Fire – 2026 – you and I are water earth fire air of life and death

PART 7

You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death - PART 7

Fire (2026)

DECEMBER 12, 2026

12 NOON TO 12 MIDNIGHT

CURATED BY Christof Migone and Milo Thesiger-Meacham

"Fire (Fired Red Ire)” is a 12-hour event that follows on the heels of 2020’s You, 2021’s And, 2022’s I, 2023’s Are, 2024’s Water, and 2025's Earth.

The seventh in a series of twelve annual events taking place on December 12 from 12 noon to 12 midnight. Each year the event moves through each word of the 12-word phrase, You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death, to activate the word of the year in myriad ways.

It all started the first year with ‘YOU’, then in 2021 ‘AND’ connected you to anything and everything, in 2022 that point of connection was focused on ‘I’—the porous one, the sole collective. With ‘ARE’ in 2023, plural action entered the fray. Then in 2024, ‘WATER’ kept things flowing. Last year, with ‘EARTH’, we were grounded. This year, sounds like we are on ‘FIRE’.

THE FIRE FILES

All of these earths sink, one after the other, into the rekindling flames to be reborn and die down again—the monotonous stream of an hourglass eternally emptying and turning itself over; a new that’s always old and an old that’s always new.
— Louis-Auguste Blanqui, Eternity by the Stars

And what is Earth? Some mud, some glue, a meteor, can it belong to itself? Where are we? In the middle, at the beginning, the end? Who is we, is it you plus me, or something expandable, explosive?
— Etel Adnan, The Sun on the Tongue

and I speak
and my word is peace
and I speak and my word is earth
and I speak
and
Joy
bursts in the new sun
and I speak:
through knowing grasses time glides
the branches pecking at a peace of green flames
and the earth breathed under the gauze of mists
and the earth stretched. There was a cracking
in its knotted shoulders. There was in its veins
a crackling of fire.
— Aimé Césaire, The Miraculous Weapons

The smell of singed paper haunts me.
Is this a burning, is it a song?
Sing, singed.
The smell of singed paper haunts me with a song.
Sing, singed, sung.
— Daniela Cascella, Singed

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul. The light that I see is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud that carries the sun. I call it 'the reflection of the living Light'. When it happens I see, hear, and know all at once. It's as if in an instant I learn all that I know. And what I write is what I see and hear in the vision. And the words in this vision are not like words uttered by the mouth of man, but like a shimmering flame, or a cloud floating in a clear sky.
— Hildegard von Bingen, letter to Guibert of Gembloux (1175)

the binary light, as a phase
in the flight of a bullet.
The report, when it reaches me
—ununique
and sequelesque: a string
of quantum noise — goes in one
ear and out of the eyes.
— Andrew Zawacki, Unsun

my body is a stray bullet. i was made from crossfire. love was her last resort. his mouth, a revolver.
— Billy-Ray Belcourt, This Wound Is a World

Fire is the ultra-living element. It is intimate and it is universal. It lives in our heart. It lives in the sky. It rises from the depths of the substance and offers itself with the warmth of love. Or it can go back down into the substance and hide there, latent and pent-up, like hate and vengeance. Among all phenomena, it is the only one to which there can be attributed the opposing values of good and evil. It shines in Paradise. It burns in Hell. It is gentleness and torture. It is cookery and apocalypse.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire

I know, like everyone, how to light this fire so that its love will warm us, but how to control its power when the eruptive blaze makes the air unbreathable and bombs the fields, evaporates the water and desolates our earth with nuclear hate?
- Michel Serres, Biogea

Just then there was a loud noise downstairs. Inside Geryon something burst into flames.
- Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

build me a never-ending fire
play songs i've already heard
tell me stories about caribou & skateboards
fill my silence with pretty words
there's nothing in this
that isnt't love
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost