BM 2003: a revelatory experience Beyond Belief

My very own first burn, Burning Man 2003, has been a revelatory experience - too much energy to be reported with words.
New horizons, and not only those of the beautiful Nevada desert, but new paths of creative wisdom that suddenly revealed everywhere, inside out me.

I created my own official Playa installation, of course using my beloved medium, the little yellow sticky post it notes.

The installation, named Beyond Fears, was composed by three tree branches that I planted (with rebars) on the Esplanade, leaving on a side several boxes - one containing virgin post-its, the other containing more pens, pencils, pastels and colors than a kindergarten stocks, and a third box to collect people's fears.


I asked people to write (or draw, or else) their fears on post-its, and then to leave them in the fear box (the third collecting box). pretty much every sunset (once I did it at sunrise) I biked all the way to the installation with a stapler to "crucify" the post-its onto branches (stapling them to the branches - a good system not to have them flying all over the place).

In a matter of days the empty dead branches took life with plenty of post-it-leaves with fears ranging in any direction: personal, existential, politic, spiritual.

I won't report those fears for privacy reasons and also because they don't exist anymore. As promised to all participants to my artwork, on the night of the Temple Burn (final Sunday) I took the three fear trees and I threw them into the Temple fire, cathartically releasing people's fears into the desert wind.

Unfortunately I broke my digital camera on the way to Burning Man, so I don't have many Burning Man 2003 pictures to publish online. These pictures of the several stages of Beyond Fear has been taken by a friend. I have some pictures from 35mm disposable cameras (with film), including panoramic and lomographic picture, maybe one day I'll scan them...

One final note: kudos and many thanks to the ARTery, the Burning Man Art team who really helped a lot with guidance and support, even if my art piece was a small one, and from a Burning Man virgin!
Thanks Artery, you guys rock.