Konstfrämjandet in Västerbotten and KF Huset in Klöse, Nordmalings invited artist and researcher Erik Sjödin to KF Huset in Klöse, Nordmalings, to cook fire soup, experiment with fireplaces, and talk about humans long and complex relationship to fire.

A fire soup is hot and spicy soup cooked over fire and consisting of primarily red, orange and yellow ingredients. Most of the ingredients for the soup were harvested from nearby farms and included beets and carrots. In Swedish "a soup" is a metaphor for "a mess", thus a fire soup can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the fire mess humans appear to have gotten themselves into.

A three-stone fire is one of the oldest and most basic arrangements for cooking food over fire. Around three billion people still cook their food using open fire and simple stoves and three-stone fires are still one of the most common cooking solutions.


While the participant cooked fire soup on the three-stone fire they discussed various aspects of humans long and complex relationship to fire. The conversation eventually continued indoors at KF Huset where the participants were introduced to books about fire and cooking and the idea of the Pyrocene as described by Stephen J. Pyne in "The planet is burning".

The Pyrocene is a notion which, similar to the Anthropocene, suggests that human activities kan be compared to earlier geologic activity in Earths history. The Pyrocene suggests that it is the use and control of fire that is the most dominant human activity and that we now live in a "fire age" where the impact of fire is comparable to the ice's in previous ice ages.

Thanks to KF Huset in Klöse and Konstfrämjandet in Västerbotten.