Thanks to Samson Young performing "Model for the Apocalypse"
In Model for the Apocalypse (2008) a man shapes amorphous little heaps with ‘slow motion material’ made from micro steel balls with a special glue. This time there isn’t any manipulation of the viewer, the mass actually appears to desintegrate in slow motion. A camera records the ‘action’ in detail and this live transmission is projected on a screen besides the performer, thus conflating real time perception with mediated vision. Resembling a bizarre form of minimalist table top animation with caviar-like matter, the performance is preferably stretched for many hours, adding another layer to the already conflated perception of time by the slow movement of ‘sculpture’ and the mediated slow motion on the screen.
Maire thus questions to what extent our vision is conditionned by tropes from diverse media. How does our eye distinguish the features of three dimensional silvery grains on the table from the recording of the grains, translated into a frame filled with fuzzy pixels? What connatations does this automatic reading trigger? Whether in the form of installations, performances or two dimensional objects, the work of Maire is making obvious the slippage from analogue to digital media. From his earliest pieces onwards, the artist is addressing the process of mediation, rather than the epistemological, the content of the media.
Edwin Carels extract of " The productivity of the prototype
View of the Performance "Model for the Apocalypse" ,
Moma Zendai , Shanghai 2008 photo © Matthias Fritsche
