“For me, photography is more the act of taking pictures than being a medium for providing a photographic image. The photographic image is almost a re- sidual consequence of photography. The motif is chimeric. The act of taking pictures becomes the legitimate aim of the work.” (Alain Bublex)
While working on a project with still cameras, Alain Bublex realised that ins- tead of drawing objects, he was focusing on their use. This reflection led to a diagram (The Camera as Projected, 1998) describing a camera that does not record images. An object which seems absurd but that could however reso- nate with one of the main features of the artist’s practice of photography: «a camera to see the world, a paradoxical object which can capture an image of the photograph’s location on a screen without being able to record it”.
In 2002, on the occasion of the exhibition “Less Ordinary”, Alain Bublex at- tempted to follow this thought with one of the industry’s largest manufactu- ring group Samsung Techwin, in coproduction with Seoul’s Artsonje Center. He made the blueprint of this machine “to heighten our awareness of the world” and produced a mock-up. His idea was not to possibly market the product but rather to involve a manufacturer in the study of an object with no apparent use.
Dreaming of «a company that would at last be able to make a meaningful object which does not provide a service», Alain Bublex uses show room co- des by presenting the Awareness Box with a high-tech pedestal and light- boxes. Yet as is his wont, he gives pride of place to a more poetic than strictly commercial mode of representation by bathing the Project Room in semi-darkness and melancholy.