After the Fire

Ohandinearlyforgot! To observe the close of FCP 2007, David bought a paper motorcycle from the market, the kind you burn for dead relatives to bring them material goods in the afterlife.


And then we set fire to it outside Galerie Quynh.



The hawkers next door were rather intrigued, too. (Who says conceptual art is elitist?)



All gone!

I don't think I properly conveyed the sense, at the end of the talk among the artists, that this has been a highly nourishing FCP - I hesitate to use the words "successful" or "productive", because we've been redefining those very words. Reading past essays and hearing past descriptions of FCPs, I've realised there's often a tension, a clear division that emerges among traditionalists and conceptualists, the pioneers and the avant-garde. This time, that didn't happen - we somehow all became very sociable, treating everyone like soulmates, siblings.

How productive is that unity? Katarina noted that if we'd gone on for longer, we might have voiced more criticisms of each other's work, become less obviously supportive. Personally, I know that if I didn't love the person's work to begin with, I began to love the person, and the next time they presented, I understood the work, I knew where it came from, I fell in love as if at first sight.