Pictures "Open Core" at Imal in Brussel © Marc Wathieu
Open Core, 2009
With the "Exploding Camera", Julien Maire literally dissected and amputated a camera to present it like a contemporary version of the anatomy lesson. This he continues with the recent Open Core performances, whereby Maire revisits the public anatomical dissectionsfrom the 16th century. In the performance he opens up some machines of vision such as cameras and webcams, while also keeping a old Super 8 projector in operation.
The anatomical theatre was indeed one of the original sites for the construction of modern spectatorship in its early stages. Matching the highly theatrical spirit of Renaissance science, painters such as Rembrandt and medical instructors like Fabricius of Aquapendente shared audiences devoted to the workings of the human body. // Bleeker) // edited by Maaike Bleeker Anatomy Live – Performance and the Operating Theatre (2008)
Yet Maire never suffizes with a dismanteling or paralyzing analysis, he always implies a new synthesis, a re-animation, creating new forms of ‘living’ images without any negative, Frankensteinian bias. His approach is always constructive. “Media are spaces of action for constructed attempts to connect what is seperated,” Zielinski professes in his Deep Time of the Media. ( extract of the text of Edwin Carels " The productivity of the prototype
