Tag Archives: burning

Jan 21 2014

World’s Biggest Fire?

We’ve just been contacted by Burner Lise, who’s a little butt-hurt that we described Norway’s giant 130-foot high Midsummer bonfire as “the world’s biggest burn”. The flame measured a “mere” 135 feet, and one brave soul lit it from the top.

She insists that their 2007 Burn in Slovenia was even taller, at 142 feet:

slovenia burnFrom fire breathers to Mother Nature, the element of fire has set an assortment of world records…
…In celebration of Labour Day, a bonfire with a volume of 60,589 feet cubed was constructed by SKD Mladi Bostanj and lit on April 30, 2007 in Bostanj, Slovenia. The bonfire was also more than 142 feet tall  qualifying it for the [tallest] bonfire in the world on record. 

It ‘slovely. Apologies to the Lovely People of Slovenia, we never meant to cast aspersions about the size of your penis festival!

Their bonfire celebrated Labor Day, also known as the Feast of Ba’al. In American ritual ceremony Labor Day is the weekend of Burning Man. The occult nature of our Wicca burn is preserved on America’s Labor Weekend, by the pentagon pentagram that contains it.

14_theme_manBurning Man’s highest Man+Base to date has been (officially) 2011, when the height was 104 feet. Will the flames rise above the new baseless Man, more than 38 feet from its top? It’s arguable, I don’t think so. The Man’s arm raises up in a Nazi-style one handed salute, fireworks go off, then the structure burns and collapses on itself.

This year’s “Craven Ass Eerie” theme is a throwback to Mans of old, before there were themes…when there was no base and the Man stood his own ground. Can you climb up it? Can you slide down it? No-one knows but the Gamemasters:

How high will the Man stand without a base? Before, it has been around 40-feet tall. It seems unlikely that it will be 170 feet+ tall. How high do the flames go? Well, how does anyone really measure?

Lift your game and lift your flame, Burning Man! 

In 2007, Burning Man had the largest ever structure burned, the  amazing “Crude Awakening” Fire. The platform itself was 99-feet high, Christopher Lawrence played on it. Burner estimates claim a 300+ foot fireball. Wired claimed the flame as 1000 feet high, above the 100-foot platform.

bonfire 2007 sloveniaThe brains behind the tallest structure ever built at Burning Man plan to produce the tallest fire ever seen at the event as well — a 1,000-foot column of flame, primed by 900 gallons of jet fuel and fed by 2,000 gallons of liquid propane. Its creators hope this massive flame will send a powerful message about the oil economy.

The piece is called Crude Awakening. It’s the brainchild of Bay Area artists Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito. Its collaborative execution brings together eight different artists who have previously received art grants from Burning Man, and involved the help of 180 different people.

The centerpiece is a 99-foot-tall wooden oil derrick that was receiving final touch-ups Wednesday afternoon, including the completion of the steps inside that allow attendees to climb to the top.

To the left of the derrick stand eight metal sculptured human figures, most of whose surfaces are made of connected metal rings, each designed with their own different participant-activated fire effects via propane tubing. The statues are 540 percent of the size of a normal human. Some are standing, hands waved in supplication; many prostrate in various ways. All of them, Das Mann says, emulate the prayer posture of some religious tradition.

The piece is meant to dramatize the worshipful relationship and dependence modern man has toward oil. The idea occurred to the married couple during their honeymoon in India two years ago, and fit in with this Burning Man’s environmentally minded theme of “Green Man.”

The piece’s fruition comes in a performance Friday evening, to be aired live on Current TV beginning at 10 p.m. PST. At its climax, four different containers at each corner of the tower will shoot a total of 900 gallons of jet fuel (given away by NASA as unusable for its purposes, Das Mann says) to engulf the top of the structure in a huge fireball.

Seconds later up the center of the derrick, 2,000 gallons of liquid propane in a pipeline stretching out to the derrick’s right will shoot out at once through a remote-control 5-inch pneumatic ball valve. The piece’s creators figure this should create a 1,000-foot-high column of flame.

The detonation of the piece will create 2.4 gigawatts of energy, which Das Mann and Cusolito say is enough to “power the entire Bay Area for one minute.”

The artists realize that it might seem indulgent to burn so much fuel for art meant to dramatize our warped relationship with fuel. They understand those concerns. But they stress the personal conservation efforts about environmental and carbon impact that working on the piece created in all the 180 people involved, which they expect to continue.

The fuel the piece consumes only amounts to an ounce or so of fuel per attendee at the event, they note. Cusolito, who says she is thought of by her friends as somewhat of an “environmental Nazi,” says she thinks of Crude Awakening as if “all the energy I have not consumed by living the way I do, it’s almost as if I get credits” to use the fuel to “make the biggest environmental statement I could make in my lifetime.” The pair hopes the message will reach far beyond the 45,000 or so who might see the finale at Burning Man.

Das Mann and Cusolito stress the massively collaborative nature of the project, including fire work from Donya Parkinson and Joe Bard of Pyro Kinetics, and Mark Perez’s carpentry work on the derrick, among many others. Let’s also not forget the tireless work done by the best tile saw ever! That thing is running 24/7 during set up.

I guess the Guinness Records crew weren’t there that day…

Do fireballs count? Or is it the height of the sustained burn that’s important? What do you think, Burners? Did Slovenia beat us, and Norway too? Or does Burning Man reign supreme in the Fire God Wars?

Dec 5 2013

Burning Man: Back to the Future

by Whatsblem the Pro

Or you can just sit there forever in your Rules-Royce, sucker

Or you can just sit there forever in your Rules-Royce, sucker


Whether the topic is children on the playa, cops on the playa, feathers on the playa, or just rules in general on the playa, burners are going to argue bitterly and at great length about it. Any time these topics are raised in any burner forum online, the conversation draws hundreds of comments, many of them aggressive to the point of abuse. It’s as though the desert fosters endless dispute in spite of all the groovy talk about togetherness and family and unity of purpose.

How can we resolve these seemingly unresolvable disagreements?

Consider the original reasons for going out to the Black Rock Desert in the first place; it was largely because the remoteness and harshness of the place made it a good place for a Temporary Autonomous Zone. It was a place where you could get your dog good and drunk and let him drive your car across the playa at 120MPH while you leaned out the passenger window, peppering the drive-by shooting range with buckshot. . . and there was nobody who could tell you with any authority that anything about that was wrong.

Ever since Larry Harvey and his gang co-opted that freedom by putting a fence around it and selling tickets, you aren’t even allowed to bring your dog, much less get him drunk. The speed limit is 5MPH, and firearms are frowned upon. . . because as everyone will tell you if you happen to lament those bygone days, the event is just too big for it to be practical to not have any rules. While that’s probably very true, it’s also true that without the fence and the tickets the event may very well have remained small enough for it to be OK. . . but I digress.

When the festivities on Baker Beach grew too large to avoid unwanted attention from the police, it became clear that San Francisco was no place for a Temporary Autonomous Zone of any size, as it would not and could not be tolerated by the locals. . . so, thanks to the Cacophony Society, a TAZ capable of supporting Burning Man as it existed in those days was established in the Black Rock Desert. Now Black Rock City itself is so big that the locals there balk at the idea of having no rules. . . so instead of discarding the best thing about the event in its early days, why aren’t we establishing a new TAZ to serve the needs of the woolier, more freedom-loving denizens of Black Rock City?

The obvious answer, of course, is that no matter what Larry Harvey or Marian Goodell say in speeches and press releases, Black Rock City LLC is a corporate business entity that exists for the purpose of making money, not for fostering anything too radical in the way of culture, and that purpose is inimical to the very idea of autonomy. The Disneyfication of the playa marches ever onward in the name of profits, and public relations problems are dealt with in the corporate way: by paying people off and covering things up. For example, I speculate that rape kits are not available at Burning Man, not because the environment is too harsh or the chain of custody being too difficult to maintain; but because having rape kits on the playa would mean that far more rapes at Burning Man would be reported, instead of shrugged off and forgotten about. Many rape victims would rather stay at Burning Man and quietly put the rape behind them than spend the rest of the burn in a Reno hospital talking to cops and doctors. In short, maybe we don’t have rape kits out there because it would hurt the corporate brand that the Org owns and profits from.

The profit motive is what brought us to this, and the profit motive has swollen the numbers of people attending to the point that most of them no longer have much in common with the free spirits that came to share their visions with each other in the early days of the event. At this late date, any proposal that suggests Burning Man might return to its origins of envelope-pushing freedom is immediately shouted down as unreasonable and unrealistic.

Imagine, though, a designated area on the playa – for waiver-signing adults only – with no rules. A place near enough to BRC to get to easily, but far enough away that gunfire isn’t a problem. A controlled-access TAZ. An anarchy park, within the confines of Burning Man. A place with no cops, no rules, and no limits.

Black Rock City can grow and grow, and so can the rules and the Disneyland-like aspects and the mandated safety and the numbers of children and the vast hordes of finger-pointers and burnier-than-thou shamers. . . and we’ll still have (we’ll once again have) a place to be ourselves, completely unfettered by anyone’s rules or expectations.

Comments are encouraged.

Dec 2 2013

Digging Ra Paulette

by Whatsblem the Pro

You think YOU'RE an underground artist? -- PHOTO: Ra Paulette

You think YOU’RE an underground artist? — PHOTO: Ra Paulette

If you’ve spent much time at all sitting around camp fires and burn barrels chewing the fat with people who go to Burning Man, then you know they tend to be fond of talking about buying land and forming intentional communities of one kind or another, building on the lessons learned by participating in the culture that has grown up around the event.

It goes without saying that they’re also rather fond of art, and uniqueness, and deserts.

Somewhere nestled in the big empty between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, there’s a burner daydream for sale: 208 acres of privacy and freedom to spread out on. . . and the property features two hand-excavated art caves.

Eloi need not apply -- PHOTO: Ra Paulette

Eloi need not apply — PHOTO: Ra Paulette

The large and intricately carved underground spaces – described in the real estate listing as ‘cathedrals’ or ‘meditation caverns’ – are the handiwork of 67-year-old Ra Paulette, who has spent the last quarter of a century working alone at digging out and decorating a series of mind-blowing sandstone chambers beneath the surface of New Mexico.

Describing his process, Paulette says “manual labor is the foundation of my self-expression. To do it well, to do it beautifully, is a whole-person activity, engaging mental and emotional strengths as well as physical strength.”

Armed only with hand tools and his trusty wheelbarrow, Paulette follows his own very particular star in a starless darkness whose sky lies beneath our feet. He seems to have developed techniques all his own that allow him to work with remarkable efficiency, accompanied only by his faithful dog.

“When digging and excavating the caves,” he elaborates, “I break down all the movements into their simplest parts and reassemble them into the most efficient patterns and strategies that will accomplish the task while maintaining bodily ease. Like a dancer, I feel the body and its movement in a conscious way. I’m fond of calling this ‘the dance of digging,’ and it is the secret of how this old man can get so much done.”

Paulette’s strange story and that of his long and solitary labor of love has been immortalized in a documentary that may just be on its way to an Academy Award nomination: director Jeffrey Karoff’s CAVE DIGGER. The film, which has been much-lauded at international film festivals this year, spelunks both Paulette’s artistic ouevre, and the artist’s difficulties in dealing with the demands of his patrons. Paulette’s clashes with those who would try to direct his artistic efforts in exchange for mere money have spawned a distressing number of unfinished projects and left the cloistered cave-carver determined to work only for himself as he completes his magnum opus over the course of a decade of digging.

“My final and most ambitious project is both an environmental and social art project that uses solitude and the beauty of the natural world to create an experience that fosters spiritual renewal and personal well being,” explains Paulette. “It is a culmination of everything I have learned and dreamed of in creating caves.”

According to the real estate listing, grid electricity and telephone lines are ready to serve the lot at its perimeter, and the gated property features roads that connect with New Mexico State Highway 285 for easy access. Along with Paulette’s underground cathedrals and their “candlelit niches, recessed seating and various breathtaking side rooms that are washed in sunlight,” the 208-acre homestead boasts “majestic mountain views” and “surreal rock formations throughout.”

See you there?

The trailer for Jeffrey Karoff’s Ra Paulette documentary, CAVE DIGGER