thanasis

Introduction

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Inspired by the historical role where fire and fiction were closely woven within the ritualized practice of primitive campfires, artefact 126 is a pursuit for new stories to emerge in a state of isolation. In a time of quarantine, the artefact transports the outside world inwards, then transports the user/s outwards, traveling towards new landscapes and horizons, places we may endlessly explore without taking a step outside of our homes.

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Blurring the scale of an object and landscape, the fire-pit is a narrative device used by the
storyteller to transport listeners from the most domestic interiors into a theatre for the imagination. Carved into the stone, the fire-pit injects itself as the central element, surrounded by an eclectic family of architectural/sculptural characters.

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At first glance the object is inhabited by dried olive leaves, oak, coal, water, matchsticks and a notebook, and composed of a fire-pit, ash void, water bowl and oxygen valves, all used by the storyteller in his orchestration of fires’ size, smoke and scents. At second glance, the artefact may be rediscovered at an architectural scale, revealing an amphitheater, a valley, windows, a cistern, and the ruins of a forgotten landscape. This ambiguity of the artefact aims to activate the shared imagination and offers itself to be molded and remolded by the user/s, who might ignite the fire-pit to generate both old and new stories.

Like the two heads of the Roman God Janus, the artefact looks backwards in history and forwards towards the future, both at the same time. This mist of time is generated by construction methods that utilize traditional modes of design and manufacture that include hand carving, chiseling and casting, alongside contemporary methods of manufacture that include, digital-scanning, rhino-modeling and 3D-printing. The design process has begun with a digital scan of a rock found in the mountainous village of Boltaş and is designed to be cast/sculpted from a stone composed of a terracotta and copper oxide cast, a material that will rust as a way to celebrate the movement of time, in an endless decay and simultaneous rebirth, an exploration between digital and analogue forms and narratives.