Out of the fire…
As Artreview Asia watched the eyeball of its barbecuing seabream gently fizzle, pop and disintegrate like a section of film reel melting under the light of a projector, it was struck by the thought that no matter how many cooking gadgets and methods there are, there is nothing quite like roasting something over an open fire. Perhaps it’s the feeling of returning to our ‘natural state’, or perhaps it’s about the feeling of control – a small (albeit misguided) sense of dominion – over a destructive elemental force. Or perhaps Artreview Asia simply likes the taste and coming away from the pit feeling half-smoked itself. Did you know that fire maintenance is a thing? It’s all about keeping the embers at a constant, hitting the sweet spot in grilling temperature that cooks your food evenly, and can mean the difference between achieving a smoky char and a burned ruin. You’ve got to respect the flame. Of course, you couldn’t tell a caveman that – he was happy to dump his meat on the coals and chew at a leathery piece of whatever. But contemporary humans are more refined now. We’ve been developing technology and culture ever since the groundwork was laid by ol’ Prometheus. But while we might have moved beyond placing a circle of rocks around a fire (renewable energy! Artificial Intelligence! Aviation advancements! To skip a few millennia), the risk of how far we contain new technologies remains the same; at any point, a piece of charcoal can be propelled beyond the confines of a barbecue and set fire to your leg. The moral of that Greek tale (in which Mr P, the thieving scoundrel, gets his comeuppance for committing the inflammatory deed of gifting fire to humans by having his liver eaten from his body by an eagle every day for the rest of his miserable immortal life), though, poses this fundamental question: once humans start to develop various technologies, would these be used to benefit society, or to destroy it? And because humans are fickle beings, the answer, inevitably, is both. Time to turn the fish. Artreview Asia