at the Year 2000
~ Labor Day Event ~
Our Burning Man 2000 camp was a collaboration with members of CWU (Cultural Workers Union) and Yonder Camp, just south of Center Camp, top of 5:30... Ponder Camp, an island fort in a swirling sea.
Our main projects were the Amazing 3-D Camera Obscura and other astounding optical displays by Harold Baize. The optics consisted of two custom-made lenses (about 2 inch diameter, 90 inch focal length) set about six inches apart, with polarizing filters and surplus military tank mirrors, reflecting onto a silvered projection screen set on the floor of the darkened room. Viewed using glasses with polarized lenses, a fabulous stereo effect was obtained. To our knowledge, it is the only stereo camera obscura ever built.
The 3-D Camera Obscura.
Despite a late start on the physical elements, Ponder Camp was a great experience in hanging out on the earlobe of the beast, like costume jewelry on a drag queen.
Haiku
Arrive August 8 Playa barren, liminal A dusty blueprint Crews on the lakebed My laconic instructions Somehow, a city Hammers are flying DPW's a verb: "to build a city" --- Zack's rock stands erect Exfoliated granite Peeling back my eyes Four in the morning Straight bourbon in Happy Land Facing the Faces Which Roman ruler Raised these obscene monuments... Pasolini Rex? G-7 Puppets Phantom yet enigmatic Ready April 1? --- Black Rock Marias Nab unusual suspects Piss Clear - Go to Jail No public servants Incite outrage and riot Unless by design Cops have a theme camp Participation - required Barter - Benjamins
DPW crew erecting one of ten 30-foot truss towers for the laser project.
Lex, Mandee.
DPW-Built House of the Lamp Lighters.
Zack's Rock.
DPW-Built burn platform.
The Burn.
The Exodus.
My Burning Man year started around the end of the last one, last fall/winter, making noise about building community burn platforms where people could torch jettisoned theme camp materials and burnable artwork. Tripped out to the playa in March, and again in May and July, to check out 99's burn scars, which looked like a street fighter's bruises, black, red, and yellow splotches scattered all over the site, and to do some tests on burn platform materials, just to spur the idea along. Fortunately, the Org went for it, instead of remaining in denial. Must have been the ignominy of hiring day laborers out of Reno for cleanup last November that did it. It really worked pretty well this year, especially the concentrating effect of having a couple of dozen designated burn spots, which people actually used instead starting a hundred rogue trash fires. Gigsville rocks... they used a burned-out Celica as a village fireplace. Next year, the platforms should definitely be made larger and more sturdy.
My work for the Project consists of dual roles as one of the DPW (site crew) construction managers, and the Theme Camp crew's contact for helping review larger camp structures. About March, the first emails came from the more gung-ho theme camps wanting feedback. As it ended up, some of the more self-confident themers had to severely scale down their plans in the face of the sandblasting winds this year. A sixty-foot-diameter geodesic dome collapsed like an eggshell at 9:30; Thunderdome's scaffold towers buckled; parachutes shredded everywhere. With the extremely dry, extremely hard playa this year, I found people with three-tier scaffold towers who tired of pounding their flimsy little rebar stakes more than a few inches into the hard ground, or who completely forgot to use guylines. I understand that nobody died, nobody got hurt, just a lot of torn cloth and dusted sound systems, but I hope the people bring more building-sense next year.
Spent all summer talking to people and sweating details on shade structures for Burning Man sponsored theme camps (Checkpoint Salon, Media Mecca, etc.), theme camp structures, the Vast Ass Cafe, DPW stuff, burn platforms, and the laser project. Hundreds, thousands of emails.
For me, the laser project ("Beaming Man") became the State of Burning Man in a microcosm. As blessed by Larry, this massive "art" project consisted of a 4000-foot-long replica of the Stick-Figure Logo described in lasers. DPW was asked to rig ten extremely stable 30-foot towers, and I took on this part of the project. A fabulous pick-up crew of DPW volunteers performed like super-heroes, and the towers were so stable that the entire suite of feedback light-sensors, radio-modems, and what-not were determined to be unnecessary. But, as with hundreds of other projects and performances during the Event, I never saw the entire laser array lit up. Glad to play my part, though.
Made landfall on the site with the DPW landing party in early August, to find Andrew's pink-covered Conestoga Gypsy wagon one of the only visible things in the vast expanse, other than rows and rows of red survey flags planted by the site crew. Andrew was Rus's foreman for the "outpost" structures; I cried like a lost child come home, when I saw his Gypsy wagon at Carp Camp, bravely pioneering the frontier-soon-to-become-city. The city grew quickly around it... Happy Land (base camp of Dan Das Mann, Michael Christian, and other metal artists) was one of the first to set up... Tower Camp (Pepe Ozan's Opera camp)... Gigsville (from L.A.)... First Camp (many of the site crew and Burning Man senior staff)... the DPW ghetto...
Yay! all but one of the fifteen-odd DPW shade structures I put up lasted through the winds without a lick of damage. Next year, we'll add a few more embellishments, as we did with the Lamplighters.
The Center Camp Cafe was massive in terms of scale, DPW effort, and Billions Served. I had very little to with it, other than to talk them out of their original notion of using bundled bamboo to create 60' high arches. Rus was the main builder, and did a great job with what was handed to him. All the interlaced cable looked really neat. The overall pattern was asymmetrical radially, with the result that the entire structure had a built-in twist to the right, which increased when temperatures dropped in the evening. Biggest thermometer in Nevada, someone conjectured.
And the outposts. About 100' diameter, uncompleted before this year's heavy winds kicked up. Both buckled mid-week before anyone could use them, and I strung Caution tape around one after we gave up saving it with cheap yellow truck rope. They looked like abandoned Roman ruins, remnants of an Empire with arms too short to box with the 3:00 and 9:00 Barbarians.
Didn't see the Burn, or the Opera. Missed all the foofooraw. But seeing Vance on that little Honda Elite rocket scooter, Carp Camp, Happy Land, Ken's bungee truck, little stacks of rocks all in a row, the DPW Ghetto aka Confrontation Camp, Zack's Big Rock, the Heart(h), and our Magic 3-D Commodus Obscurum... so beautiful, all of it... even the Cafe, I decided in the end. Missed the Burn on a hell-ride back to SF to help a fellow DPWer retrieve his belongings from his under-eviction apartment... we felt an odd thrill, flying like witches on a night errand.
Really, my favorite time is three weeks before the Event, before all the crowds come, when the only objects jutting above the haze are a pink Gypsy wagon, or a fiberglass ice ball mold, or Karl's pyramid-shaped range tent. Working and hanging out with all the stars in DPW... what a great bunch this year! Will Roger and Flynn Mauthe did a fantastic job, forming a crew out of the muscle and bones of the last years' and keeping them focused.
Got my first tattoo a week after the Event, during the cleanup, from Skitch. He's a musician and tattoo artist from Minnesota, one of the Pedal Camp boys who worked w/DPW. I drew up a sketch; it's a pentagon, with a horny toad rampant upon playa cracks, survey crosshairs at the eyeball in the center, red survey flags at the corners.
An ode to DPW...
FOG Momentarily lost for a day in the San Francisco fog... found no dust in every crevice pore and orifice, no freezing crusty nose and sweat-soaked dirty-sock bed on a dusty floor, no pants that stand up by themselves and start running away, no lukewarm dishwater coffee, no dog shit in the wood pile, no cussing or fighting or ruinous betrayal, no pitch-sticky grease-stained blunt-edged alkali-cracked fingers, no boa feathers racing bottle caps to Bordello, no muddy piss-soaked plastic bathrooms with boot prints on the seat and two squares of wet paper, no public servants shining a spotlight in the tent, no Code 48 kids crashing hard and wandering shoeless toward Sulphur... But damn, I already miss that redheaded sunrise unicycle bugler, rooster crowing duets with squeaky bike wheels, bacon bacon bacon bacon sausage eggs oatmeal bacon bacon and bacon, sweet well water filtered through pure Nevada granite, all the rosy gin blossoms popping up at 8 a.m., the unmistakable fleet of $500 trucks, clowns whacking their posts with twenty pound hammers, silver sunlight bouncing off miles of steel cable, wind whistling and hands stretching along miles of fence, woodstove flames tracing little maps of dreams in red hot lacework, painted arms pulling down the ruins of the palaces and towers of the highest little city in Nevada, dust-devil cowgirls and rocket-car cowboys prowling streets that disappear too quickly after the road maker's compass swings around, showering in firewater at dusk and fireworks at midnight, nirvana in the hotsprings under an infinite spiral of stars, and talk of brilliant projects to be continued next year, on that golden crackled dead-level clean-slate imaginary planet?
The Elian Abduction Incident... folks, this was one of our more vaporous notions this year... a dramatic ORIGAMI PUPPET production, with Fink Camp... Janet Reno, Clinton, Castro, Lenin, and Muammar Qadafi abduct Elian Gonzales in a firey torching of the city of Miami... but *they* turn out to be the real Aliens! Space ships burning refugee rafts... anal probes in the White House basement... smoke bombs, sound track from Lost in Space, incessant chanting... the usual... and Larry Harvey (aka Deep Throat) as the Cigarette-Smoking Man... But, the Iron Fist of Lenin is crushed in the end... Helco triumphs, Castro is vanquished, and poor Elian is condemned to lifetime of sweat shop labor, sewing Nike sneakers in an unventilated Havana warehouse...
Further explanations... here! Autoerotic Theme Generator
A critical issue for Burning Man 2000 is preventing burn scars. Fires typically bake the playa surface, and ash discolors the soil. This is compounded by getting trodden into the playa surface, and mixing with rain-soaked mud. We need to have less impact on the desert environment, faster cleanup after the event, and closer compliance with Bureau of Land Management requirements. Campers exiting the 1999 Event left behind a relatively small amount of garbage in the camping areas, but dozens if not hundreds of burn scars and debris from campfires and art burns continue to be a problem. Email me if you have thoughts on this. As a volunteer with the project, I'll try to relay good ideas to Burning Man organizers. What DPW is working on this year:
- even more steel drum containers for campfires
- large community burn areas along esplanade w/corrugated steel sheeting
- corrugated steel sheeting or other protection under all large art burns
- fire blankets with sand (example at REI; search "fire blanket")
- see my pages on Burn Scar Tests and Burn Platforms
© Bob Stahl | Home