Cory Arcangel: The Michel Majerus Estate, & Rhizome.org November and December, 2023, The Michel Majerus Estate, Berlin, Germany
In 2017, I initiated, with the Michel Majerus Estate and Rhizome.org, the restoration of late contemporary artist Michel Majerus' (1967-2002) laptop. The long-term research project (ongoing) is positioned within the discourse of contemporary painting and digital preservation. It proposes to unpick the structure of Majerus' work process, from the IRL to his "virtual studio".
The project had progressed through multiple steps since 2017: the initial idea, securing support from the estate for this project, producing a mirror copy of the computer’s hard drive, bringing on board the necessary technical expertise (Rhizome.org), developing a work-flow and structure for ethical issues encountered in accessing potentially personal data, booting the computer up for the first time, non-destructive redacting of personal data from the computer (done by the family), and finally preparing the computer for outside researchers (myself).
In specific, the IFCAR grant entailed a field trip to the Michel Majerus Estate in Berlin in November, and further remote research days in December, both 2023. During this trip to Berlin, I was trained by the estate and engineers from Rhizome.org on the emulation software EaaS, and I began researching Majerus laptop and virtual studio. Complimenting this virtual research was Majerus' IRL archive, and support of his long time gallery neugerriemschneider.
The outcome of both this week supported by IFCAR, and the longer term research project are a Youtube series about Majerus' laptop, and a two-person show at the Michel Majerus Estate both titled Let's Play Majerus G3 both to be unveiled in April 2024.
The findings on Majerus laptop immediately nearly doubled the size of the Majerus Estate, and thus, with this project, we can already see what an artist estate might look like moving into the future (half physical, half virtual). Already in the early 2000's, Majerus was moving in-between IRL and virtual space (very surprising for an artist known as a painter!). Furthermore, a virtual studio can give us clues to the production of a work that a physical studio can not such as time stamps, layers, and file versioning. These findings can help all researchers in the future start to navigate this new world of artist archives in which the virtual and IRL will be linked.
If I were to do something different, I would triple the amount of time I budgeted for this project! The amount of material is overwhelming and piecing it together into a comprehensible narrative is proving to be a formidable task!