Uchronia

Continuing on the theme of a near real-time remote Burning Man experience through video and photos, the Belgian artists (Uchronians) who created the massive and beautiful Uchronia (aka “The Belgian Waffle”) installation this year, produced daily videos of their project, which they uploaded to their website throughout the week. They essentially shot, edited and distributed a video documentary of their project as it unfolded in Black Rock City.

Meredith May wrote about Uchronia in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle:

Ninety artists from Belgium shipped 100 miles of wooden beams to the playa, and nail-gunned them into a free-form cavern 15 stories high. It looked like a giant’s haystack twisted into a computer model of a wave, with curved entrances on four sides. Reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s undulating architectural style, its sides appeared to drip, defying gravity.

Dwarfing all other sculptures, the “Waffle” was the biggest draw at night, as revelers packed into the cavern and danced to electronica bathed in neon-green light.

“We didn’t use a model, we just started at the bottom and kept adding as we went up,” said Jan Kriekels, who said he funded the entire $250,000 project, including buying $250 tickets for the volunteers who spent three weeks building it. They used construction cranes to add the lumber to the top. The 2-inch-by-3-inch beams ranged in size from 8 to 10 feet long and came from the reject pile at a Canadian lumber mill.

Although the artists might be offended by the sculpture’s nickname, the installation’s true name is “Uchronia” — named after a Belgian art movement centered on a world without the concept of time, Kriekels said.

“This piece is a symbol for a system that creates its own creators. We all did this together without being told how to do it — we are factory workers, bookmakers, editors, designers, artists, salespeople — and we can only do this if we refuse to be defined,” he said.