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(post in progress, more to come soon !)
Last september, we were invited by raumlaborberlin for a Live-in Lab workshop called #sculpturaldemocracy in Dusseldorf, in front of the Schauspielhaus theater, for Joseph Beuys’s anniversary.
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Fire is fascinating. In our collapsing world, images of fire are everywhere, from inflamed amazonian forest to riots and its load of burning baricades. But could fire’s images be used in a more productive way ? Can fire be used to produce forms, collective forms ? These « Forms of the we » will come from fire and what it might produce with its varioufs forms : coal for natural painting, ember for cooking and flame for firing ceramics. We’ll work in groups on welding metal for adorning a wood ceramic kiln, painting on fabrics with the artist Marion Jdanoff that’ll create an urban scenography and modeling clay to create ceramic table barbecues. That way, we might finally propose a giant collective meal at the end of the workshop.
We had the chance to be invited among other architects and artists such as STEALTH.unlimited, Arnold Dreyblatt, Kaltwasser/Fraas/Ronz and raumlaborberlin.
During one week, we lived, cooked and worked with 70 people in the middle of the city, between malls and office buildings.
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Beuys did have a sense for storytelling, fiction and mystery. That’s why we invited the artist Marion Jdanoff to draw huge medieval-like fabrics based on stories about fire we gathered during the workshop. This led also to a fanzine and all were related to four contemporary themes we discussed : Gathering-fire, Riot-fire, Energy-fire and Mega-fire.
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