Fire-Followers

"Fire-Followers is an effect of years of my interest in how contemporary art is received by its viewers who are not professionally connected to art. In 2010 and 2011, I was working on a series of interviews about the understanding of contemporary art pieces, and a few of my works, at the time, were also dealing with the issue of mediating meanings, such as The Art Translation Agency, Explaining the Art Exhibition and I Don't Understand. This piece was done based on my research, observations and reflections on the role art plays in the life of a non-professional viewer. 

The film is a story about people who are afraid of art, about the discomfort that a group of people encounters in relation to art. People being outraged at a piece of art is a common case, discussing it widely and possibly even demanding on closing the exhibition. My work is a reflection on such situations. It tries to analyze where the fear and anger come from and what they may lead to. 

What is important for me is the visual anxiety and discomfort. I tried to achieve it both in the way the story is told and in the way the image is created. I tried to make the film formally convey the emotions brought by the story. The way the observations and meetings are filmed is full of fear in order to make the viewer feel as uncertain and nervous as the characters are. I also sought to create a story that can be open for many different interpretations, not only the official one, which I am giving in the film description. I wanted it to be a fairy tale that might gain new meanings each time it is being read in different contexts and by people with backgrounds different from mine.

Fire-Followers is the first long narrative video I have done. The work on this piece made me discover new possibilities, such as conveying much broader and complex messages. It continues to explore the thematic fields that lots of my former works do, but it introduces storytelling, which is new to me. After Fire-Followers, I made three more video stories (The Offence, 2013, The Soup, 2014 and The Tower, 2015). At the moment, I am working on a new one, which will premiere in April 2016."

Karolina Bregula in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (July 2015)