Art of Fire

All week I have meant to write about the use of fire in art and connect to all those really cool fire art installations out there.  There is some inspiring stuff!  So many amazing festivals use fire art, from the smallest productions to the largest.  I have collected a bunch of pictures on pinterest.

Our local Rogue Theatre Company puts on productions in Tehidy Woods which begin with a walk through the woods where you meet performers in little mini installations.  They often use fire in some form. particularly in the winter productions that take you through the woods in the dark.

The most famous arts festival involving fire has to be Burning Man.  It is a festival that I find very inspiring and it would be great to go some day, although spending time in the desert feels a little challenging!  A city is built each year called Black Rock City in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada on the playa which is a delicate environment.  The festival has ten principles and one of these is to leave no trace.  They take this very seriously.  No rubbish.  

Two of the other principles are radical self expression and participation.  Art installations are constructed across the Playa and people are encouraged to volunteer to assist in the larger projects but also to create art themselves and take part.  The culture of the festival has become one of the most amazing creativity.  Every detail, the costumes, the bikes that people ride around, mutant vehicles, all contribute to the expression...  The aim of Burning Man is to literally, set people on fire and then send them home to set others on fire.

Fire is such a key part of Burning Man that they have a whole section of their website devoted to it.

Any time spent browsing Burning Man pictures is inspiring.

There are a number of festivals inspired by Burning Man around the world.  Burning Seed in Matong State Forest of Australia, the Telluride Fire Festival in Colorado, AfrikaBurn in South Africa, Midburn in the Negev desert of Israel, Nowhere in the Monegros desert of Spain, Burning Nest in South Wales...  In fact there are so many now that Wikipedia has a page just for Burning Man inspired festivals.

The truth is, fire is awesome and beautiful all by itself.  You create an amazing installation and then set it on fire, it's going to be an amazing thing to watch.  There are a bunch of metaphors in the burning of things that touch people deeply.  Add in the science of pyrotechnics and there is amazing potential.  I don't know where the line is between art that uses fire, pyrotechnics and fire performers...

Jiang Zhi for instance takes flowers and douses them in alcohol before setting them alight and photographing them.  The images are beautiful and often ethereal as the alcohol burns blue, mostly.  Fire can be considered as destructive, but in reality, it's a chemical reaction and nothing is lost, fire is transformative and this is what Jiang Zhi does, he captures transformation.  

The Box Project was created Tanapol Kaewpring and he places different elements in a glass box in various environments.  The resulting photographs are beautiful pictures.  In Fire a Box, the glass sits on a beach, flat wet sand suggests the tide going out and it's a calm day, waves gently ebbing on the sand rather than crashing.  The light is low suggesting dawn or dusk.  And then there is a glass box containing fire.  His understanding of his work is also fascinating and he is quoted on this Instagram post.  He talks about change, growth and destruction and how humanity control them, about how we might need to let go a little, think outside the box and break free...

Bernard Aubertin was an artist and member of the ZERO Movement, which was artist group described as a "zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning".  He began to add fire to his works and became known for setting fire to paintings and books and other objects, as well as red monochrome pieces and works involving matches.

Fire is often used to create an effect that is perhaps secondary.  Le Cercle by Sylvain Meyer is an optical illusion created at a party and photographed. It's a giant oval that appears as a circle and as a result, it makes it look like a smaller man is stood in the air above another man.  It's looks spiritual and meditative which is at odds with the story of it's creation.  It's theatre made possible by darkness and fire.

I think that some of the best fire illusions are the ones that do not use fire at all but still manage to convey something fire like.  Origami Lava was an installation that shows lava pouring out of a derelict building in a smoky atmosphere.  No fire was involved though, instead over 10,000 pieces of origami were joined together.  Dark Silence in Suburbia was an installation depicting flaming tires with billowing smoke constructed using extreme modelling skills.

Daniel Wurtzel uses fog under a fan to create tornadoes.  With the right lighting, these swirling vortexes look like flames and have been used to great affect in theatrical productions, where actors are able to stand in them.  He does however take this idea beyond illusion and back to reality because he also creates fire tornadoes.

It's not hard to create fire.  Just light a match.  But fire needs us to be in control of what we do in order to create art with it.  The flickering of the flames is beautiful in it's own right.  My Dad would sometimes have a bonfire in the back garden and I would love to stand with him and watch the flames.  There is an interesting tension with fire between letting it do what it wants as a partner in creation, and using science to understand it.  Pyrotechnics must be a fascinating branch of science, so close to art...  The boundaries are blurred.  Maybe because fire creates.