The Spacepeople and the Peasant – A Bricoleur’s Orchestra

Description:

The Spacepeople and the Peasant – A Bricoleur’s Orchestra was a solo exhibition by Jim Munro featuring a series of handmade musical instruments that were activated in a live performance on the opening night. 

Munro conceived of the instruments as functional bricolage. Drawing on Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of the bricoleur—one who works with their hands and makes use of "devious means" rather than the techniques of a skilled craftsperson—Munro explored how limited tools and materials can still generate complex outcomes through improvised methods. He linked this approach to mythical thought, which similarly uses a fixed repertoire to construct meaning.

The title references two figures: spacepeople and peasants, both of which Munro sees as contemporary industrial mythologies that reflect dissatisfactions and desires. Like bricolage and myth, these figures function as both ends and means: structures for interpreting the present and imagining alternatives.