ABSTRACT
Fires gather the real, the imaginary, the practical, the poetic. Fire is a starting point to think differently about the agency of objects through their relationships. Children can lead us there. Children are spontaneously physical, reverential and dynamic, surprising, competent and responsive, but they do not act alone. The fire space is sudden and transformative. Fire suggests the creative powers: it has passion and spirit as well as destruction such as “in diverting from the intended purpose and distributing the wood chips more widely than intended around the room”. Fire co-exists and disrupts fixed and fluid spaces. Fire ignites a “dance of agency” between humans and non-humans and is where the museum object becomes assertive in its meaning making.
