The death of fire is the birth of air | 2019
Performance documenation, Performance 7pm.15.August.2019. Museo de Arte in Bogotá.
Performer: Hanna Noh, Pedro Ramírez
The project is for a ritual ceremony of an imaginary tribe, which doesn’t exist in reality but as construction. The tribe is in my intercultural experience and researches among South Korea and Colombia. Ceremonial objects are an interpretation of hybrid cultural inspirations. The performance presents how to use bronze objects and do a ritual ceremony with them.
The quotation of Heraclitus "The death of fire is the birth of air. " explains the performance action poetically. When one performer wears the belt and holds a brazier, which looks like a baby head, charcoals burn inside. The smog comes out of the mouth of the baby figured brazier like a breath.
The other performer holds a mashua Ocarina, which makes subtle blowing sounds with the help of an electronic sensor and an attached speaker.
The project is generously supported by Museo de Arte in Bogotá, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, and Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
The death of fire is the birth of air | 2019
Leather, bronze, 35 x 60 x 20 cm, unique, Colombia.
The object is based on the use of fire in anthropological perspective, Pre-Hispanic’s metal casting techniques and inspired by an ancient South Korean brazier Chiao-tou tripod in Silla, 5th-6th century A.D period. The object navigates a ceremony by obtaining practical usage.
Mashua Ocarina | 2019
Bronze, electronic device, 50 x 23 x 20 cm, unique, 2018, Colombia.
Instrumental development collaborates with Pedro Ramírez
In the Pre-Hispanic era of Colombia, the tubers were fundamental in the diet of the agricultural society. However, at the end of the eighteenth-century, their crops were replaced by European plantations. ¹ I pay attention to the fact that colonization was unutilized and neglected some crops, changed the majority crop consumption, influenced genetic diversity in agriculture.
This object is a designed instrument for being a part of the fictive tribe’s ritual ceremony. When a performer blows the mouthpiece, a sensor activates a motor and synthesizer.
Instrument Excerpt: Link
¹ Cecilia Restrepo M, La alimentación en la vida cotidiana del Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, 1653-1773, 1776-1900, Bogotá, Colombia: Ministerio de Cultura, 2012, p. 113.