coliseum on fire - burning the roots of western culture

in front of the colosseum (coliseum?) and arch of constantine

on sunday night, a couple of us went to this 3 day exhibition. "coliseum on fire" is the title for this artistic gesture involving the "world's most famous ancient monument." thyra hilden (denmark) and pio diaz (argentina) are the artists responsible for the video-installation.

coliseum on fire is part of an even larger project - city on fire - which involves "creating virtual fires in important institutions, monuments, museums, and churches throughout europe. there were previously events in berlin, frankfurt, kiev, and copenhagen. the artists choose monuments considered to be part of europe's cultural heredity. the "symbolic inferno that the artists enact has the aim of making us think about what the loss of our cultural patrimony would mean."

i honestly had my hopes up when i heard about this exhibition. i kind of understood it to be more than just screen projections in the windows. i guess i thought there would actually be more pyrotechnics or something haha - lets get real though, like rome would let a couple artists burn down the colosseum...duhhh. okay, but it was still really cool - i forgot my tripod, so the pictures arent as clear as i would like, but i still got a couple good shots!

if you want to check out more information (or want to look at some sweet pictures of the other events - the trevi fountain one in 2005 is spectacular), you can go to http://www.cityonfire.org/projects/Coliseum/Coliseum.html

on fireeeeee

little bit of experimentation with light at the show