Small update about RAGE AGAINST THE NIGHT

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You will recall that last month I was rushing to get my Large Art Burn piece — Rage Against the Night — finished. You will also recall that it was not much more than a pile of sticks. Well, after a couple of days of stick-wrangling and propping up of “arches”…

… it was still not much more than a pile of sticks.

Especially when compared to the other Large Art Burns, e.g., the Temple.

Yes, it’s a giant angler fish. There were even more elaborate sculptures across the burn. My piece was placed in the same field as the Temple and was chosen to burn as part of it, which is an honor.

Back to the pile of sticks.

Not at all impressive. However, you will recall that the purpose of the piece was to be a repository of negativity: in a nearby tent, there were supplies of paper, writing implements, and a basket full of wedges made from the construction of Rage.

  • What is making you angry?

  • What is making you afraid?

  • Write it down.

  • Use one of the wooden wedges to gently wedge your fear, your anger, into the sculpture.

  • We will burn it at Temple.

By the end of the burn, the hippies had understood the assignment.

Sunday afternoon I helped move the three sections of the piece over to the “mouth” of the Temple (with the assistance of campmate EK), and no I don’t have a photo of it in situ. My brain was in a very calm, very quiet place, and it didn’t want to be bothered with administrative detail. I’m choosing to call it IMMEDIACY.

Nor did I get a single photo or video of Rage burning. Here’s one of Temple:

In the lower left, you can see what looks like — for lack of a better term — a pile of sticks. That’s Rage. It burned, and it burned well. The hidden bundle of 30” sparklers at the top of the lean-to was a small spectacle near the end.

It was an interesting sort of ABANDONMENT, to create the kinds of sculpture we created, to put the amount of work that I saw present in the other sculptures, and then to set fire to them… that’s a weird, marvelous feeling.

My other piece, VOID NO. 91A1422, was also well received.

Since it was a riff on the theme, Lighting the Void, I had planned for it to be a one-off joke — but then I conceived a better, more diabolical plan. Bwahhahahahaha, hippies!