Dark Mofo 2019: Cassils’ performance to deliver a fiery opening for A Forest

An artist will put on a fiery performance to launch Dark Mofo’s latest show exploring “the violent undergrowth of human nature”.

CANADIAN artist Cassils will immerse themself in flames and melt ice with their own flesh in two performance works that explore transition and being present.

A Forest – which opens on Wednesday evening in the old Forestry Tasmania building in Melville St, Hobart – features 11 artists exploring what organisers have said is “the violent undergrowth of human nature”.

Cassils’ performance explores the theme through their own body.

Tiresias will be performed from 5pm on Wednesday, where the artist will press their body against a neoclassical male torso carved from ice, inspired by the myth of Tiresias, the blind prophet who was transformed from a man into a woman.

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Artist Cassils in front of a large projection of their performance Inextinguishable Fire. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

“For all my performances I change the physiology of my body,” Cassils said.

“It’s a composition that has a lot of drama, a lot of intensity, but it’s extremely subtle.”

They said the performance was created before they had a way to articulate their own identity, a transmasculine person that was resisting aggressive forms of transition such as surgery or hormones.

“There are certain things in our lives that we can control and there are certain things we absolutely can’t,” Cassils said.

“So it’s about being present through the pain and the ultimate inevitability of pain.”

Instead of sculpture being an art form external to the artist, Cassils said they see human bodies as sculptures in themselves, formed by the person through sociopolitical forces of identity.

Cassils’ second performance, Inextinguishable Fire, is a film of the artist engaged in a treacherous fire stunt for 14 seconds, shot at 1000 frames per second and extended to 14 minutes of slow-motion flame.

Cassils said their two performances are not polar opposites of each other.

“Inextinguishable Fire looks like it would be the opposite but in fact in order to be lit on fire you have to be induced into a hypothermic state,” they said.

“If you start to sweat your perspiration will boil on the surface of your skin and you’ll get third degree burns.”

The stunt was filmed in 2015.

A Forest runs from 5-10pm. Tickets are $20 for a one-hour session, with entry on the hour (last entry at 9pm).

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