Reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle
September 9, 2001,
Robert Collier, Chronicle, Staff Writer

In the midst of the desert, there were tears.  There was flame, deliverance, and then nothing.  At the Burning Man festival in Nevada a week ago, thousands of people who expected merely a wild party found themselves mourning their dead.  They entered a strange sort of  reverence, a limpid, clear, innocent worship.  The Mausoleum, a six-story temple dedicated to the dead, was built on the desert floor over a period of several weeks and burned to ashes Sunday night.  During its mere five days' existence as a finished work, it became the festival's architectural and emotional centerpiece.  Large crowds flocked to the temple to grieve deceased family and friends, writing messages, leaving mementos (photo collages, sculptures, Army combat boots) crying, hugging and playing music. 

I was part of the project's unpaid construction crew.  I volunteered because Burning Man's motto is participation, and since I'm not an artist myself, I figured I could become at least a small part of the community by attaching myself to David Best, the Mausoleum's artistic creator.  And hey, it was something to do to keep Burning Man's famous partying from becoming monotonous.

For the past three decades, Best has been a pioneer of the outer fringes -- art cars (the absurd contraptions that occasionally wobble down the far-right lane on Bay Area highways) and "assemblage" (art using objects found in everyday life).  His works are displayed at many U.S.  museums, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art and the di Rosa Preserve in Napa.  Little did I know when I started helping out that the project would become one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my life.   

As the crowds grew, so did Best's attention to them.  The unkempt, perennially dust-covered artist often ignored his clamoring construction workers -- we needed to know which crazy thing he next wanted us to nail into the structure -- and called visitors together.  "You want to know what the purpose of this thing is?" he asked.

"Lemme tell you."  "Put your right hand out," he commanded.  "That's the person who committed suicide, alone and agonized.  Put your left hand close to you.  That's the child who died of leukemia, surrounded by love and support.  Now, move the two hands together and lift them."  In this way, he said, those who died amid love will help liberate those who died in anguish.   Inside the Mausoleum are pencils and blocks of wood.  "Go say goodbye to someone," he said.  "Forgive them or ask them to forgive you.  Say whatever you have to say."  By Sunday night, the latticed walls were covered with countless messages of love and pain and forgiveness.   The words were searing.  One woman who was sexually abused by her father: "You abused me," she said.  "It was the most difficult thing.  But I still love you."  Another wrote: "To my last baby who died. Who will join two others." Next to a 1950s-era photo of an unsmiling gentleman was this cryptic note:  "Daddy's little girl.  The only one, yes, I hope.  I wonder if you feel the same.  You're somewhere out there? Abandonment by will, abandonment by death.  I was eight months, you were 58, and you brought me pink tulips when I was born.   "The door's open, but no one is home." 

Although similar in concept to the AIDS Quilt, the memorial founded in 1987, the Mausoleum embraced all the dead and offered an entire city -- even a temporary one such as Burning Man -- a communal place to grieve.   "Burning Man's concept is to blend life and art so you can't tell the difference," said Larry Harvey, the festival's founder and director.  "We want you to interact not only with art, but with the society that convenes art around itself. 

The Mausoleum is just that.  Death is not a palatable subject in consumer culture.  Dead people don't consume.  But David (Best) had people out there, thousands of people mourning in the most sincere way."  For next year's Burning Man, Best and Hayes are planning a large building of paper and mirrors.   "It will be the Temple of Joy," Best says.  "You'll look for the reflection of someone you've lost in someone else's face."  Whatever the structure is, it will last only a few days.   Then it will be gone, consumed in flames, ashes soaring into the desert sky.   Will it be High Art? I don't care.   It will be beautiful.  -- Robert Collier, SF Chronicle, Staff Writer

Mau's Art ··· Burning Man ··· Costuming ··· Car Art ··· Music ··· Oriental Dance ··· Paintings
Recycle Art ··· Sculpture ··· Turkish Ebru ···  Home