FIRE

While twenty-first century fire prevention technologies are being successfully employed to defeat fires before they happen, fire extinguishing is still the tangible and moral fuel that keeps fire departments going; the possibility of fire dominates their training, their clothing and their technical gear. When considering the image of fire in pop culture, fire is present more than ever.

FIRE: Safe & Sound is one of the outcomes of visual artist Alona Rodeh's artist residency at the Berlin Fire Brigade, looking into the past, present and future of firefighting as cultural phenomena. Interested in what role firefighting plays in the city's day-to-day emergencies, for nine months Rodeh joined the fire brigade on their 24-hour shifts.

This publication, edited by the artist, includes four new essays by professionals who tackle the subject from different perspectives, together giving a sense of the current state of the subject matter. They are Thöre Schröder, a journalist, Gilly Karjevsky, a curator working in the urban sphere, Kristen McCleary, a professor of history, and Bruce Hensler, a retired firefighter with 41 years of experience. The booklet's epilog is a photo essay compiled from the archives of the Berlin Fire Brigade: documentations of self-caused accidents of with Berlin fire engines.

The book was made possible with the support of ZK/U, the initiators of the residency at the fire brigade, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, the Berlin Fire Brigade and the Berlin Senate Department of Culture and Europe.