ETNow.com: The 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London was commemorated in spectacular style last month as Artichoke's London's Burning festival transformed the capital with a week of extraordinary art events and brought Unusual Rigging on board to handle aspects of the technical production.
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I was initially drawn to this article because I’ve visited London briefly and want to know more about the theatre and art there. The London Burning Festival seems like an excellent way to get the general public not only interested in the past history of London but also where the arts in London will go in the future. I never really though the London fire was that big of a deal, but now I understand a bit better how it impacted the look of the city today. I agree with the article when it states: “This unique event offered an opportunity to understand just how much of an impact the Fire had on the architecture, outlook and infrastructure of the City, including some of its most iconic buildings and landmarks, and we worked with Artichoke to demonstrate this through their very unique perspective”. In order to call attention to the ever-evolving shape of London one needs to look back on the history of the city as it very much impacts the present.
It's so fascinating that 350 years later one of a city's most tragic events has turned into a spectacle. A historic disaster is now partially replicated and easily admired in modern day, turning the city inside out to explore the differences in architecture ore and post fire. This event, which is all at once entertainment technology, art, and education oriented, seems so well planned and organized as well. Like the fire, The London Burning Festival overtakes the whole city. . The finale part of the event alone required around 400 laborers. It's also great how many institutions around London, including the Tate, readily gave their spaces for this project. The LBF is a great example of a successful collaboration and an example of how history inspires new art. Past, present, and future were considered for this project full of various unconventional installations and performances, made possible by innovative minds in the field of entertainment technology.
I love the idea of commemorating a disaster with art, and in particular art that reminds of us of the tragedy and the latest effect it has had. I was particularly taken aback by the idea of creating a piece that brings up current world issues that are related to the tragedy of the fire, such as the HOLOSCENES piece which addresses the challenges of flooding in modern cities. I'm also quite taken aback by the scale of this event, and curious about how it was funded. Having 50 stage and production managers is certainly no small payroll to manage. I'm sure there is also an immense amount of work put into this event in terms of safety, as many of the exhibitions do contain fire and/or water, and they definitely do not want to end up repeating the history that they are trying to commemorate.
As someone who may be going to intern in the industry next semester in London, this was an article I was excited to see. I am trying to find an internship in London (through a provider) where I would work in the in the industry and this article exposed me to “Unusual Rigging” a rigging company in London. I think it would be a great experience to work with that company because they clearly do exciting work from looking at this article and their website. Although it does not appear that they build scenery, they do engineer it and engineer how it is rigged. There are a few places in London where I think it would be cool to work and I have now added this to my list. The London Theater scene seems to operate fairly similarly to the way it operates here, but I am excited to potentially see all the differences and learn from that if I go abroad.
It sounds like this was a spectacular festival that managed to combine being visually interesting with teaching/reminding people about history and how it relates to the present. As interesting as it was to read about the project as a whole I would have really liked to hear more about the dominoes installation and the holoscenes one. For dominoes I would love to know how they dealt with the planning and safety issues of having what seems to have been a giant chain of collapsing flaming structures stretched through the heart of London. I also want to know how they found a way to do holoscenes. A giant tank suspended above train tracks that you put performers in and occasionally fill with water? If you had told me about that yesterday I would have said there’s no way something like that would ever get approval to be built let alone be safe to be around.
Wow! this event sounds amazing and huge. All of the pieces involved seem very interesting. It is cool how all of the pieces were so large in and of themselves and not just one piece took precedent over the others. the way the article describes them makes me want to view them for myself. I can't imagine what a huge feat this event must have been to organize. Having only come in 8 weeks before the event and mainly doing all of the set up the evening before sounds crazy! How?! The article mentions how many stage managers, production managers, and volunteers there were but even with such a big team, this event was amazing in just the amount of organization that went into it. Overall, the event sounds like it did a grand job at presenting the past and future of London and I hope it continues to be a momentousness event.
The shear size of this project amazes me. They needed over 50 stage and production managers and need to close roads and getting permission from 60 property owners. Also, how quickly these projects were set up and taken down, especially their main event, is extremely impressive. Its’ really amazing that they were able to figure out all of the arrangements. Its also great that so many people got to see the piece; 3,000 were exposed to this piece. Though I have heard to The Great Fire of London, I don’t think I realized the impact it caused. I never would have thought of the impact that the fire would have had on the architecture of the city. Exposing to people to the facts, hopefully will bring awareness to the history of the Great Fire of London and to the modern dangers to the city, like the flooding piece that was present. I hope that I can see more photos of the event to try to understand the installation pieces better.
This event sounds so awesome. Every single piece in this fire program is enormous. DOMINOS just blew my mind because I can't even imagine strechting them throughout the central city and blocking traffic, and building the site after the event started. It's so crazy just to think about the sheer amount of communication and coordination it requires. I've heard of the fire as well but never thought the huge impact it must have had on the people. The fact that getting permissions from buildings that will be affected by the traffic shutdown shows how invested people are into putting together this immensely amazing event. I wondered how much the city government are involved in this and what role they play in making something this big happen in such short time. To think about the creation of ideas about this event also excites me a lot, because these artists and managers go out and beyond to engage with the people of London in such a beautiful and serious way so as to remind them of the influence of this special history and put in some reflection pieces that are more relevant today (like the flooding). I wish I could witness the event even just a little bit.
This is such incredible work on so many levels, it is also – in my opinion – extremely interesting work. The rigging company which was brought in – with not much time to spare – had to do everything from permits to mathematical calculations to ensure that everything is structurally sound. This latter point is extremely difficult in the middle of a city as large or as complex as London, as mentioned in the article. There are a lot of cavities underground – the most extreme being the Underground stations – which can only hold a certain amount of weight per square foot before catastrophically failing. Once they actually got to the time of the load-in they had over 400 people – 50 of which were stage or production managers – working on the build and install in order for everything to go quickly and smoothly. This must have required a lot of careful monitoring to ensure that all of the art pieces were going to be safe in their location for however long they are there for.
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