The Magic is Back
2006 was my fifth year attending Burning Man. 2004 and 2005 had been a bit lackluster, so it was with a certain trepidation that I prepared to head out to the playa this year. I mean, those years were great and all - but they were weak compared to the stellar years of 2002 and 2003. One might have gotten the impression that the event had passed its zenith. This could be explained by the greater role of regionals and other local events, which were diverting the energy and attention of burners round the world. Larry Harvey even sent out an apologetic letter after 2004 citing weather conditions the week before the event as an explanation for the low quantity of art that year.
Some people, myself included, speculated that perhaps Burning Man had jumped the shark. This wouldn’t be surprising at all: phenomena such as BM - let’s call them “scenes” - tend to become victims of their own success. Scenes are what they are because of the people in them. But if a scene becomes amazing enough, word starts to get out and you have a flood of new people, aka tourists. There’s nothing wrong with tourists - remember, everyone in the scene was new at some point - but if the ratio of newbies to veterans becomes unbalanced, the scene loses its culture. Newbies look around to the veterans to see how they should behave to participate. If the newbies constitute too large a portion of the population, they will look around and only see other newbies. The culture is then diluted, and eventually lost.
I’ve watched this happen to the rave scene, and it is currently happening with the trance scene. Burning Man seems a prime candidate for this sort of cultural dilution as well. It has attracted a lot of attention (some would say “hype”) in the past few years. Attendance has increased dramatically: my first year (2002) it capped out at a little over 30,000. This year the population nearly hit 40,000. More significantly, population growth is accelerating. Between my first and second year the population grew by perhaps 1,000. Between last year and this it grew by around 4,000.
And people are coming earlier. It used to be that burners talked about the “weekend warriors” - people who came only for Fri-Sat-Sun, who were there to partay. So early in the week you had a much smaller, tighter-knit population. Well, that’s pretty much out the window now. Let’s just say that Tuesday night is the new Friday night.
All this said, however, I’m pleased to say that Burning Man 2006 was my best yet. The density of incredible artwork was the highest of all five years I’ve attended. As the news feed on the front page of burningman.com puts it, “ART ART everywhere - Burning Man 2006 boasted a record-breaking number of art installations…”
This is not to say that there weren’t amazing projects the past few years, even in 2004. There always are. (That year I did my largest project to date, Beacon, positioned not far from the Man. It was one of the best large-scale projects that year, though that was more a testament to the lack of good projects than it was to my skill as an artist.) But it seems like you had to really go out and hunt down the stellar artwork. Moving between the most interesting projects was often a bit of a trek. “Ok guys, there’s this one other side that’s really cool, just keep walking a bit longer…”
My first year, however, there was no need to go hunt them down: they were just all over the place. You could barely turn around without tripping over something totally awesome. Kid in a candy store, etc. The term I will use for this is saturation.
This year was super-saturated. The thing that gives me that magical burning man feeling is not any one art project. It’s looking out over the playa and seeing one spectacular project after another, all superimposed on your field of vision. When you can’t decide where to go next because it all looks so awesome.
That happened this year, starting Tuesday night. I’d gaze out across the righthand side of the inner bowl and see the viper, the cathedral, the flame runway, the rocket pendulum, the temple, and even the waffle far off in the distance. With maybe the steam engine locomotive and Love and Dragons driving by, just for good measure.
It’s not all roses, mind you. One thing that has changed for the worse is the disparity in quality between the best projects and the average ones. The esplande was a particular offender here. With a couple of exceptions (e.g. Hookahdome), the esplande was a burner ghetto this year. All the way down it was shitty ass domes, ugly rope light, and bad music distorting because it’s being played at twice the volume the speakers are capable of handling. One place had a giant screen and were showing various cartoons such as Ren & Stimpy. (Yeah, that’s what I came to Burning Man for - TV.) In fact quite a bit of prime esplanade real estate was simply being used as a parking lot. What the hell?
So standing there gazing at the esplande with its crappy structures and then turning my head to see the amazing art in the nearby open playa, I started to think about what separates the two. What makes cream of the crop projects so mindblowing, and what makes run of the mill ones, well, lame? I think it can be expressed in one word: caliber. The best projects have this professional, polished look to them. It seems like the creators are operating on a whole different plane from the rest of us. And looking closely at the construction of these projects I find myself thinking: how the fuck did they do that?
For example, consider the rocket pendulum.
The diverse skills needed to make this device boggle the mind. Welding, machining, mechanics, plumbing, electronics, and of course pyrotechnic safety. What kind of vocation or training gives you the expertise necessary to make something like this? That’s what I call high caliber.
Contrast this to walking up to some platform made of 2x4s nailed together, draped with some fabric, and then hung with rope light. I can tell exactly how they do that. Not much caliber here.
Then there’s the viper.
The experience of seeing this thing was so intense that I actually have difficulty even laying down words about it now, over a week later. But let me try.
A giant metal serpent (~80 ft long), coiled around its egg protectively, with a head big enough to swallow a person whole. Glowing green eyes behind its heat pits as the head moves to face you. Its jaws yawn open, revealing razor-sharp iron fangs inscribed with tribal patterns, from which issues forth gouts of flame. Drips of its flame venom fall from the fangs, seeping out between the tribal patterns and onto the lower jaw below. Suddenly, its entire body bursts into flame, swirling all the way down to the egg, which hatches open to reveal its fiery contents.
For those that didn’t see it, let me tell you: whatever you are imaging right now, the real thing was about 10,000 times more awesome than that.
Projects like this are why I go to Burning Man. You just can’t see anything like this anywhere else in the world.
Check out of a few pics of my 2006 project, Luna Sanctuary.
September 12th, 2006 11:07 am
Awsome bit of writing. Makes me so homesick. I am going next year.