A Small Prometheus
“There are moments of sheer heart-stopping beauty”
World Premiere - Melbourne Festival, Arts House
October 2013, Melbourne Australia
A Small Prometheus was co-created by Stephanie Lake and audio-visual artist Robin Fox.
It all started with a struck match and ruminations on the vast consequences that can come from small actions. This work is not a telling of the Promethean myth, but rather an exploration of the physicality of heat; how does it move, what does it sound like, what are its implications?
A Small Prometheus is also about unpredictability and the boiling points that tip one state into another – from cooperative to menacing, chaotic to ordered, individualistic to unified. The work teeters between recklessness and structure.
From convection driven sound sculptures through intricate and forceful choreography to the sound of heat dissipating in different situations, this work examines the moment when a stable system becomes unstable. Flame, steam, smoke and burning drive the action with a shifting tension between mechanical precision and anarchic wildness.
A Small Prometheus looks at the coexisting darkness and light in human nature and the spark that mediates the two.