Fire: Walk with me!

„Dominion over fire is an element of our culture, as it has formed an integral part of every human society for thousands of generations. The transition from existence without fire to existence with fire has, in many ways, made life more secure and comfortable, but at the same time, it also resulted in new risks and new obligations.”

J. Goudsblom: Fire and Civilization

Fire is unnoticably enmeshed with our daily lives. On the one hand, it is a topos of cultural history – its meaning is merged with the civilizational outcomes of the Promethean mischief. The ability to light a fire has brought with it warmth and survival; while the incomprehensibility and untouchability of fire also generates fear. In an abstracted form, but at the level of mundane reality – even if not in the authentic sense conjured up by Goudsblom – domestic appliances are analogous to fire in certain ways: a source of energy, but providing a mediated access; generating a process that is uncontrollable after a certain point.

Within the framework of the exhibition, this seeming uncontrollability is extinguished by the five artists who appropriate the possible meanings of fire. Documentations of phases from the spark to the ashes. Safely. The exhibited works do not spark fire, only conjure its image up – Fire: walk with me!