I haven’t been to Burning Man since 2002 and the one of the things I miss the most about going is seeing some of the amazing art that is out there each year. By far one of my favorite installations this year was Big Rig Jig, two giant tanker trucks, curving around each other while balancing on the Playa. It was build by Brooklyn artist Mike Ross and crew of artists at American Steel in Oakland. Big Rig Jig was one of the art installations funded by Burning Man this year as part of “The Green Man” theme.
Big Rig Jig is a rumination on power as manifest in the relationship between humankind and nature. We hope to instill thoughts of wonder, fear, instability, nature, and beauty. And we are going to do this by literally cutting up pieces of the oil industry and thrusting them into the air. The sculpture is fashioned from real oil tankers and filled with lush silk plant life, a reminder of the ultimate source of the black gold once transported inside them.
Our source objects are fundamental to the world’s oil distribution infrastructure, and are pertinent examples of our culture’s unmatched production of carbon dioxide. By altering these symbolically rich objects, the sculpture is a celebration of humankind’s raw power on earth, a visual metaphor for non-sustainability, and a contemplation of our unique ability to recognize and change our most destructive actions.
Colleen Morgan shot a photo of Big Rig Jig, which I had previously used with my write-up “Burning Man 2007, Remote Access via Photos, Video, Blogs”. Apparently that caused the photo to gain a bit of popluarity (it’s had over 46K views so far).
There are a bunch of photos of Big Rig Jig on Flickr, including some from Eddie Codel (the one at the top of the post), Sean Alexander and Herve.
Brian Doherty wrote about Big Rig Jib for Wired: “Doing the Big Rig Jig on the Playa”
Here’s Current TV’s video pod of Big Rig Jig from their TV Free Burning Man coverage of the event.
Mike Connor has some photos of Big Rig Jig under construction at American Steel in Oakland and there are more construction photos on the Big Rig Jig blog.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Scott, so glad you added this in. I got the biggest boner from this art piece, too which served to wipe the Jaded Fuck label right off me. Thankfully, I was able to hook up the CBS News Sunday Edition crew that was out there with the artists and we should all see the resulting coverage on Sunday, September 16th so set your TiVo’s! Funnily, another name the artists almost called this was “Fucker Trucker” which may have limited its huge exposure so far.
Am I the only one who totally sees Trogdor everytime look at this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trogdor.png
Scott,
Nice collection of photos you found. That definitely blew my mind away. I regret not having a chance to crawl up inside it, but there was a small line of people waiting.
I also have a shortened video of the Crude Awakening shooting up jet fuel and igniting a sky high mushroom crowd. It was a sigh to behold.
http://one.revver.com/watch/387711
Lovely coffee table book material ???
“Big Rig Jig is a rumination on power as manifest in the relationship between humankind and nature…We hope to instill thoughts of wonder, fear, instability, nature, and beauty.”
This text might as well be an artist fishing for a grant from the Halliburton Humanitarian Arts fund.
Look this Is an incredible sculpture in and of itself… but here’s a suggested challenge to the BM community:
Lets see it placed in a city center with hmmm maybe the names of murdered middle east children engraved in stone and then the concept ” our unique ability to recognize and change our most destructive actions” might have a little kick to it…
Most likely not gonna happen … maybe cause the artworld has abandoned its place in everyday life and accepted the humliiating job of cultural taxidermist, to place objects in glass cases, fashion magazines … or as the case may be to animate the theme parks.
( btw, last week we were threatened with being censored, and one of our posts regarding BM / Paul Addis never went through. Lets hope the discussions remain open to serious criticism and LS doesn’t turn into just another entertainment channel… we are not spammers, nor trolls, and contribute to the discussions in order to elevate the power of the arts. And just a final note, we find arts and tech coverage at Squid extremely useful for our research, so while we may have some critique, we do appreciate the depth of work being presented here.)
Mumbley Peg, sorry but you are way off here. There was no threat of censorship. The issue was that it appeared that you were spamming this blog with with fake Chicken John blogs, falsely claiming that his blog was “hacked”. If you look at that post you will see warning regarding the spam.
The Rig blew my mind. Only regret is not crawling through it for the full stink and sweat experience.
The pictures, as amazing as they are, don’t do it justice. It’s so incredible, it doesn’t look real, or possible. Outstanding.
Mumbly Peg, great idea about getting this piece firmly cemented into some city center. The potential messages are many and it would be quite impactful. The BRJ crew are indeed shopping this piece around and i heard there was interest from an art gallery somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. I think it will live on!
Hello Scott,
Thank you for responding to the post (and email). Just to clarify, we wrote last week out of concern for the Chicken campaign and his urgent fundraising deadline, and thought that the site had been hacked, and donors would not be able to reach him though his site. We found out later that there were 2 sites…someone had created a fake site in order to attack his efforts.
the real site is voteforchicken.com
( which continues to have hysterical blog entries full of potential for tactical genius… following the election someone should get this guy published !! )
i won’t repost the other site as it appears neither to show much humor nor understanding of the crisis of the state of elections in the US.
and one further clarification, we are not affiliated with either site.
…
To Candace and jig rig artists…good luck finding a potent home for the message… it will no doubt be a challenge to have it displayed in such a way that the eye candy gets in and the message is abstracted or extracted… which is why we suggested the additional “info”.
uh, that should read in post above…
it will no doubt be a challenge to have it displayed in such a way that it is NOT JUST the eye candy that gets in while the ( intended) message is abstracted or entirely extracted… which is why we suggested some additional “info”.
I made the crawl up inside and it was totally worth it :) Although I was expecting some kind of viewing window, because once you got up in there is was incredibly claustrophobic.
However, as many people discovered, it was really easy to bake out!
You must log in to post a comment.