Burning Man Live | Episode 105 | 01|29|2025

Temple of the Deep – Miguel Arraiz García

Guests: Miguel Arraiz García, Stuart Mangrum

Hundreds of people create the temple in Black Rock City. It’s a community intent on creating a work of art that is a space for people to grieve and revive.

For the first few years of Black Rock City we didn’t have a temple. Now, people can’t imagine living without it. Each year, participants create messages, tributes, and altars for who and what they want to release. The event culminates with the burning of the temple in what organically evolved to be a silent Burn.

Listen to Stuart talk with Miguel Arraiz García, the lead artist for this year’s “Temple of the Deep.” Hear stories about how a temple is built, from crew selection to fundraising, from chances taken to lessons learned. This poetic and playful conversation exemplifies how this year’s temple is already healing.

Miguel says, “We are always looking for the answers above us. I was trying to make something just to look for the answer between us or among us. So it is not that much building a temple, it is more building like a shelter for emotions, a safe space where you can be with people.”

Burning Man Journal: Introducing the 2025 Temple

www.2025temple.com

www.miguelarraiz.com

TempleGuardians.burningman.org

Renaixement: Burning Man 2016

Burning Man Journal: Tomorrow Today

 

Transcript

MIGUEL:

When you first burn your work, people tell you, “Why are you burning that?” I think that you have a kind of very special relations with something that you know is going to disappear. Some buildings I made that are going to be there for 50, 70 years. They are there, and maybe one day I say, “Okay, this is the building.” And maybe one day is the last day I will see that building, but you don’t pay that much attention. 

But when I help build something that is going to be burned in five days, I spend like five days right beside the work, trying to capture everything in my head and in my mind because it’s something that you know is going to disappear. You want to put that inside your brain, and that stays there. 

It’s not that important what you have built. It’s more important what you will remember. 

STUART: 

All right, let’s go. 

Hey, invisible friends, it is another episode of Burning Man Live. I am Stuart Mangrum and I am here today with a good friend of mine from far across the other side of the planet. Joining us from his home in Valencia, Spain, is Miguel Arraiz García, who’s the artist who’s been selected to design and build this year’s temple in Black Rock City. Hola, Miguel. How are you?

MIGUEL: 

Hola, Stuart. Pleased to see you again.

STUART: 

I’m so thrilled that you are doing this. I’m sure you are, too. But there’s got to be a little bit of anxiety, too, because “Congratulations. You’ve been selected!”, and now you’ve got to build the damn thing, right?

MIGUEL:

Yeah. Well, people say to me “Congratulations,” but I don’t know if they really mean that. Since I had the phone call that I was selected, it’s been like a roller coaster, you know, aso, because now I’m actually in Valencia, so it’s like a nine hour difference, so I’m like working the Spanish time, and then I start with the Bay Area time. Fortunately, I will be moving to San Francisco in two weeks, so I will be able to sleep a little.

STUART: 

Okay. But you know, we eat dinner earlier in San Francisco. Just sayin’. 

MIGUEL: 

I know, I know.

STUART: 

It’s just not even dinner time for you. It’s tapas, and maybe a cocktail time, right?

MIGUEL: 

Six in the afternoon, I still have like five hours for dinner until 11! It’s okay.

STUART: 

Your cartesian, your internal clock is going to just be whack-a-doodle forever. When you move to the States.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah.

STUART: 

Let’s go to the design. Tell us about the temple. How would you describe it to people?

MIGUEL: 

Well, the first idea was to do a temple that’s more based in what the temples in the beginning were, not like the sacred rock, the sacred mountain, the sacred lake. And we were also wanting to make like a temple that looks to the sky or looks above.

STUART: 

Yeah, that is very traditional, both for our architecture and actually where you come from. I remember cruising around Valencia in Catalonia, some of the tallest church architecture. There’s a cathedral in Girona that you can fly an airplane inside of, right?

MIGUEL: 

Yeah.

STUART: 

What made you not want to follow that same pattern? Your design kind of turns the other direction, right? It’s more facing down into the underworld. Is that fair to say?

MIGUEL: 

Well, it’s not in the underworld. It’s just we are always looking the answers above us. And I was trying to make something just to look for the answer between us or among us. So it was not that much building a temple, it was more building like a shelter for emotions, a safe space where you can be with other people and grieve together with other people. There’s not an altar in the temple I don’t want just to people look to the altar or not to pay attention to the decoration. I want it to be like a burrow. 

In a way, from the beginning, we want just to make like a twist and to change the direction.

Also because I think that Burning Man is the place to try new things because not every year is the same.

STUART:

It’s a very organic shape compared to previous temples. And you’ve said that in your statement that it mirrors the Black Rock actually and the surrounding mountains.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. The idea is to take the surroundings, so at the end we have like this big black rock, this something that we raise between the strength of the community, and we have this shelter underneath this space. And instead of having an altar, inside there is an agora, so that’s the place to meet that is surrounded by small chapels that are the places where you can put the offerings. 

But in this agora is where you meet, and you meet other people that has gone through grief or is going through grief at these moments. They want a place just to share those emotions. You have a space to be on your own in this chapel. But there will be also a space for sharing.

And also this agora, also in design form the layout of Black Rock City. It has like the same layout. So it will be like a small Black Rock City inside the temple.

STUART: 

Did you call it an agora?

MIGUEL: 

…a place to meet. Yeah.

STUART: 

That’s really interesting. Every temple I can remember had a very central altar, another borrowing from church architecture. And you’re saying this one will have none? Yeah, it will be based on more of the people coming together, person-to-person rather than person-to-higher power.

MIGUEL: 

The altar is like the whole temple.

STUART: 

Well, in many ways that feels more appropriate. 

You know, Larry Harvey used to talk about Burning Man as being exactly like a religion, but with no higher power. It serves a lot of the same spiritual functions that a religion can, and and still connects you to something larger than yourself, but not with a god or goddess.

MIGUEL: 

In the space at the entrance, the fence, it opens… We have also included the fence in the design. It’s not that we build a temple and then we make a fence. There is like a bigger space at the entrance, maybe we are going to build a kind of altar there, so you can make the offering there. But this is not into the design because I want to do that kind of design and co-creation with the temple builders and with people. And they have to make something with co-creation, with people involved in the building.

STUART: 

I’ve heard it said that architects are half engineer and half artist. It looks like you in your career path have leaned more into the what, into the right brain side of that, into being more of an artist. Tell us a little bit about your migration from traditional architecture into being an artist for Las Fallas. Actually, tell us about Las Fallas.

MIGUEL: 

Las Fallas. Well, we have this festival in our city that has been running for 200 or more years. We don’t know exactly. It’s kind of a Burning Man, but we haven’t been thrown away to the desert! We’re going to still do that inside the city. 

We have like 400 different associations, in each neighborhood, and they raise money, and the group has to do some art in every corner. So if you come on March 20 you will find like a hundred sculptors in every corner and they are burned at the same time. You could see like 400 fireworks the night of the 19th of March. 

That is also the day that my daughter was born. So that’s also one thing that made me move from building things that are going to be there forever, to build things that are to be burned.

STUART: 

How many Fallas have you designed and built over the years?

MIGUEL: 

Ten or twelve. I started like 15 years ago, and in the last year it was more involved. I was in charge of the World Design Capital in Valencia, so I had a break for two years. I have no time for burning things. After that I needed  just to burn something, and it came to be the temple, the next thing I’m going to burn. Yeah.

STUART: 

Okay. Yeah. I want to go back to the World Design Capital, and your work there, but how did your path from Las Fallas to where you are now… How did you find out about Burning Man and get involved in the art exchange program?

MIGUEL: 

It all start with, you know, Christian.

STUART: 

Christian García Almanor.

MIGUEL: 

Christian García Almanor, yeah. He met you, and he met Larry, and he talk about Fallas. And so we have to do something with Fallas and Burning Man. And it was one month before Burning Man 2015. We received like a phone call from Christian, and he told us, “You have to come to visit Burning Man.” 

And we went there, and you hosted us really well because, you know, it was like, we have to prepare Burning Man in like three weeks. And we have heard things about Burning Man, but our idea about Burning Man, was the same idea maybe as weekend warriors. We knew just things from internet, so we have never been there. 

In two weeks, we had to change our mind from what we thought it was Burning Man to right there, and get the idea of what Burning Man was. And when we went there our brains exploded, because there were all those things that I wanted, I always wanted to include in Fallas: Leave No Trace, Radical Expression, you know those things. But as Fallas is very traditional festival. I was like fighting with everyone just to change things and they told me “What you say is not possible.” And when I came to Burning Man, I said, “Oh, it’s possible, and they are doing this!”

So when say yes to apply for an honorarium for next year, and we will use our art piece to make this cultural exchange. And it really work. And also since then I’m the Regional Contact in this area. It has been very helpful just to have Burning Man, just to spread those principles and try to implement them in a very traditional festival as Las Fallas.

STUART: 

Yeah. How is that going for you? I remember when we visited, actually several times, the Leaving No Trace is kind of a issue there. A lot of the sculptures are built with a lot of styrofoam. They burn a lot of styrofoam, right?

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. it’s inside the tradition there’s a little parts they’re making more experimental fallas where 10 years ago there was only one or two not using styrofoam, and now it’s like a little bit more. But at the end it will change if they change their rules or their norms. 

It’s a very traditional thing. It’s not as alive as Burning Man, in a way. It’s more difficult to move, and we also have like 400 different associations, so you have to go little by little.

STUART: 

You have the weight of tradition behind it, and a whole lot of people who have their own ideas about what it is. That sounds like Burning Man.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. And always when you try to change tradition, people take it personally because, in a way, they are so close to the tradition that they think that changing the traditions, you are like changing them

And it’s been funny because I been like reading in Facebook, you know, these chats about this year’s temple, and there were like the same discussions from here in Valencia when I was making the experimental fallas, there were these kind of, “AH, THAT’S NOT A TEMPLE!

STUART: 

“You’re a madman.”

Yeah. I was going to ask. I mean, everyone’s a critic. Do some people not like your design Miguel? 

MIGUEL: 

Some.

STUART: 

Is it controversial?

MIGUEL: 

It always happens because some people, they’re used to something and they expect things to be the same, so when they see something different, the first reaction is like, “Oh, they are changing…okay, I have so much fun with with this,” or “Okay. All right. I appreciate this kind of temple always, so they are going to change it, so they are changing me, in a way.”

It’s good because at the end you make people that have like different opinions to interact. So I think that these kind of discussions are always ways to find like new paths. If you repeat like the same model that you know, that is going to work, you are going to be repeating… Like we have fallas, we have like a model that we tried for 100 years. So it always works. 

I always say something like “There’s always a space for failure.” It’s the only way to try new things and to find new paths. And, we have the good thing that we are going to burn it, so if it doesn’t work, you don’t have to go that path next year!

STUART: 

Yeah. It’s funny how even though we burn down Black Rock City every year, people still are attached to the past. I’d think that that act of burning it and hauling away the ashes would reset the clock, but people, I guess, build a mental model of what the Burning Man experience should be like based on their prior experience. That’s psychogeography. You know, it’s the model of a city that you hold inside your head.

MIGUEL: 

I had a discussion about this for a long time because we have this more historical festival. And when you repeat things, that’s not a party. That’s not something fun. Something fun is when you don’t know what is going to happen, you have no idea what is going to happen. When you start to know what is going to happen, it becomes a ritual, so it’s not a party anymore. 

The only thing that you know is going to happen at Burning Man, you have to know the day that you enter, the day that you leave, and that Saturday you’re burning the Man, and on Sunday you’re burning the Temple. But those are the only things that you know what that are going to happen in Burning Man.

But if you start to repeat things, and to try to “Ah, last year, this way we made this. Let’s repeat this,” there will be a moment that it will become a ritual. They will be attached to the tradition, and that they won’t want those changes, and they will react to those changes. So maybe that’s what’s happening, you know.

STUART: 

Right.

MIGUEL: 

And somehow the temple – maybe the model has been repeating for several years, so for a lot of people has become like a ritual.

STUART: 

All right. Let’s go back to the artist exchange project. So you came to Burning Man. Was that before or after we came with a delegation of artists. We brought over Karen Cusalito, Dave X… 

MIGUEL: 

I think it was after. 

STUART: 

Okay. It’s been a lot of time.

Then you guys came because we didn’t want you to… I always advise against people doing a big project their first year at Burning Man because like you said, you got to come and experience what it’s really like, not what you saw in the in movies.

And then you built… The big project you built. it was amazing. Tell my listeners a little bit about Renaixement. Did I say that right, Renaixement?

MIGUEL: 

You said it right.

STUART: 

…the Renaissance, in Valenciano. 

MIGUEL: 

As I said, we have this point of possible failure in our projects. We have this contract before going to Burning Man. We built a huge structure, different of traditional things. You know, everybody was against us. When I was building that in Valencia, we have to have two bodyguards, because we were like, for them, making something against tradition. They were trying to, to hate us, to fight with us because they said, “Okay, you’re doing this kind of weird thing for our tradition. You cannot do that.” 

This was a very experimental thing. And we have a very low budget. We told them, “This is experimentation. This is about weather. This is not going to…” And we had like the worst weather in 25 years. So the last day of the festival, the whole structure collapsed!

STUART: 

Well, a lot of it was made out of cardboard, right?

MIGUEL: 

Everything in cardboard. Yeah.

STUART: 

Everything was cardboard. It’s amazing. It looks like a Greek structure from the Acropolis, but, you get up close and it’s carpet tubes, right?

MIGUEL: 

Yeah yeah. And then, okay, let’s go to Burning Man. And when you ask for technical things in Burning Man you have 100mph winds, or people climbing this, or even worse conditions like we have like in Valencia. So we use a kind of similar structure, but then we have like some layers of tradition, because it was like a work of a lot of artists with the models and sculptors that we used in Fallas, so we incorporate all those things.

Yeah, it was too much work because it took like 12 days to build on playa. It was not that big, but it was too many details maybe. And they told me that I only have 16 days to build the temple! So I think it’s going to be even harder.

STUART: 

Well, so you and David Marino brought over a pretty large crew of your friends who had their first Burning Man working on that build with you, right? It was like 20-something people. Are any of them coming back with you to work on the temple?

MIGUEL: 

Well, some of them. Well, there’s a lot of people that want to go into Burning Man this year. During all these ten years since we first went there, you know, a lot of people saying, “I want to go. One day I will go to Burning Man,” and I always tell everybody, “Well, this one, people from Valencia doing the temple, this is the year we have to go!”

STUART: 

Well that’s good. I’ll be over your camp around lunchtime to eat paella. 

MIGUEL: 

Ah, Perfect. 

STUART: 

I want to go deeper into the Renaissance project, because you should have won an award for the logistics involved, because you built it in Valencia, you shipped it to United States…

MIGUEL: 

Yeah, we built everything in Valencia. We had, like, a strike on the harbor because I would send it with the container like one month in advance but we had like this strike, so we lost like three weeks. And so we felt that it was never going to arrive. Then we understood like the difference of building in the desert and building in other places.

I don’t know why you didn’t allow us to burn it in the desert.

STUART: 

Well, not my call, but I think it might be the fact that cardboard is a really messy burn.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah, I know.

STUART: 

It sends little chips of embers all over the place.

MIGUEL: 

Now I know. 

STUART: 

So you shipped it into Oakland, and then at the end of Burning Man, you didn’t burn it; you put it back in the container, you shipped it back to Valencia. You installed it in a beautiful, medieval building.

MIGUEL: 

In the cloister, in the Gothic Cloister in the museum. It took us 12 days to build it in the desert. It took us only two days to build it in Valencia.

STUART: 

Well, you already knew. You had already made all your mistakes. You knew not to make them again.

MIGUEL: 

No, no, no. It’s because how difficult is to build in Black Rock, then you understand the difficulties and…yeah.

STUART: 

Let’s go more to failure stories. What other lessons did you learn that you can share with other artists, particularly those who are bringing work from very far away to Black Rock City?

MIGUEL: 

Well, yeah that’s the pre-playa and playa building. You have to do the much as you can in pre-playa. To build it on playa is very hard. 

It was not that big, but you know, it has like a lot of details, and a lot of screws, and a lot of manual work. 

And then it’s the scale of things. We were thinking we have to go bigger. Things in the desert like you have no reference to any other things. We had also this discussion with the temple. Things don’t need to be huge to work. There’s not such a big gain doing huge things. 

And also, yes, you don’t need to pay that much attention to smaller details. Is more about the story that you want to tell people, and the interaction. Of course, is always better if the details are better; you can make it bigger because it will be more impressive; that’s okay. But I think that the most important part is to think in how most people are going to interact, and what are the message that you want to give.

STUART: 

That what you said. That’s to me, that’s the core of architecture, right? It’s how humans interact with spaces.

MIGUEL: 

We have this thing of ‘form follow function.’ As architects, we have to take care of emotions more than any other things. Today I found a book, a book that is called “Form Follows Love.”

STUART: 

Form follows love. Wow.

MIGUEL: 

As architects when we build these kind of things, I feel that I work more as an architect when I’m working with emotions. The architects are the ones that are building buildings. We call that architecture, but that’s building, and I think that we can improve or give to the society as a gift is to work with the emotions.

STUART: 

Working with people’s emotions, one thing I know that stimulates a lot of powerful emotions in people is fire. You’re designing and building a structure that is ultimately going to be burned. What is the significance or role of fire in the emotional lives of the people who are going to be experiencing the temple? What does fire mean to you as an artist?

MIGUEL: 

When you first burn your work, people tell you, “Why are you burning that?” I think that you have a kind of very special relations with something that you know that is going to disappear. Some buildings I made that are going to be there for 50, 70 years. They are there, and maybe one day I say, “Okay, this is the building.” And maybe one day is the last day I will see that building, but you don’t pay that much attention. 

But when I help build something that is going to be burned in five days, I spend like five days right beside the work, trying to capture everything in my head and in my mind because it’s something that you know is going to disappear. You want to put that inside your brain, and that stays there. Its not that important what you have built. It’s more important what you will remember. 

I remember all my works in a very particular way. Those that I have burned, and those that are maybe 100km from here, I build a building, it’s over there, but I don’t have that relationship with that work. It’s very different. It will be maybe like seven days there beside the temple, and when they burn it, I think it’s going to be very emotional.

STUART: 

Yeah, well, it will only exist in our minds at that point, right? That reminder of mortality and of endings is, I think, particularly appropriate in the case of the temple. That’s an interesting take on it, though. It’s not… You know, a lot of people look at it as like, “Oh, we’re sending —here’s the sky again — we’re sending all those wishes and hopes and memories up into the sky.” What I’m hearing from you it’s more like, “We’re holding on to them more closely in the moment, because we know it’s not going to last.” Is that fair?

MIGUEL: 

Yeah, that’s exactly the point.

STUART: 

So you mentioned some lessons that you learned from going to Burning Man that you’ve taken out into the world. I know in the World Design Project, of which you were the program lead project manager. Was that experience influenced at all by your work at Burning Man?

MIGUEL: 

Yes, making a lot of activities around design. But there was a point that we had some issues with the central pavilion that we have to build in the central square of Valencia. So at the end I had to decide it, and there was no much time. So I took advantage of that they had no time and it was me the only one that was on the table to do that. And at the briefing, they told me that they want to do as close a space in the center of the city for the brass to put their materials and to sell their products and to make like press conferences. 

And at the end I told them that the center of the city had to be like an open space for everyone. We will use it yes, make some ephemeral things just for the moment, but the rest of the time it has to be open to the public.

So at the end I convinced them — I don’t know yet how — to build a completely open space with no doors, no nothing. It was completely open to the people. 

And when I explained that to the Mayor, to everyone, we had like this big opening of the World Design Capital, I explained Burning Man principles. And that’s the way you have to use creativity, use creativity, to put like a big logo, name and…

STUART: 

Right.

MIGUEL: 

…in the space and yes, to close the spaces and that the city and the public spaces is for all, and is for all 24 hours a day.

STUART: 

That’s really interesting. And I can see how that was influenced by your exposure to the principles. You know, in this year’s theme that I wrote — Tomorrow Today — I really got super interested in the tradition of World’s Fairs and Expos, which in a sense, I think that the World Design Capital is a little bit of that, it’s kind of influenced by that tradition. But within that tradition, there’s a huge tension between product marketing and more open minded dreaming about the future, right? 

MIGUEL: 

Yeah, always.

STUART: 

…to think about how we going to live versus what are we going to buy. 

There was one example that I ran across that was just kind of staggering. It was, I believe it was like one of the 1930s world fairs in the US. They had a huge pavilion that was “The City of the Future,” but it was sponsored by an automobile company, and The City of the Future had like 12-lane freeways everywhere running through the buildings, it was a transportation dream-slash-nightmare. And that’s always been an interesting trade off. 

So how can we think about the awesome things that are coming to us in the future without shilling for somebody’s product?

MIGUEL: 

Well, we have to… I don’t know that word is exactly in English…, like ‘the insiders.’ We have just to introduce ourselves into this mechanism from the inside. In this last moment, you just can try to change things. And that’s why I think that Burning Man principles are great. 

You know, I was there? I was inside that organization when I saw like the path to decomoddificate completely the World Design Capital pavilion. I took my chance. If I am happy about the project, it’s not about the design. It’s about being able to convince them, because it was not easy. 

STUART: 

Wow.

MIGUEL: 

to convince them just to go the other way.

STUART: 

But the tension is real because somebody’s got to pay for it right? Which is, which is leading to my next question for you. I want to talk about the mechanics of building this gigantic structure. Let’s start with the money. How much does it cost to build a temple at Burning Man? And where’s the money coming from?

MIGUEL: 

Well, the second question is a very good one, and I still have to figure where the money come from.

STUART: 

The Burning Man Project pays a certain percentage of your proposed budget, right?

MIGUEL: 

It pays $150,000.

STUART: 

And of course, you’re going to end up spending a lot more than $150,000.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. And the cost of that can be between $600, $800,000. It always depends. As a lead artist, you can decide a lot of things because you’re going to get like 120 volunteers to the playa, and you can decide not to even pay them for their meals, or at least give them food. So, you know, at the end that makes a difference of maybe $80,000. It’s always fair that the community feeds those people that want to spend that time there. You have to move during the whole process. And it’s not, it’s not that easy.

STUART: 

Well, I hope you can feed people. I mean, even the slaves who built the pyramids were fed a cup of gruel. But still, it’s a challenging question. In your team do you have a fundraising lead to work with you, or are you at this point, are you doing it all yourself?

MIGUEL: 

Right after this meeting, I am meeting with one person; I had like four or five people that want to be part of the fundraising team in the Bay Area. And I also have a couple of people in San Francisco. And then I’m moving also just to have a fundraising team here in Spain. 

I don’t think that fundraising has been rewarded that much, because we are not that used to that kind of way of… Fundraising is kind of a very different culture here in Spain with with that.

STUART: 

Yeah. I remember that. There’s not a lot of private funding of art, people more relying on government grants. right?

MIGUEL: 

It’s directly government grants, so at the end is the culture in general, it’s like political culture. If you like this kind of censorship in a way, because it’s the politicians that have to give you, or not, the money. In the States the public is not paying that much for the culture. And you, as an artist, you have like 100 opportunities to knock on one door, and say, “Okay, you can fundraise me because you’re going to deduct your taxes.” So it’s more free and you have a good idea or you believe in your idea, you have only one door to knock like we have here in Europe.

STUART: 

Yeah, and that’s the challenge: creating a story that people can understand, that isn’t confusing. Well I hope that works out. 

In addition to all that money, there’s also, I would think, an opportunity cost to you. You’re going to take, what, six months or more out of your life, move to the States; that seems like a big commitment.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. I’m not worrying about anything. I’m not worried about fundraising, it will come. I’m not worried. I just went deep into the project and never… That’s the work. The day after I received the phone call, I just quit my job, and I told my family I was going to leave for eight months, and I’m going there in two weeks and yes, spend 24/7 doing this just to live this experience. 

At least I know I’m going to be paid in emotions. And that’s more than enough. I hope not to get bankruptcy!

STUART: 

We all hope for that!

MIGUEL: 

We will deal with that.

It’s been like a ride for close to ten years, finishing with the Temple.

STUART:
Now you’re on the fast part of the ride. You’ve spent ten years going up the roller coaster, and now it’s freefall! Ahhhhh!

MIGUEL:
Now we have to go down down deep only in one year!

STUART: 

Where are you going to build, where is your pre-build going to take place?

MIGUEL: 

We are looking two or three places around the Bay Area. We are between Oakland, San Francisco. San Rafael. We were also talking about going to Reno, but a big part of my work is this fundraising thing, so maybe living around the Bay Area. I have to see what compensates or not.

I’m going to take the whole February just to set up the space for working, and to define the crew. I been speaking with TBG, with Temple Keepers…

STUART: 

TBG is the Temple Builders Guild, the year round… That’s the kind of the permanent volunteer crew that works on temples and has for a lot of years, right?

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. And they help a lot with facilities during construction and to build the camp.

STUART:
And tools.

MIGUEL: 

And I was speaking with the lead artist of the last three or four years, and there’s also a lot of people that has been involved in the two or three last years, and I’m going to be having a lot of phone calls with them. I met some of them when I was in San Francisco for the final interview. So I told them we are going to join and do be all together when they are right there and we are going to try to make the best team to build our temple.

STUART: 

I understand there… Some of these volunteer crews end up being very large, and part of the role is to make more opportunities for more people to have a hand in building it. Is it safe to say that there will be opportunities for more people to join the build crew?

MIGUEL: 

Yeah, sure. We have to define the times of construction, and the finished, and the techniques we are going to use. For a playa build, you need as many hands… They will be the need of a lot of hands there. 

They told me that from other years during those three or four months of construction, there’s been at the end like 400 different people coming to attend to the pre-build. 

Then to the desert you can only go with a team of 120. They know the project because they have been pre-building that, and you have just to set up a number that you can control on playa.

STUART: 

And they can feed!

MIGUEL: 

Yeah. And I can feed. Yeah. 

STUART: 

The other volunteer crew that I know is going to participate is the Temple Guardians.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah.

STUART: 

At what point do they get involved?

MIGUEL:

We made this website. We are asking people yes, even people that is not going to participate in Burning Man because they cannot attend, they can send us a letter of grief, of love or whatever, and we are going to keep them, until one day to make a ceremony there inside the temple. So it’s not only people attending Burning Man. We don’t have these kind of temples for grieving and for letting it go in our city. This is an opportunity for all the people to know that at that moment, they are also letting go of their grief through that.

I spoke with them, and what best than the Temple Keepers to keep those letters until that day. We still have to figure out how this ceremony, we want to do that, but I think it will be also very emotional.

STUART: 

You know, it’s funny, in the earliest versions of Black Rock City. We didn’t have anything like the temple. It’s something that we didn’t know we needed until it was built. And now people can’t imagine living without it. So, you know, the more people can have a role in it of any kind, whether that’s helping to build, helping to fund, helping to staff it, or participating in it, to share their… to share their memories. It seems like the wider the circle goes, the more power it has.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah, I think it’s for me, and I started this project in a very low moment in my life, and I think, it’s not about the art, it’s not about the building. For that you have the Honorarium. This is completely all about community, and what you’re building is a community. And when I listen to these things on Facebook and Instagram, people say “It’s OK. It’s not OK,” I say if we are the best community, but we have the ugliest temple, it’s a success. If you build the most beautiful temple in the world, but your community sucks, what for?

STUART: 

So true. I think it is beautiful in a very different sort of way. It is, like I said, such an organic shape. Tell me about the name, Temple of the Deep. 

MIGUEL: 

Well, I say I wanted something that looked into the ground, and then I started doing this in a moment of heartbroken and of very big grief. And you always try just to go through the grief very fast. And I think it’s always a mistake. You have to take your time.

STUART: 

Tell me about it. Yeah.

MIGUEL: 

It’s like, these tectonic things, they move, like, very slow. This kind of rock or power that is inside the earth, that is moving, that at the end, creates the mountains. 

The initial variations aesthetically, you know, they were more like a rock emerging from the earth. That was the symbolic idea. But then, you have to design something that has to be built in 16 days. You are limited in that way. I can do nicer things. At the end you have those limits you have to fulfill. 

Going back to the big things, and that’s something that so yes, went to something just to look inside everyone’s, and I think this principle related to the temple, that there will be kind of a radical acceptance. That you have to radically accept what is happening to you. And things take their time. Deep. Deep, not only on the earth, but also deep inside and in any of us.

STUART: 

So the hardest question of all, Miguel.

MIGUEL: 

Now is the hard one? Yeah? Okay.

STUART: 

Why are you doing this? 

MIGUEL: 

Why?

STUART:

I mean, what is it about Burning Man and Black Rock City that you find important enough to devote so much of your life to it, and put so much of your heart and soul into it?

MIGUEL: 

Ahhh…I start making this to to save myself. Four months ago, as I told you, I was completely heartbroken. And they have told me for ten years, “Let’s go for the temple,” and I was always telling them, “No, I not going for the Temple. If you want to bring art, I’m going for the Honoraria. I’m not interested in doing the temple.”

In October I saw this on Instagram: “Tomorrow there is Q&A about Burning Man Temple, to apply.” And I was, you know, depressed, totally depressed, not able to talk with anyone. And I called some friends and told them, “Let’s design. I need people around me just to design something, just to own creativity because I have my mind in other place.” But the only idea is just to be surrounded of people and creative things and just to put my mind in another place, different to my broken heart.

At the end things start to put together, to put together. And there was one day they told me, “You are a finalist. You have a soon call if you want to make an interview.” And I told them “Soon call? Let’s go to San Francisco to make a 45 minutes interview,” and also, just to visit old friends from ten years ago.

It was like, okay, the temple has already done with me what it has to do. You know, I was again able to see myself and to be back on me. And now when they call me, I say, “Okay, this is a once in a life opportunity for sure.” 

But when I was four months ago, down deep there, people always tell you, “You’re gonna get out of here,” but when you are down there, you think that you’re never be out of there. 

This temple has made that process of healing me. And now I want just to give it to the community because I think it will heal a lot of people. In a way it’s a responsibility, but it’s kind of wonderful. I’m really excited that, not only me, is how many people is like, even crying of happiness, for this. 

My kid, he will be like 19. He’s going to build that during the summer.

STUART: 

Excellent. What’s his name?

MIGUEL: 

Miguel. 

STUART: 

Junior.

MIGUEL: 

He can do the lead artist one day. He has the same name!

STUART: 

There you go! A family tradition.

MIGUEL: 

Yeah.

There’s a bunch of people that is this thing, it’s making them really happy.

STUART: 

I think it’s a great place to wrap up. Thank you. Thank you so much, Miguel.

MIGUEL: 

Thank you, Stuart.

STUART: 

I’m so looking forward to working with you on this, to seeing you in person and not just over the wires. We have a lot of catching up to do. 

My guest has been Miguel Araiz García, who’s the lead artist for this year’s temple, the Temple of the Deep, Black Rock City 2025.

MIGUEL: 

Thank you very much, Stuart. 

STUART: 

That’s a wrap on another episode of Burning Man Live, the 105th episode, OMG. You can see all of the 105 and who knows, maybe the next one, wherever you receive your podcast downloads, all the usual suspects. Or if you want to go really deep into the archive, we have them all with transcripts and bonus content at live.burningman.org. 

I want to thank everyone who helped put this episode together, all my friends, people like Action Girl, DJ Toil, kbot, Lotus Position, and of course the inimitable Vav-Michael-Vav. 

Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting this show. We can always use a little bit of cash at donate.burningman.org. We are a non-profit and that’s what keeps the lights on. 

I think that’s it for now. 

Thanks, Larry. 

 

 


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