Oscar Tuazon, “Building Fire” at Radio Athènes

Building Fire, an improvised fire on the street, is a small fire with a chimney for people to sit around and talk, read, and tell stories. During the months of April, May and June, Radio Athènes will be transformed into a recording studio for the purposes of All: Collected Voices, with Oscar Tuazon’s project Building Fire located just outside.

The Oceti Sakowin, a Sioux term meaning the Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation, was an ephemeral gathering that united hundreds of indigenous nations in defense of the right to clean water and the tribal sovereignty of the Standing Rock Sioux. The Seven Council Fires is an ancient legacy, last enacted before the Battle at Little Bighorn, fires that are lit in times of urgent change. Oceti Sakowin was ultimately consumed by fire in a final act of protest by the departing water protectors as they were forced from Standing Rock tribal lands by heavily armed state police, but while this temporary city existed it was defined by a sacred fire at its center, a small Lakota pitfire fed with donated wood that burned continuously for nearly a year.

All: Collected Voices is an audio archive produced by Goethe Institut Athen as part of ‘apropos documenta’ together with Radio Athènes.

Curated by Helena Papadopoulos and Thomas Boutoux, the programme aims to cultivate, preserve and transmit the polyphony of responses to the exhibitions and events in Athens during the spring and summer of 2017 via a series of direct commissions, incidental invitations and accidental encounters.

An excerpt from Oscar Tuazon’s reading ‘Standing Rock’ from April 6th, 2017 is available here, and will be available in full length on All: Collected Voices in mid July.