Flame Lix*, David Bennewith

In the 2017 music video for ‘Awful Things’,
after a heavy petting session with a classmate
in their high school’s bathroom, the late ‘third-wave
emo heart-throb’ Lil Peep is given a (white) BiC J1lighter by his departing BAE. In the following scenea close up—nestled in Peeps heavily tattooed
hand—of the J1 reveals a text printed on its milky
surface: ASH IS OUR PUREST FORM. This text
is rendered in a typography that resembles
the uneven and burned letters made by the device
itself. Words that you might see burned intoceilings with a common cigarette lighter, in (mostly)
public places and thoroughfares—hidden spacesof anti-social behaviour. Later, in the school’scorridor, Peep happens on his love interest kissing(vampire style) the neck of what looks like theclass jock. Peep’s happy face flicks to apathy andhe proceeds, on his down-facing right palm,
to light himself on fire—using the same lighter given
to him by his crush (of course). His palm a ceilingto the lighters promise, Peep becomes some kindof elliptic … typography, his stare locked tothe person who will (always) cheat on him. The firespreads and engulfs the whole school. In theinferno Lil Peep and his BAE are once again reunitedin (type-like) silhouette, the video ends witha rainbow and animated sparkly light-flares overthe school campus. I don’t really understand what
this means.
ABstudio, I exhale. A deep exhale that jerks my headback, raising my eyes to focus on the ceiling.
On which, burned into the laminated plate, I see
words: LizaRT, SNAKE and E R C (mirrored).
I became immediately transfixed by this collectionof ashen circles, burned smouldering marks—
looking like some deformed dot matrix—made witha lighter. Instead of vandalism, I think about
typography, and about doing typography. I thinkof these burned letters as getting close to whata typography is for me, in spirit at least. Yet, inlacking a (digital or physical) matrix, the letters misstypography’s object. Or maybe these letters are
typography’s chemical [gassy] deviant (made witha device not used for its original function),they depict a kind of intent that is relatively free ofthe conventions that define it. Right Peep ?
CI’m standing in an underground limestone
quarry below the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem—
Zedkiah’s cave (also called Soloman’s Quarries).
It’s 2011 and i’m on holiday with my brother and hisgirlfriend. On the lower parts of the cave’s ceilingare many burned-in texts: including dates, names
and symbols; in Latin, Hebrew and Greek. There
are burned crucifix, single glyphs, unintelligible—
perhaps secret—marks. There is the Greek symbol Φ[Phi], which can mean many things, in philosophy—
interestingly—it represents a ‘generic act’. There isalso the symbol of the Freemasons, made up of
its allegorical square and compasses.
DCut back to the 6th of May 2009 and I’mvisiting Sint Lucas art academy in Antwerp to givea lecture. Taking a nervous pre-lecture wee in theunremarkable school toilet adjacent to the students

Since the 1860s the cave has been used by theFreemasonry for their ceremonies, the marks on
the cave ceiling seem to record acts of pilgrimage.
It is not hard to imagine these texts with an almost
bureaucratic function in mind, texts that reinforce
a claim to, or ownership of, this place.
EI’m looking at a set of images of prison holding
cells, sent to me by my friend Lotte in September
2016. The ceilings of the cells, at least the parts
that can be reached by standing on a benchor bed, are filled with burned texts. These holding
cells are located in one part of the Bijlmerbajes,
a former inner-city Amsterdam prison which up
until recently was being used as a centre forprocessing asylum seekers. Another part is being
rented to ‘cultural entrepreneurs’—in line with
South-East Amsterdam’s rapid gentrification plan.
[With much of the former prison infrastructure
still in place you can do a tour to see and experience the place when it was used for its originalfunction.] The site is being developed and by 2020
the former prison towers will become affordable
accommodation for students. In the holding cells
the burnt texts seem more like a way of killing time
for a misdemeanour (I guess you could smoke),its mostly the names of the cells occupants thatare rendered. But there’s also the name ofRotterdam’s football team burned into the perforated
metal ceiling. They have a kind of boredomor apathy to their reading. Right Peep ?
FIn 2013 I was able to design graphics foran edition of my own J1. The text printed on it‘My Functionality Resides Not In My Ability To Light
But In My Manipulability’ paraphrases a sentenceby Jean Baudrillard taken from the chapter‘Functional Form: The Lighter’, from his 1968 book
The System of Objects (Le Système des objets).
[The text is typeset in a font that I designed basedon graffiti that caught my eye in the toilet of an
Amsterdam fondue café.] Baudrillard’s quoteinspired the text on the lighter in the sense thatit suggests that any object (in this case a lighter)can be manipulated in ways to which it was notintended. Here, a device used to light things on fire
becomes, instead, a tool for (deviant) inscription.
In terms of writing / typography the act of making
letters with a lighter redirects the objects teleology.
The action of doing typography is ‘thus echoedby the hand creating fire’ 1; touching on a desire
to communicate, ‘in the very practical essenceof an industrial object.’ 2G

Through these meetings and actions
described above we can see the lighter being used
in a sometimes subversive way, in the productionof sometimes subversive (but also generic)messages. The lighter as an object is embedded
in popular culture and therefore our imagination.
The BiC J1 is a part of the design collection at MoMA
(it is also important to note that BiC also makes
disposable pens—the connection between theobject of the pen and the lighter are in closeproximity to each other, often a pen company hasa line of lighters.) Borrowed, bought, stolen, lost,found, we can all find fascination and relation
within a flame coming from a simple flick. Like theflame on Charmander’s tail on my son’s Pokemoncard [Charmander is a Pokemon that does damage
to itself. Right Peep ?]. Like the thousands of lighter
flames in the audience of a stadium concert [whichare now being replaced by smartphone torches].
Tinashe licking a lighters flame on the cover ofDAZED Winter 2015. Holger Czukay flicking along
to the tune of ‘Cool in the Pool’ in the song’s music
video. Lil Wayne’s consistently audible lighter flick
and inhale before going in… . Making letters witha lighter is a coercive kind of writing and typography, and hereunto is the danger or threat of setting
something on fire. Even though these texts can bethought of, or described as, some kind of graffiti,
I can’t help but want to elevate and connect theirrepresentational qualities to what it means to use,
design, consume and publish text into civilian life.
The production and design of letters is somethingthat nowadays exists in a collective unconscious,writing or making letters is second nature to us.
Looking at typography through this narrow opening,a peep, orientates me back to the craft itself :its making, meaning, histories and possibilities.
Language burns. It is not usual to check the ceiling(to the roof) for typography, and I always have toremind myself to ‘look up’.

*

LIX is a readability measure indicating the difficultyof reading a text developed by Swedish scholar
Carl-Hugo Björnsson.

1.

Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects(Editions Gallimard 1968, Verso 1996), pp 61-62.
Ibid.
Lil Peep, Awful Things, ft. Lil Tracy, directed by Sus Boy& Nick Koenig, produced by Daniel Ostroff, 2017.
Screenshot, 2019.
Lil Peep, Awful Things, ft. Lil Tracy, directed by Sus Boy& Nick Koenig, produced by Daniel Ostroff, 2017.
Screenshot, 2019.
The first time I noticed lighter made text. Sint Lucas
Antwerpen, 6 May 2009. Photo by author.
Zedkiah’s cave, 28 July 2011. Photo by author.
Zedkiah’s cave, 28 July 2011. Photo by author.
Bijlmerbajes holding cell, 18 October 2016. Photo byLotte Schroeder.
‘My Functionality Resides Not In My Ability To Light But
In My Manipulability’, BiC J1 lighter with customised
typography, edition of 250, published by Split/Fountain, 2013.

2.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.