Burning Man is the biggest festival in the world described as an experiment in community and art with the main focus on creativity. Every year over 70 000 participants from all over the world erect a temporary city in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. This year Lithuanians will not only be part of the event, but also shall present an art installation “Dance for the Dawn”. The festival provided grants to 75 projects, which were selected from 550 applications. The Lithuanian installation is one of seven to represent Europe.
The Lithuanian installation “Dance for the Dawn" is a 4-meter high and 7-meter wide eye with 300 hands rotating in the centre to portray a hypnotising eye. “Dance for the Dawn" is a joint “Burning Man LT” and VGTU’s “LinkMenų Fabrikas” project. The team of engineers, photo and video professionals, designers and students has been working on this project for four months now at VGTU’s creativity and innovation centre “LinkMenų Fabrikas”.
“The whole concept symbolizes our unity and living in synchronous harmony. Watching the sunrise together brings us closer to the root values and reveals Burning Man 2017 art theme – Radical Ritual,” explained the author of the idea Karolis Misevičius. He shared that that the initial idea for the installation was born during previous festival when meeting sunrise in the desert.
Karolis offered engineers and designers at VGTU’s “LinkMenų Fabrikas” to take on the project together. “We have met each other last autumn, when together with the Lithuanian Burning Man community we organised delivery of 300 used bicycles from the place of the festival in 2016 to Lithuania to give them a second life. Then Karolis shared his ideas for the next year. We had the first sketches in winter and in spring we learned that our application received the Burning Man Art Grant to cover part of the project’s costs,” described Eglė Girdzijauskaitė Vice Director at VGTU "LinkMenų fabrikas" and the project’s representative for communication.
During Burning Man festival, all infrastructure needed for the temporary Black Rock city is created in Nevada desert. But after 7 days the city of 70 000 temporary inhabitants vanishes without a trace of any human activity. Thousands of modern art installations are constructed during the festival. All participants commit to the values of the community. The event starts on the last Monday midnight in August and the epicentre of the event takes place on Saturday after the sunset by burning huge wooden statue of a man.
The authors of the Lithuanian installation admit that this project is challenging in every possible way. “We had overcome many challenges to convert our fantasy into drawings, and then to give a body to a 4-meter high and 7-meter wide installation. Later we had to ensure that it moves and operates the way it should, but most importantly it has to withstand the temperature fluctuations and sand storms,” shares Mykolas Bistrickas the project’s engineering manager from VGTU’s "LinkMenų fabrikas".
In the end of August, the Lithuanian team shall travel from Vilnius to San Francisco and then to the Black Rock desert where they will set up a camp and start construction of the installation. Part of the installation – the metal iris of the eye – has already reached the USA in June. The rest of the installation – the wooden frame and 300 rotating hands – shall be assembled by the team on the desert.
