The MUSCO Story c.1985 chronicles the tragicomic story of MUSCO (muse-co), a fictitious lighting business sliding steadily into decline. The work is a collaboration between Michael Smith, a veteran installation-video-performance artist and Joshua White, artist and originator of the Joshua Light Show of New York’s Fillmore East fame in the 1960s. This infomercial-style video is derived from an installation entitled MUSCO: 1969-1994 (1997), a lifelike recreation of a worn and aging showroom replete with shoddy office, coffee station, floor models of low-rent lighting effects, and a demo disco floor. Portrayed here in the final days of bankruptcy, MUSCO serviced the pyschedelic, disco, and club communities for more than a quarter of a century, and is owned and managed by Smith’s unflaggingly optimistic alter-ego, “Mike.” Employing a pastiche of fictional and historical elements, the work functions as both a tribute to bygone eras and a metaphor for failure.