STUART: 

Hey everybody, it’s Burning Man LIVE. I’m Stuart Mangrum. I am here with my friend kbot. Hi, kbot. 

KBOT: 

Hi. 

STUART: 

Did you get all the dust out of everything? Are you unpacked and home completely now in Montreal? 

KBOT: 

You know, this was my best return yet in terms of de-dusting. There have been years where I just put my bag away and take it out the next year and just deal with it then. So this year, the only thing that is still dusty are my boots. I just can’t. I just can’t take that extra step and clean my playa boots. They’re filthy. 

STUART: 

Pro tip, don’t put the bag away with all the playa dust on it. Really, you’ll hate yourself a year from now.

Anyway, today we’re going to talk about volunteerism, this being the season of giving. We wanted to talk to some people who give a lot to Burning Man, which is lots and lots and lots and lots of people, even people right here in this imaginary room. kbot, what was your first volunteering experience in the Burning Man world? 

KBOT: 

I think it had to be rangering. I saw friends in my local community becoming Rangers and I was fascinated that they got a peek behind the curtain, and they got to do all these extra cool things that they would talk about, and they looked cool in their Ranger outfits, and so I got into that, and did that for several years both in Black Rock City and at Regionals. It really transformed my experience. 

What about you Stuart? When did you start volunteering for Burning Man? 

STUART: 

Oh golly, well I started going back before money was invented, so, all roles were volunteer roles. I, ah, actually I went out there my first year to publish the on-site daily newspaper, the Black Rock Gazette. And I had a lot of fun and, yeah, I’m still, still writing silly things for Burning Man. It’s become a habit, a lifelong habit. 

KBOT: 

Look at that!

STUART: 

I did not know you were a Ranger. You’re not going to Ranger me during this conversation, are you? Don’t Ranger me, bro. 

KBOT: 

You won’t even know I’m doing it. It’ll be so subtle. 

STUART: 

I know. You’re like a ninja Ranger. You sneak up on me in your khaki clothes. 

All right. So why do we do this thing that we do? Speaking as one volunteer to another, I know now we both receive paychecks for our work, but we’ve done a lot of volunteer work over the years. And honestly, we could probably make more doing something else. 

We do a volunteer survey every year of all the people in all the departments, and the number one reason that they say that they do hard work in the desert for the love of it is out of the spirit of gifting. They feel that they’ve received a gift, and they want to return the gift. 

KBOT: 

And it’s also just really fulfilling. There are people who work 60 hours out there because they love it. And Rangering is how they Burn, or DPW is how they Burn, or building Center Camp is just how they Burn.

Sure, they go out and have fun and dance and shake their booty and visit with their friends too, but the fundamental kernel of what they do out there is working their asses off. And that gives something back to them. It feels good. And then they take that home into their lives. 

The people we spoke with kind of said that they had this sense of generosity and this idea that you can live your life for more than just a paycheck. 

STUART: 

Yeah, there is something magical of actually having your hands in the making of things. And so many people have jobs that either they don’t get to see the direct result of what they do, or they don’t feel any real sense of achievement or accomplishment in their work. Or it’s just so abstract that they can’t really touch it. 

There’s something about carpentry that I find is very attractive to a lot of information workers, right? There are a lot of people out there swinging hammers just for the tactile feel of it and the knowledge of looking at something and saying, “I built that.” 

KBOT: 

Well, yeah, and they do say that Burning Man is kind of an antidote to pushing pixels all day long. Not just in the kind of work that you do, but also the human connections. A lot of people volunteer because they’re working with people. They work at playa Info, or they’re working with Rampart or with ESD or whatever their service happens to be, there’s a connection, an immediate connection with human beings too. 

STUART: 

And I believe those are typically the third and fourth most popular answers on the volunteer survey: fun and friends. So people go out there because they want to give back. People go out there because they just love Burning Man and they like being part of it and having put their hands on it. And it’s fun to hang out with your friends. I think that’s true, really, at all levels of contribution. 

I know there’s some people who come out here and just want to bask in the experience and have it delivered to them. They usually don’t last. The people who come back are the ones who want to be a bigger part of it. And if it really gets under your skin, you’re going to want to keep contributing more and more and more and more every year. 

KBOT: 

And these people we spoke with were all multi-year volunteers, some of them decades-long volunteers, and you do see that it’s a little bit addictive when you start doing it. And you realize that you’re doing it because you want to do it, not because someone’s telling you you have to. 

STUART: 

So you orchestrated a lot of interviews this year with a lot of super fascinating people. And I think we got five of them queued up to maybe turn into a bit of a podcast-ia. 

The first one is a pretty legendary fixture on the Greeter’s team. Tell us a little bit about Topless Deb. 

KBOT:

Topless Deb is a legend. I heard about her long before we actually met in real life, which was just this year on playa. She started greeting the minute she landed in Black Rock City,she literally jumped out of the car back in the early 2000s and started greeting right away. And she’s been doing it ever since. And she started a regional event in Los Angeles. She is a force of nature. Quite amazing actually, I kind of felt starstruck when I met her. 

STUART: 

Yeah, many years ago I was camping next to her and before our bar had even opened she brought over a lovely bottle to the bar to donate it. I asked her her name and she said Deb and I said “Is that it, just Deb?” And she said, “Topless Deb.” I was like that explains why you’re not wearing a shirt, thank you. 

KBOT: 

We actually did get the story about why she’s Topless Deb. 

STUART: 

This interview was conducted on playa in Black Rock City 2024. Let’s hear a little bit from Topless Deb. 

 

TOPLESS DEB:  

My real name’s Debra Stiers and they call me Topless Deb, and I’ve been burning since 2002. I haven’t missed any years except for the two Covid years. 

I have volunteered from Greeters since I rolled in the gate. I had no idea what it was, and I came in the middle of the night and I’m like, “oh, this looks like fun.” And I parked my car. I pulled out a jacket and I started greeting and I’ve greeted ever since. 

I like welcoming everyone home. I like that what you teach and learn from each other when you greet; it’s not one sided by any stretch of the imagination. Meeting someone from an international place, you are going to learn what are you doing here? Why did you come this far? Who are you and why? And oh yes, I’m going to show you where you go. And I think there’s a lot of energy exchange when you greet. 

I’ve brought a lot of what I’ve learned here into my off-playa life. What you learn here is easy to take, for me, is easy to take into my normal day-to-day life. LNT to me is a big one. And  volunteering – I volunteer here a lot. I volunteer outside. I think volunteering and doing what you can for others is really important. 

KBOT: 

So we asked Deb what she does in her normal life that involves greeting and volunteering.

TOPLESS DEB: 

Maybe some skillset I have. I crochet voraciously and I share that skill with other people. I’m an accountant by trade. I share that skillset with other people. 

KBOT: 

We actually wanted to know whether she greets people in her day-to-day life, given that it seems to be second nature for her.

TOPLESS DEB: 

Do I greet? I used to volunteer at a hospital and so maybe that was part of my greeting skill. 

I don’t hug them. I do say hi on the street, but I don’t hug them. I’ll ask for consent for that one. Even here I’ll ask “is a hug okay?” I don’t ask them if they want to roll in the dirt. I do ask, but I… Perhaps I pressure a little bit. “Please make your snow, your dirt angel here.” — but not in the “default.”

Have I done other creative things outside of Burning Man? 

Yes. I’m very involved in the LA Burning Man community, and then also involved in community service projects over the years.

I want to help people, serve people, show them other places, things they can do. There’s so much more than just being paid. I’m retired. I think maybe that makes a lot. You know you really can go into the community outside of Burning Man and do things for people when you have the time, and you’re just giving them your time. You don’t have to worry about, “How am I going to make the holy grail dollar?” Ya know, it’s okay. 

I think Burning Man impacts individuals. Does it impact the world? That’s pretty, that’s pretty big. Does it have an impact on the world? I don’t know that answer. 

Do I think it impacts individuals? 

Yeah. I think when someone comes to Burning Man, they can’t help but leave this place a different person. I mean, I’ve seen people leave within hours because they can’t do the dirt, or the sun or the cold, wind, whatever. I’ve seen people go home and start a brand new business because they’ve discovered that they want to weld, or they want to cook for people, or whatever it is.

Has it changed the world? 

One person at a time perhaps? Yeah. Hopefully, eventually they’ll all get together and make a difference? I hope so. But watching it from 2002, there were 20, 25,000 people to now when there’s what, 80,000 people, it’s a huge shift in just the energy of the place. It’s very different than when I was here in 2002, but I was also a very different person in 2002 than I am now. 

Even though I’m pretty, I’m pretty private, people will say, and I will say, I’m an introvert. and I like that. I’m good with a few, but not with many. and still, even though it’s a huge – you are very social out there as a Greeter, it’s still one-on-one. And you can have wonderful conversations, one-on-one with people. You’re not greeting 400 people at a time. You might greet 400 people in a day, but it really is a one-on-one connection that you’re making with people out there. And you really can change their whole experience at Burning Man, one-on-one. That one person coming in that’s had a really bad day and you crawl in the backseat with them and have a conversation at five o’clock in the morning? Hell yeah, you’re going to change their life. I hope so. I hope so! 

Being a Regional Contact, I was a Regional Contact back in ‘07 through probably ‘10, ‘11 era, and helped LA grow in their Regional activities. And then in ‘11, we created a board, created Los Angeles League of Artists, became official, and did all the things. And then in 2018, Los Angeles had saved enough money and we paid cash, we bought 163 acres of property in the Mojave Desert, just outside of California City. And we’ve successfully held 10 Bequinox events since then we’ve had about 1200 participants. We’ll grow. We’re growing slowly based on our volunteerism, because you can’t have an event with all volunteers.

We actually have a co-producer, David, and he and I are old-school Burners, whatever you want to call us. We both started very a long time ago and we kind of agreed at the very beginning that we wanted to keep Bequinox, what we believed Burning Man was in the late 90s, early 2000s, and keep everything very basic. Keep everything radical. Do everything very simply, LNT, radical inclusion, make sure that we keep it as Burning Man as we believed it was back then. 

And we have departments just like Burning Man. We learned a lot from Fly Ranch as well. When we bought the property, we left it alone for a year, just like Fly Ranch. And we mirrored some of their growth patterns, so that we didn’t grow too fast and kept it simple. 

And it’s a sweet event and it’s really important to the LA region. In fact, we’re doing our Bequinox reunion year and announcing our 2025 theme and our new date. And so yeah. We keep it in that spirit of the early years. 

I feel like Burning Man now has become a bit commodified. I think that it’s got a lot more going on, a lot more complicated now. And yes, I think that comes with growth. You’ve got 80,000 people that you need to manage. You had 25,000 people back then, you didn’t need to work quite so hard. So we try and keep things simple. 

How did I get my playa name? I grew up a nudist, and it was not my intent to come here and be topless. It just happened as things do at Burning Man. It just happened. And I wanted to go flying at the airport, which was much easier in 2002 than it is now. You could just walk out there. And I got myself on a plane, went for a beautiful plane ride over the city and I was topless. Yes I was. And the next day I went to say thank you to the pilot. He wasn’t at home. So I left a bottle of tequila because, to me, that was an appropriate gift. And I had to sign it, “Thanks for the ride” – and that could be taken so many ways, ya know? And I said, “Thanks for the ride. Topless Deb,” and my name stuck. And it’s just lasted all these years. “Thanks for the ride. Topless Deb.”

 

STUART: 

All right, our next volunteer, perhaps on the other end of the spectrum from Greeters, is a DPW volunteer by the name of Tamsin. 

KBOT: 

Yeah, I got to go deep into the DPW Ghetto to meet Tamsin and she was an absolute delight. It was amazing to meet a woman carpenter who’d been doing this for so long, who also was very involved in Regional events in her personal life and volunteered her summer to go out and build things in the desert.

STUART:
Let’s hear from Tamsin.

 

TAMSIN: 

What do I do here? This year I’m working as a volunteer for Special Projects. It’s the crew that, it’s all the random carpentry bits on playa, like bike racks, the Commissary fence, various other fences. We install the blue blinky light poles for the portos and build staircases, and we help out all of the crews with all of their woodworking needs, more or less. 

I’ve been on DPW since 2015. I’ve been coming to Burning Man since 2008. 

It is the most amazing experience. It’s the best people. I’m very fortunate that I can do it. Not everyone is able to come and volunteer, but I prioritize it because I have a great time. It’s really, really hard work. It’s grueling. Sometimes we’re in extreme conditions, but when you’re here with the best people, learning new skills, having fun at the same time – there’s nothing else like it. There’s no other experience like it. 

Before I first came here in 2008, it’s like “Oh, Burning Man’s going to change your life.” And I thought, “Go on. It’s not really going to.” But it did. I got heavily involved in, I live in Barcelona and so I got heavily involved in the Regional event in Spain. And that’s my community. Actually. I mean, I probably moved to Barcelona because I was involved with Burning Man and the Burning Man community here and there. So it definitely has affected it in that way. And now I’m not involved in the Regional event anymore. But really it is the principles that just I carry through with me in life. And just the kindness and generosity of spirit, and the connections that you make with people. I value that incredibly highly and I try to bring that into the default world. Not just with the Burners I meet, you know?

I always try and Leave No Trace. I always try and leave as small a footprint as possible in everything I do. In consuming things and buying things and picking up trash and all of that. So yes, that’s an example. 

I feel like just in the valuing of people and connections and helping where possible in whatever way that may be. 

STUART: 

We also asked Tamsin a question that I am kind of getting notorious for asking everyone who shows up on the show: What is the significance of Burning Man in the world, and why is it important?

TAMSIN:

Gosh, in a way, I think it’s more important now than ever. Because we’re so, with the social media and the digital stuff and everything like that, even we are more connected, but we’re actually less connected. What I love about being here is the connections and just, you know, there’s tens of thousands of people here now, but in the last few weeks there’s just a few of us. We don’t all know each other, but everyone waves, everyone says hello, we’re actually connected as human beings and not on our phones, and I think that’s essential now. And I do try to carry that with me. I talk to strangers in the street, and greet them, and I know my neighbors and the shopkeepers in my area where I live, and it’s that human connection. It’s incredibly important and diminishing at the moment.

It comes down to that generosity of spirit and the human connection. I mean, really, if I could be paid to be here, I would love to be paid to be here. But it’s still worthwhile. And there are aspects of being a volunteer here, where in a way I feel I get more value out of it than some of the paid staff. It’s really is my choice to be here. It makes me really appreciate and take advantage of everything that we have available to us here. 

 

KBOT: 

Do you want me to start with Fuckyeah?

STUART: 

Fuck yeah!

KBOT: 

What I loved about meeting Fuckyeah, is first he has a big personality and that was really charming and delightful. But he’s a second generation Black Rock City volunteer, and he started volunteering because his parents were volunteers. It was really cool to imagine young Fuckyeah hanging out with mom and dad while they did Greeters or collation; and what that means is taking the What Where When guide and putting all the little inserts in it, so helping his parents collate. And it’s really cool to see the next generation come into this.

 

FUCKYEAH: 

So my name is Eric Hale. I go by Fuckyeah out here as my playa name. And I work on Man Base as a carpenter. 

I work as a Greeter as well. I assist mostly, I did it for a lot of years doing coalition and I still help out here in Greeter’s camp, but mostly for setup and teardown. 

I volunteered with a lot of groups. I roustied for some years, meaning I bounced around and did a lot of stuff and was a part of a lot of unofficial, or unofficially a part of some other teams – fence crew, Arctica, helped out in Cafe for Rug Day a couple times, did a lot of different crews. 

What inspired me to first volunteer was actually my parents. They had already been coming to Burning Man for a number of years before I got here. This would have been their 25th year. And they’re not here this year unfortunately for health reasons, but they were already volunteering with collation and now Playa Info as well too for years and years now. And it was basically them that kind of gave me the reason to want to keep doing something, and made me realize that it gives a sort of sense of purpose and connection while being out here. It gives a drive that’s a little bit more than just the party culture, I guess.

So things I’ve taken home, I’m actually the head of DPW, the co-lead for the Los Angeles Regional as well too. As a matter of fact, this year I was actually the lead designer, builder and PM for the effigy at that structure. And we built that in my backyard.

It’s given me a strong sense of community and the reason that I want to keep doing more and more is the people that I get to work with. Ultimately even on Man Base we feel that being at a finite structure, we burn at the end of the week, that it’s not about the thing, it’s about the thing that it symbolizes, which is us and what we do here. And that’s what it’s about for me. 

KBOT: 

And so of course we wanted to know, as a volunteer, how does he take this out into his personal day-to-day professional life? And he had a really rich answer to that, actually.

FUCKYEAH:

The things that I bring most into other parts of my life that I get from the burn is an appreciation for community, and a love for doing things that I believe in, not just that I feel like I have to do to earn a wage or a vocation, but an avocation.

I think it’s given me a strong sense of ‘acts of service’ being a really strong love language and a meaningful way to show care and connection with things that I do value, like people. Now I understand even more so helping a friend move. How much more that means of just having someone there in solidarity and trauma bonding next to someone doing something that’s really, really hard, and having something that is really meaningful from a advocation level, not just a vocation. We don’t do it for the money, we do it because of the people that I get to act with that I get to be shoulder to shoulder with every year building something we believe in and what it symbolizes. 

I see traces of what Burning Man is, to me, out in the real world when I see people doing things that they feel excellent at because it drives them. It is not something that they’re just doing for money, but because they have a want for expression or… community and connection is something that’s really powerful that I see now much more clearly. And maybe it was there before, but I can see it so much more because, if you’re doing something out here, it’s hard. And when I see that out there, people doing something, because in spite of difficulty, it is absolutely this place. You know, this is one of the dumbest places in the world to have a party, and yet here we are. But it is so wonderful because you can’t help but be your most magnified version of yourself out here because it’s hard. And so the connections that you make out here are very powerful for that reason. And I think that’s why myself and others keep coming back. 

STUART: 

And even though it might seem like stepping on a landmine, we just had to ask: How did you get your playa name?

FUCKYEAH: 

So I got my playa name two ways. One, the first year I got here, it was 90% of my vocabulary when someone asked me a question.

“Eric, you want to go to X?” 

Fuck yeah. 

“Do you want to go see the Critical Tits bike ride?” 

Fuck yeah. 

“Do you want to go to Thunderdome?” 

Fuck yeah. 

Which led me to get to Thunderdome. And that particular night that I went, I fought five or six times in a row. And for whatever reason, just because there was no one there at the end of the night, I was the only person that kept going and going and going. And the whole crowd was chanting “Fuck yeah!” Which then became my name after that point, for real. 

So that was just my very first year. I think it was my third day on playa. 

So we had a dome full of people swirling whiskey everywhere, thrilled that someone was, maybe someone was going to beat me that year, five times in a row and no one was doing it. And the crowd kept getting more and more and more hyped. And as that happened, it just stuck basically after that. So I became “Fuckyeah” ever since then. So thank you Death Guild for my playa name basically. 

KBOT: 

Fuck yeah.

FUCKYEAH: 

Fuck yeah, Fuckyeah. 

 

STUART:

Well, I gotta say, Fuckyeah is a pretty solid DPW playa name. Maybe not a radio handle. Can you say Fuckyeah on the radio? You can say Ruin on the radio. Even though it’s just two syllables, it’s still pretty strong. Tell us about Ruin, kbot. 

KBOT: 

I first met Ruin in 2023 when he was walking the catwalk at the Center Camp Fashion Show and he was being a DPW and he was decked out in his DPW gear and he had a saw and a hammer and he even did like a little bit of like carpentry work on the stage, and he was strutting his stuff, and he was just a delight. So of course we hunted him down for this episode as well.

 

RUIN: 

My name’s Ruin, and I am the assistant manager for the DPW Shade Department. 

The Shade crew is about 45 people big, and we come out here and build roughly 120,000 square feet of municipal infrastructure shade: the Ranger stations, the ESD stations, admin buildings, even the dog shade over at the JOC. So it’s everything that kind of keeps the city cranking. 

KBOT: 

We asked Ruin what brought him to Burning Man in the first place.

RUIN: 

My friend had just been coming for a long time, and I had always been aware of it. I had sort of adult friends as a kid who had gone, and I was always fascinated by the stories that they brought back. So when I had the opportunity, I jumped in his car and ended up in a tiny Coleman tent and no shade, and I had a great time. 

I was inspired to start a small theme camp with my friends after my first year. And so we brought some really crappy speakers out and built a pyramid structure, and we thought we were really cool. And then I realized after a few years that the only people that do sound camps are people who are trying really desperately to get laid. And I was like, I don’t actually need that. So I decided that my gift to the playa was going to be a little bit more substantial, and it was going to be sweat equity. 

Yeah. Probably not a super publishable statement…

STUART: 

And here it comes again. Get ready for the windup. We had to know what Burning Man’s impact on the world was from his perspective.

RUIN:

That’s a complicated one. It’s undeniable that Burning Man has had a profound impact on, not just the local art scene, but on the global art scene. It’s created new precedence for new kinds of art, especially on large scales. It’s touched millions of people’s lives. The transformation that I’m talking about has absolutely 100% moved the needle on sort of progressive values and what it means to be radically authentic.

But, you know, it’s also complicated because Burning Man is not necessarily like a love and light festival. Its values aren’t necessarily sustainability. I think we try, I think we give it good effort, I applaud that effort, but at the end of the day, it is a hugely wasteful event.

So like it’s a complicated feeling. I love the gifts that Burning Man has brought to the world. I think that it’s impact is undeniably positive. And also, ya know, after being here for 14 years, I can’t not see some of the things that it does that aren’t so great.

KBOT: 

And why does he keep coming back?

My experiences out here have really become a cornerstone of my overarching existence. I think the answer to that question is ‘transformation’, which I know is a word that doesn’t really super mean anything these days. There’s a lot of festivals that profess to be like, transformational festivals, but I think that Burning Man and DPW, they kind of pose this really juicy question every morning that you wake up which is unmoored by regular societal conventions, and what I would call normal world consequences. “Who is it that you are going to be today?” And the answer to that question is kind of an experiment that brings you like maybe an inch or two closer to a more authentic you every day. 

I think that a lot of people think that transformation is the sort of thing that you find at the end of a DMT pen, like some Alex Gray-esque goddess or something talking to you. But yeah, I think it’s actually a choice that you make every day when you get up. And when I come out here, the choice is to work really hard with my team, work really hard on myself, and find out what I’m made of. It’s kind of exhilarating. It feels really good. And every year I come away with another pretty big life lesson. I endeavor to like help share that sort of growth pattern with my crew. I find that to be really fulfilling. 

KBOT: 

That’s great. Would you guys let the baby buggy go by? It’s really loud. 

RUIN: 

Oh, yeah.

KBOT:  

And adorable and weird. 

RUIN:

Do you think he’s wearing a diaper? 

KBOT: 

I wonder. I’m wondering the same thing. You think so? 

RUIN: 

Are you wearing a diaper!?!

I need my megaphone. 

I mentioned that this sort of quest for transformational like authenticity or something that’s really colored the way that I live my life. I kind of switched everything around after my first couple years out here. And I stopped being an office assistant, and I just started a bunch of small businesses, one of which is a hat company. I got really frustrated with the cheapy, mass produced stuff and I just wanted something that I could wear that would feel a little bit more me and authentic and brought that out here. And people are like, “Oh, that’s really cool. Can you make me one?” At first, I was like, “No, I don’t have the time for that.” But eventually I gave way and started making a few for friends, and now what I do full time is I make interesting leather hats for folks.

It’s a way that I can participate in people’s transformations in this small way. When someone decides that they want to be a new or a different or more authentic version of themselves, sometimes they need to accessorize with something. And so that’s kinda where I started. That’s really near and dear to my heart. I try to find ways that I can invite people towards this sort of transformative experience that I was mentioning, in different fun ways. 

 

STUART: 

And, because one DPW is never enough. Who’s Terra, kbot? 

KBOT: 

So Terra came to us as kind of a surprise. A colleague heard that we were doing these conversations with volunteers and she came running up to me and said, “You have to speak with Terra. He’s amazing.” And Terra started doing work at KiwiBurn and at various other events in New Zealand and collaborated with some DPW there who then brought him to Black Rock City.

And it’s really cool to hear the wonder and awe in his voice as he talks about this whole…I can’t believe I’m working on the Man Pavillion now. You know, he’s come from a little tiny Regional event, you know, that’s become quite powerful, and then made the jump over here and now he helps out in Black Rock City. This interview was terrific. I think we should just roll it as is. Let’s just go ahead and pop it in.

 

TERRA: 

So, my name’s Terra, and I’m one of the Man Pavilion carpenters. I come in at the start of August, and then I’ll basically help put together the whole Man Base. And then at some point during that process, the Man gets delivered, and then we erect that on top of the base. We’re just like, problem solvers, Basically. It’s all kind of bespoke carpentry, so, we put things together and then we fix problems.

KBOT:

How did you begin in this task, this project?

TERRA:

I’m a build lead at KiwiBurn and a lot of the Australasian sort of festivals I’ve been involved with, and I’ve been doing that for …sort of coming on to a decade now. Four years ago, one of the existing Man Pavilion crew members came over and volunteered, and we worked together, and he was just like, I got to get you over there. So, he put my name forward and it kind of just worked out like that.

KBOT: 

Tell me about some of the projects that you do at KiwiBurn and some of the other New Zealand, Australasian projects.

TERRA: 

We have a temple and we also have an effigy. It’s not always a man every year, it can be whatever anyone sort of designs. So we’ve had things like minotaurs or giant robots or giant faces or… We’ve had heaps of stuff. 

I’ve led a temple, an effigy, and then just recently, at the last one, there was a piece called the Haast Eagle, which is the biggest eagle that has ever existed on the planet, which is a New Zealand eagle. And we put it together with the help of Jules, who was the architect for the Man Base. So we actually got a few of the Man Crew over to New Zealand to do that, which was like super cool, really nice to hang out with them.

KBOT: 

And that was an interesting project too, the Haast Eagle, I remember hearing about it. Can you tell me a little bit more about it?

TERRA: 

So she did the design. The design was actually kind of bare bones, and it gave a lot for us to work with on the spot. When I lead teams, I like to just get a feel for what people’s strengths and weaknesses are. 

So I managed to just designate a few tasks for these, like open-ended bits, one of which was the feathers, which I had actually no idea how we were going to do that. And in the end, a couple of the girls that I put onto the project, they started carving them out with like a flap wheel on an angle grinder. And this girl, Katie did one for me as a test piece and I was like, “Wow, that looks amazing.” So then we ended up hand carving probably a thousand plus feathers of all different sizes and shapes. So the whole thing is like a hand-carved piece of art. 

And then one of the most special parts of that was, we have a Maori carver called Hayden. And, he came in and we got him to do the beak of the bird. 

KBOT: 

You said Maori? 

TERRA: 

Yeah. Maori. That’s indigenous. It’s like a real honor to have somebody like that on the crew.

And we worked with him over a couple of months and trying to figure out what, like, what piece of wood we could try and get. And in the end, he hooked us up with one of his family that works in the carving school in Wellington. And they donated to us a piece of kauri, which is like very rare wood. I mean, it’s on the verge of extinction. But we get swamp kauri, which has been dug up out of swamps and this particular piece was an offcut from a ceremonial waka, which is a boat, a Maori boat. I mean, you can’t, you can’t even buy that. It’s so precious that we couldn’t have come across it any other way.

So he spent the whole time carving this beak out of this incredibly rare piece of wood. And that was kind of the centerpiece for the bird.

We toyed with bringing it out last year for Animalia, and it was, a don’t know, a few personal issues that went on, and it was just a bit too much for people. But it’s out there in Hunterville, which is where KiwiBurn is. And I think currently the plan for it is the town of Hunterville are gonna pay for it to be installed in the town which would be the first piece of KiwiBurn art that will be installed there.

KBOT: 

When that happens, I need to know about it. That story, that’s really cool.

TERRA: 

Yeah. Okay.

KBOT: 

So what are you doing or creating out in the world that is inspired by Burning Man? So not just Regional events, but one step beyond Regional events. Community stuff.

TERRA: 

I work as a carpenter full time aside from this, and I try and use the skills that I have to bring people together. Some of the events that we… We do like very small events, like maybe 15 people. We’ll go to a deserted West Coast beach and we’ll just do a one day driftwood and hemp rope, and we’ll just build one thing in a day, and spend all day building it. Burn it that night, and have a little like get together and then clean up the next day and leave.

It’s hard sometimes to bring Burning Man into your real day life, but I just feel like little events like that are really special to people, and people come away from it with a memory that is really precious to them, so, yeah.

KBOT: 

Are there any projects that the Kiwiburn community is doing that are coming to life through Burning Man connections?

TERRA: 

The management of Kiwiburn have got their fingers in a lot of pies, and I know that they’re involved with the solar project here. They’ve been helping out with that. And I think there’s a few things going on, but I don’t know about them personally.

KBOT: 

Oh, I have one more question. In your experience, what is Burning Man’s impact on the world?

TERRA: 

I think it gives people space to realize that life can be a bit different. It doesn’t have to be based around capitalism. And for me personally, the fact that it’s ephemeral art, that’s a real passion of mine, so, I prefer to create something that is like a moment in time or an experience for a number of people, over something that can be bought and sold and gloated over. I just feel like that’s a really important message, and when people come out here and experience it, then it’s like a different experience to what you get anywhere else.

KBOT: 

Anything else you want to say?

TERRA: 

I feel really blessed to have been given this opportunity. I’m not really sure how I ended up on the Man Crew, because it was a pipe dream ten years ago to even be building burnable art structures. And I just kind of like got into it. And then I just ended up here on a really incredible crew.

So, yeah, it’s been a great journey for me.

 

KBOT: 

You have been listening to Burning Man LIVE, a podcast produced by the nonprofit Burning Man Project. We run on donations from our community. Drop a few coins in the box if you can. donate.burningman.org. We’ll use it for good.

Thank you to all the volunteers: Topless Deb, Tamsin, Fuckyeah, Ruin, and Terra. And a huge thank you to the Documentation Team and Media Mecca in Black Rock City for help with these interviews. 

We appreciate the whole podcast team, Actiongirl, Lotus, DJ Toil, Tyler, Vav, and Stuart. We love you all. 

Thanks, Larry. 

Bring your ears around two weeks from now for the next episode.

 

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