Julien Maire - Kikk Festival 2019

Out of Order (Talk in French) In his artworks and performances, Julien Maire systematically re-invents the technology of visual media. His research is a manifest hybrid between media-archaeology and the production of new media constellations. His output consists of prototypes that perform exactly what their etymology promises (from protos: ‘first’ and typos ‘impression’ or ‘model’): proposing unique technological configurations that produce a new, specific image quality. As industrial prototypes, these original creations – no matter how technically clever and refined – are rather useless: too complex, too delicate and too clunky to ever be considered for mass-production. As artistic statements, the main function of these full-scale constructions is to provoke an effect of wonder, alerting the viewer to the ambivalent status of moving images produced by a machine. Extract from Edwin Carels, “The Productivity of the Prototype: on Julien Maire’s Cinema of Contraptions,” University College Ghent