As an artist, I feel sometimes that my doings don’t have any significance. Can I go on making art when it would be more important to participate in the activities of the Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace for focusing attention to climate change. Can I go on making art when it would be more important to march for peace and Ukraine and help, with all means, Ukrainian refugees? These kind of questions have troubled me a lot, and still do.
Both the private me and the artist me think that we must pay attention to climate change in all we do, that is to say, how we are here in this world, on this planet. This is quite clear. The private me tries to live like this, and the artist me wants to make pieces that are not neutral to climate change but participate in mitigation of it, in their own way. It is not necessarily written on the surface of the pieces. Maybe the artist me strives for the works to be in a position that takes into account or pays attention to climate change.
Firehead clearly takes a stand on climate change and its root cause, fossil capitalism. Planning it, I thought that the figure would appear in close vicinity of companies, banks and governmental institutions that are connected to the fossil capitalism. As Firehead, I went to a climate demonstration and felt I was making applied art: I gave the figure for the demonstration to use, and it declared the good cause. Simultaneously I felt I was in chains. At demonstration one must act by a certain etiquette. I felt that Firehead shrank. It became a megaphone of a good cause only. I don’t know how the people there saw it.
On Sunday cruisings Firehead behaves like Sunday cyclists behave. (I’m quite nervous. Gradually, I’m trying to gather courage that Firehead would dance or read a poem on Kompassitori.) Firehead strives for to communicate with the other people on the street. In a craftier and more ambiguous way than a megaphone of a demonstration. Although the matter remains the same.