the hollow mountain at burning man, 2011

the Mountain is an ancient icon of rites of passage: to go to the mountain top, as joseph campbell might have observed, was part of the hero's journey. "hollow mountain" offers participants at Bman in 2011 not only the mountain top, but, perhaps even more interestingly, passages "through" the mountain.

built entirely of fabric & architectural plaster over a complex frame of white lumber, "hollow mountain" will offer participants an unique opportunity to interact both with the sculpture and our community: i will be asking participants to explore the cavern within and use it for a primitive, intimate expression of humanity's relationship with nature in paintings that i hope will echo the paleolithic artwork of such places as lascaux, magura, & gilf kebir; and both the summit & a monumental ocular geological structure should create many interesting opportunities for photogs, videogs, and painters to interpret other aspects of Bman-- including sunrise, sunset, the City, & the Man himself-- with the mountain as frame or tripod. installation assistant creative director Ciara Carinci will additionally be offering a series of theatre workshops at the sculpture with the intention of creating a theatre performance using the sculpture as stage. finally, it will be interesting, i think, to see in what ways our community will interact with the sculpture that we have not anticipated-- dance performances, perhaps, or impromptu musical creations using the acoustics of the cavern.

"hollow mountain" will have two final evolutionary iterations of its own ritual passage: a collection of small- & medium- sized sections of the cavern wall paintings will be carefully removed and distributed to various Bman regional organizations, either for display or for sale to help raise revenue for their own communities; & after the aforementioned panels have been removed "hollow mountain" will be burned. i imagine the fire as beginning around the central column which supports the entire structure, creating a glow through the mountain's "skin", with smoke billowing from the topmost orifices, collapsing on itself from the top like a volcanic peak collapsing into its caldera, with the lower "slopes" falling into the central burning mass until the whole is consumed.