#firepoint

Flash point:- The minimum temperature, at which the rate of vaporization of of fuel is just sufficient to produce a momentary flash up on the application of ignition source and in the presence of air, is known as flash point.

Fire Point:- The minimum temperature at which the heat radiated back from the the burning vapor is capable of producing sufficient vapor to enable combustion to continue is known as fire point.

https://www.firepointgames.com/

Fire Point, 2018.

Installation view at “Capitalo, Chthulu and a much hotter compost pile”, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin.

HD video loop, 7’40 min., stereo sound, burnt branches, carpet, earth, pigment. Flexible mesures.

Sound: Didio Pestana

Pictures of the Installation views by Eric Tschernow, Screenshoots by Anaïs Senli

The projected images could come from a non-terrestrial landscape, a fictional place, apparently inert, with rare and subtle movements occurring only from time to time. Structures are dispersed on the ground reminding of uncanny geological or organic formations, residue of burnt vegetation. The video then guides the viewer to a more recognizable place: the remnants of a burnt forest.

The images of the burnt forest and the sound of the cicadas were both recorded in in Andratx, Majorca, after a forest fire in 2013, whereas the branches on the ground were taken from a burnt forest near Barcelona in 2018. Spain is one of the countries with the highest number of forest fires in Europe, almost all of them caused by human activity. However, there is little effective regulation to this problem. Public resources continue to be allocated primarily to extinction, while minimizing detection and prevention. Though especially severe in Spain, other Mediterranean countries in the European Union equally suffer under such circumstances. Still, on the level of the European Union the common Community Forestry Policy is incomplete and uncoordinated.

The debate around the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene in particular has highlighted the impact of colonial and industrial activities on ecosystems all around the planet. Fire Point departs from one of many cases, reflecting on the importance of a more sustainable environment and healthy forests. Emphasizing the planet’s strangeness and the feeling of desolation Fire Point simultaneously intends to bring to mind the need to find collaborative strategies that help us to live in a world that becomes strange and unrecognizable.*