ArtBase Anthologies 002: Let’s Play Majerus G3 📽

“Let’s Play Majerus G3” explores a previously unexplored aspect of artist Michel Majerus’s archive: his laptop.

Majerus (1967–2002) was a painter who used the computer extensively, incorporating digital imagery and media into his work. His laptop, which held sketches and compositions, working materials, notes, and appointments, could be thought of as an extension of his studio. Following Majerus’s death, this rich window into the artist’s late work was not accessible for nearly two decades – until artist/musician/researcher Cory Arcangel brought Rhizome together with the Majerus Estate to restore access to the laptop. 

In this series, Arcangel will don the role of a YouTuber who films “Let's Play” videos, a popular genre on YouTube wherein gamers record their playthroughs of videogames, often providing commentary while doing so. In this situation, the "videogame" in question is the laptop of Michel Majerus. 

Through this process, Arcangel will share insights about the artist’s practice that can only be gleaned by exploring his digital environment. In so doing, the project will consider how artists’ use of digital tools might inform an art historical understanding of their work, while yielding rich insights into the late work of Majerus, a painter who engaged deeply with the computer at a turning point in digital culture. 

 

Watch episode 1: Could we get this ancient artist's laptop to boot up?

As Cory explains in the first episode, Emulation as a Service (EaaS) is an open source emulation framework originally developed at the University of Freiburg that provides management of and access to emulators running in the cloud. In this case, EaaS was utilized to perform a copy of the hard disk originally built into Majerus’ Macintosh G3 laptop, bringing the whole system back up in the original state it was left in when last used by him. Similarly to saving your progress in a video game, EaaS allows you to make changes in an emulated environment without affecting the original copy.