Tromsø Kunstforening
The project presents four diagrams on fire-retardant textile and an audio piece. Each diagram drafts a possible choreography in public space, in which crawling techniques employed in fire fighting are unfolded. Demands made public in the virtual sphere – from online discussion forums to anonymous comments on recent fire incidents – have been selected and re-contextualised for each choreography, proposing four different strategies of action: ‘Don’t smash the machines’, ‘Demand mutual protection’, ‘Fight fire with fire’ and ‘Look at the global south’.
While these demands emulate a language very present in warning signs and public posters, they are written in the form of ambiguous maxims in a rather speculative way. Aiming to reflect on how societies are choreographed, the association of words attempt to explore how our language can perform – and how our infrastructures can move. Installed in pipes, the blankets allude to another structural dimension: that of an architecture which is no more concrete or more physical than the network of thoughts it sustains.
Inside two vertical pipes attached to the floor, an audio installation is set. Using a fast-paced performative rhythm, the audio gathers material from scientific articles, newspaper headlines, memes and other online sources, navigating through the idea that new fire-fighting technologies, our perception of nature and the act of crawling might be strangely correlated.
The project received the BKH kunststudent stipend 2019.
"Bianca Hisse’s installation ‘Four infrastructural movements for a burning social body’ is a contemporary comment. (...) I perceive it as poetic representations of man’s rather meaningless strategies in the face of a threatening catastrophe. The impression is enhanced by the accompanying, fragmentary sound work. I especially attached myself to the story of a man who called the fire department because he thought the sunset was fire, and a dystopian oneliner: ‘Crawling has saved my life, but do I even want to be in this world?’ "- Mariann Enge, KUNSTKRITIKK: Kunst som bryr seg.
Interview with Hilde Sørstrøm: https://www.hakapik.no/home/2019/6/7/maba-2019-bianca-hisse
