During the XIXth century, the neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne created electrotherapy to study human expressions. A system combining an electric shock applied to the muscles and a shooting close to the time lapse to fix ‘the movements of the soul’ too quick to be captured with the naked eye. Duchenne had the ambition to build a vocabulary of facial expressions, each corresponding to a specific emotion or in his words a ‘living image and experimental passions’. The Electroshock performance offered people an insight into the deepest secrets of their soul. Back to reality, the photograph becomes the evidence of a physical reality. In its seizure, the body reflects the reality facing the question that now bears upon him in our world bathed in electronics.
Photoproject in three phases: PHASE 1: Participant received a small electroshock device and an instruction on how to manipulate it to undergo the procedure of electroshock. PHASE 2: As soon as the button was pressed, he/she received a slight electric discharge and reveiled his/her inner face... that got photographed instantly. PHASE 3: GERM LAB team used the created database in real-time projections on walls of the lab. Pictures could be downloaded the next week on the collective website.