A GALLERY WITHOUT WALLS | 1993 Essay on Burning Man
By Stuart Mangrum
There's something about the desert. Maybe it's the lack of perspective, or the stark, unforgiving colors. Maybe it's the absolute rule of the elements, or just all that wide-open emptiness. Whatever the reason, since moving to the Playa in 1990 the Burning Man has attracted an ever-widening circle of artists and performers, and has become the focal point for a wild riot of creative energy that bursts up out of the desert floor each year like a crop of strange, beautiful wildflowers. Graphic artists, sculptors, storytellers, dancers, musicians; creative people in all the known genres and a few that haven't been named yet; out on the Playa their artistry defines space, inspires mood, and touches virtually every aspect of experience.
Just as images and gestures are amplified in the desert, so are the emotions they provoke; against an empty horizon, the smallest movement becomes ripe with meaning. Beauty edges into passion, ugliness into terror, and the full range of emotion may be exercised in the appreciation of a single image. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the Burning Man itself, whose graceful form serves as a sort of lightning rod for all manner of accumulated energies; a conduit that can channel any aesthetic and absorb all expectations. It is both beautiful and utilitarian, superbly functional and ultimately useless. It blurs lines: between artist and audience, action and reaction, creation and destruction. It does more than just attract talented artists and passionate performers; time and again it inspires artistry in those who thought they had none.
If there is an overall aesthetic to this creative cacophony, it is aggressively populist: a sense of both boundless potential and enthusiastic encouragement. In the wasteland, anyone can be an artist. This is liberating for amateurs but even more so for professionals. Freed from the constraints of commerce and the politics of the gallery, they enjoy unparalleled creative freedom. Dislocated from the art world, they are free to fashion worlds of their own design.
While the Burning Man and its attendant torch lit spires, all based on the designs of project director Larry Harvey, clearly form the visual and emotional center of the Playa, these are not the only works of sculpture to embrace the skyline. The entire camp is, in a sense, a sculpted landscape, and one of its dominant landmarks in recent years has been Pepe Ozan's lingam fire tower, a 30-foot spiral chimney of mud over steel mesh that invokes both the sky-piercing power of the phallus and the deep, earthy folds of the womb. Set ablaze by torch-bearing dancers, its towering flue sends an awesome column of flame to the heavens before the structure is itself consumed by the fire.
Another distinctive landmark on last year's skyline was Chris DeMonterey's camera obscura, an interactive marvel crafted in the shape of a pyramid; from within the inner chamber, one could observe a magic lantern show of the surrounding camp, focused by a lens onto a disk-shaped viewing table. Reno sculptor Greg Schlanger fused form and function in another uniquely interactive way: his twin-stalled shower obliged would-be bathers to work in pairs, with one person climbing a ladder to supply water for the other from a cistern shaped like nearby Pyramid Lake.
Maze maker Alex Champion fashioned a labyrinth of stones with a hidden walkie-talkie at the center, allowing intrepid explorers to converse with a disembodied oracle. English sculptor Serena de la Hey, in a nod to the ancient Britons' tradition of burning men, erected and incinerated three oversized wicker figures. These installations, while they may be technically described as sculpture, are actually much more than that; by default, they become the landscape itself. Even the bare desert floor lends itself to manipulation, from Lynn Marsh's enigmatic inscriptions at the feet of the Man to Dean Gustafson's oversized sundial, which cunningly employed the observer's own shadow to mark the passing hours.
At night a different landscape emerges, rich in shadow and bright with stars, edged in neon and limned with fire. Just as the Man dominates the daytime horizon, so does its blue neon skeleton help define the edges of night. John Law is already well known for illuminating the Man, but he's not the only neon artist on the Playa. Karl Hauser's neon fishes, mounted on the helmets of dancers, appeared to swim in space; Vince Koloski's immense neon crop circle lit up 3,000 square feet of the lakebed in vivid, arresting colors.
Neon, with its distinctly urban associations, seems both startlingly surreal and oddly appropriate to this desert community, this nascent and transitory "Playapolis," but it is of course firelight that ultimately defines the event. From the comforting glow of the campfire to the raging inferno of the Man in full burn, fire is both the primal image and the dynamic process that unites this diverse group of artists.
No one on the Playa is more intimate with the mystery of fire than Kimric Smythe, a pyrotechnic artist who has worked with San Francisco's Survival Research Laboratories. As the Incredible Exploding Man, he attaches a small arsenal of fireworks to his body, dons a protective helmet and breathing apparatus, and lights up. In the second year of this act, he was joined by his fearless wife, Heidi, to form the Incredible Exploding Couple; last year he brought his father, Bill, into the act as well.
Another veteran fire performer is Crimson Rose Indigo, a dancer who has been with the festival since 1991. Dancing in the nude, she brushes fire over her body so that it seems to envelop her like a second skin. With and without partner Will Roger, she has led participants in ceremonial fire dances at the feet of the Man.
Also incorporating fire into the dance are Terrance Graven, Indra Lowenstein and ReneŽ Jojola of Collapsing Silence, a Butoh-inspired troupe that highlighted last year's pre-burn festivities with their haunting, stylized moves. L.A.-based Mona Jean Cedar, on the other hand, used the Playa itself in her Kali-Ma dance, as though making love to the very ground.
Of course there's so much more: the music, the art cars, the theme camps, the indescribable performances like L.A. Cacophony's Spontaneous Combustion Theater; describing all the extraordinary artists who help make the Burning Man festival a reality is, of course, an impossible task in this short space. So, with profound apologies to those I've left out, I would at this point simply invite you to come out to the desert and see for yourself. Or, if you'll be in the San Francisco area during the first two weeks of August, come experience "Out There," an interactive exposition at the SOMAR Gallery featuring the Burning Man itself and a wide range of contributing artists, including many of those listed here and many more who are joining the Project for the first time.
Collapsing Silence will perform with the Sirens of Saturnalia and the musical ensemble Hollow Earth. Magenta Crowe will dance with a galaxy of candles orbiting her head. Timothy North will construct a "hover drum" - a 3-story drumming platform suspended from flexible cords. Beverly and Hans Reiser will premier their interactive Voice Garden, a "labyrinth of desire" featuring a computerized/realtime maze and big-screen projection. Sculptor Wayne Scott will combine mud, metal and fire in an enormous brazier that shoots tongues of flame, and Pepe Ozan will install sculpture that combines, in his signature fashion, elements of monumentality and voluptuousness. Ape Theater will engage in interactive performance art, John Law and Vince Koloski will install neon, and Synapse will create a ritual environment of media immersion entitled "Ancestor Stones." And once again, participants will be invited to talk to the Burning Man Ñ they may either be the voice of the Man or ask it their secret question while suspended three stories overhead in a bosun's chair.
The schedule will also include afternoon lectures by UC archaeologist Billy Clewlow and Burning Man Project director Larry Harvey. See the "Out There" notice on page two for more information, and call the hotline in late July for a more detailed schedule.
Stuart Mangrum is the pen name of cultural desperado Lloyd Void, Interim Minister of Propaganda for the Burning Man Project and publisher of the zine Twisted Times. Send him e-mail at stumangrum@aol.com .