Raphael Hefti: A) Negligence Causing a Fire

Edited by Renata Catambas. Text by Harry Burke

In the art practice of Raphael Hefti, manufacturing processes are pushed to extreme limits to effect epic material transformations. These are guided accidents in industrial alchemy that test the points of failure in everyday materials. But in 2008, while working on a new project in a remote mountain village in Switzerland, a different type of failure transpired. In this publication, writer and poet Harry Burke retraces the story of over two dozen dubiously acquired explosives, thirty three firemen, an arms manufacturer, a bomb squad, an international travel ban, a thick dossier of police reports and a totaled Benz.