"Playing with Fire" explores technology as a contemporary flame, akin to fire's historical role as humanity's profound extension in nature. Fire, neither good nor evil, symbolizes a force transforming culture and society, echoing the impact of hi-tech models. The exhibition speculates on countering the "HyperNormal," questioning societal alignments with technological progress and the neglect of environmental physiology. The triangle of fire extinction becomes a metaphor for examining controlled or eliminated factors. "Playing with Fire" delves into the possibilities arising from errors, consequences of entropy, opening pathways for new emergence.

Playing with Fire is a show which scratches surfaces, voids and enclosures in the outlook of speculating our life and society as art practitioners. Is it possible to counter the “HyperNormal” where governments, financiers, and technological utopians have, since the 1970s, given up on the complex "real world" and built a simpler "fake world" run by corporations and kept stable by politicians? The triangle of extinction of fire states that for combustion- fuel, heat and oxygen are the three essential factors. If one of these factors is controlled or eliminated, the fire will be extinguished. Can we think about encountering these methods of extinction- limitation or elimination of the relative factors of combustion? Why are advances in understanding the physiology of the world not incorporated into the current social, political, and economic practices? Why are we deliberately led to a mismatch between technological progress and human consciousness ? Error, a consequence of entropy, opens possibilities for the emergence of new paths.

Curated by Sayantan Maitra Boka

Participating Artist:
Bhabatosh Sutar, Mallika Das Sutar, Nirmal Malick, Pintu Sikder, Pradip Das, Raju Sarkar, Ayan Saha, and Tarun Dey .