Tactical Ninja - The Temple Saga - long post

10:16 am - The Temple Saga - long post

It started when pombagira and I were approached and asked to design the Temple for Kiwiburn. I don't know why we were asked, buy hey, it sounded like a fun project, so we said "Why not?"


Well, I kind of did. The Temple at Burning Man is a big deal. It's built on site by a dedicated group of people, and is usually finished about three days into the event. It's a pivotal part of the infrastructure, and various traditions have built up around it. It's one of my favourite things about BM. People write messages of loss on the walls, and when it's burnt on the last night, it's a huge cathartic release of the negative emotions of 40,000 people. Something very special. How would we live up to that?

How would we create the first Kiwiburn Temple? How would we do the concept justice?

Well, we started by coming up with a design. Oddly, we went off and drew our ideas, and when we got back together, we had drawn the same thing! Hmm, auspicious. The design was two interlocking spirals, whereby people would enter from one side, walk a full loop anticlockwise to the central area, then leave from the other side by walking a full loop clockwise. Details were finalised, the Temple of Infinity was named (we had to call it something and Frank just wasn't cutting it), and a scale model built out of plasticene and chopsticks:




The next question became, "What on earth are we going to make it out of?" We are talking a large scale (12m diameter and 2m high) installation here. Investigations were made, and we decided on 75 x 25 untreated pine boxing (the only boxing we could get untreated - important because we were plannig to burn it), organic weed matting made from recycled paper, and sisal binder twine to lash it all together. Kiwi came up with the bright idea of using the cardboard inner tubes from rolls of carpet to fortify the uprights, which at 75 x 25 seemed very spindly to this shepherd who's used to digging holes for strainer posts.

All of the materials were duly ordered, paid for and delivered on site. Well, except the matting which arrived a day late and had us all panicking for a bit. But what's an art project without a bit of panic to add to the fun?

On the Wednesday afternoon, after spending the morning on the power tools (POWER TOOLS! YAY!) cutting timber into lengths and adding points to the ends for easy driving, Polly, Joel and I headed to the chosen site to mark out our spirals. Hilarity ensued as we wandered around in the hot sun with our string, our tape measure and our hot pink spray paint, trying to remember how we figured it all out on paper. Eventually the spirals were marked and Polly wandered off to mother people (read: apply sunscreen to hot boys) while Joel and I scratched our heads at our sudden inability to do maths when exposed to sunlight.

I take no responsibility for the lack of consistency in the spacings between the posts. *nod*

We wandered back to camp to discover that more people had arrived in our absence, only not the person who had the post driver with them. Oh noes! No post driver! *meep* We had to get this thing up by Friday!

Thursday morning dawned and there was still no post driver. By this time people were starting to look for things to do, and this is the point where the Temple megamorphosised from OUR project to EVERYONE'S project. Joel started it by grabbing a hammer and some pointy sticks and disappearing off to the site, followed shortly by a group of girls from Auckland who carried most of the timber and cardboard tubes to the site single handedly. Meanwhile I was frantically trying to keep up with measuring and cutting framing.




Everyone took a turn to ram posts in the hot sun, working in pairs. By 2pm all 54 posts had been driven, and I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting the cross members to length in preparation for THE BIG ERECTION the next day.

I should say at this point that I fully expected it to be Polly and I down there working while people did other stuff. I had no idea that people would jump on board with such enthusiasm. What started as a Kiwiburn art project turned into a community project. Pretty much everyone there had a hand in the building of the Temple, the people made it theirs in a way that totally blew me away.

On Thursday evening I phoned the weed matting guy to find out where our paper was. "Look up" was the answer I received as he drove in the gate. Burner magic strikes again! Yay! We had all our stuff! Another session on the power tools in the evening, with the help of Hugh from Waiheke (a convenient carpenter with vision and skill who turned up at the right moment and became indispensible), and we had an altar:



Friday dawned, the festival officially opened and it was time for me to take on my role as Parking Demon, showing people where they could camp and generally answering questions and cracking my whip. This made it impossible for me to go and work on the Temple, and I was in a panic. People were arriving and it wasn't even close to finished! Argh!

Why did I worry? As people came in the gate, they set up, then went looking for something to do. The Temple became the place where everyone congregated, introduced themselves, and built community in working towards a common goal. What had been a concern became a blessing. Again, the things that hadn't worked became the cause of people coming together. Burner magic. *nods*



By 4pm it was time for the walls to go up. Up to this point we'd used no metal in the Temple at all, but the walls went on with a staple gun, and with 10 people on the job it was done in less than half an hour.




And there it was - our vision, made real by the coming together of a group of people who didn't have to help but worked to make it happen anyway. I wrote the first message on the walls, and it was a message of thanks. I am amazed and humbled that people would do that.

Here she is, finished.



Now. Those of you with astute observation skills may have noticed power lines in the picture. More on these later.

The Temple of Infinity was done. We could all pat ourselves on the back. Some people stayed to add final touches or just to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. They didn't stay for long because about half an hour after finishing, a storm blew up out of nowhere and it dumped so much water on us over the next three hours that we had a built in slip-slide in centre camp.

Remember how the Temple walls were made of paper?

Polly and I avoided going there after the storm. We didn't want to know. Next morning someone went for a look and reported about one third damage. Yep, a third of our beautiful Temple had fallen down. *cries* We decided to do nothing until things had dried up a bit. At lunchtime I grabbed a roll of duct tape (have I mentioned how much I love duct tape?) and a staple gun, and went down to fix what I could. As I worked, people came, joined for a while, left, came back. The call went out - "We need more duct tape!" FIVE ROLLS appeared miraculously out of nowhere. So now I know. Burners always have duct tape. ;-) And again, the people came together to rebuild the Temple.



There were 14m of paper left on the rolls we had bought. And, wouldn't you know it? With those and what was salvaged from the original walls, the Temple was reborn, again thanks to the people coming together. If it fell down again, it'd stay down. There was no more stuff left to rebuild it with anyway. THIS time, everything would be fine.

Now, about those power lines. Yes, well. *blush* When we picked the site, we were very careful to make sure it wasn't near any scrub, that there was a good perimeter around it for safety, that the prevailing wind was away from the campsite. We thought of everything. Only, we didn't look up.

Doh. The power board guy came down to inspect and told us no, we couldn't burn it there, as the smoke may leave carbon on the 400,000V lines and cause "some problems" for those lovely people in Auckland, power wise. The Temple would have to be moved if we wanted to burn it.

*cries*

Ideas were bandied about. We could pull it down and rebuild. Nobody wanted to do that, oddly.
We could saw off the posts at ground level, then get everyone to grab a bit each, lift, and walk to the beat of a drum to take it the required 50m away. Great idea, the logistics of which made everyone laugh and not want to be the one in the middle.

Meanwhile, people were visiting the Temple, leaving messages. Strangely, unlike the messages of sadness and loss that are the common theme for the BM Temple, these messages were mainly of inspiration and hope. Many people at Kiwiburn have never been to BM, are not influenced by the tradition, and just wrote what they were inspired to write. There were many messages of thanks. This poem from Ergoat, who was one of the most diligent workers in the building and rebuilding of the Temple (I even saw him down there by himself on Saturday evening, duct tape in hand, repairing away), moved me. It speaks of the attitude of the people at Kiwiburn.



And of all the messages I read (I went down to say goodbye on Sunday before the burn, and read them all), this is the one that made me cry. I don't know who wrote it, but the sense of these words overwhelmed me with the knowledge of the effect we'd had on people in the coming together of this project.



So anyway, about this moving the Temple thing. We were at a bit of a loss. Again it was looking like things would go pear shaped at the last minute. Then, the Green Fairies suggested that instead of taking the fire to the Temple, why not take the Temple to the fire? Everyone helped build it, let everyone pull a piece off it and throw it on the pyre of the Man?

Oh.My.God. Perfect solution. Word was spread, and everyone breathed a secret sigh of relief at not having to carry a 12m art structure of interlocking spirals 50m across a paddock in 30 degree heat. As the Man burned, so would the Temple. On Sunday evening Joel and I went and cut the strings so it would come apart easily.

Come burn time, the Man was ignited, then the call went up from Polly - "The Temple!" People ran. I couldn't believe it. Everyone wanted to get their bit and put it in the fire.





At Burning Man, the Temple burns in silence. There is formal ritual and it's a very solemn occasion, and as I mentioned before, a huge cathartic release of emotion.

Our Temple burned with whooping and laughter and dancing and shouts. It took less than 10 minutes till nothing was left but the altar, which was not to be burned. It was also a huge cathartic release, one of a different kind. One of joy and excitement for this new thing we're creating - and there was something pretty special about the 'we built it, we tear it down' temporary nature of the whole thing.

Temple Burn, kiwi style. Not Burning Man style, our style. I like that. Same idea, different application.

This is Ergoat. He drove posts, he lashed cross members, he duct taped, stapled and folded, he wrote a poem that moved and inspired me, and when the Temple burned, he basked in it. This guy is an inspiration.




Next year, the building of the Temple will be passed on to new minds, new inspiration. But I have the bug. While I was working on this project, ideas formed and crystallised, and next year there will be a personal large-scale art installation from me. And it'll have the bits of this year's Temple in it.

It was the first, and the people did it justice.

I was moved.