MICHAEL VAV: Black Rock City, the first and largest Burning Man event is happening. I’m here, and I’m here to tell you that it’s happening. The paperwork’s in place, the collaborators are on site, or en route. The infrastructure’s up and running, and the artists are building massive interactive experiences for participants out of wood, metal, and tech, and everything else imaginable.

So we decided to bring you a sonic journey of some artist’s recordings and chats with Burning Man Project’s Director of Art, Katie Hazard. 

Hear the stories of the art in Black Rock City, well some of it. 400 art works from around the world will happen here. You’ll hear about 12 of them, and this year’s Temple. 

The Desert Arts Preview is your chance to step behind the scenes and listen to the process of creating interactive, collaborative, community-built artworks on playa.

KATIE HAZARD: My name is Katie Hazard. I’m the director of art for Burning Man Project, so I have the great joy of overseeing the selection, placement and installation of about 400 artworks at Burning Man each year. And I’m so happy to welcome you to the 25th Annual Desert Arts Preview. We’re going to be featuring different artworks with artists present. This is almost 400 artworks coming to Burning Man this year, and I’d like to invite you to consider how you would like to participate this year and play a part in the art of 2025.

So, Desert Arts Preview, this means that Burning Man is on the horizon, and no matter whether you’re new to Burning Man or you’ve been an active part of the community for decades, I think many of us believe that the art is one of the things that’s most unique about Black Rock City. I’ve been going to Burning Man since 2000 and hosting Desert Arts Preview since 2016, and I still get such a thrill hearing about. It’s innovative and engaging with wild things that artists dreamt up and want to bring to life. We get this rare opportunity to hear directly from the artists themselves about their work. 

So you’re going to get a sneak peek behind the curtain and into the minds of these artists as they share with us about the projects they’re working on for Burning Man 2025. We’ll hear from artists all over the world, and in some cases, we’ll get to see artists in their studios where they make the magic happen. 

So without further ado, let’s get into it and hear from this great lineup of artists.

–

I am excited that we have here today with us the two co-leads of the Sphinx Gate. 

We’ve got Mareesa Stertz and Tania Abdul. Mareesa is a filmmaker, storyteller, and community organizer focused on healing and transformation. She’s been coming to Burning Man since 1999 and has been part of the Zendo team since 2019, and brought an artwork to Center Camp last year.

Also with us today we have Tania Abdul, who is a producer of immersive art and events and the co-founder of a nonprofit focused on environmental justice. She’s produced multimedia experiences all across the US and brought her brand of activism to festivals in the Bay Area and beyond.

TANIA ABDUL: The world is in a hard place. Many of us are asking, what can we do to help? Ancient stories tell us that those who face such hard questions are often met by sphinxes, mysterious keepers of riddles, guardians of the threshold, and across time and culture. The sphinxes would offer one invitation to look within. Now the Sphinx return to towering guardians 34ft tall, inspired by the never ending story.

I invite humanity to know thyself. This is Burning Man’s largest Honoraria project this year and the first of its kind, a transformative, immersive rite of passage. This isn’t just about what we’re building. It’s why we’re building it. Too often, personal growth and mental health feel isolating and overwhelming. But what if it didn’t have to be like that?

And when it comes to answering the riddle of how to do this better. Our team has spent years playtesting across festivals and burns, and we found one truth again and again that knowing thyself is key, and doing so in community and play unlocks these riddles, which is why our team of artists, designers, and dreamers want to invite you on a quest through the portals of being.

Each portal offers a chance to play, reflect, and gather wisdom from life’s challenges into a talisman. The talisman has been offered at the feet of the Sphinx for a climactic moment of lights, laser and sound seekers are greeted by an oracle with a personalized mission, and the journey comes to a close in our cozy integration space. These sphinxes are built not just for Burning Man and modular, designed for rapid build and strike, but the future that spans museums, festivals, retreats and city pop ups.

These steel skeletons are wind rated to 120mph. CNC cut forms will be layered with fiberglass faces sculpted and polystyrene wings shimmering with elliptical hoops and knotted string. Every curve, every bolt designed to awaken or. And we need you. We are looking for event producers, builders and fabricators, fundraising leads, our team docents, camp crew and gear and materials. We are telling a new story, one where we face the hard parts of ourselves with curiosity, heart and play. For we are not broken. Rather, we are becoming. And the gate only opens when we face it together.

KATIE HAZARD: So knowing myself, I mean, what a big challenge. Yeah. What about each of you has brought you to the place where that’s what you want to help other people.

MAREESA STERTZ: I just saw and I see this around me is a lot of people are suffering and they don’t have that community to help them unpack it. Nor have they been able to look at working on ourselves and healing in a fun, playful way. Yes, it has been. Now that I have community doing it, we’re like, ooh, you got some hard stuff. Ooh, let’s feel those hard feelings and move through them. 

And with that positive peer pressure, it’s easy. But if you don’t know that exists, you’re sitting alone. You feel bad. This is very much born of the desire to shift that narrative and shift the way we look at working on ourselves and knowing ourselves into something we can do as a quest.

There’s an incredible power that people are really used to knowing: the art has power; it has power to move. There’s so much you can do when people move outside of what they’ve sort of been patterned like. You change a little bit of the context. Somebody in, and allow them to feel a little bit of freedom where they can have some expression.

Then it’s kind of amazing, like someone’s psyche will bring to the surface. There’s this opportunity for spontaneous knowing and revelation: light bulbs.

KATIE HAZARD: Thank you guys so much. Really nice to have you here, and I’m so excited for this project this year. Thanks so much.

–

The next guest we have, Scottysoltronic who is bringing the project this year called Sinksphere. Scottysoltronic is one part inventor, one part artist, and three parts mad scientist. Scotty is the founder of the Jank Stars and the creator of Jank Star Ranch, home to sustainable living, art and music festivals in the heart of the Utah desert.

I’m happy to have the chance to chat with you more with you, Scott. Welcome.

SCOTTYSOLTRONIC: Hi, I’m Scottysoltronic, a nomadic artist down here in the desert of southern Utah. I’m here at my ranch known as the Jank Star Ranch. The ultra entirely from found and reclaimed materials. And I worked entirely from sand and reclaimed materials. I do a lot of painting, a lot of sculpture. I like to work and tinker on all kinds of things.

The sinks and the armature itself that it’s mounting on was a globe that my friend found at a trade show. So our mission is to give all of these pieces of material another life out here to see what we can build out here with found and reclaimed material and give everything another shot. So this is the first time I’ve brought an art piece to the playa.

Since I built the flying saucer in 2007. I just got back from Salt Lake. I was up in the scrap yard last week, digging through the scrap yard, finding sinks. Pulled out 5 or 6 more sinks. So this represents probably five years of collecting sinks. Then in the spaces between the sinks, I’m going to be doing some glass pieces.

I work with a lot of glass in my art plates and vases and candle holders. Just all the grandma’s glass that gets sent to the thrift store.

KATIE HAZARD: Jank. Will you define it for people?

SCOTTYSOLTRONIC: Jank is derived from the term janky I guess is maybe like derived from the word junk. Junk may be garbage and it’s just got thrown away. Janky is like, it’s janky, it’s broken, but it still works. The sinks are Jank, now. It’s a noun. Putting them together, it’s janky. 

I think that once this thing is died, it’s going to be such an interesting thing to see from a distance, because you won’t recognize them as saints. It will just look like this sphere made of stainless steel, which is a really good representation of what Jank is. It’s 100% found and retyped material, I guess I should say 99.9%, because we do buy some screws every once in a while.

KATIE HAZARD: Thank you so much for what you’re doing, and I can’t wait to see the sink sphere spinning around on the playa this summer. So thanks for all you’re doing.

SCOTTYSOLTRONIC: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.

–

KATIE HAZARD: I’m really excited that today we have with us, Abe or Blitz, as we all refer to him, Burning Man was what ignited his passion for immersive art. And in 2022, he received an honorary Om for a project called The Afterlife. His whimsical, kinetic and flame filled works now light up events across the Bay area. So I’m really excited to have you here today, Blitzy. Welcome.

BLITZY: Thank you! 

Yo, I’m Blitzy or some people call me Ade. I’m the lead artist of Afterlife and Afterlife Reincarnate. The Afterlife is an artist collective of various Bay Area artists coming together to create some amazing big art on Playa. The seed of the Afterlife was planted. It was 2011. My first burn. I walked out to the Esplanade and the open player and on my right my jaw just dropped and I vowed to someday make big art out there.

When we first brought the first iteration of afterlife in 2022, we have about 33 crew members. We’re building here in San Francisco for over nine months. It took ten days for us to build on a playa and is one of the worst desert conditions with high winds and white outs. But the team came together and delivered, and it’s so gratifying to be able to culminate all of our experiences and our skills in gifting something as magnificent as a sacred space, if you will, to our netizens and city dwellers of Black Rock City.

And it’s an honor to bring it back again this time. So Afterlife has got many lives. Apparently afterlife reincarnated is: what are we going to bring to the play? Yeah, this year the afterlife is an interactive black light art on player, of course, with color and beauty and movement and kinetic art. It evokes this lively presence on Playa.

And that’s what we try to create, you know, just beyond aesthetics. Try to inject some spiritual meaning. Into the art. The art itself is basically, if you look from a point of view, Tibetan mandala, we have various pieces that represent shrines and stupas and temples and pagodas and the chance to represent some of that ancient knowledge and culture.

So, for example, this year the art represents the ruined temples of Uncle and Borobudur, in Cambodia and Indonesia and some cabo and Thai influences and Japanese influences in the structure and esthetics. It’s quite a huge undertaking to create big art. Playa, you know, the logistics, the fabrication and the transportation and building it in one ply and take it down in a matter of like a week, just over a week.

I can never do this alone. I’m so indebted to my dream crew who comes from all backgrounds. In fact, some of our crew come from different states, including Colorado and Florida, different countries, you know, from Denmark to Portugal. But they bring such rich knowledge and understanding from electrical engineering as to how we distribute our power to rigging and how we do our aerial work for hanging some fire breathing dragons and, you know, fabric clouds to builders, carpenters logistics helps us create something that none of us could achieve by ourselves.

So thank you, Afterlife crew.

KATIE HAZARD: You have such beautiful footage of that project. And yeah, it really created a sense of space and place that was beautiful.

Where did your interest in death or the afterlife come from?

BLITZY: 

I personally had a few, you know, deep spiritual experiences with life after death and out of body experiences, and journeys, with psychedelic medicines and all that. And it sort of gravitated me to exploring what that is. Death is such a heavy, dark subject, if you will, you know? But I kind of see it differently in some cultures do that as well.

You see that in the Mesoamerican cultures as well, especially in Mexican cultures. And to celebrate. So it can be bright and colorful. It can be a beginning, instead of an end.

KATIE HAZARD: Kudos to you for finding a way that, you know, like, more of whatever people have in them that they’re bringing to it at that time. They can, you know, they can be like that and explore it. Yeah.

BLITZY: And I think that’s the joy of collaborative art. I tend to choose the road less traveled. And, it’s been quite a journey.

KATIE HAZARD: Well, I’m so glad that our journeys have intersected and that I’m really grateful for you and the community that you’ve formed around you and the amazing work that you bring to black rock cities. Thank you so much. It’s really nice to talk with you more today. 

–

Next up we have artist Whitney Webb, who is sharing the project at Burning Man this year called resilience, based in Asheville, North Carolina, Whitney creates large scale, emotionally charged installations that weave together social justice, environmental awareness, and personal experience.

The project resilience transforms storm debris from Hurricane Helene into a sanctuary for art, memory and recovery. Whitney is a Helene survivor herself, having lost her home in nearly everything she owned. So this work is both deeply personal and powerfully communal.

WHITNEY WEBB: When Hurricane Helene hit, it made headlines, but headlines couldn’t capture what it felt like to live through it. The power disappeared, birds vanished. We were suddenly completely cut off with no signal, no communication. I was trapped away from my home. I had no idea what I would return to. For three days I was listed as a missing person in western North Carolina.

We still don’t know how many lives were lost in the River Arts District alone where I lost my home, 27 warehouses were destroyed, over 300 studios and galleries. And yet community. We gather where we could on porches by rivers and powerless kitchens. We share food, clothes and tools. Someone always showed up with what someone else needed. My friend Joe couldn’t reach me. No one could. But he drove in from two states away anyway, showing up with a generator, water and fuel. That’s just who he is. And he’ll be one of our builders on resilience, a state of Zen katana in his big, beautiful family. For a week after the storm, four kids, a bonus kid, and a steady stream of people passing through their home became a refuge for anyone trying to reconnect.

Zen hosted one of the first shower parties as soon as, well, just to clean for six months during the boil ban. His was one of the only reliable sources of potable water. Zen is our building because he doesn’t just build structures, he builds community. I remember standing by the river watching the flood carry our lives away. Then a giant fiberglass hippo from a mini golf course floated by.

We laughed hard. We laughed for the first time since the storm, and I thought someone made that it matter. That moment was the seed of the resilience gallery. Our friend Justin is contributing to the gallery, organize our lost and found efforts. He recovered pieces, including a few of his own, but what surfaced most were fragments of home. The memories of lives interrupted the resilience is built from that wreckage, a shelter made of salvaged materials, a gallery filled with work by artists who nearly lost everything and still created something.

In the months that followed, we kept gathering river parties, shared meals, borrowed tools, interstellar noise. The sound artist behind the track you’re hearing the background, and I partnered with Burners Without Borders to build a small distribution center. It became a hub of care and for connection. Now, Interstellar Noise has created a custom soundscape for resilience, woven with field recordings from the mountains that made us.

Every sound is rooted in place and in survival. Just last week, a body was pulled from the river, a man missing since Helene. Eight months later, the storm hasn’t finished telling our story, but neither have we. Thank you for believing in us, our community and our story. This project is built on community and we’d love to share ours with you.

Because resilience isn’t just about surviving the storm, it’s what you create from the wreckage.

KATIE HAZARD: Oh my God, how incredibly moving. I just think it says a lot about you as a person, and your own determination and your personal resilience that you emerged from something like that and then wanted to make something positive out of it.

WHITNEY WEBB: We actually didn’t even have power yet. When I wrote my letter of intent, I went to a disaster relief place and sat on the floor with my laptop and the only internet I could find to write my intent, I did. I knew that I had to do something for this, and I’ve wanted to do art for Burning Man for about 20 years.

I think it’s the place for it, because Burning Man has always been something really, really transformative for me. So I knew that was the right place to do something for my community and kind of show the world what we have. So the skills learned doing this radical self-reliance thing can be used to be radically self-reliant in times of need, outside of this cool thing we do in the desert.

KATIE HAZARD: Well, thank you so much. It’s really nice to chat with you today and we’ll see you at Burning Man. And I can’t wait to see you.

–

So today I’m excited that we have with us James Gwertzman, who is the co-founder of the Moonlight Collective and the lead artist, and Casey Marvin, who is the other co-founder and the creative director of the Moonlight Collective.

JAMES GWERTZMAN: I’m James Gwertzman, lead artist for the Moonlight Collective. And I’m really excited to introduce you today to our new piece for burning. And this year, the Moonlight Library. The idea for the library was conceived as all great ideas are on a napkin over drinks one night with co-founder and creative director Casey Marvin, our first big work, The Prairie of Possibilities, debuted at Burning Man 2022 and explore the transformational power of storytelling to generate empathy, inspire connection, and bridge divides.

In that piece, participants had a chance to have a conversation with the entity who inhabit the field of glowing prairie grass, and to record deeply personal stories connected to core emotions. We’ve collected nearly 2000 of those stories, and now, with this new piece, we’re expanding on the same fictional universe as the Prairie Building, the library where the entity stores those stories.

The Moonlight Library, visible to the human eye as a desolate ruin suspended between realms, serves as a liminal archive of collective memory. And in this moonlit moment, participants have the unique opportunity to look at their own story from the viewpoint of their last chapter and author their own changes to this narrative. Our work explores the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

In this exhibit, we explore that question through an immersive, interactive experience that centers around our ability to author our own stories. To be human is to engage in the grand experiment of life, trial and error, growth and regret, joy and sacrifice. It’s the process of becoming and the fragments of self that we leave behind as we change.

Besides exploring the library itself, we’re going to have different levels of immersive. This guest can notice that certain books and the shelves are glowing, and if you stroke those books, you’ll be rewarded by hearing the story. That book contains one of the stories we recorded earlier, and if you’re able to find the hidden entrance to a tunnel inside the walls of the library, you can follow that through to a hidden space where you’ll have a dialog with the entity who will challenge you to consider your own story and ask from the respective of your final chapter.

If you could rewrite one part of your story, what would it be? We can’t wait to welcome you at our library on the playa at Burning Man. Until then…

Luna, Luna as sent incentives and moonlight. You are reborn.

KATIE HAZARD: I love how you started with the possibilities for several years, and that was so much about storytelling. Like I and your video at 2000 stories from that it’s cool to see the evolution of that into our library. Like it makes a lot of sense.

JAMES GWERTZMAN: Same fictional universe. Yeah. A part of the conceit here is that this entity that inhabited the prairie, this is her library. This is where she keeps the story. You had this brilliant idea for this kind of climactic experience that is so buried deep within this piece, where you can really start to explore this notion of not just sharing a story, but really starting to edit your story.

CASEY MARVIN: Going forward into the library we’re leaning a little bit more into the active right that the art of that sharing and the role that you play in authoring that story. And so I think it’ll be an interesting shift. I don’t want to… No spoilers. Yeah. But I think there will be an experience with the entity if you can find her and, and it’ll be, it’ll be an interesting shift and a more active involvement in your own story.

KATIE HAZARD: Do you already have thoughts about what might evolve after the library?

JAMES GWERTZMAN: We’ve got some pretty big, ambitious ideas for the future. But, right now we’re in execution. You’re under the gun to bring you guys some magic for Burning Man, and we’re going to deliver.

–

KATIE HAZARD: I am really excited for us to welcome Elnara Nasirli who is coming this year with a project called Desert Air Oasis: BreathCore 7. She’s got a background in environmental technology, and she draws inspiration from biotechnology and mixed media to create immersive biomorphic worlds. So, Elnara, I’m so happy that you’re calling in today. Thank you so much for joining us.

ELNARA NASIRLI: Thank you for having me.

KATIE HAZARD: And you are. Tell us where you are.

ELNARA NASIRLI: I’m from a celebration. Hello. My name is Elnara Nasirli. I’m a lead artist for Desert Air Oasis: BreathCore 7. And we’re going to be at two if effort, writing from Azerbaijan to, until this installation and Burning Man 2025. And it’s basically a self-sustaining, you know, bifurcation unit in a dystopian future. It’s interactive and it mimics an artificially artificial lung.

It filters air and captures carbon while immersing participants in a rhythmic, breathing-like atmosphere. It’s a seven-panel bamboo shell which encloses a mechanical core powered by binding this LDA that breathes and filters the air so people can actually, have it like a shelter from the environment, real time lighting and has this is present as siblings.

The fragile balance between nature and technology. I mean, bc salmon is basically an invitation to reflect on survival, sustainability and our dependence on air as a shared, essential resource. We, built up an air, a tax law, for the future, adopted center member 2139 and basically, in this hypothetical scenario, all trees died out.

So there’s mass extinction. And so every single person is required by law to filter their own air and have a quota of oxygen consumption per person. And the outer shell allows, and then ABC seven allows survival against the harsh weather conditions and sandstorms, the lighting produces a frequency that allows people to navigate and access it, even with poor visibility, and collects water during rain.

And of course, we use solar panels to completely, sustainably, power. And and part, the inner, ABC seven apparatus, first model design and 2140 has a central mechanism that is replica seven cylinder radial combustion engine with its design inverted to spec to function as an artificial ventilator, filtering up to 4000l of CO2 from the air daily, depending on the state and speed of function. Thanks to bioluminescent algae driven carbon capture and storage filters. 

Thank you very much.

KATIE HAZARD: Well, I just love all the different wild ideas that people come up with for art to bring to Burning Man. This one fits actually really well with our theme. This year, tomorrow, today that’s focusing a lot about the future. But I’m curious, in general, does your work, conceptually, do you like to think about the future frequently or this kind of like this, you know, post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of concepts?

Or is it this particular project, this the first time you’re exploring some of those ideas?

ELNARA NASIRLI: Well, because of my environmental background, when I worked as an environmentalist, I found that it’s very difficult to make people understand and actually pay attention to the issues that we’re talking about. But through art, it’s so much easier. And I find it’s it’s very powerful tool. It’s something that makes you feel uncomfortable in a way where you’re like, “Oh, we need to do something now” because we don’t want to depend on these sort of machines in order to breathe just because we made a mistake 200 years ago that’s irreversible, basically.

KATIE HAZARD: Well, we’re really excited to have you coming to Burning Man this year. Thank you for coming. Thank you so far. I’m so, so far away to share what is a really crucial message for us in this moment.

–

We have here today with us, Mark Deem, who is going to talk about his project One Tin Soldier. He has been going to Burning Man for ages and ages. He actually helped build the man many, many times going back to 2013 and has worked on a number of other large pieces in Black Rock City, including a temple and the head maze.

He is part of the collective The Misfit Toys, that’s an art collective that is brought together by the love of creative collaboration. Its members are a mix of professionals and amateurs, artists and makers, architects and electricians, welders and woodworkers. And they like their art big, as they say, a really big. So, I’m excited to welcome Marc here today.

MARK DEEM: Thanks for having me.

Yeah. This is the great barrier. I had this idea of what? What, an archeological find of your child, like. Well, it would have to be massive because everything looks so big when you’re a kid. And I wanted that magic as an adult stumbling across something so familiar that immediately gets a gut punch that puts them back into a childlike state and just leaves them no option but to wonder and to play. It’s that sense of imagine, nostalgia. It’s a time of being a kid playing out in the dirt, with the blocks and the horse and thinking about how this time used to be.

I’m here at Golden Gate Park with our first piece. I remember when we’re excited to bring a bigger piece of five large toys. I was on the playa this year, decided to build big art, and building big art for the world is even better. Now we’re at the Reno Generator, where we’re going to be building the Yo-Yo for the Misfit Toys project. Welcome in.

I think the real centerpiece is a horse. I just get lost in it. I love a piece of art that makes me forget where I am. I forget how old I am. I forget how big I can just be. That little man playing in the sand with all the toys.

KATIE HAZARD: 

I’m interested in the childlike element of it, why exploring childhood is meaningful for you.

MARK DEEM:

I think more than anything else it was just this idea of, like, an archeological find.

There’s a universal experience of growing up and losing touch with that childlike quality. And so that combination of an archeological find of things that you stumble across in the desert and what would be really meaningful and impactful to find, we spend so much time thinking about rediscovering our childhood. I’m like, let’s just do it.

KATIE HAZARD: 

Great. Well, I’m really excited for your project this year and to get to work with you. 

So thank you so much.

MARK DEEM: I’m totally psyched. And thank you all on behalf of the Misfit Toys, because I’m the one in front of the camera right now, but I will always, always credit the misfit toys. I just happened to be the one with the idea for this piece. Yeah.

–

KATIE HAZARD: We’ve got Rob Brown, Alysha Cypher, and Aviva Kinoko who are part of the group, the Followers of Floyd, an ephemeral group of artists who come and go throughout the remote fishing community of Cordova, Alaska. Welcome to you guys today. Thanks so much for joining us from Alaska. Cool.

ALYSHA CYPHER: Hey, Squawk.

AVIVA KINOKO: Yeah, thanks for having us.

ALYSHA CYPHER: I’m here at the Black Rock City Chicken Ranch testing facility. We rigorously test each chicken before we allow it to be used in the ranch. First we spin it. Then we pressure test it. And then finally our squawk test. If any Black Rock City chickens fail our tests, they are euthanized in a humane manner. 

Electrocution.

Here’s that large part of your brain, as it were. So you might then see if you don’t feel as if you don’t feel the pain, just know that, the cushion is gone from bringing you.

KATIE HAZARD: This is great. I mean, this is one of the things I love about Burning Man. And like, the variety of projects that come to Black Rock City is just one of the coolest things about it. 

ALYSHA CYPHER: Bring us your chickens. Bring us your chickens.

AVIVA KINOKO: We just want people to laugh and have a good time.

ALYSHA CYPHER: Yeah.

KATIE HAZARD: Well, thank you for bringing that level of absurdity to the playa. And I think a lot of people will appreciate and get a kick out of. I know I’m looking forward to rolling around and hearing the squawking.

ROB BROWN: I asked myself, what would a ten year old Rob do and 10-year-old Rob would play with rubber chickens. So we’re making that possible. So thank you.

KATIE HAZARD: I think you’ll have a lot of people access their inner 10-year-olds this year. So thanks.

–

And next up, I’m really excited that we’ve got Alyssa Oliveira here today with her project, the Disco Snail. Alyssa is a multidisciplinary artist. You may have seen her work at Burning Man, lightning in a bottle, the Shambala Festival, and more events. So welcome. Yeah. So glad you’re here.

ALYSSA OLIVEIRA: Yeah, me too. 

Hey, everyone. My name is Alyssa. Two years ago, I started Alpine Artists Collective, not really knowing exactly what I was doing. I just knew that I really wanted to build big art and also build a community of like minded people. So in 2023, I built my first large scale installation, promise of the decade. It marked my 10th year at Burning Man, and the year I finally fulfilled a promise to myself to bring big art to the playa.

In 2024, we received an honorary grant. That piece became prismatic Perspectives or, as we started to call it, Doors Galore, an installation made entirely out of doors. 32 of them. It resembled opening new doors or chapters in life and invited people to step into new perspectives. This year, I’m so honored to be returning with another honorary grant to bring Disco Snail to life.

It’s colorful, ridiculous, and joyful, and at its heart, it’s about slowing down and embracing playfulness and goofiness. My last two pieces were more architectural in nature, so I didn’t have as much personality per se. But Disco Snail is full of character, and bringing it to life has been an entirely new and incredibly fun experience for me so far.

Another reason Disco Snail has been both fun and challenging is that, unlike my previous two projects, mostly built from wood, this piece uses entirely different materials. Learning to work with foam, concrete, tile, and metal has been exciting and at times definitely frustrating as well. The body is sculpted from high density EPS foam, then layered with mesh, concrete, tile and grout.

I wanted to use aluminum for the majority of the shell for its sleek appearance and being weather resistant. Lightweight. I was just curious about welding aluminum, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn. First, I had to design the shell and have all the pieces cut out from a CNC plasma machine. Then I welded all of the aluminum pieces together to create the overall shell design.

I still have to build a solid frame for it to attach to, and add in all of the colorful windows to the shell. The last component to the installation is the mushroom base at. The snail will be elevated on top of. I also really wanted to give a shout out to our amazing makerspace, the Truckee Roundhouse. We primarily work out of the wood and metal shops.

We also have access to the textiles shop, ceramics studio and tech shops. This community of makers, dreamers and doers are at the heart of our creative process. Needless to say, without this space, none of these projects would have been possible. But most people don’t see are the months of preparation and problem solving, heavy lifting, all the dirty work and late nights.

But seeing people interact with our installations, finding their way inside and playing with the small details, watching them light up at night, that’s the moment that makes it all worth it. So I’m so grateful to every friend that trusted the vision and helped me pull it off. And to every dusty soul who stopped to play and admire our projects.

KATIE HAZARD: I’m interested to hear more about your collective like from when you first brought promise in a decade, and then prismatic perspectives. Like, I had this impression that the alpine artists are kind of like this group of friends. How did this group of people come together?

ALYSSA OLIVEIRA: I started working out of the Truckee Roundhouse. I started volunteering there. That opened so many doors. Just working out of that space and just collecting people who also feel like they want to try something new. We have all these tools at the Turkey roundhouse, and if you don’t know how to do, you can take a class and you can learn.

KATIE HAZARD: Yeah, it’s nice to get to hear more about it and talk to a little bit more. So you do. Thank you so much for coming. Yeah, that we have with us today. I’ll leave. We open who is calling in. 

–

And joining us from Estonia, Auli Uiboupin is a modern day Earth loving waste alchemist with over a decade of dedication to giving abandoned items new value by transforming discarded materials into resources. So welcome, Auli. I’m so happy to have you here today.

AULI UIBOUPIN: I am so happy to be here before the desert, before the metal. There are 42 pairs of hands. They live in islands. Forest city flats stitching. The idea called DROP. There’s a family eating breakfast and getting ready for their day. Across the map, three more mornings unfold in each someone is sowing. Tomorrow at 9:00. All roads lead to a giant hangar that smells of coffee and possibility.

This garden waits for the skin. Arrives by the armful. Inside the like flows like milk. 100m of heartbeat. Every stitch carries a signature. And a salary is more than you. I’m Auli. And this is DROP, a sculpture made from textile waste by hands across Estonia. Mothers, makers and people with special needs. It’s not just a sculpture. It’s a question, a mirror, a womb, a whisper that says we are all connected.

As Rumi said, you are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in the drop. And this is that drop. A vessel of care, connection and change. Soon this milk will meet the dust.

KATIE HAZARD: Wow, what a beautiful and inspiring project. It’s very moving. I’m curious if you can tell me more about what inspired you to explore the concept of mother’s milk.

AULI UIBOUPIN: Well, I’ve been breastfeeding religiously now for about four years, and I was thinking and doing so much and doing my best. And no matter how well I eat or how natural my fibers are that I wear, my milk is still contaminated because in 2022 they found microplastics in breast milk. But it’s not even my singular effort into giving the best, purest milk to my son.

But it’s what we’re all doing, how we’re all contaminating the water that we drink or the air around us.

KATIE HAZARD: Am I right? And understanding this is your first year actually coming to Black Rock City to Burning Man? Yeah, that’s a big deal for your first time to come and be the lead of a big installation like this.

AULI UIBOUPIN: Well, I’ve known about Burning Man for a long time, but what I didn’t know, though, is that it’s open for everybody. I don’t even identify myself as an artist. I call myself a maker. And maybe I should make the leap because I am an artist. And when I learned that you can actually anyone can have an idea and submit it, I was like, wow, that’s actually amazing.

You don’t have to have all these accolades and be an artist in certain circles. You can just be whoever you are and you can do art and I just thought that was amazing.

–

KATIE HAZARD: And I’m really excited today to welcome Antoine Lee, who’s bringing the Project Killer of Puerto Lo. Antoine is a licensed architect and artist whose work explores the intersection of history, mythology and art through a contemporary lens. Antoine and I met back in 2020 when he proposed a project called the Solar Shrine for Burning Man, which wound up ultimately happening in 2022.

And I also had a chance to visit him in the studio in Chicago recently. It was lots of fun, and now he’s joining me here today to chat a little bit. High end fund the city. How are you? God. I’m good.

ANTOINE LEE: My name is Antoine Lee. I am the lead artist for the Project Killer, a portfolio which is a 2025 honorarium project for Burning Man in DC. I and the rest of my team are based out of Chicago and we call ourselves the Solar Shrine Collective. Our team started back in 2022 when we brought our first project out, The Burning Man, called a Solar Shrine.

It was a rather big structure. It was an Afro futuristic ancient Egyptian and Nubian temple, and it was a great project. And we have done other community projects in Chicago as well. The pillar of the tall logo is an interactive art installation that pays homage to the ancient cosmology and spiritual beliefs of the Dogan people of Mali in West Africa.

This sculpture transmits their knowledge of astronomy and sacred science through petroglyphs, symbols and other indigenous esthetics. One of our main goals, the project pillar of Pitolo, is to have a conversation and dialogue about what is technology, you know, like African art and architecture and sacred structures are forms of technology. They may not be zeros and ones, but there is a science.

There are spiritual science and Africans, like other cultural groups all over the world, have traditional practices that engage with shrines and structures to connect with other states. And being higher states of consciousness, transcendence and other dimensions of realities are experienced. The installation integrates ethnography of the Dogon people with archetypes from our modern consciousness, such as terminal interfaces from our computer age.

We want attendees at Burning Man to question what is technology and how did, how do they experience it, interact with it, and are impacted by it both spiritually and physically in contemporary realities? 

Then there will be various levels of interactivity, of lighting and sound cameras. At each podium, we’ll capture images of the attendees faces and transmit them to the center pillar sculpture element in The Soul Shrine collective is honored to have received an alternate theory, for this project, we feel that healing and transformation will be facilitated through pillar up of Tolo with the reintegration of spiritual concepts and connections to ancestral beliefs of study, astrologer systems provided there now, but well over 30 years I started studying metaphysics and different parts, esoteric sustenance and things like that.

But I’ve always had a deep definitive to like African spirituality. My father was really big in it when he was also a young, an early West African spiritual it out of Nigeria. And so that’s why a lot of it comes from.

Some of what we’ll be using as a software program. It will use something called pixel mapping by the. So some of the effects we’re going to be doing is like based on sounds we’re going the installation to be playing 24 hours, like indigenous African beats at the base around here. And then we’re going to augment that too. 

KATIE HAZARD: Thanks so much for having me. 

–

So today I am so excited to welcome Thomas Dambo here today with the project Rose wonders. Thomas is a Danish artist and recycler visionary. Welcome, Thomas, really happy to have you here today.

THOMAS DAMBO: Hello. Hi, Katie. And yeah thank you. Nice to meet you. Hello, Burning man. Community and art lovers from around the world. My name is Thomas Tambo. I am known for building giant recycled wooden troll sculptures that I hide in forests around the world. And over the last 11 years, I’ve made 156 sculptures.

So my idea was that this is like a little child that’s sitting in a forest looking and wondering about what is this butterfly that sits on my finger, but instead of that, it’s a human looking at a butterfly. It’s a troll looking at a human, and all the hair is made out of all these branches. So we’ve had a lot of volunteers that have helped me collect all these branches from like some different places in Denmark.

All my stuff is made out of like, leftovers, waste trash and all the cladding of the Burning Man troll comes from a playground company in Denmark gets all this like shells and first cut in a Robina tree that they don’t need. So we’re using that for the FIR. And then it’s water damaged, large wood. That is all the cladding of the arms.

I see you at the burn 2025, of course.

KATIE HAZARD: Did you ever imagine it’s all community he would build around the work that you’re doing.

THOMAS DAMBO: I had like a vision about that. I just remember having that clear sight of, like, if I make a giant sculpture exhibition all over the world that is made out of a trash, and that is man made in that way so that people can help me build it. And I was just like, so if I just start putting one all over the world one by one, then and then it’ll be epic.

You know, we have like data that shows there’s 4 million troll hunters annually that goes and find my trolls and them and all my trolls is made of trash. Together with volunteers, I saw a survey that said that there is 12.5 million tons of scrap wood that is either burned or woodchipped annually in the United States. That’s enough to build 2.5 million trolls a year in the United States.

So thank you so much for letting me come to Burning Man and supporting him. Come to Burning Man to do that there with the wonderful Burning Man community. That’s been a dream of mine for many, many years to do that. So I’m happy to come into it here in 2025.

KATIE HAZARD: I’m excited to see your work, around the U.S, around the world, but certainly at Burning Man this summer. So thanks so much, Thomas.

–

I am really excited that we’ll get to talk to this year’s lead artist of the temple, the temple of the deep, led by artist Miguel Arraiz from Valencia, Spain. He is also the regional contact for the Burning Man community in Valencia, Spain. Miguel has been a practicing architect for many years, where he lives in Valencia. There is this hundreds of year old tradition called Las Vegas, where they build neighborhoods, come together and they build ephemeral art in community.

And then they burn it, which will sound familiar to many of us in the Burning Man community. And so he has been very involved in building these ephemeral artworks for many years, 15 years plus, and was introduced to Burning Man in 2015 and then came in 2016 with an honorary A project Renaissance. And this project was in Black Wax City and also brought back to Valencia.

We are thrilled that Miguel is the temple artist for this year. Welcome, Miguel, I’m happy to have you here today.

MIGUEL ARRAIZ: Thank you very much.

The main idea behind this project is to go back to nature. We were in black growth this year with this idea was to take one black rock, to raise it into a power of community, and to build this and more than a temple, to build a center for, and also some place where we will go safely and share your emotions or your grief with other people.

This road, it’s us like a big heart has been like broken at 17,000 pieces. And then after the grief, it comes back together and it’s stronger. Doing the project of this Christ. And people see through there. So it’s like the hardest is broken and it will be at one moment of completion with this goal. It will be when we find the temple to fire here from the inside.

So this grad school people are going to be the light and that will be the moment at the end of the project. We are like feel. Five minutes after that it will be us. Okay, so it’s like saying that the process is always continuous, that you have your ups and downs. You have this moment of completion when we are burning that, but next day we will have to start to working in the process of learning and going through the grief and that process of life.

If you dig in the humanity of the rock, it’s like a flower. And the first thing that we do in Playa is we’re going to build this flower on the ground. The beginning of life is like a flower. In life it’s hard. It’s happened to you. And then this flower, you will become the rock. So it’s like you start to refresh.

But in the end, life makes things harder. So you probably become like a rock. This is a moment in your life that you would have to break the rock and go through the grief and through the learning of life.

KATIE HAZARD: So this year’s temple, Temple of the Deep, it’s a dramatically different design than what we’ve had in Black Rock City for since… 2000 was the first temple.

MIGUEL ARRAIZ: I think that at the end, Burning Man is a place where we have to explore different paths.

I think that Burning Man is the place to experiment those things. We want to make something that makes them feel like protective shelter. We are not. Building a temple is more like a shelter. To be inside and to feel safe. Just be with the other.

KATIE HAZARD: One of the previous temples, or religious architecture in general has this upward skyward, you know, this kind of feeling of like some divine beings in the heavens and we’re like directing our energy upwards, okay? We’re talking about it feeling more protected and like a shelter.

MIGUEL ARRAIZ: Of the anything that we need the answer from other humans and other people. So it’s like sometimes we try to find the answer some place in the universe. Yeah, well, maybe the answer is me doing this temple is just trying to show you some path.

KATIE HAZARD: Right? It’s providing a space for that healing to happen. Well, I’m so glad that you were able to be here in person today. And thank you really deeply for all that you’re doing to make this temple come together. It’s such a meaningful part of Black Rock City for so many of the participants there. So, I’m really grateful for you and all you’re doing.

MIGUEL ARRAIZ: Thank you very much. And we will try to provide the vestibule for the community. One thing will be for sure that we are putting all our heart and the volunteers are doing that. So at the end, I think that’s the important part.

–

KATIE HAZARD: Wow, what an amazing journey through creativity and storytelling. And I think this is only just a small slice of the almost 400 projects that we’re going to bring to Eric, son, it’s interesting to me to hear all these stories and to see how alive the theme of environmental sustainability is. This year, so many artists are working with reclaimed materials exploring climate issues.

And, you know, we didn’t set out to explicitly feature projects focusing on this, but it’s just such a part of the zeitgeist right now, and what’s on people’s hearts and minds. And it’s really reflective of the larger world. So cool to see that happening. 

Thanks to all of the artists that have participated. What an amazing bunch of people you are having the opportunity to collaborate with this fantastic range of people from, you know, doing such interesting work from all over the world because one of the biggest highlights of my job. So thanks for your creative visions, and for taking a break from your building to share your stories with us. I can’t wait to see your work come to life in Black Rock City. Thanks also to the production team here at Burning Man, my amazing colleagues who are producing this with me. Oh, it’s fun to work together and thanks to you, a huge thank you to all of you for listening to these artists’ stories, for supporting self-expression at Black Rock City, and for whatever ways you are fighting to stay creative in your own life and in their own world.

So thanks for joining Burning Man and seeking to make the world a more innovative and engaging place. Remember that Burning Man is all about participation. There are no spectators, as we say. So you too can be involved. Maybe you’ll be inspired to support some of today’s artists and participate in their build or contribute to something that they’re doing with their project.

And you can get contact info for all of these artists on our website. And with these hundreds of projects coming to Black Rock City this year, almost all of them are built in community. So there are plenty of ways for you to plug in and get involved. See the art listings at our website to find a project happening near you.

Or connect with your regional community. There are groups all over the world to find out how you can get involved close to home. So lots of possibilities and ways for you to engage. 

And lastly, material costs and transportation costs have risen dramatically. Today’s artists all really need any financial support. You’re able to provide links to all these artists. They’re at our website now on the Desert Arts Preview page. So please take a look and see what itches your eye and what you might want to support. 

And the work my team does year round to support these artists is part of the larger mission of Burning Man Project, which is a nonprofit. If you feel moved to support us, we would truly appreciate it. Some artists are supported by grants from Burning Man. Our budget is close to 5 million annually for all arts support, and of that, 1.5 million is given directly to artists that bring us. Help us continue supporting a global community of artists, stimulating innovation and creativity, and amplifying the magic of Black Rock City. Visit DONATE.BURNINGMAN.ORG. 

And thank you for your generosity. 

Bye-bye.

 

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