camp fimbulvinter at burningman

burningman is a week-long event in the middle of nowhere in nevada, on a dusty lake bed. over 46,000 people descended upon this playa to partake and contribute to a cornucopia of events and adventures. my camp was called fimbulvinter, a norwegian word you'll just have to look up to understand. the biggest draws were world-renown artists & DJs, amazing art cars, and lots and lots of flame-throwers and big fires. It used to be known for being a hippie retreat, alas, no longer.... its more like a gear-head geekfest on steroids with a side of radical self-expression.

the prematurely burnt man, what all the hooplah was about. A bit crispy fried, but still has his ankles, and was later replaced with a bionic version (whit's pic)

brad after downward dogging- yoga in the mornings at the plushatorium

happy hour in our dome

our austrialian friends try out the shotski

group outing on the igloo art car

a nice place to take a nap

reverand gary marries gothalot and butterfly in their coffin-shaped art car

group outing vs. dust storm, rescues lost bikers

art car and porta-potties

art car towing surfer

waiting out a dust storm

an art car plays live music at a dance party before another storm .............

& during the storm, the band played on, as dancers hung to the carousel horses that went up & down

someone put an evil bunny on our car

pouring drinks down the shot luge to polar bears... quite fitting given the igloo car

partial night/day shots of an amazingly large art piece, an oil darrik surrounded by large metal sculptures representing the different religions of the world ("praying" to oil), when this was ignited, it was the largest explosion ever for a planned burn, over 20,000 pounds of propane shot a thousand feet into the air. crazy.

impromptu dance party on the playa (with flame-throwing art cars)

andi and gary on tutu-tuesday

dance party at the 'deep end' camp

weeeeeee! (whit's pic)

the temple. over the week it is filled with memorials, trinkets, lots of poems and sad eulogies, the idea is to burn the temple with things you want to release/cleanse from your life or memorialize somone you've lost. many tears shed. when it burned you could hear a pin drop, among 40+ thousand observers (whit's pic)

sculpture with semi-trucks (whit's pic)

ok check this out- this piece was surrounded by bikes, the bikes generated energy to turn the monkeys, strobe lights coincided with the speed of the monkeys such that at a particular tempo, the monkeys appeared to be swinging from limb to limb seamlessly. drummers helped the bikers keep tempo. It was amazing (night time only). (whit's pic)