The paper deals with the concept of matter manipulation and its vitality in the Brothers Quay' works. The matter manipulation is not limited to the actual "matter". Brothers Quay perceive the acting "matters" as symbols and signs of human activities and relationships. For them, there is no fundamental difference between "matters" and living beings inhabiting their films. Matter manipulation is the process of "machine" production, reproduction, destruction, repair and deconstruction. The creation process acts as a magic spell, in which objects are transformed into something else. The Street of Crocodiles (1986) is an example of deep understanding of lifelessness as a mask, a kind of conspiracy, behind which unknown life forms hide. Brothers Quay' creative works tell us about autonomous existence of objects beyond their direct utilitarian purpose. The article will be devoted to such problems as synergistic vision of the world in which the material and the spiritual are inseparable. Despite the paradox of visual embodiment, it fits into a philosophical metatheory of the "new materialism", which transversely crosses streams of matter and mind, body and soul, nature and culture. The legacy of Brothers Quay open to us the world of ordinary, "banal" things, signs of time on their body shell, in contradiction with the dominance of endless consumption of new, intrusive advertising and cult of youth, in which there is no room for "sign of the times".