Situation specific performance event for the Aberystwyth International Ceramics Festival 2009, composed by Tom Barnett, with kind help from many others.
Within the framework of a 'spectacle' - a performance firing event scheduled to entertain potters, ceramic artists, teachers, enthusiasts and professionals from around the world at various times over the festival weekend, the Fire Capsule event set out to to evoke, provoke and excite through opening up a melting pot of potential association and connection with fire at its core.
This was the fire gazers dream brought closer to consciousness; employing 24 hours of the vast range of popular music that uses fire as a metaphor for love, with 24 hours of projections of capsular architecture from when the word 'capsule' first came into popular lexicon in the late 50's, and with a series of working clocks raku glazed by punters and fired (batteries taken out) to 1000 degrees. Fire Capsule explored the dichotomy of inside and outside that we experience innately, bodily; it attempted to question the body's relationship to architecture, and the politics of separation that have emerged in capsular design. Transformation and change were, as always, key ingredients and consequently the experience of 'loss' inherent at the end of this ephemeral moment was embraced from the events conception as being perhaps the most important element of the project.

Sound by Simon Mathewson and Cai Longman, and projections by Peter Dibdin.

A brilliant firing crew : Jamie Dibdin, Katalin Horvath, James Kelly, Deana Lee, Dom Strong, Harriet Thomas.

Thanks to all who helped out at the Aberystwyth Ceramics Festival. Special thanks to Sophie Bennett, Sandy Brown, Pete Goodridge, Roger Guy-Young, and Wendy Shaw.

Thanks also to kind sponsorship by Valentines Clays and Gladstone Engineering.

For more information contact the artist.