[ISEA2010] Artist Statement: Julien Maire – Memory Cone, 2009

Artist Statement

Installation

A video camera records the hands of a person organising strips of paper on a table. The whiteness of the blank paper triggers micro mirrors that orient a section of a photographic image on a screen. These micro mirrors, activated by a video source, open up ‘photographic windows’. With his Memory Cone, Julien Maire invites us first of all to explore the nature of the grain in the image and question its apparent motionlessness. The installation functions as a
laboratory for probing the material qualities of a mediated image. The status of the image in Memory Cone can neither be described as a photograph, nor a slide, nor a video nor film still. A video-image without pixels? A quietly vibrating photograph? The projection of the white paper fragments seems neither purely digital nor analogue. Julien Maire prefers a conflation, or hybridisation, to a simple opposition. In Memory Cone, the combination of visual sources provokes the awareness of different generations of images. When participating in this heuristic process, the viewer turns into a mediaarchaeologist. Whereas consumer electronics become increasingly smaller and at the same time continue to expand their memory capacity, Julien Maire celebrates the sheer materiality of a deconstructivist display, foregrounding the whole
configuration of machines necessary for the production of a limited number of images. In sharp contrast with the daily visual overkill, polluting our consciousness without making lasting impressions, Julien Maire cultivates the slow process of image recuperation.

  • Julien Maire lives and works in Berlin. He studied fine arts in Metz. Maire is a visual and performing artist who deconstructs and re-invents the technology of audio-visual media. He renews obsolete cinematic techniques and develops alternative interfaces to produce moving images. His research confronts immobility and movement, reality and fiction and interrogates the notion of time and memory in the film image. His performance Digit and the installation Exploding Camera both received an Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica Linz 2007. Exploding Camera also received the New Media Art award from the Foundation Liedts-Meesen in 2008. His work was nominated for the World Technology Award in New York in 2009. Recent exhibitions include venues such as The French Pavilion, 25. Biennale
    of Alexandria; Matter and Memory, Woodstreet Galleries, Pittsburgh; SMAK, Gent; Behind the Image, Festival Artefact, Stuk, Leuven; 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seoul; Elandscapes, Eart Festival, Shanghai.

Full text (PDF) p. 64-69