Blind Burners Tabletop Model Project
Blind Burners exists because of a desire for connection, to share transcendent experiences, to create, to facilitate moments of serendipitous ‘playa magic’ that are often dependent on our visual sense, and to do so independently, with maximum agency for each participant.
The ARTery is the on-playa home of the Burning Man Art Department, and the check-in and service center in Black Rock City for artists, as well as a hub of information about Burning Man art.
In 2019 our co-founders Adi Latif and Chris Hainsworth were exploring one of Burning Man’s most significant pieces of art and civic infrastructure, the man base pavilion. Chris struggled to convey the visual aspects of the space and architecture, the forms, motifs, and the large number and variety of objects. Adi suggested it would be great to have a tabletop model at the Man Base, so that anyone who wanted to could access the beautiful architecture through touch. We focus currently on key civic infrastructure such as the Temple and Man Base. And any other large scale art that cannot be fully touched by hand, due to height or scope.
Tabletop Model: Zoltan Ferenczi – Chief File Wrangler; Micah Shapiro – Model Printer; Aleks Zosuls – Model Printer & Woodcuts; Adam Ervin – Model Printer
Since 2023, Blind Burners has presented a selection of scale models of the Man Base Pavilion and other Art pieces for participants in Black Rock City to explore through touch, feeling the contours, spaces, and architectural qualities that may be out of reach out on playa. As we like to say at Blind Burners, “If we can’t touch something, it doesn’t exist”.
For Blind Burners and our friends and allies, Accessibility IS Art.
By hosting this project IN the Artery as well as at Mobility Camp, we maximise opportunities for the artists of our city to come into contact with accessibility as art, and with disabled persons who are creators, not passive spectators.
We want to show our community that removing barriers and providing genuine inclusion is not some dry exercise in prescriptive rules, and it is not about “helping the blind”. It is an opportunity for creative experimentation, delving deeper into our non-visual senses, celebrating the art and innovation of disabled artists. And it is an opportunity over the years to build threads of connection between artists from different disability groups on playa.
A particular highlight of 2024 was working earlier and more closely with the Temple Crew. Our vision was to take our tabletop project beyond the 3D printed model, by adding “textural elements” to provide additional breadth and depth to the experience. We were so inspired by the beautiful motifs in the design of Temple of Together. Since some of these were out of reach in the actual Temple of Together, and therefore invisible to someone exploring through touch, we created some small woodcuts to illustrate the patterns. We hope to build on this aspect of our project in future years, so that our tabletop model exhibition provides an opportunity to communicate the architectural details of Black Rock City’s civic infrastructure, and to evoke the sense of space, and the conceptual and spiritual ideas that have driven the visions of the lead artists.
We were delighted to have many conversations with visiting Artists, and with several volunteers in the Artery. We learned several novel and unforeseen uses for our models. We heard that people were using our model of the Temple of Together to help friends to locate memorials placed within the Temple. We met one Burner who, since the passing of a relative, several years ago, had found the energy of the Temple too much to experience up close. This person appreciated the opportunity to get close to the Temple and feel it in a different way. And we were thrilled when we arrived one day at the Artery to see the tabletop model of the Temple of Together being used as a racing track by two children playing with toy cars.
Big thanks to Katie, Opa, Jeremy, Natalie, Miranda and Peter, Caro, Maissa and all of Temple Crew who engaged with Blind Burners to develop this project. Thanks to our allies in BMORG Culture & Art for supporting our vision for transforming art and accessibility in Black Rock City.