Studio Practice & Feedback Frameworks

4 Experiments: Burning, Standing, Moving, Sounding

During my school trip at Massia in Massiaru, Estonia, I experimented four things: burning, standing, moving and sounding. And I made and present one performance with them to my colleagues. In the performance, I could not feel any connection with each other. However, they had settled in my mind since when I don't remember exactly, so I wanted to take this chance to unpack them.

Burning

At Massia, I tried to burn something. I wanted to do it since I became interested in finding primary actions of human for sustaining life as the living organism. Burning seems like a destructive action, because it makes something burnt, destroyed and gone. Regardless goodwill or innocence beneath the intention, it always needs something to be destructed. Especially, what interesting in me is about making soap. For making soap, lye is necessary and lye is made of ash. Cleaning myself means eliminating harmful ogranisms from my skin, if I want to clean myself, I have to burn wood for change them into ash. It is intriguing because it is the evidence showing the fact that human must destroy something to keep themselves healthy. Even lye is also extremly dangerous to human as it breaks human's own membranes. However, for making a weapon to fight with micro-hostiles, human have to make toxics, for making toxics, human have to burn something...

Not only that, human who want to get electricity or heat have to burn something, also. Then what would be burnt? Personally, it was not easy to task that decide to what would be burnt. I thought I could burn things that was useless or meaningless to me or too meaningful that I could not bear it anymore. Either way, it needed value judgements. Am I have the right? This question might be needless in front of desires of a physical beings who have powers to do whatever they want, especially under pressing conditions. I still do not know what thoughts exactly I should have for burning, but in Massia, I just wanted to make a time to think about it and to experience how does it feel. The following is reflections on my burning experiment with photos.

I found this fireplace at Missia and decided to burn something.

But it is not easy to burn even a tiny leaf due to a moist weather.

Even a thin stick. It was embarrassed because I had thought it will be easy to burn a dead leaf or twig. My objective began to change into making a fire itself...

At one night, some of my peers and I made a fire on a bunch of sticks and papers. It looked going so well, however, it could not be sustained and needed more firewood.

After that day, I revisited the fireplace and tried again to burn a leaf, it also failed due to the moisture.

Another day, we collected more materials for making a bigger and long-lasting fire.

And lit a fire...

It went well. We constantly put materials picked up around fireplace such as fallen branches or disposed paper into a bonfire. For making bigger fire, the more material needed.

We had to pour water to extinguish the fire. Its appearance was totally different from before (compare photo 6).

After that day, I revisited the fireplace, again.

I touched ash. It was soft and light surprisingly. Maybe because of the mositure gone.

Standing

If burning is an extroverial action for surviving, to me, standing is closer to an introversial action. Standing, specifically a transition to standing from lying down, is a mechanical concept intriguing me with its dynamics. It means an active balancing against gravity, that is exactly opposite to lying down, which is passive balancing following gravity through relying on the ground. Therefore, in my perception, it seems a clear statement of being alive. Also, standing objects not the living, give an impression of an artificial feeling. Because gravity pull everything down to the ground in nature.

So I picked up a branch on the ground...

Made it stand.

And another one...

And another one. A line was made. In other words, a pattern was created.

I also found pine corns on the ground.

Stand it up!

Two...

Three...

And more. It looked like a wall, a march or a spine of a dinosaur.

After two days, I revisted branches. They partly fell down.

And pine corns, too. It reminded me of a process of something becoming the ruins.

Another day, I found this pine corn on the side of a road while walking and made it stand.

I moved it to the middle of the the sidewalk. It became more visible and had a possibility of interrupting a passage.

In my tutorial session, I found this standing hammer coincidentally while walking in a forest with Claudia Brazzale. We still do not understand how it was standing up there. Finally, what I discovered when I was trying to make them stand, especially on soil was that I had to slightly dig up the soil to gain the support to stand.

Moving

“Moving” has a too broad range of meaning, however I could not find a specific title to name my experiment. At that time, I just had an idea of rotating my wrist; I did not know why I was captivated by it.

Sounding

Performance

In the performance, I gathered the audience around the fireplace, reading out the following text.

My intention was provocating a thought about burning itself, I have no idea how to deal with it. I just wanted to make an action and experence what will happen. And I had a moment of silence briefly, moved a little towards the building and stood on a way on the grass (the audience followed me because I had asked it through my invigilator). On there, I picked up some branches and made them stand on the ground after read the following: