We’ve re Lost. losing…

Mark didn’t lose. Mark’s family has a wonderful home, big & beautiful and scampering distance from the new (and TWICE as large!!) SRL shop, for Mark & Amy’s little rascal and SRL heir-apparent, JakeEddie, to visit his daddy at work. San Francisco has lost- and is poised to continue to lose.

Interpretive Arson and the Flaming Lotus Girls produce audience-predictable, static and family-friendly fire sculptures- Fire Art. They’re my friends, I’m a die-hard fan, and I love their wares and love that we all share the same zip code.

Respective to the recently published sfappeal article (and imho generally), though- “Performance Art” and “Fire Art” are 2 very different things. While Mark has always chosen to employ fire as a device among other devices in SRL shows, the art itself has always been the performance; the scripted (and at times more spontaneous), staged interaction of machines, machine behaviors, and props, in a specific context, following a specific concept. If oil-paints and marble were capable of prompting the same emotions & provoking the same ideas, I’d bet that in a heartbeat, Mark wouldn’t give a second-thought to re-evaluating his chosen media.

Audiences are present at FLG and IA shows to interact; audiences are present at SRL shows to spectate, to intake, to just be present & experience what is presented to them. If audiences could predict SRL’s effects, it’d just be one kinetic sculpture garden after the next- and that’s never been the point. SRL operators, safety crew, and builders- and most notably, Mark- are the technicians who know the machines, the effects, and for 30+ years have been safely predicting, guiding, and massaging experiences for their audiences.

So- if well-planned, static objects with fully transparent implications of danger for all spectators are what this great “Fire Arts” paradigm-shift in the Bay Area is representing… then what: we’re ushering-in a new era of technical excitement, but letting fall to the floor an era of promoting thought with unplanned stimulus…?! What are we letting happen to the social mandate that has existed for thousands of years, for artists to push society’s buttons to push people to think- to think as a group composed of individuals each behaving in their own ways that have larger ripple-effects for the greater group… (rant, rant, rant, rant).

If “thinking” can only be accomplished by always feeling snuggly-safe and always knowing what lies ahead- well, hell. If that’s the new era of thinking then I’ll be the first to get the hell out and look for something else, somewhere else. That’s not gonna happen (entirely- as much as I’d like to be punkrock and truly say “fuckit”)- but I can’t let concessions of creative-complacency, brought on by civic leaders who needlessly seek endless coddling from their beige cubes in grey offices that pad their six-figure salaries, ruin the culture of a full-city that used to embrace it’s resident creatives & quirky creative-culture. I wanna make ‘em earn those damn salaries- and I hope, desperately, that others will too. Let us make people think- and let those people be uncomfortable.

My ranting aside- below is a wonderful video I did want to share. But the above rant, was prompted by both the video, and the article that accompanies it on the sanfranciscoiam.com site. Ave Maria is both a cliché but poignant subtext; and I hope the intercession it cries to Mary for in it’s Roman-Catholic mythology, can be embraced by what few artists are left here today, and those who have yet to arrive tomorrow. I have nothing against painting, galleries, or static sculptures- I just don’t think they encapsulate what “art” is, can be, or ever should be- In a nutshell, exclusive of all that it needs to be.