SuttonBeresCuller (John Sutton, Ben Beres, Zac Culler) is now in its 16th year as a cooperative entity rooted in a unique, strictly collaborative process with a goal to create unique experiences in the public realm.
Over the years SBC has challenged the boundaries of collaborative and community-driven art making, seeking to decentralize the prominence of market-based consumption in contemporary art practice, instead producing work with a strong conceptual foundation that also remains accessible to and enjoyable for anyone.
-What is the purpose of your coming to Serbia?
We are honored to be invited by Kulturanova to participate in Festival Ulicnih Sviraca. We will be debuting our mobile performative sculpture: Department of Bearing and Orientation at the Festival. This work has been made possible through a grant from CEC ArtsLink.
- How did you came up with the idea of this act (with backpacks)?
We designed a commercial-like sign for a backpack as part of an ongoing series of mobile projects and temporary events. The backpacks are a mobile version of an earlier site-specific installation we created for the Frye Art Museum in Seattle and 21c Museum Hotel in Oklahoma City. The site-specific installation that the piece is based on was meant to speak to the sustainability of growth as it pertains to aspects of our social, economic and natural environments. For the mobile piece, we have imagined a fictional bureaucracy: The Department of Bearing and Orientation. As representatives of this fictional bureaucracy, we plan to walk the festival acting as living sculpture.
- How will your act look like on the festival (will you be walking with those backpacks or you are planning to have some stops where you make the audience circle)?
This will be a roving performance. We plan to walk through the festival crowds. We have no planned stops. Dressed in white coveralls, we plan to walk through the festival pointing out architectural features, performers and people.
- How long is your performance?
We plan to walk around the area for approximately 8 hours a day with a few breaks for meals and rest.
