In her new film, O fuóco e ò nuósto e l’appicciammo nuje (“The fire is ours and we lit it”), SAGG NAPOLI pieces together fragments of footage spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries into a collage: volcanic eruptions of Mount Vesuvius and the raucous celebrations of New Year’s Eve in Naples. The title, in Neapolitan dialect, frames the work as a collective declaration of ownership – both destructive and celebratory  – of fire —. It suggests that the blaze is no longer nature’s alone, but has been seized and staged by the citizens themselves. Against this backdrop, the film juxtaposes the incandescent fury of magma with the artificial explosion of fireworks; the roar of eruption with the cacophony of festivity. Naples’ night sky becomes a vision of disaster and delight, where civic ritual echoes geological threat. Mount Vesuvius has always loomed over the city as both landmark and threat. Its infamous 79 A.D. eruption, which obliterated Pompeii and Herculaneum, belongs to collective memory, echoed by later eruptions across the centuries. The mountain is never fully dormant; it stands as a reminder of volatility, the possibility of catastrophe. In this uniquely powerful yet fragile context, Neapolitans have cultivated an exuberant tradition of New Year’s Eve fireworks. At midnight, private and municipal displays blur into one overwhelming pyrotechnic storm.
The psychological force of sound lies at the heart of SAGG’s new film, for which the artist collaborated with sound designer Matteo Pit. Fireworks are not simply seen, they are felt: the body reverberates with each explosion, the air quivers under the stress of sonic shock. Anthropologists have often linked loud percussion, relentless beats, and sudden ruptures of sound with rituals of trance or exorcism. In this video-montage, the visual parallel between fireworks and eruption is immediate. Both phenomena hurl incandescent matter into the sky, rain down debris, and cloak the air in smoke. One is catastrophic, the other celebratory; one uncontrolled, the other man-made. Altogether they reveal the city’s paradoxical condition: it is as if every year Naples re-enacts a miniature eruption of its own making, as though pre-emptively burning off the precariousness of living by an active volcano. The New Year’s ritual becomes a controlled blaze, enabling people to enjoy a degree of proximity to fire, an echo of disaster turned into a celbration. The flame, as the title suggests, is chosen, ignited, and extinguished by the people themselves.
O fuóco e ò nuósto e l’appicciammo nuje importantly marks a shift in SAGG NAPOLI’s artistic practice. It is the first film in which the artist does not feature. The sequences of archery training, the controlled accelerations of go-karts or speedboats, the relentless testing of strength and focus are absent. Yet the presence of the body is implied. The bursts of fireworks echo the sudden release of muscular force; the roaring soundscape evokes the intensity of physical exertion. Where her body once propelled arrows or vehicles at full speed, here the city itself becomes the performer, erupting in light and noise. By visualising the encounter between fireworks and eruption, SAGG reflects on what it means to live in permanent proximity to danger. Her film insists that the ritual of New Year’s Eve is not only festivity but also exorcism: a way of imagining that, as long as the city sets itself alight once a year, the mountain may stay silent. In this oscillation between catastrophe and catharsis, death and joie de vivre, SAGG captures an important part of the essence of Naples in the blazing intensity of its poetry. SB

1-2 Image & Video

SAGG Napoli
O fuóco e ò nuósto e l’appicciammo nuje, 2025
video, sound, colour, 10″14′
Courtesy the Artist and zazà Milan / Naples

Home Page Image: SAGG Napoli, O fuóco e ò nuósto e l’appicciammo nuje, 2025. Courtesy the Artist and zazà Milan / Naples