Performance Art

Performance Art: Playing with Fire

Performing with fire seems a universal activity that connects us to primal man exploring the power of flames. The thrill for the pyromaniac is the gamble and unpredictable results when playing with fire. Audiences appreciate the spectacle and enjoy vicariously the dangers associated with fire walking, fire eating, poi and fire twirling, torch processions, and fireworks. Such fascination with fire adds to the appeal of raku firing--the danger of getting burned, the display of glowing pots crackling in the air, the instant flames of pots touching combustible materials, and the smoke of pots hissing when plunged into water--this is the magic and drama of public raku entertainments.

Raku events blur the line between fine art and performance art. While the potter herself may be an accomplished raku artist in her studio, once she hosts a public raku event, she becomes an entertainer, a magician. For an event to qualify as a performance, anthropologist, Milton Singer, requires certain features: limited time span, beginning and end, organized activity, set of performers, audience, place, and occasion (qtd. in Carlson 16). A raku entertainment fulfills these requirements with the audience also often serving as participants. In addition, Jean Alter suggests that performance is based on two coexisting functions: the telling of a story, the "referential function," and the display of exceptional skill, the "performant function." Rather than communicating through signs or language, performances emphasize instead the direct physical experience (qtd. in Goldberg 81). A raku event is referential in that novices crudely imitate what the true potter normally would do within his studio in a more deliberate and refined way; amateur results resemble professional ones sufficiently enough to be identified and appreciated as raku. Alter explains that the "referential function is fulfilled when audience experiences pleasure derived from process of learning as well as from watching imitation" (32). Additionally, the activity is definitely performant because the professional potter exerts a magic control over the firey spectacle and relies on the naive audience to trust in the extraordinary caliber of the performance. To the audience the performing potter is magician, defying the natural law which requires clay pots to heat and cool slowly to prevent them from shattering; in short, the artist has convinced the public that the spectacular event is difficult. Not only does the magician provide a dazzling display, but she has the power to transform the man on the street--even a child-- into a creative artist through audience participation.

Fire Twirler

Raku Demonstration

Rudy De Ridder