We work toward a greater knowledge of past, present, and
future volcanic activity. This includes volcanic eruptions of artistic activity, as well as
artwork about volcanism. We don't entertain frozen definitions. We want to ascertain,
seismicly speaking, the very degree of inspiration required to shape lithospheric and
ideospheric creation. We will determine degrees of inspiration by observable bubbling,
crackling, smoking and glowing.
We are the searching ones who want to be
liberated by your information on past, present and future events of volcanism in the arts.
We want to strata an archive on the subject which shall never calcify.
Have you
anything to report on volcanism in the arts? You are welcome to send your smoke signals
to breakout@volcanisminthearts.de
Do you want to break in to collaborate? Sorry, we don´t have any cASH at all!
Nevertheless we are looking for qualified collaborators to get the
project professional enough that the next eruption of volcanism in the arts will not last
another 200 years. breakin@volcanisminthearts.de
Do you erupt yourself as much ashes as the volcanoes do? Then you
are welcome to help the project's and your own historic breakthrough. breakthrough@volcanisminthearts.de
Do volcanoes play the game of life?
Is every volcano - on the basis of its elementary unpredictability - a synonym for a game of chance?
Is a crater a gaming hall or a gambling den?
Couldn’t the volcanic throwing more likely be interpreted as throwing a dice?
And would volcanoes then throw rather a six or an one?
And can it be called Russian roulette to play a game of dice with volcanoes?
Is it possible that visitors and inhabitants of such a chronic playing area are compulsive gamblers?
And is all that a never-ending game or are we in the finals already?
The 8. Internationale Feuersalon STROMBOLI is simply playing along from March 13th to 23rd.
Firestation ZAGREUS
Dining at the center of hearthplates-tectonic Installation by KAIN KARAWAHN
Volcanic four-course wine menu by ULRICH KRAUSS
Vernissage Friday December 1, 2006 at 7 p.m.
The sun is boiling above us, the earth is boiling beneath us, and we are cooking in between. In order to cook, fire is needed. Understanding of this principle and experience indicate the beginning of human existence. Our masterminds might have copied their cooking-stove model from the chimneys of the terrestrial kitchen, the volcanoes; they put a volcanic cone with a flue upward on their furnace combined with a kitchen garden around it ... this is how dining at the center of hearthplates-tectonic once began.
Volcanic fire is the synthesis of the material and spiritual worlds. On Etna I discovered the image which unites all the images of fire, within us and exterior to us, be they painted, sculpted, conceptual or written ... (THINK LAVA ART p.594). This is what one of André Bucher's numerous verbal volcanoes sounds like. The Swiss sculptor, born in 1924, transferred his studio for a three-week period to Mount Etna's crater rib for the first time in 1976. Where purest lava welled, the torpor should not only be formed by the forces of the mountain, but eventually also by the human body and mind.
Unfortunately, the relation of volcano and man and art has not been compiled since the 19th century. Consequently, it is the endeavor of VolcanismInTheArts to particularly track down recent eruptions and to introduce them to an interested public. That such a public really exists, becomes apparent from virtual seismographs in the form of statistical numbers of clicks. Therefore we inform our readership of the title eruption of the Städtischen Museums Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich which had already occurred in 1994. In our opinion these extremely revolutionary works from the recent belong to the subject of volcanism in the arts, created by Peter Gilles, published in 1994 in the book Stromboli - 68 Selbstportraits 1991 (cover illustration on the right).
A model house turns into a volcanic model - Cai Guo-Qiang
What is a volcano? Everyone blessed with a more or less good educational background immediately associates it with a tapered rise in a flat landscape, whose upper vent gives way to a temporary cracking, spitting and fuming. The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), yet this term belongs to scientific education, serves as the measurement of such volcanic activities ranging on a scale from 0 to 8. There is no need to measure anything beyond it because a VEI of 8 does already involve effects of global climate and the elimination of entire genera.
On March 16th, 2006 the volcano hauled eruptives. 12 hours after their bounce around the peak they were not glow-emptied - they were still surrounded by lickering flames. During a further examination on the 17th around 23:34 CET, the first au-tomato-lava began suddenly to burst open splashily.
On the 16th of march an occurence took place on the volcano Stromboli which has never been seen before. During our observation, directly in front of the sunset, a lava dome piled up on the crater. Seemingly vitrified simultaneously by the outer coolness, it suddenly burst several times paroxysmused. This unimaginable row did not even sound like the opening of a ketchup bottle, but produced widely thrown out fractal lava formations as well as hundreds of red round objects which bombed on some of the Feuersalonists resting near the peak. They used in the moment of the hit the ordinary expressions for pain which even within the hysterical panic could be heard as a scientifically controlled protocol; the repeating roar of "Au!" (pronounced as "Ow").
"Feuerzangenbowled"/volcanized-punch-examinations of samples of fertile ARTPALAVA out of the italian volcanoes Etna, Campi Phlegraei, Stromboli and Vesuvius Performance, video and lecture of VolcanismInTheArts.de Kain Karawahn and Kerstin Quitsch GDK Galerie der Künste
Potsdamer Str. 78 - 10785 Berlin
Saturday 18 February 2006 - 7:30 pm
If there should be fixed a global copyright concerning cooking in general than authorship can be found in between the estimated four- to six thousand degrees Celsius hot earth-core. Its heat radiation then let it bubble and cook up to the extreme, out of holes and fissures and thus, can be experienced sensually until today in forms of volcanoes and hot springs. Therefore, tasteless questions are brewing together concerning the fire-salonistic 2006th-brainstorming on volcanoes - which are ready now to be digested as hors-d'oeuvres: "Why do volcanoes cook?" "Were those nature-steam-pots the crucial inspiration for the invention of first h(earth)-kitchens?" "What is the recipe of volcanic primeval soup, which is still the favourite meal of the first organisms the so-called Archaea?" "How does a popacatapetled volcanic rabbit taste?"
Eye-witness report of The last hours of Herculaneum
Normal-mortals who wants to be known for future generations should move in the neighbourhood of the Vesuvius as soon as possible, because its next eruption is expected as a plinian one. Plinian means in its consequence that it will come to similar dimensioned burying as the unfled inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii had to experience. Some of them tour now - scarcely 2,000 years later - as bony nameless through German museums and give their viewers a feeling for what it means to be cooked out of life by a heat-shock of 400° Celsius.
eruption prognosis for The Last Hours of Herculaneum
6.200 before Christ volcanoes still were figured as "tents" vomiting fire. Obviously were such fire-mountainers then not perceived as exceptional threatening - would humans have built otherwise their own chimneys close to such outbreaking neighbourhood?
This at present oldest known picture of a volcano (excerpt) has survived until today in a shrine at the Anatolish stone age settlement Catal Hüyük.
Analyses of the eruption materials of the Vesuvius of Wörlitz
It took VolcanismInTheArts some days to analyse intensely the eruptive materials of the Wörlitz Vesuvius. Next to the usual light-, warmth-, smoke- and ash-emissions a title-eruption has been registered simular to ERUZIONE D'ARTE A STROMBOLI. Meanwhile according to our perception a title-eruption is always an objective hint for cultural volcano-activities.
Eye-witness report of the eruption of the Vesuvius of Wörlitz
387 before Christ it has been the geese, which woke up all the inhabitants of the Roman capitol and in that way introduced the successful defence against the assaulting Gaul. At the 1st of September 2005 it has been a black swan, who suddenly appeared lava-red billing about 7:30 h p.m. and in that way also successful introduced the evacuation of the Wörlitz volcano island.
Volcanoes don't sleep. They only do "mountain" their activity. Even in areas of evident silence eruptive surprises can occure at any moment. Due to interdisciplinary interpretations of current collected data and, after the successfull prognosis for ERUZIONE D'ARTE A STROMBOLI it is necessary to define a prognosis for another volcano.
eruzione d'arte Stromboli - studio Feuersalon 2005
Since 1999 Berlin artist Kain Karawahn has organized the International Feuersalon on Stromboli once a year. The myriad yearly eruptions, with their gigatons of explosive force over thousands of years, stand for a creative output of immeasurable energy. According to Karawahn, this volcanic force defines the playing flame of the Salon, whose sulfurous atmosphere can potentialize mental eruptions without mercy. Due to such eruptive spells, participants of differing age, profession, and origin created exactly what they couldn't hold back: art!
eruzione d'arte a Stromboli - temporary works 20 III 05
Stromboli is known as the island of unexpected developments. Visitors to Stromboli who don't bring with them the permanent expectation of the unexpected once they are there want to leave the island immediately. Surprisingly this can lead to another surprise too, because you never know if the ferry boat will come or not until you see it coming with your own eyes - but wait! - until you step on its board, because it use to happen that you see the ship, it is straight in front of you and you cannot enter it, because of unexpected and rarely explained surprises. Otherwise the permanent expectation for surprises on Stromboli can become a habit for the ones who grow along with it. For those kind of professionals the performance of the young strombolian artists Marialuna Maresca (artstudent in Napoli), Raffaele Maresca and Caterina Utano was an impressively example for a new type of strombolian surprises - the artistic ones. The group's performance on the theme of human being, volcano and art was the crowned end to the official part of the project eruzione d'arte a Stromboli.
eruzione d'arte a Stromboli - temporary works 19 III 05
The exhibition of eruzione d'arte a Stromboli included a further special event in the afternoon of March 19th at Artegianata. In a performance the artist Elvira Pirozzi demonstrated the preparing of special bread considering the four elements. After riping in the oven the bread had to cool down overnight before it got married deliciously in the spectator's palate together with a glass of strombolian wine.
eruzione d'arte a Stromboli - temporary works 18 III 05
Within the exhibition program of eruzione d'arte a Stromboli at the evening of 18.III.2005 a lot of spectators came together again on the beach of Ficogrande to experience five more performances to the theme Synthesis of Human and Volcano and Art. The documentation of performances is impossible. As a attempt it is allowed to medialized the artistic intension. As a fragment only which depends on the authors selection out of both, available and accessable visual and written information.
eruzione d'arte a Stromboli - temporary works 17 III 05
Parallel to the opening of the exhibition, designed like a gallery tour, at 17.III.2005 within five hours seven performances were happening to the theme Synthesis of Human and Volcano and Art. The documentation of performances is impossible. As a attempt it is allowed to medialized the artistic intension. As a fragment only which depends on the authors selection out of both, available and accessable visual and written information.
At the 17th of March 2005 human, volcano and art synthezised to a "Monte Nuovo" on Stromboli. Opposite to the same titled "Monte Nuovo" occured on the Phlegraean Fields on 29th September 1538 the strombolian one did not lead to a change of the natural landscape but to an eruptive rise of the international art-landscape. Almost overnight Stromboli had enriched the world of art with four locations simultaneously, which offered public accesses to local and international artworks on the theme of volcanism for 14 days.
As was the prognosis, eruzione d'arte a Stromboli 2005 erupted on March 17th. The whole phase of artistic activities then lasted until March 30th. After that, most participating artists stopped their public works, prudently evaluating all their new knowledge concerning the
realizations of the program.
encounters between local and international art on an active volcano
The English ambassador William Hamilton was stationed in Italy in the second half of the 18th century when Vesuvius had a series of grand eruptions. Hamilton's detailed observations of volcanic matter and phenomena led to his publication "Campi Phlegraei," which is widely regarded as the first scientific paper on volcanic activity. In addition to scientifically observing volcanism, Hamilton viewed it as a fertile source of inspiration for the Arts. As a patron, he invited many artists of different disciplines to his villa to paint, act, dance, read, sing, and give concerts in front of the erupting Vesuvius. The resulting work from this romantic fusion of geophysics and art found its way back to Europe, fueling a new appetite for depictions of "fire mountains."