MC Daubendiek spent her years at GW developing not only as an artist but as an athlete as well. Her artwork reflects and expands upon these identities by focusing on laborious processes, the physiology and magic of the human body, gravity, time, and the color hot pink. AFFECTED, her body of thesis work, is an ongoing set of experiments and artworks centered around questions about nature, fantasy, and truth. Her experiences growing up as an athlete, and most recently her four seasons as a collegiate volleyball player, have shaped her perception of the body, labor, rest, success, and sexuality. AFFECTED asks how we can use the body to know who we are? Why do we think we can solve the mysterious and magical qualities of our bodies? How do we know what is natural or true about human lifestyles and physiologies? The work is looking at the levels of mediation that exist between our consciousness, our physical bodies, our built environment, and the natural world that ultimately construct our reality and influence how we treat our bodies. It highlights the methods used to discover, supplement, and affect our physical vessels to explore the slippage between what we think we are and what we actually are.

AFFECTED was one installation made up of three parts, a site-specific sculpture of athletic tape and gym weights, two televisions facing each other with two different videos on each, and a touch-sculpture made of pre wrap.