.Welcome back eplaya friends to The Pier. What are we going to to do,... well, here is what I wrote in my little Tumblr (http://photoscribbles.tumblr.com/) blog:
"During the tear down of The Pier we were ready to watch it disappear into nothing. But we were approached to bring it back the next year, and after a series of fortunate events I really couldn’t say no.
I have been fairly vocal about my opinions of bringing art back to Burning Man. And I felt like I was going to be eating crow for awhile if we brought The Pier back unchanged. Yes, The Pier was loved,… but how could we make a statement about returning art while still retaining what people loved about The Pier.
I kept thinking about breaking The Pier, maybe a snarky attack on our own art project. Don’t get me wrong, it was an absolute honor to be asked to bring it back. We were beaming from ear to ear. But there was some serious pressure there. At Burning Man 2011 it was original and unique, at Burning Man 2012 well it will be old hat.
Then it came to us: Lets ram a ship into The Pier! Lets ram La Contessa into The Pier!!! (Well we didn’t exactly say that, but it is so much more romantic that way)
La Contessa was a ship I never saw. It was before my time at Burning Man. However, its legend was not lost on me. La Contessa was, by all accounts, the alpha and omega of art cars. It was detailed to its core, it was dangerous, and magical. It moved fast, broke the rules and wowed all that saw it. And then it was burnt to the ground,…
We had it, we were going to ram a Galleon into the middle of The Pier. It would destroy 100ft in the center of The Pier, leaving a field of wreckage in its wake along with the shattered hull of a great ship half sunken in the playa.
Imagine, its Sunday night, Burning Man 2012. You come through the gate, the excitement overwhelms you. When you hit the Esplinade, a vaguely familiar site. The Pier? Wait? Why is it still here?
A memory takes over, the feeling of sitting at the end dangling your feet watching a whale fly by, hoping your pabst would catch a wandering Grizzle Bellied DPW. You run to The Pier, the lights swaying side to side. But wait, what is that in the middle?
Holy Shit? The nose of a massive galleon juts out from the playa. What happened. The Pier,… its,… destroyed! Wait no, someone placed some gangplanks over the ship reaching the other half of The Pier.
You’ll just walk over the makeshift bridge to the end of The Pier,… but there is a light coming out of the massive hole in the side of the ship. Are those people visible in through the portholes? Do you relive your memories from the past year, or explore a 60ft wreck,…
So, here is the quick rundown. The Beginning and the End of The Pier are unchanged. The middle is demolished. Replaced by a 9 room 3 story dive-able ship wreck. To get to the end of The Pier, you can climb up the wreck, walk the make shift gang plank, climb some rubble or make your way up the slightly more climbable end.
The ship is a piece of art separate in itself. A relic of an unknown time, recovered, resold, crashed, stolen and repaired again and again. Inside, it tells the story of its existence, its crew and its death. A dead hermit sits in the back of the brig. The tight crew rooms offer a glimpse into another’s life. The captains chamber is perfect, save the remnants of the captain lording over the map of Black Rock City trying to figure out how he made such a catastrophic mistake,…
There is more, but that, well is our little secret
"This ship wreck is going to be quite large and very, very, very detailed. We are trying to find reference ships at the moment, looking at war ships from the 15th -18th century. We are also studying ship building techniques as we are hoping the hull will be about 12-16ft wide. With the nose of the ship sitting about 15 ft above the ground. With the entire ship sitting at a 15-20 degree angle. The idea is that the main entrance to the ship is a hole in the hull, the hull is large and cavernous, filled with supply sacks and rubble (offering a soft chill space). There is a small wooden ladder leading up to the second floor. Exiting into a tight hallway. Behind you, prison bars on the floor that lead to the brig, a dark forboding space covered in the carvings of an isolated hermit trying to defend his life. Down the hallway doors lead to the cramped crew chambers, the cannon galleys with about 6 cannons, and a large ??? room (still figuring out the big room at the nose of the hull under the deck). A small set of stairs leads to the main deck. The main deck will have 2 masts, one split in half and the other fully erect, hehehe, covered in tattered sails and left over rigging. The captains chamber/navigators chamber sits at the front of the deck, under the second tiered deck, and is decked out to show the former wealth and power of this ship. The remnants of the captain lord over a massive map of Black Rock City trying to figure out how everything went so wrong,...
We would love collaboration from Eplaya again
. This is a much bigger project then the last one and will need a pretty mighty team and a whole lot of funding!!! The goal is to set up remote teams of people who can handle prop building and collecting, and creating aspects of the ship that aren't needed in construction. The ship will most likely be constructed in Reno (as that is where most of our crew is) in pieces and then re-assembled on playa. If the remote teams have enough dedicated people the hope was to simply hand them entire rooms to populate, allowing them to develop characters of their own and tell their stories through the props in the room. We are trying to be more open with collaboration. I am going to try to provide an overall art direction for the ship while trying to integrate the best ideas from everyone on the project.
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