In a windless evening, 20 cardboard houses line the center of the dry lagoon. Some houses have windows, others have them completely obstructed, and others have some empty space. The way they are located in the center refers to the way the trees are planted (poplars usually) with the intention of providing protection against the wind as a natural fence. The fire, in real time, takes place house by house until the entire line catches fire and disappears, leaving a trace of ash. When the fire is over the camera rises in the area and you can see the groove that leaves a wound in the ground.

 

 

 

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The remains of the end

By Claudia Ferretto

 

My house was burning and I could only save one thing. I decided to save the fire. I have nowhere to live but the fire lives in me. And he discreetly defends me from everything impure. My future is no longer important. Only the intensity of the moment counts.

Jean Cocteau "Saving the fire"

 

What does the fire leave that erases traces and snatches existence? What remains after the end? asks Patricia Viel; that scavenges rubble, rescues books that resist fires, seeks inquiries in that interval or interstice of what was and is no longer; it investigates the edge, the limit, in that space in which the artists look. "The remains of the end" is in continuity and congruence with his previous production, but in this work he does something else. Decidedly, something else. Here she jumps, stands on top of the story and this time she starts the fire, empowers herself and plays a fire game. The drone camera, contemporary, not only because of its technology, but also because it operates as a ubiquitous, simultaneous, hypertextual gaze, is witness to the event. From a cartographic vision, he brings us onto the scene and without delay confronts us with a row of objects that are beginning to burn, and we intuit, they are all burned. In the vastness of the Patagonian steppe, he puts on a remake of the tragedy, but this time he multiplies the staging: he lines up twenty-two cardboard houses, sets them on fire and films them; houses that can be metaphors for refuge or urbanity, burning one by one, houses that are made of cardboard, because everything is ephemeral, she knows it. In that scenario where synthesis and excess are imposed at the same time, the different grays of the ashes, the light values ​​in the flames, the shadows on the plateau, the contrasts in the sky are articulated as in a dance; subtleties of fright. The sound like an accompanying beat reinforces time, contracts and dilates the moment and we cannot help but see that hypnotic fire. The show seduces us and so we perceive the veiled paradox: there is beauty in this fire, it is a sinister aestheticized. The end is quite a display: in a background of traces and traces, the camera approaches curious, anxious, desiring, it makes the ashes fly through the air and bare the scar; It seems that the end not only leaves remains, but a host of new clues. Like the text by Jean Cocteau that he proposes to anchor his work, Patricia exhorts us to save the fire