Fire and Conifers (2012) was developed whilst in-residence at QO2 in Brussels. It uses the six books of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things as the basis to explore different modes of composition. Developed as part of a longstanding engagement with the poem, the work takes the form of installation and score, each made in response to the book’s structure, its exposition of materialist philosophy, and the various repetitions throughout the poem which remained unfinished at the time of Lucretius’ death. It is generally accepted that the repetitions were not intended to appear so explicitly in the text, yet many of Lucretius’ translators choose to retain them, thereby demonstrating the poet’s process of composition, the interconnections he saw between natural science, ethics and logic, as well as providing a provocative anomaly that can be conducive for creative engagement. The exhibition explores an expanded conception through the placing together of found materials, both as objects and composites, using repetition, insertion, convention and parallels that mirror elements of The Nature of Things.

Details of the exhibition, The Void Belonging to Created Things, is available here.

– Performed at Extradition Concert Series, Portland Oregon October 2019
– Broadcast: Hear and Now, BBC Radio 3, August 2017
– Performed at Music We’d Like to Hear 2017
– Published as part of a collection of scores by The Set Ensemble BORE publishing Summer 2015
– Released on Stopcock by The Set Ensemble Consumer Waste Records September 2015
– Performed by Ryoko Akama, Jane Dickson, Patrick Farmer, Sarah Hughes, Samuel Rodgers, David R J Stent, Paul Whitty. Oxford, 2015
– Performed by a.pe.ri.od.ic Ensemble, Chicago 2013


Image: Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga performing Fires and Conifers at Music We’d Like to Hear 2017.