WORKS
Fire on the West Front
Single Channel Video, Loop 3m, 2008
Fire on the West Front takes its concept from the most dramatic moments in the ski sport history; " Kvar var du da Oddvar Br Brakk Staven?" (“Where were you when Oddvar Brå broke his pole?”). Oddvar Brå won a shared gold medal (with the Soviet Union) in the 1982 FIS Nordic World Ski Championship in Oslo. In the closing stages his ski pole broke which led the Russian skier to catch up with him and they reached the finishing line at the same time. This Norwegian reference- point is universal, -world or local events that forever remind one of what one were doing or where one found oneself at the moment of significant episode.
The obsessive and fetishistic characteristics of a dramatic episode and fire, inspired Fire on the West Front. The impact that a fire has on people and nature involved, is impossible to comprehend during the exhilarating encounter as a voyeur of ‘the beauty of flames’. Often one remembers with nostalgia what one were doing or where one where at the start of a big fire. One is preoccupied in the mundane of daily events and somehow these daily events become romantic, as one will forever remember that moment in the light of the fire; the devastation, yet beautiful and forever- captivating nature event.
Fire on the West Front; Drama attempts to meet the familiar in Eretria, West on the island of Evia, one hour north of Athens, Greece. Fire has once again left a black hole in the nature and in the lives of those affected by the flames that lasted for 6 weeks. Fire on the West Front is a collective and obsessive attempt to convey the beauty and devastation that for so long has raged the woods and the lives of the Mostopoulos’ family.
