Julian Charrière’s work addresses urgent ecological concerns, often stemming from fieldwork at signal locations, such as volcanoes, glaciers, oil palm plantations, undersea and radioactive zones. Meditating upon the flame as a figure of excess, containment, and renewal for our warming planet, Controlled Burn documents Charrière’s solo exhibition curated by Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman at the Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany, from September 2022 to August 2023. Deepening Charrière’s reflections upon ideas of nature and our place therein, both the book and the exhibition interrogate the dark vitality of materials used for fuel: coal, petroleum, palm oil, and sunshine. Taking us back in time and deep underground, Charrière’s speculative visions range over fossilized life-worlds and future atmospheres saturated by the burnt residues of modernity’s excess.