Who sponsored the wooden cavern thing?

domitron · Post by **domitron** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 7:46 pm

That Belgian wooden cavern structure was amazing!!! I have never seen something that large on the playa before! Did anyone see it burn down? I read in the SF Chronical that it cost about $250,000 (a quarter million dollars) to create with over 90 people working on it for 3 weeks! At that expense, they had to have sponsorship, but it wasn't sponsored by the BM organization from what I can tell. Was it Belgian corporate sponsorship? Does anyone know anything about it?

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 7:07 am

...the story I heard was that it was a commercial venture, also backed by the Belgian government. The artists plan on selling films, etc to recover the costs (and perhaps make a profit). In the event that the expenses are not recovered, the Belgian government will pay any expenses that were not recovered by film sales, etc.

If true, welcome to the new Burningmanland Inc.

Did anyone else see the wonderful spoof coupon books for center camp?

domitron · Post by **domitron** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 8:37 am

Hey well as long as they don't plaster their company logos at Burning Man itself, more power to them. Uchronia was amazing at any price. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

oleg8888 · Post by **oleg8888** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:29 am

people can't live without rumors, can they??
there is so much crappy posts on this forum and people just believe anything.
Why don't you read that article in chronicle one more time...

domitron · Post by **domitron** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:36 am

Jan Kriekels said he funded the entire $250,000 project in the article.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:38 am

So what the hell, A lot of art on the playa is funded. BARF

mars · Post by **mars** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:43 am

It was funny hearing camp memebers come up with names for this structure before "Belgian Waffle" stuck. We had "Toothpick Palace", "Birds Nest" and "Stick Oz" among others.

I had heard the burn was designed to go up the sides and shoot flames out the doorways. (I also added the rumour onto that that David Bowie was going to be there, did anyone hear that?) But what was actually great about that burn was how HOT IT WAS. White hot. And at one point it looked like a giant horse on fire--I've got pics of that. It was a fantastic burn.

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Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:46 am

I was a mile away at least and the flames looked like they had to be shooting 80 ft or higher. And it was the sheer mass of flame that impressed me.

I'm curious though...when I was dancing in there I didn't see any burn blankets or burn scar prevention materials to speak of. Did they put them in before the burn? And did it leave any burn scars or crap for DPW to clean up?

polvo · Post by **polvo** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 10:17 am

The official Belgian site is http://uchronians.net/

I'd love to know the true cost of the project, I heard $300,000, $500,000 (given on the BM art tour bus) and even $3,000,000...

Also heard that the nails were aluminium and therefore not detectable. They will have to picked-up by hand, one by one.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:07 am

polvo wrote:The official Belgian site is http://uchronians.net/

I'd love to know the true cost of the project, I heard $300,000, $500,000 (given on the BM art tour bus) and even $3,000,000...

Also heard that the nails were aluminium and therefore not detectable. They will have to picked-up by hand, one by one.

/
If that sucker was as hot as people think it was. Those nails were turned to gas. So plant a tree to balance out the gases for the green earth.

supersurly · Post by **supersurly** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 12:10 pm

I went out on tuesday morning to check out the burn scars on playa, the waffle either had burnt incredibly thoroughly or had already been mostly cleaned up. There was a layer of overlapping drywall sheets down covered with a small amount of ash and the playa underneath looked fine. I could have been looking in the wrong spot though, I'm still confused about exactly how it all was organized since there didn't look to be any sort of platform before the burn and I didn't look at it at all on sunday or monday. The playa was so fucked up out there they could have hidden it pretty easily(burn scar or platform, seemed like they had their shit together though, I'm sure with the level of bman.org involvement they had some sort of plan).

Rumored the uchronians were planning on planting trees to offset the amount of shit burnt

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 12:34 pm

Kinetic IV wrote:I'm curious though...when I was dancing in there I didn't see any burn blankets or burn scar prevention materials to speak of. Did they put them in before the burn? And did it leave any burn scars or crap for DPW to clean up?

Also in the story I heard was that DPW has a machine that can suck up a foot or so of Playa, and somehow convert burnt Playa to good Playa. The artists were supposedly paying for this service. Sounds like BS to me, but who knows?

Anyone know if a burn blanket/platform was used for the burn? If not, how did they prevent a scar?

pbmaniac2000 · Post by **pbmaniac2000** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:49 pm

I had heard that they put down a burn platform before they even started building. About a foot below the playa.

Key Man · Post by **Key Man** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:04 pm

Our camp had a small collection area for used lumber, which was to be sent on to Katrina victims and used for rebuilding destroyed homes. The Waffle fire was quite spectacular and all but seemed like an example of waste for the sake of waste, without a whole lot of art in the equation.

The Green Man theme was just announced for next year. Good thing they did the Waffle this year -- next year it might seem hypocritical.

SnowBlind · Post by **SnowBlind** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:30 pm

Key Man wrote:Our camp had a small collection area for used lumber, which was to be sent on to Katrina victims and used for rebuilding destroyed homes. The Waffle fire was quite spectacular and all but seemed like an example of waste for the sake of waste, without a whole lot of art in the equation.

According to another thread the wood was low grade and not usable for as building material:

kukulcan wrote:well, someone wrote "this is grade 3 building material, not suitable for structures or buildings of any kind" on the "Belgian Waffle" (Uchronia) next to the little "donate this to Katrina victims" thing. they are 2" x 3" beams, and everyone i asked confirmed that the material would not meet code.

K-mom · Post by **K-mom** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:44 pm

Really, what's the difference between groups holding fundraiser events before the event, and groups selling films/tshirts/etc after the event to recoup their loss? The central focus and intention is there either way...

powbob · Post by **powbob** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 10:11 am

I was at the Uchronian burn site, about an hour or 90 minutes after it burned. I couldn't beleive what I saw..! There were people inside the pile of ashes dancing already. Basically, after 15 minutes of watching, I realized that people were actually walking through the areas where you walked inside it before it burned. The pile of ashes was so small, it seemed like to me, that they had already been in there with a bulldozer, or something. But it just seems that the fire was so hot, and it fell directly downwards, into 3 main piles of ashes, leaving those passageways devoid of ash. You could also see that there was a layer of whatever they use to protect the playa. Someone called it sheetrock, I don't know, but from what I saw, everything was on those sheets. Amazing installation to say the least. As impressive as David Best, but with no symmetry or architechtural precedent to create from. It is one of my favorites from the last 6 burns.

mars · Post by **mars** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 4:29 pm

short and interesting video:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/ar ... 02.DTL&o=0

Who sponsored the wooden cavern thing?

Who sponsored the wooden cavern thing?

Waffle/Uchronian Burn platform