When leaving their home city to start a new colony, ancient Greeks took with them embers that they later used to kindle a fire – the symbol of the connection between the new settlement and the metropolis and the focal point of the community. In 1910, the American Forest Service, as the first organisation in the world, started to build fire watch towers. A few decades later special planes appeared and in 1980 satellites started to monitor the entire globe, quickly detecting the places of fire. With time, the number of detections grew as did the number of fires. In the entire history of Earth observation there were fewer cases of fire than in the recent years.
Fires and arsons: An old legend can help us determine the origin of fire on Earth. Shifting quickly from a local to the global perspective, from the perspective of a fairy tale to that of archives, one may observe how the firespread in various regions and times. Fire is a recurrent thing. It moves rapidly from one place to another. It is like a rumour, spreading from mouth to mouth, infectious like violence. Making a fire has become our addiction or maybe it has always been ourdrive, uncontrollable and needing to be suppressed.
Orange, or minus green: Winter is coming and the chill becomes more severe every day. Air pollution rates shown on a colour scale are shifting from orange to a more toxic pink. A gloomy landscape of green black Silesia. Eachwinter, while trying to peer through the sky, we often mistake a flock of crows for flakes of black snow – particles of burnt rubbish and soot.
Curator:
Agata Cukierska
Presented:
CSW Kronika, Bytom
2019/20