THE

DANTE ORGAN  and the AESTHETICS OF VIOLENCE by Erik Hobijn

THE PROJEKTS

THE KONZEPT ........

This is an installation consisting of 10 to 15 flamethrowers with pillars of  fire 13 to 20 meters high, creating an environment dealing with the   aesthetics of violence.

The performance is technically based on military knowledge, and this     also determines a substantial part of its artistic form and content.      It is an example of an extreme level of industrial violence. The       reality of the aesthetic experience develops in multiple levels        that derive from the viewer's preconditioned aesthetics.

THE FIRST LEVEL            is that of amusement, where the audience is charmed by the             visual and conceptual aspects of the piece. The public              desire for fulfillment of pure amusement satisfaction               is appeased.

		This leads to THE SECOND LEVEL.  There is still the comfortable situation of looking at these 'images' of violence, as though   they are sequences in an action movie, or newsreels on television.    But the 'beautiful' images of disaster-fires and exploding rockets as seen in the media     are never true representations of reality, and the increasing violence of the Dante      Organ undermines the media-violence principle. The sense of danger of the       Dante Organ becomes real, as the intensity of the flames develop from        a visual level to a reality of their own. The safety screen of media         violence is dissolved by the flames.
	This is THE THIRD LEVEL.                       The Dante Organ becomes real time media violence, as the intensity and heat                      turns into a dimension which is normally not possible to create out of, for                     example, a war field, or any other human disaster situation as represented                    in the media.    One is forced to abandon the pure artistic aspects of the                   piece to deal with the real and present danger.                  The computer orchestration of the flames may cause the audience to view                 the piece as a media spectacle, but the motoric essence of the oil fires                plays a game of cat and mouse with their advers aries. The audience               is required to take a physical decision either to step away or to              accept the heat and get burned. The speed of this violence             burns the time. Nothing else rests than a blistering image            on the retina.