Daniel Knorr
Das Offizielle Feuer
ab dem 27. Juli

from 27.07.2012, 07.30 a.m. - 3.30 p.m.
(during the opening hours of the Administrative Court)
about the duration of the exhaustion of the exhibition budget by burning wood

Performer: Dan Madescu

"The official fire" by the artist Daniel Knorr provides for the construction of a bonfire at the Neumarkt in Arnsberg from July 27, 2012. The performance is to last until the funds available for the realization of the work by the Kunstverein Arnsberg are exhausted. It will be lit by Dan Madescu, a Romanian citizen living in Paris, during the opening hours of the Arnsberg Administrative Court.

The work is linked to the burning of witches in the Middle Ages and is a temporary memorial to the former mayor and opponent of witch burning, Henneke von Essen. The government of the time imprisoned him in 1681 and tortured him until he died in the Arnsberg dungeon. Through its event times, the campaign draws attention to the special nature and responsibility of the town of Arnsberg as the seat of the district government and the administrative court.

Furthermore, combustion is also a consumption of resources and so the performance speaks of the thermodynamic system in which we find ourselves. The energy we use and lose is more than the energy we gain. Natural resources seem inexhaustible at first, but the energy question is one of the most important issues in our "modern history".

Last but not least, the action addresses the waste of personal time and energy. At the same time, the fire also marks an existence, an existence that sustains it.

This art performance could be realized with the kind support of the family Lothar Mittelstädt, company KRT Kanalrohrtechnik & Straßenbau, Arnsberg.