21/09/2026
Video loop embedded in recycling sculpture | 4k screen, cardboard, wood, hot glue, acrylic | minutes | 1,5 x 1,3 x 0,4 m |
https://www.jensisensee.de/fire-side-chat
„We won’t not save the world, because we can’t agree on a shared vision of it.“
This premise forms the conceptual core of Fire Side Chat — a transmedial wall installation that unites sculptural form and audiovisual media in a fragmented whole.
The work is a sculptural reconstruction of the marble fireplace in the White House’s Oval Office — the same fireplace that Trump, since the beginning of his second term, has had adorned with ostentatious gold applications in the style of an autocratic ruler.
The work ironically engages with the persistent rumor that these decorative elements are in fact cheap plastic imitations, ordered from the online hardware store Home Depot. This fireplace, however, is not crafted from noble stone — it is recycled from scraps of wood and cardboard, remnants of a throwaway society.
What appears as a symbol of institutional permanence reveals itself as an ephemeral and highly flammable collage assembled from the waste of the present. Inside the fireplace, no fire burns — only a video screen. It shows, among other things, burning ncient forests: an echo of the promised warmth and shelter that transforms into the apocalyptic evidence of the climate crisis. A soundtrack breaks the silence of the exhibition space — the loud crackling of fire, the snapping of burning wood — opening a narrative rift between the promise of political representation and ecological reality.
Fire Side Chat interrogates subjective human projection as a cultural principle: How do collective fantasies, political imaginaries, and personal worldviews overlay our perception of the actual state of the world? The installation invites viewers to linger in this gap — between representation and reality, between comfort and responsibility — and to discover within it an impulse toward collective action.
