Material Exchange exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago during the exhibition entitled "Massive Change", conceived of by the designer Bruce Mau. His view is that all of the problems in the world can be approached through the lens of design, and even remedied to a large extent through design. Massive Change exhibition was filled with text, prototypes and historical examples of sustainable, or high-efficiency models, from vehicles, to materials, to poultry, to computers...designed presumably to overwhelm the viewer with a deluge of information on the topic of sustainability, and the impact of design more generally on environmental and social issues.

Transportation is one of the hidden costs/impacts of traveling exhibitions. Massive Change originated in Vancouver, and was shipped to Chicago in large, heavy, well-made crates. Since our exhibition focused on the MCA's waste materials, they thought to pass their crates on to us once they were finished with them. So we inherited a large number of crates, transported at the Vancouver Art Museum's expense, to our storage facility. The images show some of the iterations that the crates have passed through-and there are more to come...

The crates have served as:
1. tables and benches for Pathogeographies at Gallery 400
2. tables and benches for the Pedagogical Factory at the Hyde Park Art Center
3. The Material Exchange Coat Check at the exhibition Pass It On: Connecting Contemporary DIY Culture
4. Sze Lin Pang's sculpture "Buried Love"
5. bookshelves for Rebecca Zorach's house