Burning Man Sculpture Defaced In Honor Of Burning Man Weekend
A friend called from shopping at the Ferry Building and told me I had to see the alterations done to the butt-ugly public sculptures at the Embarcadero — the ones that everyone calls the “burningman sculptures”. Looks like they gave up panhandling quarters for gas to get to Gerlach and decided to light up instead. Imagine my delight when I pulled my camera out in time to capture this perfect moment, complete with one very puzzled, drug-free tourist.
More pics of the very fucking bold alterations after the jump — and close-ups of the spot welds affixing the bong-and-lighter mod to the sculpture. It’s amazing that someone climbed up there with a welder!
* * * * * * *
Related posts:
Human creativity never ceases to amaze me.
I kind of fascinated by them, never been to the desert (burning man event). Never will. Thanks for the pictures. I should to out on my bike to see them today.
- Yuk yuk, let’s put a bong up there!
- Yeah, let’s go dude!
Yeah, that’ll show them artists they can’t just go out and create things anywhere they damn please.
There’s nothing bold or creative about it. It’s just stupid and hopefully worthy of a hefty fine. You just wrecked someone’s hard work and trampled all over his creative vision.
Now everyone will remember it as “dude, remember when they put a bong up there on that statue” instead of even contemplating the artist’s own vision.
Ugly or not, it’s a disgrace to discourage art.
DLN: how does putting a bong in the sculpture ‘discourage art?’ I mean WTF?
our local underground arts culture has a long, rich history and tradition in executing and valuing well-done pranks, and this modification is certainly a great example of this. it should be mentioned in context here that burning man evolved from a core group of cacophony society people, pranksters who have customarily modified and pranked art — making an art of it, if you will. the people who originally made this sculpture are part of this community as well.
Scott Beale summed it up perfectly in his post on this:
“Knowing Dan and Karen, who have a pretty good sense of humor, they would probably not be too upset about this, since it appears that there was no major damage done to the sculpture and the alterations can be easily removed. Also, something tells me that the The Billboard Liberation Front is getting a big kick out of this one.”
read Scott’s post:
http://laughingsquid.com/2006/09/03/passage-sculpture-prank/
and if you’re still mad about my anti-burningman-hippie snarkiness, then, well the terrorists have won. or something like that.
“You just wrecked someone’s hard work and trampled all over his creative vision.”
I’d like to see the person that can trample over that sculpture! It’s indestructible!
But besides that, the “addition” is funny. Sometimes, we shouldn’t take ourselvces too seriously. That’s the “vision” as you termed it, that I got out of this addition. And it made me contemplate the art even more, and it’s original vision, which adds to the uber-vision. I don’t think that it detracts.
Also, it was done in the style of the original, which adds to the humor and insight. This isn’t a random tag or graffiti mark. And as Violet pointed out, the original artists are pranksters from the get-go, so it’s even more in the same vein.
the bong has been stolen.
THE BONG HAS BEEN STOLEN!
my god, someone please return the bong.
What’s a bong?
Burning Man Sculpture Defacement Defaced In Honor Of Burning Man
The artists most likely got the creative vision for the original scupture from thier own “water pipe”
thanks for the interesting addition to the sculpture. karen and i found it humorous. we appreciate the careful fabrication work required to create and install mom’s pipe and are touched that someon felt so compelled to be a part of the sculpture making process in our absence. we could definitely use your fabrication skills on future projects. give us a call and keep up the good work!
Great to get Dan’s response to the prank. I think it’s pretty courageous to go up there and actually weld something onto the sculpture itself. I’m happy and not surprised to see that Karen and Dan had a very positive reaction.
For the rest of the commentaries out there, no one really needs to have you guys preach us what is wrong and right, the prank and the pranksters seem happy with it remaining anonymous. Just looking at the prank is enough for everyone to make up their mind