Kiosk 1, 2, and 3 are three sculptural TV stands and seats, made from discarded furniture and a dead tree. Each stand holds a 72” television, and plays back 4K video recorded on an action camera strapped to my head. The videos document me performing tasks in the production of either making the stands themselves, or of other artworks: gathering discarded furniture, cutting down a dead tree to gather logs, or building panels for the Excess Dispersion series. The videos are all edited following the logic of do-it-yourself videos, such as posted on YouTube. In each video, the soundtrack has been generated in real time from a modular synthesizer that I have brought along with me. In one video, I sing the how-to instructions along to the self-generated melody of the synthesizer.

In the Kiosk Series, I identify and satirize the demands of efficiency and aestheticization that are internalized in our neoliberal era. I perform as a one-person-band juggling act to reveal tension between doing something and explaining it, while aesthetically framing it. As with the Victorian-era explanations of artisanal craft, contemporary how-to video attempts to render everything transparent. Yet there is always a gap: the tacit, embodied knowledge involved in making cannot be fully described or depicted. Complete knowledge only comes from direct feeling or experience. This gap parallels my interest in confusing where the aura of my research resides; whether in the process, the resulting object(s), or the documentation thereof.