Can we ever get enough Burning Man documentaries? Not here at Burners.Me, anyway. This latest one, entitled “Ode to Black Rock City” was shot and edited by Anders Christian Rasmussen at his first Burn, and features some beautiful images shot with a Canon 5d Mk III DSLR.
The full documentary was broadcast on Danish TV at the end of last November.
by Whatsblem the Pro
The International Arts Megacrew is a crew of builders that has earned a massive amount of respect from the citizens of Black Rock City, in particular with the success of their very ambitious and brilliantly executed Temple of Transition in 2011.
The IAM has announced their project for 2013, a mysterious structure called THE CONTROL TOWER. I met with Irish, one of the group’s leaders, to find out more.
Whatsblem the Pro: Welcome back to the States! Tell me about the IAM.
Irish: Thanks. IAM is a loose collective of people from over twenty countries, of which the core group is based in Reno. The crew initially grew from a group that knew each other from working together at the Black Rock International Burner Hostel (BRIBH) camp from around 2005 onwards, particularly members of the leadership team: Kiwi, a master carpenter and general contractor from New Zealand, myself, an artist from Dublin, and Beave, a notorious international man of mystery from England. IAM has since expanded to include many other people, including our architect Ken Rose and a wide diversity of crew from Reno and further afield.
The BRIBH was a camp that sought to provide burners from overseas a means to integrate faster at Burning Man by providing a surrounding community and a shared project – camp construction – for them to get involved in, even in their first year at Black Rock City. Attending Burning Man from overseas is a daunting task, both psychologically and logistically, and the role of the Burner Hostel was to make the journey easier, allowing international participants to spend more energy on really getting stuck into Burning Man while knowing they had a sweet home base to return to whenever they needed. . . and this philosophy of providing accessible experience to international burners continues in our art projects today.
IAM crew distribution — Image: Josh Simmons/IAM media team
The first big project we did, Megatropolis, grew from a whiskey-sippin’ conversation at Kiwiburn 2010 between Kiwi and Otto Von Danger, there at the time to build his Cow with Gun project. Too late to apply for a grant that year, we hustled, begged and borrowed to raise the funds required and drove to the playa on fumes, where, over the course of twelve hotdog-eating days, twenty-five of us managed to pull off a pretty big and popular project. Black Rock FX came in at the end to help us with an epic, pyrotechnics-intensive burn.
Our crew that year included people from New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, Australia, the USA, Hong Kong, Canada and Germany.
Megatropolis went so well that at some point during cleanup, Kiwi jumped to the next logical conclusion: building a Temple.
Megatropolis burning — Photo: Chris ‘Kiwi’ Hankins
This was a very different project – much bigger, far more complex – and being the Temple, required a lot more sensitivity and thought. With a crew that topped out at just under 400 volunteers from over twenty countries at Hobson Square, an awesome warehouse complex on 4th Street in Reno, we spent an extremely intense four months pre-building, then had an even more intense time with the on-playa build. . . so intense that we needed a year off to recuperate in 2012.
The Temple of Transition appeared to be well-liked by the community; afterwards we heard estimates that there were around 45,000 people at the Temple burn, which hopefully means it was a special place for a lot of people and that it performed its intended function effectively. The Temple is a well-understood, well-developed concept that had been explored and clarified over the preceding decade by David Best and other Temple architects and crews, and we tried our best to create and honor that same experience and feeling on our watch.
The IAM’s Temple of Transition, Burning Man 2011 — Photo: Scott London
Whatsblem the Pro: Well done, it was a great Temple.
What is the Control Tower? What does it signify artistically, and what do you hope to achieve with it?
Irish: Where the Temple was serious, the Control Tower is designed to be fun, both for participants to interact with and for us to build!
Sensible grown-ups that we are, we realized that the theme is likely to inspire all manner of bizarre air and space craft, no doubt operated by a babbling smorgasbord of unlicensed, cantankerous, and demented pilots, all buzzing around Spaceport BRC in the most uncontrolled, abstract, and fundamentally irresponsible manner. Very dangerous! Very haphazard! So we figured we’d step up to do our civic duty and provide some modicum of air traffic control, provide landing clearances, define flight paths and so on. . . all of which can only realistically be achieved from sixty feet above the playa, high atop a flaming, laser-shooting Control Tower.
Aside from selflessly providing this vital public service, of course, we wanted to focus on two key principles this year: interactivity and collaboration. So every system on the tower – flames, lasers, lighting, sound – will all be interactive via a number of secret game-like methods which will have to be discovered upon visiting the installation. Many of these systems will be built by a rapidly expanding list of awesome collaborators including UV99, Mischief Lab, BambooDNA, Audiopixel, the Media Architecture Institute, Ideate, Play)a(skool, several 2012 CORE crews, and even some peaceful, softly glowing visitors from the Fractal Planet, so the project is shaping up to be a collaboration of epic proportions. We strongly believe that collaborations yield the best Burning Man projects, so we’re really excited about where the Control Tower project is going to end up by the time we actually get to playa!
The Control Tower. Not pictured: your mind exploding — Image: IAM
Whatsblem the Pro: What is the Org’s involvement in the project? Does it meet your expectations?
Irish: Sadly, we did not get a grant from Burning Man this year, which makes our lives a little more difficult. It’s hard to know exactly why they chose not to support a project that delivers so much interaction, collaboration, visual impact, and fire in a theme-appropriate way. The community as a whole clearly likes the idea very much, as shown by the massive wave of support we’ve experienced in just three short weeks since we launched on Facebook, and since we like those people so much, we HAVE to move ahead, grant or no grant! We built Megatropolis without a grant, so we know it can be done, especially with so much support gathering around the project already.
It’s also important to note that Burning Man supports its artists in more ways than just via grants, and this non-monetary support can be just as – if not more – critical to making a project happen successfully. Now that we have been given a very clear mandate by the community itself to build their Control Tower, it will be interesting to see how the Burning Man Org supports the project as it evolves. The fact of the matter is that we love building awesome projects at Black Rock City, and Burning Man loves awesome projects too, so I’m very hopeful they will work with us closely to ensure the whole community gets to enjoy the full, ridiculous magnificence of the Control Tower.
Whatsblem the Pro: What’s the plan for actually getting it built, and when and where will everything happen?
Irish: Well, we hope to start building in early May at the Generator, a new art space in Sparks, NV. Matt Schultz of the Pier project has very generously offered us space there, and we’re hoping the space will be quite the hive of Burn-related activity for the summer. We’re way into the family vibe that comes from working side-by-side with other projects, and it allows us to share our experience and infrastructure with smaller or less experienced crews. Our actual start date – indeed whether we start at all – will depend a great deal on how fundraising goes over the coming four to six weeks.
Whatsblem the Pro: What does the project need in order to succeed?
Irish: Like any other project, we need to assemble a mixture of four key resources to make the whole thing come to life: materials, funding, people, and clever ideas. We think it’s important to list materials ahead of funding because in the end, funds get used to buy materials anyway, and we really try to find free/cheap/donated material, equipment, and tools rather than spending on new stuff. However, even being super-proactive about using second-hand gear, we still think we need to raise just under $50,000, and we’re going to try to raise at least half of that on Indiegogo.
Equally, if we can come up with clever ways to avoid spending money by finding unexpected solutions to technical or organizational challenges, this helps reduce the fundraising load too, and that’s where the whole community comes in; we are always open to volunteers and new ideas. Across a community as big as Burning Man, we know there are people who have already developed a lot of the solutions we need to make this project go, and we’d love to hear from anyone who wants to get involved!
Whatsblem the Pro: How do people contact you to get involved, and how do they donate?
Irish: The easiest and fastest way to support the project is via our Indiegogo campaign.
We are fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, an umbrella 501(c)(3) that provides tax-deductible status to qualifying art projects. This means donations of money, materials or equipment to the project are all fully deductible to the extent permitted by law. A list of materials and equipment we need is available here, and we can pick stuff up in both Reno and the Bay Area. We will work with donors to determine a fair valuation of their donations for tax purposes.
To volunteer, collaborate, contribute ideas, or get more info about the project, just visit our Indiegogo page.
by Whatsblem the Pro
DPW PRC: They bend over for you ’cause it’s so dirty
When Burning Man is long over and Black Rock City just a thought in the minds of goddesses and gods for another year, DPW’s Playa Restoration Team is still out there, making “Leave No Trace” come true.
Maybe you think working Restoration is a piece of cake. It’s just partying on all the leftovers and picking stuff up, right?
Maybe. . . but “picking stuff up” may entail bending over at the waist eleventy squintillion times a day, every day, for weeks or months, with a distinct lack of all the shade and resources and entertainment that abound before Exodus. People who work Resto deserve your respecto.
A couple of picker-upper roughnecks who call themselves The Hun and Easygoin have paid tribute to our noble Resto warriors with a spirited video that gives us all a reminder of how grueling picking up all that MOOP can be. Can you say “lower back pain?” I knew that you could.
This video also reminds us, though, that the Restoration Team doesn’t just do our dirty work for us; they do our dirty work for us with gusto, èlan, verve, joie de vivre, esprit de corps, sisu, and a stiff upper lip. Under the circumstances, they even look pretty good doing it. . . and hey, useful is the new sexy.
Next time you’re out on the town and you see someone wearing Restoration crew swag, tell the bartender their next round is on you. Bend over backwards to make them feel appreciated; they have, after all, bent over forwards for you already, thousands of times.
From the Playa Restoration Team’s page at Burningman.com, here’s a list, in no particular order, of the top thirteen MOOP issues on the playa:
1. Rebar, Tent Stakes and Ground Anchors
There’s nothing that a pair of vice grips and some leverage can’t pull out. And anything hammered into the ground will just get squeezed out of the playa another day, after a series of freezes and thaws.
2. Abandoned Art, Abandoned Camps, Abandoned Stuff
Get your stuff off the playa!
3. Grey Water/Black Water Dumping
Dumping your grey/black water on the ground is nasty for the environment, and can get you a hefty fine from the BLM.
4. Dunes
Why do dunes matter? We share this land with others who use it, and it’s important that we keep it safe for vehicle passage by keeping the playa flat (The Black Rock Desert is known to be one of the flattest stretches of land on Earth). Dunes are formed when windblown dust bounces off stationary objects and reforms on the ground, attracting more and more dust to the pile and exponentially creating a bigger dune. A mere pencil can create a dune. Once they start, there is nothing to stop them, except us. Caught at an early stage, dunes can be stopped by simply raking them down with a landscape rake. Be sure to MOOP the area afterward.
5. Fireworks Debris
Fireworks are not allowed in Black Rock City; unfortunately, some folks do sneak them in, and more unfortunately, the people who light them off are rarely the same people that clean up after them.
6. Carpet Fiber/Debris
Carpets, rugs, and old tattered tarps are often shredded to bits, leaving behind micro-sized MOOP over large areas.
7. Cloth, Fiber and Rope Debris
Torn fragments of clothes, costumes, jewelry, and other fibrous materials.
8. Metal Debris
Nails, screws, fasteners, metal slag, beer bottle tops, etc.–there is hardly anything on the playa that isn’t fastened with metal. Whether your constructing something out of wood or welding, a magnet sweeper with a release handle (do a web search) will work wonders getting metal quickly and easily off the ground.
9. Cigarette Butts
DO NOT DROP CIGARETTES ON THE BLACK ROCK DESERT. THE PLAYA IS NOT A GIANT ASHTRAY.
10. Glass Debris
Broken beer bottles, broken windshields, etc.
11. Plastic Debris
Plastic bottle tops, packaging, baggies, zip ties, duct tape, caution tape, etc. Plastic is all too often airborne MOOP due to wind conditions and carelessness. Manage your plastic materials, keep them secure and recycle. Hint: Cut off the top of a 1 gallon jug of water and you have an excellent MOOP bucket.
12. Wood Debris
Wood chips, bark, palettes, splinters, sawdust, boxes, cardboard, paper, etc. Though often thought to be “organic,” wood is simply not found naturally the playa, and it is here where we must draw the line — it’s MOOP. The impact of wood is consistently the highest of all the traces and must be eliminated. We simply ask you to manage your wood. Place a tarp on the ground for your work zones, woodpiles, and burnable debris.
13. Plants
Plants, palm trees, pine needles, palm fronds, leaves, etc. Trees, plants, and leaves die, break, and shred, creating a huge mess of micro-sized MOOP spread out over a wide area. Factor in the dust storms and you’ve got a disaster to deal with on your hands and knees.
I missed the Burning Man contingent at SXSW, being there with a contingent of my own in relation to different festivals. But they were there in full force, to support the Burning Man movie Spark’s debut.
Jim Harrington of the San Jose Mercury News was not impressed. He’s never been a Burner, and doesn’t want to become one after watching the film.
I’ve never gone to Burning Man, the gigantic free-spirited, clothing-optional gathering of artistic souls and gregarious spirits that takes place each year in the Nevada desert.
I’ve never even wanted to go. I guess there’s just something about one of the event’s main principles — “There are no spectators, only participants” — that doesn’t quite mesh with being a professional critic, who is, by very job description, an observer.
Yet, I feel like I now have a better understanding of those who live and breathe for this event. And I guess that’s probably the main goal of “Spark: A Burning Man Story.”
It’s important to note that this is not really a documentary about what it is like to actually attend the freewheeling fandango. It’s not filled to capacity with scenes of nude folks running about the desert, playing games and juggling fiery objects. In fact, amazingly, there is very little nudity in this film.
Instead, it’s a film about what goes into putting on such a mammoth event. The stars of “Spark” are the festival founders, organizers and those who spend months each year preparing the often-impressive art installations that are erected on site.
It is, of course, only side of the saga. That’s probably why the filmmakers carefully had the title read “A Burning Man Story” as opposed to “The Burning Man Story.”
This story is indeed pretty interesting. Yet, certainly not interesting enough to get me out to the desert
Marcia Franklin at the Boise Weekly (that’s Idaho, folks) was much more impressed, but also flagged the disappointment at the lack of nudity:
Spark: A Burning Man Story—part of SXSW’s stellar documentary lineup—succeeds because it applies both a journalist’s and a cinematographer’s eye to the characters and commotion behind the annual Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.
Co-producer-co-director Jessie Deeter, whose background is in journalism (Revenge of the Electric Car, FRONTLINE: Death by Fire), crafts a story that goes beyond a history of Burning Man.
“I didn’t want to make a PSA for Burning Man, because there are plenty of those,” she says.
Deeter examines the tension between the communal ideals of the event, which began as a small gathering on a San Francisco beach in
photo from BurnerFashion
1986, and the current reality, in which organizers have to ensure that a pop-up city of 60,000 doesn’t collapse into mayhem and danger.
That has meant higher ticket prices and new rules, including a ticket lottery—all of which create a backlash against the organizers, which we see as the film progresses. It’s a story replicated in many organizations that become wildly successful.
“It’s a story of growing up, primarily,” says Deeter. “You reach a point where as the founder of your small, cute little company that has this ideal, you have to then look at yourself and say, ‘What are we going to have to do to grow it?’ And you can choose as the remaining founders did to make certain compromises… or you can choose not to.”
We learn more about those founders, who include a dynamic group of women and an intriguing man who left the group because he felt it had betrayed its roots.
Deeter also winds in the tales of three participants for whom Burning Man has been an epiphany, including a disabled Marine who builds and burns a replica of Wall Street buildings, and a woman who is welding a 12-foot heart—perhaps the purest symbol of the original ideals of Burning Man.
Filmed almost entirely using DSLRs, as well as a drone for aerial shots, the film is gorgeous: a virtual carnival of images that reflect the spectacle that is Burning Man. (Some in the audience, however, were disappointed at the lack of nudity.)
Deeter, who’s filmed abroad under tough conditions for other pieces, says she was nevertheless “terrified” of the sand destroying her equipment, and used underwater housing to protect the cameras from the capricious sandstorms.
This film is for those who’ve wondered about Burning Man but never wanted to actually “live” it, as well as for groupies who want a visual reminder of its importance in their lives. Speaking of that, if you’re at Burning Man this year, plans are to show the film on the Playa.
Dan Gentile praised the film’s visual composition and narrative arc in the Austinist:
For those that haven’t been to Burning Man, it’s hard not to think of it as an escape for the type of drug-user who’s really into peace, love, and glitter. Spark: A Burning Man Story smashes this stereotype, spotlighting the intense amount of hard work and dedication that has helped to grow the festival from a small beach side bonfire in 1986 into a 50,000 person spectacle of unbridled creativity in the Nevada desert.
The film is comprised largely of interviews with the founding festival team, nearly all of whom have stayed the course and dedicated their lives to Burning Man’s come-as-you-are philosophy for the past 30 years. They’re a motley crew of idealists, showing their age in appearance but working with an adolescent fervor to expand the festival infrastructure while holding fast to their ten guiding principles. As the scale increases exponentially, these principles are threatened and shake the community to its core.
The narrative arc follows a cross-section of burners whose meticulous preparations for the festival highlight its growing pains. A former businessman who found his freak flag at the fest curates an all-inclusive plug-and-play sub-camp where self-reliance goes out the window and attendees have more of a responsibility-free hedonistic experience. A young female metalworker who has Kickstartered a massive heart-shaped sculpture fears she may not receive a ticket despite her months of planning. A contractor who’s building a faux Wall Street complete with an eight-story Goldman Sucks building stresses over his construction schedule. The viewer feels their struggle, cheers once the projects are complete, and can’t wait for them to all be burned to the ground.
Visually the film is a treat, with a cache of some of the most vibrant B-roll you can imagine. Wide-eyed, barely clothed women dance through psychedelic light structures, ramshackle Mad Max vehicles shoot flames, and a temporary city of 50,000 cheer as it all goes up in flames. But the real takeaway is that this isn’t just a giant rave, but rather the type of event that people pour their entire lives into, and receive something just as valuable in return.
It’s not a giant rave? What? I obviously didn’t get that memo. That ain’t the kind of takeaway I wants ta be eatin’!
Angela, at Lost In Reviews, gave it a pretty good overall 3 out of 5, and put it on her bucket list:
Only three minutes into the film, and I knew I would have to go to Burning Man sometime in my life. After watching the film, I realized that may not be as easy as imagined.
The documentary Spark is about how the elusive festival in the desert, Burning Man, came to be and is today. In this moment, what do you really know about Burning Man? Before watching the doc, I knew very little. I knew it took place out in the desert, it was something like five days of hippies dancing in the sun, taking as many drugs as possible and commemorating the entire experience by burning a huge statue of a wooden man on the last night. Come to find out, my predictions were not too far off. Although the festival is a week-long and there is much more involved than hippies getting high in the desert. It’s much deeper than that.
Now after learning a little bit more about the fest, I began to wonder why they would even want to film a documentary on Burning Man. What I mean to say is the essence of Burning Man was a free-spirited festival in the desert where everyone brought in what they needed and left nothing behind. There were no corporate sponsors or advertised drinks sitting around. By announcing to the world that you have this secret, little, awesome festival in the desert, won’t everyone want to come? Won’t it become too big? That question, or one very similar was asked to one of the co-founders in the film and he answered with a question: What is too big?
Of course, how free-spirited could this festival have been after all? Sure, there were no bouncers telling people where to go, but without some sort of guidance out there, the scene was surely going to turn into the lizard orgy Hunter S. Thompson feared was all around him. 
The entire idea of Burning Man is that they are setting things on fire, at the end of the fest. Well, I’m no scientist, but I would feel confident in stating that fire mixed with people on drugs can not end well. According to the film, the festival in 1996 turned into the wild, wild west, with every man for himself.
Since then, Burning Man has had to step up their security a bit to protect themselves and everyone else that attends the fest. It’s still far from corporate, but not quite as free as in the good ole days. But then, what is anymore? The film spent the last twenty minutes or so just filming the goings on at the fest. No narration was needed, just a little music to set the scene. We get to see huge dance parties, dusty people making out, many things being set on fire, and tons of creative costumes and vehicles riding around showing off their glowing lights and flame-throwing dragon cars. Going to Burning Man is definitely a photographers dream!
I give Spark: A Burning Man Story 3 “” out of 5
Here’s an interview from SXSW with Director Jessie Deeter
Aussie media loves Burning Man
The Aussie flag has been proudly flown at Burning Man since at least 1997. The word is well and truly out Down Under, Australians love a good party and this is the best one in the world.
Thanks to Burner Butchio for finding this. The video is described as:
Once upon a time four Australians undertook the adventure of a lifetime. This is what happened
I bet that’s not all that happened. If they’re like the many Australians I know, copious amounts of drugs were consumed and it was “fully sick mate”. Enjoy.
It makes me homesick…but not for Australia!
