[Will & Kate] (0:00 - 0:26)

Burners of New Zealand, Australia and Asia, Radically making magic on the paddock around the fire, B-O-N-Z-A-A-R, Bonzaar Podcast.

[Stevan] (0:30 - 0:52)

A big, beautiful bonzaar welcome to everyone and anyone out there listening. In this episode, we invited a whole bunch of Blazers to the panel to talk about building temples and art at Blazing Swan. With me, I'm joined by Nancy, who's the Arts Manager, Neesh, the Temple Facilitator, and Kym and Sara, who the Temple Co-Leads for this year's Blazing Swan.

Welcome, guys.

[Kym] (0:53 - 0:53)

Hey.

[Nancy] (0:53 - 0:53)

Hello.

[Sara] (0:54 - 0:54)

Hi.

[Neesh] (0:54 - 0:54)

Hi.

[Stevan] (0:55 - 1:07)

It's also audio checks this here, everybody. So the last time you guys got together at Blaze, you guys had a bit of a crowd, but now it looks like everyone's on lockdown with the Zoom kind of podcasting here.

[Kym] (1:09 - 1:10)

We all live too far away.

[Stevan] (1:12 - 1:18)

Yeah. This is interesting. Not everyone's in Perth, right?

Like, you're all spread out everywhere. Quite an interesting bunch.

[Kym] (1:19 - 1:28)

Yeah. We're down in the countryside, and Neesh and Nancy are up in the city. So definitely makes for a different build process, but still definitely doable.

[Stevan] (1:28 - 1:40)

Okay. Let's get into my favorite part of the segment is getting everyone's origin stories, background, how you guys got involved, got to know the Burner culture and the local Blazing Swan Burner community.

[Nancy] (1:40 - 1:40)

You guys start.

[Sara] (1:42 - 1:45)

Kym's better at telling the story than me, so you go for it, buddy.

[Kym] (1:46 - 2:14)

Well, my story, personally, started with going to Burning Man in 2012 with Sar. We went for our 30th and our minds were just blown wide open and we found our people, basically. And then from there, Blazing Swan was started in, well, the first one at Jilakin Rock in 2013. That's correct, isn't it?

[Stevan] (2:15 - 2:15)

2014.

[Kym] (2:16 - 2:16)

2014.

[Stevan] (2:17 - 2:20)

Did you go to the initial campouts and Ignition Burns?

[Kym] (2:20 - 2:27)

No, I didn't go to the Ignition Burns, just the first one at Jilakin Rock. So, and...

[Stevan] (2:27 - 2:27)

Inception.

[Kym] (2:27 - 2:28)

Sar and I, sorry.

[Stevan] (2:28 - 2:30)

The theme was Inception that year.

[Kym] (2:30 - 3:24)

Yeah. Yeah. And Lewis asked Sar and I, being that we are textile manufacturers, or both of us were at that point, to build a shade structure.

So, we came up with a bit of an interesting, dodgy, but kind of adventurous first time. Like a shade, whirly giggy thing. And yeah, that was fun.

And it did withstand the crazy storm that came through. So, that was good. And yeah, basically, in years after that, we've done some art cars, been involved in one of the bigger theme camps, Papazhans.

Must have been at least five years. Five years? Six years?

And that was pretty intensive. As a theme camp, there was just a ton of decor and fine details. Like, yeah, I don't think you'll ever still find a theme camp that was like that.

That was just next level.

[Sara] (3:25 - 3:29)

Water fountains and lakes in the middle of a theme camp.

[Kym] (3:31 - 3:44)

Just botanical decor, animals, everything.

Draperies, fringing, tassels, carpets. Just deluxe. Deluxe.

And then, yes. So, what did we do after that?

[Sara] (3:45 - 3:50)

I think we took a year off and then we came back with another theme camp and another art car.

[Kym] (3:52 - 4:25)

Had a couple of gap years. And then, last year, the concept of Temple Build came up and I was, yeah, Sar whispered it in my ear at a festival, knowing full well that I would not be able to say no. And, yeah, that was the beginning of Temple Weave.

So that's, yeah, my background as far as burn projects go, essentially.

[Sara] (4:25 - 4:54)

Yeah. I think if I was to add to that, I'd say that we met a lot of the founders of Blazing when we did go to Burning Man and their dots just joined immediately like very strong magnets. And from there, kind of forged some good relationships in friendship but also in business as well with some crew.

And it's really kind of influenced the direction of our lives as well, I guess.

[Nancy] (4:54 - 6:07)

Yeah. Awesome. I'm Nancy.

I'm from Canada. So my actual home original burn is Freezer Burn, not Blazing Swan. But I was never as involved at Freezer Burn as I am now with Blaze.

I've lived in Australia, in Freo, for the past five-ish years. And I started going immediately. I think when I first moved here, I went to Blossom first.

And then everyone was talking about Blazing Swan, blah, blah, blah. I floated around some theme camps that first year, checking out what everybody was doing. And I think the second year I went, I was on Neesh's 2024 Temple.

So it's really been my living in Freo and Perth in this community that's gotten a lot deeper in the burn community. I think it's a lot smaller here where everybody is very Freo, WA-based, south coast. And so you can keep seeing everybody coming back year after year, growing more and doing their thing more.

So this year was my first year as arts manager. And then that is taking care of all of the arts grants, the whole process, and then overseeing the temple facilitator and the effigy facilitator, the photography lead, and mutant vehicle. So this year has been super awesome.

And we've just done so much art stuff and got to just accomplish a lot all year.

[Stevan] (6:07 - 6:13)

And what inspired you to get more involved, stepped up into getting more involved in the organisation?

[Nancy] (6:13 - 6:47)

Just wanting to do some specific things, having time in my life as well, the right settings with my job. Sometimes you don't have enough time in your life to take on a full volunteer position that's hundreds of free hours. But this year there was that opening and then it just felt like a good time to do it and really good time with Neesh in my life.

And I got to call on lots of people in the past and ask Neesh a lot of advice and just get some knowledge that was being lost and bring it back and bring some fresh energy as well and just make lots of awesome changes. Yeah.

[Neesh] (6:47 - 8:21)

I'm Neesh, background is a degree in contemporary art. So majored in sculpture, but then that took a backseat for quite a few years. You don't really walk out into set jobs from that.

And then first burn was Big Burn in 2014. And that reignited that artistic side again and just realizing that people are making artwork for the sake of making artwork, which you can get a bit sidetracked with life and forget that's what it's all about. And then went again in 2017 and then that's when it really kicked off and heard about Blazing Swan back in WA.

And then from first year going to Blaze in 2018, it was artwork every year. And then eventually, I think as most Blazers do, you just get more and more heavily involved and ended up on committee and art lead, which going into COVID years, which were pretty challenging. But then out the other side of that, just still very heavily involved in a couple of temples and this role as a facilitator, which has been, yeah, this was the first year.

Guys this year and yeah, just a really, I think an important role to have at any burn just to hand down any knowledge from your own experiences, especially just mistakes to avoid, etc. So, and yeah, that's where we're at now. So, yeah, exciting times going forward, I think.

[Stevan] (8:21 - 8:26)

Have you had past experience of mentoring, of facilitating big art projects before Neesh?

[Neesh] (8:27 - 8:51)

Not to this scale. A few little things in Tassie and a little bit involved with some events, but yeah, not on the scale that's been reached with Blaze. So, yeah, kind of found myself in that lead role by chance, I guess, just by wanting to push my own boundaries and then really wanting to encourage other people to go bigger as well.

[Stevan] (8:52 - 8:56)

Yeah, but your previous experience of building temple in 2024 helped you to sort of guide other people.

[Neesh] (8:57 - 9:38)

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I'd done the 2019 temple at Blaze as well. So it was just, yeah, it's just been continuous learning of what works well for crews, for builds and the whole process.

So yeah, it was nice to kind of offer to kind of initiate this role into Blaze. So people aren't going in as blind, maybe, because I know I did the first year as well. There's a lot of people in the community with a lot of build experience, which is great.

But I think if there can be designated people to really help anyone applying and anyone successful through that whole process is really important.

[Nancy] (9:38 - 9:56)

I will say that I think unofficially you did this role for temple and for some people that did the temples previously. But it is good that it's an official role so that people know that there is a lot of mentorship available and documents and processes they can follow and someone that's going to support them.

[Sara] (9:57 - 10:09)

I didn't realise that it wasn't a role before. And how on earth did anyone do a temple without having that person give you the guidance? That would be incredibly difficult.

[Neesh] (10:10 - 10:34)

I'm trying to think back to 2019 and who the art lead was. I feel really bad. I think it might have been Ben Foster that year.

But it was just talking to other people that have done builds, people like Angus and Rye and just a lot of people who've been through that process or been on a lot of builds themselves. So there's a lot of knowledge in the community.

[Sara] (10:34 - 10:52)

Totally. But having that streamlined made the huge. We had you on tap and we could ask you a question at any time of the day or any day of the week and you would get back to us straight away with the answer that we needed. That's a huge valuable asset.

Huge.

[Neesh] (10:52 - 11:27)

Yeah, I think you too were like me on the build. Your brain doesn't really switch off for six months of that build. It is nerve wracking.

It's quite a big undertaking. And when that thought comes up, I know for me personally, you kind of want the answer straight away so you can go on to the next thought and the next one and the next one. So if you can really pin down that information as you go along and just get an idea of what needs to be done for that specific topic, then yeah, it's good to go.

[Stevan] (11:27 - 11:36)

Yeah, to have that institutional knowledge is immense, right? I mean, how did you guys, Kym and Sara, how did you guys find the whole bonding, the whole knowledge sharing?

[Sara] (11:36 - 11:39)

Between the organisation or between us?

[Stevan] (11:39 - 11:41)

On site, when you guys were building.

[Kym] (11:42 - 11:57)

Well, most of ours was pre-fab and again, because we are in the country, so we didn't kind of have a whole blaze community around us locally to access basically.

[Sara] (11:58 - 12:03)

So yeah, it was... We pre-fabbed it off site, we built the pre-fab.

[Kym] (12:03 - 12:20)

Yeah, so it was all... Sorry, my brain doesn't work at night. Long range communication rather than having physical people being able to help us and show us things.

Yeah, which was fine. Like Sar said, Neesh was always there on tap.

[Sara] (12:20 - 13:38)

We were pretty lucky with the pre-fab we spent. I think it was probably eight weekends, like two full days at an industrial block that we were allowed to build on that's kind of halfway between Bridgetown and Margaret River. And we rostered our crew to come down for a couple of those weekends and they stayed with us at Kym's Dad's or our friends and stuff.

But for those two days, we'd always have a chippy or a carpenter or Kym who's a builder as well. And we would spend two full days just mapping everything out and building and then do that consecutively. And within the group that we had, the building knowledge was because we were isolated from the blaze community, I guess, we just set the project to what we were going to build and built it.

The knowledge that we needed for logistics and stuff like that was always helped with Nish and Nancy or the blaze crew, but it was a little bit isolated in the pre-fabbing duration. But when we were on site, when everything came together, it was super smooth. We were super supported.

We had everything we needed. If we didn't, there was always the communication or the drive to find the solutions for things. So nothing was really a huge issue.

[Kym] (13:39 - 13:40)

Smooth sailing.

[Nancy] (13:40 - 13:52)

It's not so different. Some people in the past have built theirs at the nest or in other warehouse spaces, but like Neesh's last temple, most of it was pre-fabbed in the backyard.

So similar to you guys.

[Stevan] (13:53 - 14:07)

Can we quickly explain to the listeners the distance or the isolation you talked about? So Perth, the city of Perth, you guys are down south and it's like 200 kilometers away from Perth. So yeah, you do feel a bit far away, remote from the city.

[Sara] (14:07 - 14:24)

It's about a four-hour drive in either direction to either of us, and we're about an hour and a half apart from each other. And then the industrial location was an hour from us, kind of in the middle off to the side. So there was a lot of traveling.

[Kym] (14:24 - 14:26)

Lots of traveling by everybody. Yeah.

[Sara] (14:26 - 14:35)

Yeah. For those pre-fab weekends, we'd have crew come down from Perth so they would stay down or we'd have crew go up from down south.

Everyone came from all corners.

[Nancy] (14:35 - 14:49)

And we were sending stuff down with anybody that would drive down to them. So sending different tools from Blaze, sending the card from the treasurer. We even sent an empty box of lights from our house.

An SUV.

[Kym] (14:50 - 14:53)

Oh, yeah. The atmosphere was very important.

[Neesh] (14:54 - 15:36)

I think that this happened. Sorry that you were the guinea pigs for the first out-of-town build, but I think it's quite good to experience that and know that it isn't restrictive just to the city. We want to encourage people to apply from anywhere.

So, yeah, a few challenges logistically, but not really. It's still only a couple of hours to get materials down, maybe a little bit more in transport. But, yeah, realistically, if people are comfortable in where they're building, it's more important.

I know I'd rather be building out of the city than here.

[Kym] (15:37 - 15:42)

The timber supply was actually down near us anyway, so that bit was easy.

[Neesh] (15:42 - 15:43)

Yeah, yeah.

[Kym] (15:44 - 16:00)

But, yeah, certainly things like ordering in bolts, it just means you have to be thinking two weeks in advance rather than you can't just go to a big warehouse like half an hour away in the city because you've got to actually get it on a freight truck and get it down to you. But lucky we're super organised.

[Stevan] (16:03 - 16:16)

It also goes to show you how the state is, right? Blazing Swan is the representation of Western Australia and that's how massive the whole country is. Yeah, so it is spreading.

Blazing Swan is spreading across Western Australia.

[Neesh] (16:16 - 16:16)

Absolutely.

[Stevan] (16:17 - 16:22)

Okay, so how was Blaze this year?

Let's quickly go around and have some reflections, quick reflections. How was your Blaze?

[Nancy] (16:22 - 16:28)

It was busy. It was so busy. It was so awesome.

[Stevan] (16:28 - 16:31)

Busier than previous years? How was the weather, first of all?

[Nancy] (16:32 - 17:10)

The weather was great. It was windy, right? But no rain.

We thought we were going to have that cyclone. Turned out we didn't have any cyclone. So we had delays in all the artists because we had told all of the theme camps and artists to not come to site.

And then the weather didn't come either. So then we had beautiful weather. It's actually windier during the event than before.

Yeah. And it was really windy like when the temple was about to burn and when the fireys called the OK to burn. A huge gust of wind came and blew.

And we were like, oh, is it OK still? Right as they're about to start the fire.

[Kym] (17:11 - 17:14)

Yeah, that will stay with me forever. That was great.

[Neesh] (17:19 - 17:20)

Weird things happen out on the playa.

[Nancy] (17:21 - 17:23)

Weather-wise was great though, I think, right?

[Kym] (17:24 - 17:29)

Yeah, we had perfect weather, I would say. As far as previous Blazers have gone.

[Neesh] (17:30 - 18:15)

Yeah. Yeah, that's two years in a row now of really good weather. So we're probably due for a bad one.

Event this year was pretty amazing all round. I mean, there's always some challenges, but I think overall pretty positive. And as always, I think from people in the back end and working so many months into the event, it is pretty exhausting by the time event hits and sometimes you don't get to do as much as you would like to do through the event.

But I guess it's not just about the event. It's about the year-round community and what you get to build as well. So, yeah, it depends who you ask about event and how it went.

But yeah, overall, it definitely...

[Stevan] (18:15 - 18:18)

Well, for you guys personally, I mean, did you guys recover well?

[Neesh] (18:20 - 18:24)

I flew to work two days later and it nearly killed me.

[Nancy] (18:28 - 18:30)

I work from home, so I was fine.

[Sara] (18:31 - 18:37)

Yeah, we went to Bali for a week and I think it was the best decision we've made in a very long time.

[Nancy] (18:38 - 18:40)

I was very jealous.

[Kym] (18:41 - 18:42)

Yeah, we literally...

[Stevan] (18:42 - 18:43)

It's the ultimate decompression, right?

[Kym] (18:44 - 18:49)

Yeah. It's got to happen every year now because it was just the best. Yep.

[Nancy] (18:51 - 19:29)

Yeah, definitely takes like a solid week after a big event like that because you spend so much of your year preparing so many groups of people to be ready out there and preparing for the big builds and all these little subgroups of leads and 31 artists and all of their needs and quirks. And then when they all do it, it's all so exciting and everybody needs quick problem-solving on site. And there's always little things that you're doing to fix small things.

And then they all do their pieces and their art pieces come alive and then it's all over so fast. And then you come home and you're just thinking about all the things that happened that your brain didn't get to process in the moment. So you just think about it all for another week.

[Sara] (19:30 - 20:00)

Yeah. I think my experience or our experience was very different to what we normally have at Blaze because there was no... There was very little obligation during the event to do anything. So that was very different.

Normally we're in the situation of art casual theme camps or having to organize people or something like that. So it was really good. I think having a theme camp that you can just burn at the end rather than pack up is the way to go.

[Kym] (20:02 - 20:08)

I absolutely agree. I had the best Blaze. It was just, yeah, definitely.

It's where it's at.

[Stevan] (20:09 - 20:18)

From your perspective, you guys are doing all the hard work before everything starts and then you get to enjoy it. But when you get to enjoy it, does it go quick? Too quick sometimes?

[Kym] (20:19 - 20:20)

I think that's Blaze in general.

[Stevan] (20:20 - 20:21)

How does it flow for you?

[Kym] (20:22 - 20:37)

We still had a lot of things to participate in. So, yeah, every day we're still like, all right, we've got this on, we've got this on. But, yeah, I think Blaze always goes really fast, way too fast for my liking.

Could be out there for a lot longer.

[Sara] (20:40 - 21:09)

I was a bit worried that we were not going to be physically okay. Because of the physical labour involved with building leading up to it, I thought I would spend the first few days of the event just kind of recovering. But it went a lot easier, I guess, the further into the build we got, the less physical it got and the more just organising and finalising things it got.

And, yeah, the transition wasn't too bad. So, yeah.

[Kym] (21:09 - 21:49)

Also, yeah, we made a decision for the build to – we actually had a gap week. So we came on site for a week and built the mainframe, which was the most main technical part. And then we all went home for a week.

Not that we rested, but it was nice to have that. I think it was actually a really good plan, even though I don't think it's how it normally goes down, to then get ourselves back together again, come back out on site and complete the project. It was, yeah, it was actually a really nice way to do it. And just to have that little headspace gap in the middle, I highly recommend it.

[Sara] (21:49 - 22:51)

Part of the bigger plan of, like, having not depending or not leaning on your team so heavily to have to take time off of work, because that's really hard for a lot of people, and also that burnout with crew. Like Kym and I have done a few events before where it's – burnout is just – you've got a 99% success rate of killing people on the job.

So we really wanted to make it enjoyable for the crew and minimise the amount of leave that they had to take from work and also the amount of physical endurance that it would be on the people as well. So that first build week team was generally different people to the second build week team. And then the weekends that we did prior to that, that was on a rotating roster as well of just who was available when.

So I think that made a huge – that was a good call by Kym to have that gap in the middle of the pre-build just, if anything, so that your crew isn't exhausted or broken by the time the event comes around.

[Kym] (22:51 - 23:05)

And just how lucky we are to actually have that many people to call upon. Yeah. With skilled people, that was just so keen to just keep working.

Yeah. Amazing. Very lucky.

[Stevan] (23:05 - 23:10)

So this year's theme was called, It Takes a Village or Takes a Village. Is that the theme?

[Neesh] (23:10 - 23:10)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (23:10 - 23:16)

How did that play into how you guys – for example, Nancy, the artwork there, the installations?

[Nancy] (23:17 - 24:14)

Well, it's a really small category to have artwork fit to the theme. We don't really mind if it doesn't. In some burns and some big events, they do want the artwork to fit to the theme.

But I think we feel like if someone's going to make something really big or really epic, it takes multiple years to plan. So planning an artwork to fit to a theme doesn't necessarily matter too much. I like a theme, personally, that is a little bit ambiguous, that leaves something open to interpretation.

But the themes are always just for every event. Real funny, real random. I do feel a lot of people felt like Takes a Village, it can imply you have obstacles.

So that was what was going around this year with the fuel thing and a lot of random little bumps in the road. But it was good. And we had lots of people step up this year to new positions, and even me and Neesh in this position and lots and lots of other people.

So it really did take a village to fill all the gaps in the back end. And we'll be voting on our new theme soon.

[Stevan] (24:15 - 24:17)

Any thoughts about the theme? Any other thoughts?

[Kym] (24:18 - 24:25)

I think the temple was designed before we heard the theme, from memory. Is that right? Oh, maybe.

[Nancy] (24:26 - 24:26)

No.

[Kym] (24:26 - 24:28)

Pretty much at the same time.

[Nancy] (24:28 - 24:28)

Yeah.

[Kym] (24:29 - 25:02)

Yeah. So we incorporated some sound into the temple this year, which was basically a giant wind chime or like tubular bells style thing. So it was kind of like the bell tower of the village in one way.

But, yeah, other than that, I mean, Takes a Village kind of just says it all for almost every project at Blaze because it does in every aspect. Yeah. From management to creativity.

Yeah.

[Neesh] (25:02 - 25:50)

Yeah. I think the theme is always a tricky one regarding artwork with Burn. I think even Big Burn has that idea of it can be something to work off of.

But like Nance said, people often have an idea before the theme comes out unless we start getting a bit more organised and releasing it earlier. But it can be represented quite well with effigy such as the man base or, you know, the effigy base can be representative of the theme, which it was this year, the village square. So that worked quite well.

But, yeah, regarding it actually influencing too much artwork, I don't think it usually does. But it is nice to have a theme and play around with it in other ways.

[Stevan] (25:50 - 25:58)

Yeah.

It's hard enough trying to pick a costume that matches the theme, right? So if you're trying to build art to match the theme, you're asking too much.

[Nancy] (25:58 - 26:10)

That whole side where the temple was this year, all of the art placement there was very iridescent and matching and female artwork, almost all. Like it was very, very shiny over there. Nice.

[Sara] (26:11 - 26:21)

That was mind blowing. Each time a new piece came up, it was like, oh, my God, they're doing that. That's the same.

Like the color theme was on point. Yeah, it was crazy.

[Nancy] (26:22 - 27:00)

A lot. Neesh's just really good at doing the placement. Like we do it together and we do the mapping portion together with the mapping team.

But just that he's been on site so much, he knows like where exactly how far you can get power to, where you can push the boundaries a bit, what will look good places and kind of how you can tell people a little bit to make it a little bit more stronger or bigger a little bit or any something like that. They wouldn't know that they would need. And then it just all gets.

I felt like the placement was perfect because I thought about it after and it's not really anything we would have moved to anywhere else, but it is dependent on what people put into the application. So what it's going to be and where.

[Neesh] (27:00 - 27:17)

Especially with the temple corner, especially with that temple area, you want things that kind of reflect that space up there, the quieter space. You don't want to put anything too loud and crazy within that space and kind of take away from what's happening up there.

[Sara] (27:17 - 27:21)

So if you do, you just get Nance to go and tell him to move it.

[Neesh] (27:22 - 27:24)

Yeah. Or you just moved it together.

[Nancy] (27:25 - 27:26)

We had a miscommunication.

[Neesh] (27:28 - 27:33)

Nine people to pick up a sculpture. That's already been put in a few meters.

[Sara] (27:39 - 27:49)

Glad you did though, because like the that space that it freed up really made a difference for the walkway into the temple. I think that was a good call.

[Nancy] (27:49 - 28:11)

You don't think it would make such a difference being like 10 meters or 20 meters or something, but it really does with all that open space and it just made such a difference and they would, they wanted to move as well. Like that art piece just looked too close to the temple shape and it was too close. So even when I asked them if we could move it, it was even though it was pouring rain, it was fine.

We did it together.

[Stevan] (28:14 - 28:25)

How has the placement evolved over the years Neesh? You guys put a lot of thought into the design and the traffic as well. You're looking at a lot of things like the terrain as well.

[Neesh] (28:26 - 29:13)

Yeah, absolutely. For me, that's probably the funnest part of the whole job. The lead up to that with grants and stuff is, I don't know, that's just a lot of backend work and can get a bit tedious.

That's where Nance is all over that, a lot more patience than me, but the, yeah, the actual layout of, of the land down there is just really fun to play with, especially when you really understand what the artist is bringing through a good application or what, you know, what they're trying to convey with their work as well. Yeah. And like you said, like high traffic areas, what's going to work, what's going to draw people into quieter areas of the landscape and the event as well.

So yeah, the curating of that is, is really fun. A really important part to activate the whole space as well.

[Nancy] (29:13 - 29:33)

Because we don't have an infinite space like Burning Man. So activating what we have properly makes a huge difference. And you'd see it in other years when a corner could be darker than other times and it just makes it all seem a lot bigger when things are just kind of in the right space or you put something and it can be discovered there.

So it does make a difference.

[Stevan] (29:33 - 29:39)

So you also had an art panel talk at To Be Continued. Is that right? A theme camp?

[Neesh] (29:39 - 29:41)

To Be Confirmed. Yeah.

[Stevan] (29:41 - 29:49)

To Be Confirmed. Sorry. To Be Confirmed, TBC.

How did that go? You guys drew a bit of a crowd as well? Some eager listeners?

[Neesh] (29:50 - 31:08)

Yeah, not as, we could have had a few more, but, I didn't advertise it too much. I was pretty nervous at the thought of actually running it and then it ran a day later just through being exhausted and not really getting organized in time. But yeah, so had the girls on from Temple, and then we had the Light Rebels crew come on.

So Dave and Paul as well and a few others, Carl and Simon. It had been something I wanted to do for years with the panel talks that they have at Burning Man with Temple lead each year and just a few other things going on and just to bring more knowledge or just bring more stories about the artwork to people that are interested in hearing the backend processes for those artists. And it was really fun.

Yeah, really enjoyed it. And I think the people that were there, you could see everyone just really infatuated by when the artists were talking and just learning so much, learning so much about the Temple and the Wind Chimes and then Paul and Dave's history as well. And yeah, no, it was fun.

It was good. And yeah, good to actually get out and do something that scares you a bit as well, public talking. So yeah.

[Nancy] (31:10 - 31:11)

And we will do it again.

[Stevan] (31:12 - 31:15)

What were some of the topics that were covered during that talk?

[Neesh] (31:15 - 31:31)

What did we have? We just had the application process, the Temple and probably art in general, the history or yeah, the artists introducing themselves and how they got into that position.

What else did we talk about? I don't know.

[Nancy] (31:31 - 33:20)

We had Simon Halter who did that big wooden piece and he had met Dave just this year. He'd not known Dave or any of those guys. And he had some epic story about how he met them, how he got to make that piece in Paul's warehouse and cut on the laser cutter for six weeks straight or however long it was.

And just went really deep into all of the mathematics and golden ratio stuff and all of the design philosophy of how you can keep designing that geometric way, any shape. And all of those guys are really all into that stuff. So it's really crazy that they met and got to just nerd out about design philosophy of every geometric kind of hedra, hexon, whatever sacred geometry shape that they make all of their things out of.

And then the frequency of the wind chimes that you guys made, they were also really interested in like what the actual frequencies were and how you made them and how they were pentatonic. And it's good to have that emerging artist with the seasoned artist. And as the people that go through the applications, we always find out all the stories that happened to everyone.

And then I also have the artist group on Facebook that all the artists go into to kind of amp each other up all year and kind of motivate each other. And they post progress photos of themselves. And so I think it's just really important to be able to document all of those stories and then share them with other people in this way.

And so even though we were running out of time with doing all the jobs where we were going to do this paddle talk that hadn't happened before, and he really wanted to do, and I really wanted him to do it, maybe next year it'll be in a bigger space and we won't try to cancel it. Like we did try to cancel it because we'd never done it before. He'd never done it.

And then so many people were coming into our camps to be like, no, you can't cancel this. It has to happen. And then people did really enjoy it.

[Stevan] (33:20 - 33:25)

And was this on the Monday after the event was just kind of winding down?

[Sara] (33:25 - 33:26)

It was on Saturday.

[Neesh] (33:26 - 33:28)

It was Saturday. Yeah. Yeah.

[Stevan] (33:28 - 33:30)

Before both of the Burns.

[Neesh] (33:31 - 33:33)

Yeah. Was it Saturday?

[Nancy] (33:33 - 34:02)

Yeah. Yeah. Because we try to get everything out of the way early as well.

You don't want to be waiting around for the things that you're part of organizing to just happen. And even though because you think about Temple a lot until it's over, it's always on your mind. So even the Temple wasn't like your girl's Temple, but Neesh was still there fueling it.

And I was there with Angus filling it with fuel. When you guys went and changed, we were the ones like behind it. So until it's pretty much ashes, we're just all thinking about it.

[Stevan] (34:03 - 34:11)

Yeah. There was quite a few scientific words thrown around in that talk. They're like Fibonacci, stuff like that.

So it was quite exciting to hear.

[Nancy] (34:11 - 34:13)

And I'm sure they'll talk about it more as well.

[Kym] (34:14 - 34:16)

Because Dave doesn't like talking.

[Stevan] (34:19 - 34:23)

Where do all these geeks gather? Only at Blazing Swan, right?

[Neesh] (34:23 - 34:53)

I think when Simon was talking about his hedgerow piece and the mathematics behind it, everyone, their jaws were just on the floor of like trying to keep up with what he was saying about what went into that piece. And it was fascinating.

I think a lot of people just felt like they were way out of their comfort zone of trying to understand shapes. It was really impressive.

[Sara] (34:53 - 35:12)

I'm trying to relay that story. You listen to Simon tell that. And then I remember trying to tell my brother, who's a cabinetmaker or woodworker as well.

And I'm like trying to remember all these words and explain what he was saying in the process. And there was no chance. It was, yeah, pretty mind-blowing.

[Neesh] (35:13 - 35:17)

You just need to show a photo of the piece and be like, this is what it is.

[Sara] (35:18 - 35:18)

Yeah.

[Neesh] (35:18 - 35:20)

Give it what you will. Yeah.

[Sara] (35:20 - 36:02)

I think that panel was really important. For me, it was one of the highlights of Blaze in tying a bow on the project or kind of bringing all the bows, all the ribbons together of the art community. I think there's like as an individual artist, it's a very different experience.

But when you get to connect with other artists and hear their stories and their background, it changes not only the art that you see, like you see it in a different way, but also you create almost a bond with other artists because you're in the same boat. So for me, that panel was a highlight. It was pretty important.

I'm glad you guys did it.

[Nancy] (36:03 - 36:03)

It was all Neesh.

[Stevan] (36:06 - 36:08)

We do have a clip of that. Sorry, go for it.

[Nancy] (36:08 - 36:35)

I do think that it's good as well with the people in the audience like listening because we want to bring it back to being an arts festival event and focus on art as well as music. And so I think it's a good way to have people listen in and get re-inspired and then come back, even especially people that have spent a lot of time in the theme camp area to just come back and remember that they can do like individual art pieces themselves and not always like big projects as a group.

[Stevan] (36:35 - 37:00)

Yeah, we do have a little clip of that. A small clip. So what we'll do is take a break.

We'll play that clip. It's the clip where Paul talks about belief, design and create. And I thought that was kind of interesting.

So when we come back, we'll talk more about that and talk more about more technical on the temple builds as well as what niche, what you're doing with your facilitating and mentoring. So we'll be right back.

[Neesh] (37:02 - 37:13)

Building stuff for commercial use in town and then changing it...

[Paul] (37:15 - 38:38)

I think the way we go about things is different to other artists in town. I've seen there's a guy called Josh who inspired us in many ways. He was doing some big artwork, but he put tenders in and drawings in and then would lose the tenders and they would never come to fruition.

We build and then tender. We just build the item, come up with the idea. We're building it, whether he gives it or not, because somebody will want it because it's epic.

And they always take it. And then I bumped into Josh last week at a forum, did an event in one of the big entertainment companies. And he came up to me like two years ago and met him.

We haven't built anything. We've built 12 things. He's built none since.

And he said, you've flown past us. I'm like, yeah, because you're not believing in yourself. You're believing in them.

And it's holding you back. And he's like deflated. And we're taking off.

And we're getting phone calls from literally everywhere now, all over the world wanting us to build. But we're building anyway. It's not going to stop us.

And we've had to do some commercially type stuff, like the Christmas trees over the city. I just went to the lady in the city and we built this. It was the Sonic Runway.

We were inspired by the Sonic Runway.

[David] (38:38 - 39:26)

Two days after Blaze. I had to put this panel in the city. After being exhausted and everything, I had to go back early and kill myself driving home so we can do this, so we can fund money for the Blaze project.

Lewis set us up. I said, we're going to talk to Blaze. We're going to light the place up after COVID.

We believe in it so much. We're going to help you, Lewis. We got the hearths and we synchronized the whole place.

It was the Kickstarter that pays him. And then he said, well, we can't fund you that much, but here's a link for the city. I said, get some money from that.

So we got that money to help do this. And that's what we're doing. So the answer to the question is that the helix was designed for here, for the wind and for the openness and Sydney, the temples, the city.

It was designed for here. There was a lot of thought put into that. The diamond was made for here with all the principles for this event.

[Paul] (39:28 - 42:03)

But we've got to come back to what is it we do as creators? An idea for thinking people is we manifest and create reality. We have the power here.

We all see that. Don't tell me you don't see why you're at Blaze, that you think it's something that's going to happen within a minute. We do that every day outside of here.

So literally you have to believe in yourself and you have to draw it. We say design, believe, believe, design, create. First you're going to believe it.

Then you're going to design it. Then you're going to take action and create it. And you can do that with anything.

You can do that with art, you can do that with relationships, you can do that with children. If you want a child, you can do that with a child. You have to believe in you.

But I think that's the key with the whole of Blaze. It's run by volunteers. Each of them volunteers have to believe in themselves to pull this off.

We can't do it individually. We have to do it collectively. But we have to believe in something greater than what the system tells us we are, which is a where could be to pay taxes and die of cancer.

That's bullshit. So we don't work with that. We put our whole year from January, December through to April for Blaze every year.

We put that aside. We work for free for that time. And we just focus and build it.

Because we know that from April to December, we won't stop with the other leads that come in because we're doing the right thing with the right intention. But you all have to believe in yourself. You all have to stop listening to the lies and bullshit.

The Iran war is a joke. All the things are a joke. They want to murder and kill people.

We want everyone to live and connect. We have to believe in our ethos, in our community, in their values, in their principles. It's super important.

And we have to back each other. If you guys need anything ever, and you're creating, we've got this workshop that we were gifted to us. Because we do everything, we manifest.

We were gifted a million dollar workshop for free. We were gifted electricity for free. These are the laser cuts running for two months straight, 24-7.

It just doesn't stop. We got the laser cuts gifted for free. We got the 3D printers gifted for free.

Everything we've got, we've been given. We don't pay for anything. Do you know what I mean?

So if we've got anything that you need, if we've got any tools, and if we haven't got it, we'll have it within a month. But we, again, it gets to this stage now.

[Stevan] (42:05 - 42:13)

Okay, let's talk about Temple. Let's get more technical about Temple. The intentions, design processes, inspiration.

Let's talk about those aspects.

[Kym] (42:14 - 42:17)

Okay. So, inspirations.

[Stevan] (42:17 - 42:18)

How did it all started.

[Kym] (42:19 - 42:19)

Sorry?

[Stevan] (42:20 - 42:23)

The idea came from a festival, Blossom.

[Kym] (42:23 - 43:01)

Yes. So, yes. Just whispered into my ear that no one's put an application in yet.

And my brain just instantly whirled into action. And, yes, I kind of had a concept for it probably within five minutes. Yes, just picturing like a large, cavernous space.

I'd already had the wind chime concept that I was hoping to bring as an art piece. So, yes, kind of built that into the design as a centrepiece. And, yes, the rest just kind of.

[Sara] (43:01 - 44:17)

We had lots of chats about wanting to have, if we got accepted, we would have been, well, we were the first female temple builders in Australia and wanted to really lean heavy on a feminine inspired as well as a feminine look to it. We really wanted to bring those elements out. And also lots of discussions about, I was thinking about that today, about all the different things that we wanted to include that we didn't include, all the crazy ideas that we had, but how the underlying concept of being like a central heart or a womb or a very divine space that felt both.

It started with a very feminine intention, and then the more we worked through it, it was more about combining both a masculine and a feminine. So I think both elements came through pretty strong. But, yes, the sound element and the colour element, adding things that haven't really been explored that much, was the result of a lot of brainstorming, crazy ideas and kind of narrowing down to what was actually achievable.

[Kym] (44:19 - 45:13)

Yes, having 3am thoughts versus reality can be difficult sometimes. But, yes, and then working, obviously, you've got a budget to work with. So, yes, kind of thinking about, right, how can we make this big impact of this what we want it to look like while still, you know, coming within budget.

So, yes, a few different things. We never want to see bamboo ever again in our lives. We had the concept of these giant tendril-like things weaving up through the structure, and, yes, in order to do that, we harvested elephant grass, which is a pest, trailer loads and trailer loads and trailer loads of it, many a Sunday with a chainsaw.

And then, oh, my gosh, how many hours do you think it was?

[Sara] (45:14 - 45:23)

It took me to do one on my own was like two hours or something. It was nuts. Yes.

Yes, I think we ended up with over 60.

[Kym] (45:23 - 45:37)

Yes, of, yes, basically bundles of elephant grass that were about 10 to 12 metres long. Yes, that was pretty. But, yes, the effect in the end was worth it, I think.

Yes. What else did we have?

[Sara] (45:37 - 46:44)

The chairs and, like, the lamps and the lanterns kind of creating, so on top of the cabinet space to make it homey and welcoming, like a lounge room that you just want, that you feel really comfortable in and you feel safe in and you feel held enough to be able to process whatever you need to process. That was really important to us. Yes, the lanterns were all hand-woven, so we had a group of maybe 10 or 12 women where we spent the weekend together, and we used repurposed cane that's been salvaged from, I don't even know where it was salvaged from.

That's a whole different story. All this cane was gifted to us, and we spent the best of a weekend plus another weekend weaving all these giant lampshades, and we got to experience that with Fiona Gavino, who's, like, a very experienced weaving artist in WA. So it really not only did it tighten the theme of weave, but also we got to experience that culture of weaving together as a group of women.

It was pretty cool.

[Stevan] (46:45 - 46:51)

You had a bit of some comfort seating as well, like a lot of cushions, so you're going for the nurturing kind of meditative space?

[Kym] (46:52 - 47:35)

Yes. Well, I work in textiles, so there had to be some textiles in there. But, yeah, I think it really added to the space, having that little bit of, yeah, just softening and this beautiful Sazh's brother is a cabinetmaker, so he led the build of these beautiful layback kind of bench seats, and that was, yeah, they were just perfect as well.

It was just really, you could just lay back on them and look up at the whole space and listen to the chimes, or you could lay, we also had a space below the chimes that you could lay on the pillows directly underneath and play them that way.

[Sara] (47:35 - 48:05)

So it was really nice. Fun fact about the lounge is that to get the shape of the lounge, I actually laid on the bitumen ground in a position that I thought might be comfortable, like laid on my side, and then Kym drew behind me with a piece of chalk, and that became the silhouette or the template for the curvature of the couch, and so we carried around this giant piece of cardboard that was cut out to this chalk. Don't use that piece of cardboard.

[Stevan] (48:08 - 48:11)

That's what they do at the crime scene, right?

[Sara] (48:12 - 48:17)

Yeah, exactly. And it turned out to be the perfect laying shape.

[Kym] (48:19 - 49:00)

Yeah, I guess backtracking to the main structure, so obviously we have to work with an engineer on a build like this, so there was a few teething issues at the beginning with, yeah, what we envisaged and then the reality of it when it came to engineering was, yeah, a bit mind-blowing with the size of the timber that we ended up using was huge and, yeah, it was quite industrial, a lot more industrial than I had originally envisaged. But, yeah, just working with the engineer, we kind of had to come together with something that was going to work for both of us, yeah.

[Stevan] (49:00 - 49:06)

What's the dimensions? It's quite a sizeable structure, right?

[Kym] (49:06 - 49:45)

Yes, so it was 16 metres across at the base and then, well, about 8 metres high to the top of the pokey bits, but the legs of the tower in the centre were 6 metres, just also trying to make things easier, going with a 6-metre length of timber means that you don't have to waste any or add any on. So, yeah, it was a good size. I had originally envisaged a bit bigger, but I think overall it was a good dimension for feeling that big space but also feeling cosy.

Yeah.

[Stevan] (49:45 - 49:47)

And how was the build overall?

[Kym] (49:47 - 50:03)

It's amazing. I just can't rave about our team enough. I think Sar and I are both incredibly organised people, so we're just very good at being 10 steps ahead of everything at all times.

[Sara] (50:04 - 50:17)

And we've also worked together for a long time, like we've run businesses together, we've been mates, close mates since, you know, 15 years old, so I think we know how each other works pretty well.

[Kym] (50:18 - 51:07)

Yeah, so obviously, yeah, team management, all the behind-the-scenes paperwork, took care of all of that, thank goodness, and I would take a lot more of the technical side of things, ordering the timber and, yeah, figuring out how many bolts we're going to need and then having to double it because I haven't done the math properly. But, yeah, the build was amazing. Yeah, we had so many people tell us, this is going to be the most stressful thing you've ever done in your life, but I think we just were so lucky with our support and our team and maybe we're just really lucky.

Everything just went smooth, yeah.

[Sara] (51:08 - 51:58)

I would say that's important for anyone else that's thinking about doing a project like that is surround yourself with people that you can trust that are going to do what they say they're going to do and also that have the skill set that you need, so have a varied skill set around you. Like we had a couple of carpenters, we had a couple of chippies, we had lots of different creatives, we had a lot of different artists, so we had pretty much every part of the spectrum covered that we could call on people to do their part, and then also having that leadership above us, we really had the full spectrum of being able to call on other people but also, yeah, everything was covered for us. So, yeah, I would have to agree with Kim and say that we were really lucky with the team that we had.

[Stevan] (51:59 - 52:02)

Well, how did you form your team? How did you gather all these amazing people?

[Sara] (52:02 - 52:05)

Oh, fuck, we can't get rid of them. No.

[Kym] (52:07 - 52:25)

I think both of us have a little bit of an event background, so I think, yeah, people that work in events are already a bit nutty and ready for it. So, yeah, I guess that's the kind of people that we hang around. Yeah.

[Sara] (52:25 - 53:05)

It was also a little bit of a family reunion for us as well, which was part of the inspiration to actually do the project was we had a lot of the original theme camp crew that we started with 13, 14 years ago that haven't done a couple of blazes or that have lost their passion or that needed something that was really meaningful for them to come back to blaze. And so we reached out to those people specifically in order to, you know, both get them both given the opportunity to light that fire again but also bring that family back together. So, yeah, it was pretty amazing to be able to have the crew that we had.

[Stevan] (53:06 - 53:12)

And some of your recruitments also came from like interstate and overseas as well? Did you get any people from a volunteer?

[Sara] (53:13 - 54:01)

Yeah, so we had a couple of over Easter. A lot of our crew was people that we knew or that we've worked with before, but there was a couple of new recruits, the people that reached out to us that we had no idea who they were. And I remember the first weekend that we caught up with one of them, I was very tentatively asking them what kind of lifestyle they have because they'd never been to blaze before, they'd never really done these festivals and events before, so trying to just vet them to make sure that they're going to withstand the storms of chaos.

But, yeah, we had a couple of people from over East and the recruitment came pretty easily because of the other people that we had in the team. I think it was seen as an amazing opportunity for each of us to be able to work together again.

[Kym] (54:01 - 54:25)

And to get to know each other better as well, catching up on weekends. And, yeah, quite often with event crew, you're only catching up at events and you're always in that hectic space. You don't get to actually sit down, yeah, catch up properly, learn about their lives properly, and that was just so lovely just to get people that I've known for a decade to actually sit down and get to know them properly.

[Sara] (54:26 - 55:00)

Yeah, for sure. And I think that also comes back to the way that we planned the schedule of it as well because, you know, we were having good lunch breaks during the prefab builds where we would actually get to talk with each other. It wasn't all about smashing out work as hard, like we did smash it.

There was a lot of hard work done, but we also made the effort to make sure that, you know, people were fed right, had the breaks that they needed, and we also got to connect on a more personal level. So it wasn't all about building a temple. It was more about building each other or building with each other.

[Kym] (55:00 - 55:15)

Well, the brainstorming and being able to bounce things off each other was just awesome. Yeah, so you never lack having to solve any problems on your own and, yeah, just having that variety of people with a variety of skills was really cool.

[Stevan] (55:15 - 55:26)

Yeah, people managing, those are the soft skills that you need, right? What are the attributes or qualities, you think, like the skill sets people, they can also learn on, you know, on the job experience, right?

[Kym] (55:27 - 55:45)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have got some construction background and I guess my job is kind of a lot of project managing, so all that side of it came easy. But I think, look, anyone can do it if you've got the people around you and the support team.

Yeah, go for it.

[Sara] (55:45 - 55:55)

Just make sure someone is in your team that can do the people management because I think that is the biggest part of the job is herding cats. Yeah.

[Kym] (55:56 - 55:58)

Even really good cats need herding.

[Stevan] (56:01 - 56:04)

And the bottom line is to have fun. You mentioned that previously.

[Kym] (56:04 - 56:05)

Yeah, absolutely.

[Sara] (56:06 - 56:51)

Yeah, that was always the drive and Neesh was also big in implementing, like, just make sure everybody has a good time because it's about having a good time and that reminder was also definitely helpful because there would be some days where we would be like, geez, we just have to finish this or when is it going to be over or, like, we just have to work so hard to get things done and, yeah, taking that step back and going, well, you know, it's not everything that matters, yeah.

Even, like, when it came down to the last day before the event, like, it's if we don't finish, we can always still do some tomorrow. Like, it doesn't matter if it opens late. It's a fine line balancing that pressure with also making a safe and exciting space for people.

[Stevan] (56:52 - 57:05)

The other huge burnable art piece is the effigy. So when the effigy was being built alongside what you guys were doing, how was the camaraderie between the two builds? Everyone was busy, right?

[Kym] (57:06 - 58:05)

Everyone's just busy. Honestly, I didn't see effigy until it was finished. And then I think I was even on site for another day before I was like, I really should go check it out.

Yeah, we're kind of on opposite sides of the paddock and, yeah, we're just so focused on the job at hand. But, yeah, obviously at night time getting to meet the build crew from effigy and tool trading, all those little bits. Tool stealing.

Tool stealing, yeah. Yeah, so there's, again, yeah, not a lot of time for either project to be helping each other as such. But obviously, yeah, near the end there's like, have you got a piece of sheet of ply you don't need or this bit of wood or that bit of wood or this tool or that tool.

But, yeah, as far as working with each other, that doesn't really happen because everyone's too busy.

[Sara] (58:05 - 59:18)

Yeah, I guess I had a bit more of that experience than you did because you were up in the machinery a lot. But being on the ground and being on comms, there was a fair bit of tool trading or materials trading or sourcing of things. Like they would be the first place that we would have gone if we needed like red nails or certain bits and pieces.

We would go there first and ask them and likewise they would ask us. So there is that trade-off. I think it was funny to have the conversation of like who, I don't know if it's a normal thing, but who's going to be the taller structure or who's going to be the biggest structure or who's going to be, yeah.

And speaking to the effigy lead or one of the effigy leads, their input to us was that it was a lot smoother this year or it felt more unified than competitive or it felt more, yeah, like a unified process for them. We did have some difficulty with machinery because they had a lot of up-high work and we had a lot of up-high work so we thought there was going to be an issue with not having access to the machinery enough. But it all worked out.

It's all about compromise and, yeah, working it out.

[Stevan] (59:18 - 59:24)

Neesh, can we talk about the difference between the effigy and the temple, like the process? I believe that…

[Neesh] (59:24 - 59:36)

Temple is better. There's some good rivalry between temple and effigy crews usually. But as far as, sorry, what was the question?

[Stevan] (59:36 - 59:42)

Like the process of the temple and the effigy is more like an in-house kind of process.

[Neesh] (59:42 - 59:43)

Okay, yeah.

[Stevan] (59:44 - 59:47)

Whereas temple is extended to the community, is that right?

[Neesh] (59:47 - 1:01:14)

Yeah, well, at the moment, in the past, they were both open for tender.

Whoever wanted to submit a design could and it would go from there. After a few years, they started to look at Burning Man and the process they do. So that's kept a bit more in-house and it's the same crew that build the man each year.

Man base changes a little bit and has a little bit more input from community. But it was just… And this is where the build application process, we want to try and bring forward so people have more time to actually submit applications and then go through engineering and pre-build and everything that goes with it.

So yeah, we'll probably see some changes over the next few years of how this process goes, whether it opens back up. And in saying that, if people are really keen to build temple or effigy, people should just come forward with their proposal and go from there. Because I think the problem with people doing it every year is that it is a lot to take on and people can burn out and just get a bit tired of doing it, really.

So if people have ideas, they're encouraged to come forward and have a go.

[Stevan] (1:01:14 - 1:01:38)

I was just mentioning about our previous clip that we played earlier when Paul talked about believe, design and create. He also talked about how Blazing Swan is also forming a nice network of support there where you guys have 3D printers available for people to use, laser cutters, stuff like that, spaces to work and also the knowledge to be passed around. How's the culture and network there now established at Blazing Swan?

[Neesh] (1:01:39 - 1:04:35)

Personally, I think it's getting better. I think that culture is coming through, but it takes a lot of work. I think you have to keep at that and keep communication going all year round so people know where to go for supplies or skill sets.

And really, it's about networking people together, seeing what this person's building and when they're asking for help, knowing which direction to send them to other people or supplies or anything that they're needing. So yeah, definitely getting better, but it needs to be upkept all year round. It's not just from New Year's to Easter and everyone crams in and it gets a bit stressful.

It's literally in the months post event when people are feeling really inspired to make their artwork. Keep that conversation going. An example of this is that this morning, I was in a Zoom meeting with Burning Man US about their temple application process and they've brought that forward.

So the actual closing date for applications for 2027 burn, keep in mind that the 2026 event hasn't gone ahead yet. So that closes in June. So they're looking for next year's design to come through already and that follows on and they've brought things forward five months, four months for the different stages of that.

And then the person that's building next year actually goes to this year's event and shadows crews to really get in there and start understanding what their journey is going to be the following year. And with the scale they're at, I feel like it's really important and the money that they have to fundraise a lot themselves. So even though we're not probably more than a year ahead for Blaze, I think we definitely want to bring things forward a couple of months and that's representative of what happened this year with the application for Weave Temple came through.

And by the time we found a new structural engineer this year who's amazing but hasn't worked on a structure like this that has to stand for a week and then burn. So there was just a lot of learning curves for everyone this year and pulled it off amazingly and created some really good relationships moving forward. But yeah, I feel like we just need to keep that going and give everyone as much time as possible so we can really start pushing even bigger boundaries and just less stress.

I mean, there was a bit of stress there for you too this year or end of last year when things kept getting pushed back and you're starting to lose material, ordering dates going into the Christmas break and things like that. So if we can get ahead of that moving forward, I think that's a real positive outcome from previous lessons.

[Stevan] (1:04:36 - 1:04:46)

That would also give the front and center attention to, like you were saying for Nancy, about having Blazing Swan as an art focus, rebuilding that culture.

[Nancy] (1:04:46 - 1:05:39)

Yeah, they always should be art-first events. Somehow, theme camps and sound always creeps in, I think. But it's always better to just have time on your side and be able to open applications early, even just for the people going through all the applications.

Those are a few people going through them. But then calling more people, say people who have experience in similar art pieces from previous years to just get some more input from them or anything that can help anyone. And then going through all those budgets meticulously, we have to revive a preferred suppliers list and send that around to people and then just give people more time to make stuff.

Because you'll just run out of time even if you're opened early and you've gotten everything's on track and you're on time. Eventually, you still end up late or just on time, not early.

[Stevan] (1:05:40 - 1:05:43)

Would that also capture more diversity in arts?

[Nancy] (1:05:43 - 1:06:30)

It can because it offers a lot more. People can make bigger stuff. People can just be more prepared.

We also could have more potential to have interstate artists come. It is hard as well, just because of the distance and what is allowed to be funded in terms of transportation and stuff like that. But we had a few interstate artists pull out that were going to be coming from Victoria.

And we even had one old school Burning Man artist that was going to bring something that just couldn't make the trek from America to here. Obviously, flights and everything like that is so far. But if it's early, people can prepare and then we never know who will apply.

We had other artists as well that were just from down south. And that had its own challenges as well. But yeah, we're still going to open them early this year.

[Stevan] (1:06:30 - 1:06:39)

So let's talk about the philosophical side about temples and what's the feature of the burn. What's its meaning?

[Kym] (1:06:39 - 1:07:17)

To us, I think it's just creating that space that people feel safe in, comforted. I think most people understand what this space is about now in terms of what it's there for. And it's a quiet space and that you can go and write down your thoughts and feelings and well wishes and all over it.

There was so much writing this year. It was amazing. Yeah, so just with that in mind, while we were creating it, yeah.

Sorry, did I answer your question?

[Stevan] (1:07:19 - 1:07:35)

Well, how do you think they differ? Because I saw like the Blazing Swan previous past effigies and past temples, like if there was no labels or titles to it, you wouldn't kind of notice like, was that a temple or was that an effigy? Like if you're looking at it from the outside in, so yeah.

[Kym] (1:07:36 - 1:07:44)

Yeah, I guess the placement of it, being down in the quiet area, it's a tricky question.

[Sara] (1:07:44 - 1:08:15)

It's a good question, but I think it also comes down to like other people, like other custodians in the area kind of passing on the messaging as well. But the effigy is always in the centre of the theme camps and the temple is always on its own in a quiet area with no sound around it. And then I think it comes down to people that know what the temple means, starting the writing on it that then creates the interest for other people to continue that maybe.

[Kym] (1:08:16 - 1:08:23)

I think also it's just the energy it puts off as well. As soon as you walk into that space, you can just feel it.

[Stevan] (1:08:24 - 1:08:31)

In your designs, was there any features that you're kind of proud of, of saying that, you know, this is not an effigy, like you guys are building a temple here?

[Kym] (1:08:32 - 1:08:36)

Oh, I think the whole thing is the whole thing.

[Sara] (1:08:36 - 1:08:36)

The whole thing?

[Kym] (1:08:36 - 1:08:37)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:08:38 - 1:08:41)

Like you said, it's got that vibe, it's got the energy of the temple.

[Kym] (1:08:41 - 1:08:44)

It just has the view.

[Sara] (1:08:45 - 1:08:57)

It's got the intention as well, like the intention that we knew what we wanted to create and also provide for people or deliver that space. Having that intention made it a clear objective, I guess.

[Neesh] (1:08:58 - 1:09:02)

It's also not a giant swan or a giant man, so.

[Kym] (1:09:02 - 1:09:10)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Templary, yeah. I guess it's hard when it's, what is a temple?

[Stevan] (1:09:10 - 1:09:17)

And how was the burn? Did it go the way you guys planned it to go, like the way he built it and structured the way to burn it?

[Sara] (1:09:17 - 1:09:20)

Oh, my God. It could not have gone any better.

[Kym] (1:09:23 - 1:09:24)

My biggest fear was that.

[Neesh] (1:09:24 - 1:09:25)

I'm glad you said that.

[Kym] (1:09:26 - 1:10:36)

It was so good. My biggest fear was that because it was quite a spaced-out structure and the dense, like the amount of timber that was in the beams, I just had this image of all the cladding burning off and then the frame being left standing there. But, no, we just put heaps of extra fuel.

Yeah, obviously, Neesh's expertise and Angus and the fireys to help give us some guidance on what we would need to do to get it to the ground. And, yeah, it was just beautiful. It collapsed in on itself all at once.

Perfect. I mean, nothing was left standing. Like we were mentioning before with the wind coming through, we were literally about to light the sticks to light the temple and this almighty roar of wind came from behind us and it just didn't stop.

And I was like, oh, God, they're going to cancel it. We just forged ahead quickly and, yeah, it made it really burn. Incredible. Yeah.

[Neesh] (1:10:36 - 1:11:52)

Yeah, so some context to this year's burn. Sunday was quite windy all day and we'd had the morning meeting and then by the afternoon meeting the wind was still quite bad. But, you know, most of the forecasts were for it to drop around 7 p.m. So the decision was made to push burn back by an hour from 6.30 to 7.30 and at 6.30 it was dead calm. At 7.30, like Kim said, the wind picked up just as they're about to light and it was pretty touch and go. It was a decision of like, okay, we have to go now because this is actually borderline a bit too strong to be lighting it. Luckily, it had swung around from a safe direction so it's away from a vent.

But, yeah, the fact that it picked up like that just shows you that you've got to be ready for all conditions and all kinds of stuff happening out there. I think that's just the power of the temple and the meaning behind it just makes some crazy things happen out there and I think that was pretty special in the end that it really added to the whole effect as well.

[Stevan] (1:11:53 - 1:12:10)

Yeah, one of the things about the temple is that you have to make the pilgrimage from, I guess, center camp or wherever the center of Esplanade is. From Esplanade, you got to make a trek quite a fair ways towards the temple. I think that's a good design feature there for people to make that pilgrimage.

[Nancy] (1:12:11 - 1:12:58)

And it is a loop like from Esplanade to Sound Alley through the end of Sound Alley through to Templeside. You can do the full circle so when you do go on the art tour or you go and look at all the art pieces, how we activate that loop makes all the difference. And then for the temple, a lot of these kind of people don't really follow any set religion so having that space that you can let go of stuff and just for a lot of people putting that much effort into plays it's like New Year's afterwards.

You're completely new, you don't have to focus on this huge thing and that space, just so many people use it and let go of so many things and I think the people that put their hands up to build that are also going through something crazy in their lives. Some kind of midlife crisis.

[Kym] (1:13:00 - 1:13:01)

No way!

[Stevan] (1:13:01 - 1:13:04)

Yeah, for some it's a religious experience or at least a spiritual experience.

[Nancy] (1:13:05 - 1:13:11)

Even if you don't sign up for that, it's some kind of experience that gets everybody. So it takes a lot.

[Kym] (1:13:11 - 1:13:28)

Yeah, I think there was definitely a lot of processing our own life things during the build. It's a lot of different intentions that you're putting into different parts of it. But yeah, do help you move through things for sure.

Like with any creative process, I guess.

[Neesh] (1:13:28 - 1:14:00)

I think it calls back to that spirituality without being tied to religion, which is a lot of, yeah, referred to, the temples referred to that kind of, that motto a lot of the time, which is nice. I feel like we all have a deeper side that we can, you know, introspective and that creates a space that's not loaded with things from people's past or what's going on in the world and things like that. So it's a pretty special space to be able to have in the community.

[Sara] (1:14:00 - 1:14:26)

Definitely. It's a different experience from building spaces. It's a huge difference between building spaces at events or even a theme camp.

You're still going through the building process, but there's a lot more emotional attributes to it for yourself, for the team, for the people that experience it. It's definitely a highly emotional process.

[Stevan] (1:14:27 - 1:14:46)

It also shows us a different side, like the reverse side. The effigy is kind of like the reverse side of the temple of the community where it's more resilient and strong, whereas the effigy is more energetic and creative and fireworks stuff like that. So it's kind of interesting to have that kind of yin and yang sort of things.

[Nancy] (1:14:46 - 1:15:27)

Which is always why there is that camaraderie of the temple and effigy, but also a small rivalry. You see the two different crews in the kitchen, two different build crews, and maybe you don't know them, they don't know you, but it's just two crews doing their own things, going in and out every day for a month. And then at the end of the day, you're both just two groups of extremely wrecked people.

But there always has been team effigy, team temple. Who knows, even when we did some jumping into temple crew to do jobs because they were having so much fun, before we had lots of stuff to do when we were on site. It is just nice being out there early.

[Kym] (1:15:27 - 1:15:28)

Yeah, definitely.

[Stevan] (1:15:29 - 1:15:34)

So both of those burns went well. Were there any other burnable art pieces that burnt at blazing swan?

[Nancy] (1:15:34 - 1:15:45)

This year not. There was maybe someone that wanted to do it, but it just didn't end up happening. But we're always on the lookout and next year, hopefully more people put their hands up.

[Stevan] (1:15:45 - 1:15:47)

So COB didn't burn another church this year?

[Nancy] (1:15:48 - 1:15:56)

Not this year at all. That one is gone, done and dusted. But we didn't put the option out there.

It's on the application form and people can.

[Stevan] (1:15:56 - 1:16:02)

That was a good exercise in terms of how you guys can safely burn a church, right?

[Kym] (1:16:04 - 1:16:06)

Without going to hell.

[Stevan] (1:16:09 - 1:16:10)

Getting cursed, yeah.

[Kym] (1:16:10 - 1:16:11)

Yeah.

[Nancy] (1:16:11 - 1:16:21)

That's what we want. Just more burning art pieces as well.

So we can have something on the Monday or something smaller out there. It's just all about giving people time. Maybe next year.

[Kym] (1:16:21 - 1:16:22)

Okay, then. Okay.

[Nancy] (1:16:26 - 1:16:53)

Because it's also fun.

There's one guy that does a lot of just burning art pieces and it's just him, his ideas. And they're still pretty big, but it's not as big as designing and engineering a whole temple or an effigy. So it's still just a fun project for him, for that person and their friends, whoever have done it.

There have been a few over the times. So anybody listening has to apply to do a burning structure next year.

[Stevan] (1:16:54 - 1:17:10)

Yeah. The whole community is all ready for it. You guys have the network, the infrastructure, the people, the talent and the intelligence to do it.

Yeah. Okay, let's take another break. We've got some better voice messages.

Play those and we'll be right back after this.

[Ranger Sunflower] (1:17:12 - 1:17:30)

Hello, this is Ranger Sunflower. This is my first blaze, my first burn. I had a great experience.

I really like the vibe here. Everyone is so lovely, so supportive, and I love this community. And thanks for all the Rangers for your support, for your love.

See you next time.

[Stevan] (1:17:32 - 1:17:37)

Okay, Disco Snail. Let's talk about Disco Snail. I've been asked to talk about Disco Snail.

[Nancy] (1:17:38 - 1:19:10)

Disco Snail was an art piece by Julie Rice, and it was her first time doing an art piece like that. It was just one of those pieces that became like a crowd favorite. Everyone would talk about it.

You didn't really know what to expect. It was a frame to make a snail, and then cover it in an iridescent, shiny material. And then you go inside the snail from the back end, and there's a song playing in this small space, and it's the Disco Snail song.

Maybe you can play it at the end of this. It was such an earworm song, and also a viral song, but I'd never heard of it before. And people would be there for hours, and by the end of their time there, they would have learned all the lyrics to the song because the song was on repeat.

And it's just one of those really quirky things that's just super fun and everyone just loves. It's also really fun to put something like that outside of Magical Frontier, because people spend a lot of time in Magical Frontier talking, drinking cocktails, and it's like that Western saloon theme camp. And there's live music in there, so it's kind of a chill out, listen to some music, have some deep conversations.

And then when you leave around that corner, it's dark, and that's the first ways you enter back into the event. So having that really quirky, fun, kind of offbeat art piece is there. But you never really know what you're going to get over there because that's one of the only places you can't get power.

So anybody who pretty much applies to be solar and not mains power is going to end up being over there, unless there's a different spot. So I was just really lucky for that. It's so fun.

[Stevan] (1:19:11 - 1:19:19)

I've got to say, to go viral at a burn, it takes a lot of work, right? It takes a lot of effort. Like the whole community, getting into the community's subconscious, it's hard work.

[Nancy] (1:19:19 - 1:19:41)

It just happens. People pick up and people get talking, and then Chinese whispers, what people talk about has changed, and there'll be little missions out there, like pranks and stuff like that, like people stealing all the signs from all the theme camps and whatever little quirky things that happen. But yeah, we'll see.

We'll see if we can get Disco Snail to come to Recombob.

[Sara] (1:19:41 - 1:19:56)

Nancy, is there another meaning for Disco Snail? Because it was in a lot of the paperwork, like in the volunteer application, there was a section to say whether you're a Disco Snail or not. Is there a cross-reference?

[Nancy] (1:19:56 - 1:20:08)

She wrote that because she also jumped into some of the forums. So she had infiltrated forums to write Sad Boy's forum for this year and then jumped out. And then that was, I don't know what it is.

[Sara] (1:20:08 - 1:20:18)

That's hilarious because when I was approving volunteers, or when I was approving the crew, it would say, yeah, I'm a Disco Snail. I'm going to eat kale in the garden. What does that even mean?

[Nancy] (1:20:22 - 1:20:31)

I'll have to look it up. That's awesome. I just truly don't know.

I think I'd have come up from TikTok, but I don't have TikTok, so I'll never know.

[Sara] (1:20:32 - 1:20:40)

Well, I don't know if anyone knows or whether she's just put it in there as a random box to choose, like when you choose.

[Nancy] (1:20:40 - 1:20:48)

It must have come from the song and the song, like the new Space Craps, wherever that came from that stuck around for a while. I also didn't know what that was about.

[Sara] (1:20:50 - 1:20:56)

It was great because people wanted to be Disco Snails. I'm like, great. We've got a whole team full of Disco Snails.

What do we do with them?

[Nancy] (1:20:58 - 1:21:13)

It was really fun, though. Yeah. Especially when you make all that effort to go see all the things and you have your small group of friends with you because you've lost all of them from the beginning of the trek to see all the art and you end up with a few people in that corner dancing to Disco Snail.

[Stevan] (1:21:14 - 1:21:17)

So what other shenanigans that happened at Blaze this year?

[Kym] (1:21:17 - 1:21:18)

Nothing.

[Stevan] (1:21:22 - 1:21:25)

Any rivalries that's continued over the years?

[Nancy] (1:21:26 - 1:22:24)

Oh, rivalries. Well, I didn't know. After they burnt the church of belligerence that year, a tiny pink church appeared on the burn scar and it was this little tiny pink church the size of a doghouse and it was called the Church of Belwigerence.

Belligerence. And it was this like kawaii Sailor Moon pink anime church. And then after that year, after Packdown, it was gone, never to be seen again.

But I did see it outside of that radio camp that popped up around the site services. And the next day I saw it in Send Nudes, the theme camp, and someone had stolen it. No, someone had taken it from radio camp and put it in House of Orb.

Someone had then stolen it from House of Orb and put it in Send Nudes, but then built this shrine of bones coming out of it. Because obviously when you go to a big event like this, you bring a bag full of farm animal bones. So that had changed over the days, but I don't know about any rivalries.

Unless anyone else knows.

[Sara] (1:22:24 - 1:22:25)

No.

[Stevan] (1:22:25 - 1:22:27)

Any theme camps that impressed you this year?

[Nancy] (1:22:28 - 1:22:30)

To be confirmed? Oh, hang on.

[Kym] (1:22:33 - 1:22:34)

Just pop it on the playa.

[Stevan] (1:22:34 - 1:22:37)

How was that set up? How was the whole build?

[Nancy] (1:22:38 - 1:22:39)

I mean, I don't know.

[Stevan] (1:22:39 - 1:22:39)

We'll talk.

[Nancy] (1:22:40 - 1:23:27)

Theme camp was awesome. That theme camp in particular was really awesome. I did like Lady Bird set up this year.

They got a new dome, and so they had a bunch of new upgrades in there. So it was actually like way better than it's ever been, like warm and bubbly and new lighting. That was nice.

And the Mirror Maze Paradigm Prism also went from being an art piece last year, being a fully epic theme camp this year. I think last year, the funnest thing they had was kind of doing pop-up margaritas. And then they'd called us early on that they wanted to be a theme camp and not an art piece.

And then they just did it. And it was so awesome. And now the next year, they've already called asking for tips to do a fundraiser because they've already got ideas of how to expand the Mirror Maze and make it bigger and more intricate.

Those are two really good ones.

[Sara] (1:23:27 - 1:23:42)

I love the fact that the Mirror Maze packs down to one single palette, like the whole structure fits on one single palette. That is so good. Like whose theme camp fits on one palette?

[Nancy] (1:23:45 - 1:24:09)

True, true. What else? There's so many.

To be honest, we had 61 theme camps this year. And so I think last year was only in the 50s. So there's fully new theme camps that I know I didn't even get to experience in the quieter theme camp areas, like the more food camp oriented one.

But there's always so much to do. You can't do everything.

[Sara] (1:24:10 - 1:24:14)

Wow.

61 theme camps. I think there's still like maybe 10.

[Nancy] (1:24:15 - 1:24:16)

Yeah.

That's crazy, hey?

[Stevan] (1:24:17 - 1:24:19)

Did you get out to any interesting workshops?

[Neesh] (1:24:19 - 1:24:21)

Oh, yeah. I went to yoga every morning, you know.

[Kym] (1:24:25 - 1:24:27)

Oh, my God. Maybe I can't remember.

[Stevan] (1:24:27 - 1:24:28)

What's a burn without yoga?

[Kym] (1:24:30 - 1:24:32)

What did we do all week?

[Sara] (1:24:33 - 1:24:34)

Yeah, what did we do?

[Kym] (1:24:34 - 1:24:39)

Had continuous fun.

Nothing in particular. We missed that.

[Stevan] (1:24:40 - 1:24:47)

Did you have your Blaze bingo card with you so you can play along? Like you got to check out, check off all the crazy random stuff that people do at burns?

[Kym] (1:24:47 - 1:24:48)

No.

[Sara] (1:24:49 - 1:24:52)

No, we should be the ones doing the crazy stuff.

[Nancy] (1:24:52 - 1:25:53)

I'm definitely asking the wrong people about workshops. I had moved some workshops into our theme camp. So we did have the Make a Light Up Hat workshop by Ben Hitchcock in TBC.

And then we also had a Ciano type workshop happen in there, along with the panel talk. But we just didn't have time. We had art safaris running as well, like art tours going around or checking on.

And then Neesh had to go to bed early that night because he had to get ready for the temple the next day. You just, I don't know. Time flies and then it's just done.

Yeah. But there used to be this girl who does yoga with Nish and her name was also Nish. It was always a dream for Neesh to do yoga with Nish across the room.

And so we did kind of have yoga and we were ready, but then she wasn't on the timeline. So she must not have done that this year or be around. But we were kind of hoping the yoga with Nish would happen.

And then we looked at the Fat Cab lineup board and she wasn't there this year. So next time.

[Kym] (1:25:53 - 1:26:04)

Yeah. Definitely many late nights and not many early mornings. Got to get your Zs in these days.

[Neesh] (1:26:05 - 1:26:09)

I saw you like Saturday night and I was like, you need to go to bed now.

[Kym] (1:26:10 - 1:26:34)

I'll be fine. Got it all covered. Yeah. I was so energized all week.

I was just expecting to be completely shattered. But I think just being on an adrenaline high from the build, I was just like, yeah, let's go. Yeah.

I think I finally collapsed last week.

[Nancy] (1:26:36 - 1:26:37)

Delayed.

[Kym] (1:26:38 - 1:26:40)

Yeah.

Very, very delayed collapse.

[Nancy] (1:26:41 - 1:26:56)

Yeah. But it is nice when you don't have jobs on during the event. That gives you energy.

Not having to wake up for a shift is just the best. Yeah. Even just checking on things, it's different than actually doing a whole shift.

[Kym] (1:26:57 - 1:27:13)

And being that we got a cushy campsite this year, so we had a lovely home space. And yeah, just catching up with friends that you haven't seen for years and all that going on as well. Yeah.

It's just too much to fit in, isn't it?

[Stevan] (1:27:13 - 1:27:22)

One of the questions that was raised was, how do you guys feel about extending delays for another day, an extra day? You guys get more time to party, to check things out.

[Kym] (1:27:22 - 1:27:23)

Sure.

[Nancy] (1:27:25 - 1:27:50)

I don't know. Yeah.

It's just tiring. Because we still get even in that extra day of the Tuesday post, which is like the theme camp and crew night afterwards, after everyone else packs down. And you're not even really alive for that night anyways.

It's just all too long. It goes by fast. Neesh still always been petitioning to move the entire event to winter.

[Neesh] (1:27:51 - 1:27:53)

No start of summer. So we're building through winter.

[Nancy] (1:27:54 - 1:27:54)

Yeah.

[Neesh] (1:27:54 - 1:28:44)

Because building through summer is just a very hot ordeal and just a lot of things going on. There is a bit of a petition to move Blaze from a Monday to Sunday event, still running into Easter. So you get the full week, but then the Monday public holiday just gives people some time to pack their stuff down and be able to get out on a public holiday day and not be so rushed.

And just, yeah, people feeling rushed to get out Tuesday morning if they've got to get back to work and things like that. And then just more involvement with pack down on a Monday for the whole event as well where people can help out instead of having to rush off Tuesday. So yeah, some people are keen for that, but you know, if anything's going to change, it would still take a long time to get to get that change through.

I think so.

[Stevan] (1:28:44 - 1:28:58)

Yeah, there was a few discussions about the swan effigy, having it without the actual swan. Right. We're not building swans anymore.

We're building pavilions or some kind of like burning man structures where it's a bit more spread out. How do you guys feel about having a swan?

[Nancy] (1:29:00 - 1:29:22)

It's always fluctuated between a man or a swan. And the argument may have been for having a venue space inside with DJs inside versus not and having it be more like a pavilion or art sculpture garden as a thing you can go and visit rather than a thing you experience with sound. But no comment.

[Neesh] (1:29:23 - 1:30:07)

I think it was about activating the effigy space. Having that base that it's not just an art piece per se that you look at from a distance, but it's actually more interactive. And, you know, it draws you in there and there's things going on and people can bring their own stuff into that space and apply to do things.

But yeah. Yeah. Watch this space.

I think with that one and just there is a lot of talk going on with how it's going to move forward. Obviously want to keep the space interactive, but maybe bringing back that actual effigy component of it for the burn. So, and yeah, for the piece itself.

[Nancy] (1:30:08 - 1:30:53)

But there was a discussion there like online, because whether or not people were interested in the way the effigy was for the last few years or changing it again, there was like both sides of that discussion online immediately after Blaze and brought like a lot of conversation around how people can get involved and how those changes actually happen and how the effigy even becomes what it is. And there was just lots of good talk in there. People don't know all the time how things actually happen or how the designs come and all that stuff.

And nothing is set in stone forever, no matter what, like anybody can bring ideas forward and bring fresh energy and then ask questions about how things change. It's not just writing on the community page that this should change and then waiting for it to change.

[Stevan] (1:30:54 - 1:31:28)

Yeah, to me, my whole thing, my view is that the whole thing is about change. So, you know, the idea of having a swan and then seeing how the swan could evolve. So we've added more elements to it and we want to see how it now can be evolved even more now by bringing the swan element to it, right?

So the whole thing is about change. It's also capitalizing year to year, all the designs, you know, we've tried moving away from the swan to the hats or something. So we've innovated, but yeah, I think people want to see the swan again.

[Nancy] (1:31:29 - 1:31:32)

Well, the swan never went anywhere this year. The swan was there this year too.

[Stevan] (1:31:33 - 1:31:38)

Yeah, but it's not as prominent as previous. Yeah, blazing swan.

[Nancy] (1:31:38 - 1:31:50)

Blazing swan. But Effigy Crew is always receptive and open to ideas and stuff. So they can reach out easily to anyone.

And I'm sure like Neesh said, watch this space.

[Sara] (1:31:51 - 1:32:06)

It's good for it to be experimental as well. Like the pushing boundaries or pushing like the limitations of what is expected or what is acceptable or normal. I think it was.

[Nancy] (1:32:06 - 1:32:32)

And people want the hat as well. Going back to that one. And even this year, there was a lot of interactive stuff.

There was lots of art there. There was different corners. And in those corners were like spaces for different like visual, like laptop visual kind of art, like interactive, like projection art.

Could always have more stuff going in there as well. It could always be more.

[Stevan] (1:32:33 - 1:32:48)

Yeah, I like to see how it evolves, how it changes. It's not always the same. And it doesn't have to take the form of a swan.

I think KiwiBurn doesn't really get fixated to any kind of structure or design. Yeah. But the swan is unique.

So it's unique to WA.

[Nancy] (1:32:49 - 1:32:56)

It's nice to see how the swan changes every year too and how different crews build it and how it has a different look. I don't mind it.

[Stevan] (1:32:56 - 1:33:13)

Okay. So what about some of the community learnings this year as well with Blazing Swan? I think there was a few issues with some of the burgins or some of the uninitiated burners, I guess.

So where there was a lot of... We have to with some of the values.

[Nancy] (1:33:14 - 1:33:43)

I would say that's an ongoing issue with every event that changes. How can you preserve your culture here? And it would be interesting to see what everyone else does with their events because it's different in every country as well.

There's always going to be people around that don't live and breathe Blaze and Swan for their entire year. And there's always different ways to get the principles across. So that's a year-round conversation that people have to be having.

And I don't know. It's a hard one.

[Sara] (1:33:44 - 1:34:01)

It's not isolated to Blaze either. I think that's across any event. There'll always be an education that needs to be delivered. And there's also security that needs to be...

Like the safety of people that needs to be measured as well. It's not just a Blaze thing. That's events in general.

[Nancy] (1:34:01 - 1:34:48)

Yeah. And people can get territorial as well about things that they love. And it's hard to even track if it's changed over the years. Truly.

Even this year, we have had the same amount of Ranger reports as other years. But it feels different to some people. Who knows?

There are ways that you can, I guess, preserve and preserve the culture or educate people all year. And that just needs to have more chats and more actions happening before the event. And there's ways you can do that through every department, from arts to theme camps to general to ticketing to whatever.

But it's just that slow actions just need to happen all year, I guess. And that can be a hard one when everyone's tired and burnt out and there's all volunteer power. But I'm sure we'll get there.

[Stevan] (1:34:49 - 1:35:06)

What's interesting is how Western Australia is quite isolated. So there are a lot of tourists that go to Perth and WA. You will get these travelers coming through that want to check out Blazing Swans.

So yeah, there's a lot of influx of new burners that need education.

[Nancy] (1:35:06 - 1:35:35)

But another sense is you have the new burners come that are super epic and super keen. And I had volunteers in my little pod this year. There were Swedish guys that were young that had never been to a burn event before that just couldn't get over the fact that they could go to Coasis and drink beers after for free that they didn't have to pay for.

And then they were just volunteering above and beyond for artists the whole time, even past their required shifts. So it's just like, who knows?

[Sara] (1:35:36 - 1:36:00)

Yeah, we had a couple of new part of our temple crew. We had a couple of people that had never been to a Blaze event before. And their experience was pretty mind-blowing as it is.

But I think it's about fostering the community and everyone playing their part and helping educate people that don't live and breathe Blaze.

[Nancy] (1:36:01 - 1:36:16)

I guess volunteering does give you the option to fall into the principles over the time you do your shifts. Whereas if you don't volunteer and you're just buying a ticket, you don't get that option as quickly or streamlined. But yeah, I don't know.

[Sara] (1:36:18 - 1:36:42)

There's lots of ways, different events, yeah. Yeah, and different events. Every event has the issue and it's not even just the messaging that goes out to ticket holders because there will always be people that try and get in without tickets and say, how do you communicate that messaging across to them?

It's a broader community job rather than just an organizational job.

[Nancy] (1:36:42 - 1:36:43)

100%.

[Stevan] (1:36:43 - 1:36:58)

Yeah, definitely. I think the community has to step up on negotiating for those issues. It's not a leadership thing.

It's not an organizational thing. But yeah, it's interesting to see the growth phase of BlazingSwan. This year was a record year attendance-wise.

[Nancy] (1:36:59 - 1:37:28)

Yeah, this year was a large year. Whoa. Yeah, I would say that's probably as large as it needs to be in the event organization subcommittee level where it just becomes a lot for the space with just logistics and stuff like that, especially with the fuel and other stuff like water.

I think the consensus is to keep it smaller, not to grow or anything like that, not to get out of hand. We have a good thing going.

[Stevan] (1:37:29 - 1:37:34)

Yeah. Well, comparing to the Kulin Bush races, they get 5,000 people packed into that property.

[Nancy] (1:37:34 - 1:37:50)

They do, but then it's shorter. It's like three days. So those toilets and stuff like that, they can handle three days of 5,000 people.

But could they handle a week of 4,000 to 5,000 people? It's a lot of resources.

[Stevan] (1:37:50 - 1:38:05)

Yeah, this is why it's a good case study because over here in the East, we see you guys as the top burn in Australia. So we're all learning from you guys how to build massive temples and effigies. Yeah, all sorts of stuff.

[Sara] (1:38:06 - 1:38:06)

Wow.

[Nancy] (1:38:06 - 1:38:21)

Well, that's why it's good that there's the skill sharing that people come. There was people from over East Burns that were in all of the subcommittee meetings all year and shadowing event management, learning all that kind of stuff.

That's always the best way. Yeah.

[Sara] (1:38:22 - 1:38:35)

We got to meet the temple builder for the Aurora Tassie burn and another female builder for the Modifyre burn. We get to share context and stories, which is pretty cool.

[Stevan] (1:38:35 - 1:38:39)

Yeah. That's something that the Bonza Initiative for the Bonza community is all about.

[Sara] (1:38:40 - 1:38:40)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:38:40 - 1:38:50)

It's about knowledge and skill sharing. Yeah. Because while the wider community is great, you've got the whole network to also tap into, which is even more massive.

[Nancy] (1:38:50 - 1:39:05)

Yeah. And I guess it's just utilizing all that we have in front of us. We know that we have these issues that we want to preserve our culture.

So it's like, who's really doing the groundwork for getting the knowledge from other people that already have them in other burns? Like what's worked and what hasn't worked?

[Stevan] (1:39:06 - 1:39:17)

Cool. All right. So we'll go to the last break.

We've got some more voice messages to play and we'll come back and wrap this up. We'll do some shout outs and talk about Recombob. Any thoughts about next year's theme?

[Ranger Elmo] (1:39:19 - 1:39:34)

Hey, this is Ranger Elmo. I have a message in a bottle for my daughter, Charlotte. I hope that growing up in this community enables you to become a strong, independent and creative woman, just like your mom.

Ranger lead, 2027.

[Stevan] (1:39:36 - 1:39:47)

Okay, let's do some thought experiments. Let's talk about the, I guess the trendy subject right now is artificial intelligence, AI and art. How does that work?

Or, does it?

[Nancy] (1:39:47 - 1:41:33)

Well, it is such a testy subject or controversial subject because like everybody hates AI, but then everybody uses AI as well. And you can tell when somebody uses AI in an application or in their writing. And there's like the argument that takes away from all of the creative people that would be doing that.

So like theme camps using AI artwork or people using AI writing. And then we even got an AI application for a temple with no safety form filled out or anything. It was just an AI photo of what the temple should be this year.

And that was like the first application we received, just their email, not on the form. And like, and that's why everyone hates it as like that it's taking away. But in some forms, like if people were going to use AI to create like an art piece that had like a cultural theme or something that kind of related back to how AI is influencing our culture and then had a disclaimer that it was AI or it was sort of like sci-fi art and using AI in a weird way.

Like some people do do that kind of stuff. That sense I feel like would be okay because you're using it to make more commentary about it in our society, which is like good for art. And I think some people have programmed AI in certain senses do.

I mean, a lot of people, I think they do use AI to program raspberry PI and Python things and stuff like that when the pieces are more technical, but like it would like to see more sci-fi kind of art. It just has to come with that disclaimer. Like AI was used to make this or like, this is what it's taking from you to make this.

And people need to know when it's being used and I don't think it should be used to replace artists or like in that kind of sense where it's duping out like real people's work or you don't know. And especially writing, like people are all relying on AI to write for them when we all just need to be doing that ourselves. Right.

Anybody else?

[Sara] (1:41:34 - 1:42:11)

We did the opposite of AI. We did the very analog version of Kym built a model out of like cut out tiny bits of wood and stuck together the model and with many iterations. But that thing followed us around for every build, but it was a great reference point and we didn't need to look at anyone's phone or anything. We just had this model of what it was going to look like.

And the finished result ended up looking exactly like it. Scale. I don't know.

To scale. Sorry, to scale. Yeah, we didn't find the need to use AI for anything in our process.

[Neesh] (1:42:13 - 1:42:52)

Burning Man Department of Mutant Vehicles, DMV actually don't accept applications or proposals with AI generated images or writing. So yeah, there is a place for it in some circumstances. But I think if you're trying to convey your art piece, there needs to be a little bit more effort put in from the back end, whether it's your own skills in creating sketches or CAD or anything like that, or you're working with other people that can build up that for you.

[Nancy] (1:42:52 - 1:42:53)

Especially for applications.

[Neesh] (1:42:53 - 1:43:05)

It's just taking over and you can already see the damage it's doing. And it definitely does take away from creative people, I feel.

[Nancy] (1:43:05 - 1:43:20)

For safety, like an AI render of an art car or an art piece will look completely different than what a person is able to make with their hands. So that is going to give us nothing in terms of what it will actually look like or how structurally safe it will stand.

[Sara] (1:43:20 - 1:43:46)

I think it takes away from the learning process as well. Like you're saying, with CAD or having to use a software or learning, like Simon's story of how he learned how to use the software program within the six-week trial period to do all the engineering or the laser cutting format for that laser printer. Like if he had put it into AI, he wouldn't have learned that skill set.

[Neesh] (1:43:46 - 1:44:16)

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, that just shows you that if you apply yourself to something with an idea in mind, then, you know, I mean, six weeks is an insane amount of time to accomplish what he did. But yeah, definitely says something for when you have an idea, sit down and work through the process.

And I think you'd get more out of it as well. You start to learn, you know, your process of building things as well and learning what's going to work and what's not.

[Stevan] (1:44:16 - 1:44:42)

Yeah, it's interesting that KiwiBurn announced their theme for next year and they've issued out an art competition. And well, the theme is moss and microchips. But there's a rejection of people submitting AI stuff.

So it's a good kind of interesting trend there. But I do find it quite funny how the theme is moss and microchips. We're talking about AI.

[Nancy] (1:44:43 - 1:44:44)

Well, that is the yin and yang.

[Stevan] (1:44:45 - 1:44:50)

But KiwiBurn, I love them for their forward thinking and their radical thoughts and ideas.

[Nancy] (1:44:51 - 1:45:04)

And they are good at putting everything into a process immediately. Whereas I feel like a lot of the things are a certain way here, but they're just not written down enough, which is just the way it goes sometimes.

[Stevan] (1:45:04 - 1:45:10)

Yeah, Blazing Swan is still growing. I mean, KiwiBurn is over 20 years old, I think. What an old established burn.

So yeah.

[Nancy] (1:45:10 - 1:45:11)

Yeah.

[Neesh] (1:45:11 - 1:45:15)

It was the first burn out of Blackrock City, wasn't it?

[Stevan] (1:45:15 - 1:45:23)

Yeah, first international burn. Are there any ways that we can use AI more, I guess, accommodate or complement process?

[Nancy] (1:45:23 - 1:46:08)

Surely, there probably are. I feel I'm not one of the people that uses it in streamline with work. But I'm sure in some of those backend workflows, forms and stuff, there's probably ways that it's being used or that it could be used just to make things more organized from a data perspective.

Whether or not they do do that, who knows? Or can do that. I don't know.

We don't have a process for rejecting all applications that use AI or anything. We don't say that, but we do always ask for way more renders and pictures of everything and expect hand-drawn images, whether it's a pencil sketch on a napkin or it's an actual image. We need a lot and we need to keep getting them until we're satisfied that we know what's going to be built on site.

[Stevan] (1:46:09 - 1:46:19)

All right, cool. Let's end this with some shout outs. So it takes a village.

Now, you guys got a lot of help for all your contributions at Blaze this year. So let's go through some shout outs. Who do you want to thank?

[Nancy] (1:46:19 - 1:46:20)

You guys go first.

[Sara] (1:46:21 - 1:46:22)

That's a long list.

[Neesh] (1:46:24 - 1:46:49)

I'll throw a shout out to Bo, who is the structural engineer who came on. We hunted him out of the community and worked with the temple this year, and that was a really great relationship that built there. So, yeah, Bo's just a great person to work with all around.

So thanks, Bo.

[Nancy] (1:46:49 - 1:47:15)

I will say shout out to the arts panel crew that do the panel meetings, doing the applications, and they just offer a lot of support and help going through all the applications and did this year, answered so many questions. That is a crucial step in doing all the applications early with a really low rejection rate, is to just be able to go through them really deeply with really knowledgeable people. Shout out to that early process.

[Kym] (1:47:16 - 1:47:48)

We could talk for hours, but obviously shout out to all our crew. But also, being our first year being in the Blaze crew, it's just really awesome to see the behind the scenes and how many people really are coming together consistently throughout the whole year to make this happen. So big shout out to the crew.

I'm going to do it. From grounds to kitchen to obviously, yeah, the committee. There's so many people that come together to pull it all together.

It's awesome.

[Sara] (1:47:48 - 1:48:36)

Yeah, I second that with all the committee, but I'm going to do a list of people, our crew as well, because without them, you would have had sticks in the sand, sticks in the dust. Thanks to Ado, to Isaac, to Bondi, to Bambi, to Cindy, to Sister Jessica, to Thi, Moose, Bala, Jez, Zach, A.B., Chris O, Rizzy, Steve, Shaye, Maggie Thatcher, Georgia, Nyoma, Rika, Adam, Shannon, Jesse, Tim, Carissa, Honey Sydney, Bo, Llama, Fondo, and Neesh and Nancy. That's our family.

[Stevan] (1:48:36 - 1:48:37)

That's a massive list of legends.

[Kym] (1:48:37 - 1:48:44)

That's a good one. Shout out for pulling some extra strings at the end there. Yeah.

[Nancy] (1:48:45 - 1:48:45)

Yeah.

[Kym] (1:48:45 - 1:48:47)

Firewood and pack down stuff.

[Neesh] (1:48:48 - 1:48:49)

Yeah. Call it strings.

[Nancy] (1:48:49 - 1:49:22)

Shout out also to all of the event subcommittee and the people that we're in the meetings with every week, because that's the real driving force for the corner that we're in to get everything going is those check-ins every week and knowing that you're on the right track and having a little motivation push. And then I also shout out to all the people that do the event management shifts on site and Vida as well for doing the whole event ops top role. And shout out to our theme camp to be confirmed because that's the best place ever.

We can go hide out there. That's our family.

[Kym] (1:49:22 - 1:49:24)

Yeah. Second family.

[Nancy] (1:49:25 - 1:49:26)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:49:28 - 1:49:50)

Yeah. So it truly is a village. Yeah.

It takes a village. Yeah. It's unbelievable.

Like all the behind-the-scenes, all the background activities that goes behind it. It's a lot of work and we're all volunteers pretty much. We're all just for the love of it, for the hobby, for the love of culture and the community.

What's ahead for 2026 for you guys?

[Sara] (1:49:51 - 1:49:51)

Catch up.

[Stevan] (1:49:52 - 1:49:55)

Get to a big burn.

Anyone going to Burning Man this year?

[Nancy] (1:49:55 - 1:49:55)

No.

[Sara] (1:49:56 - 1:50:04)

No. I think this year is recover and then wait until the next big project falls in, falls in place.

[Kym] (1:50:05 - 1:50:05)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:50:06 - 1:50:07)

You have something in mind already?

[Kym] (1:50:08 - 1:50:25)

I'd like to get onto some other builds, maybe at Modifyre or Tassie. Yeah. Just get to some other events, meet some other crew and do some more building. Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:50:26 - 1:50:28)

Neesh, you grew up in Tasmania.

[Neesh] (1:50:28 - 1:50:28)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:50:28 - 1:50:30)

Are you going back to Tasmania?

[Neesh] (1:50:32 - 1:51:09)

If the dates align, I wouldn't mind. I think it's November, isn't it?

Is it November? Yeah. It's just, I don't know.

There's just not enough time in a year to do everything. And you get to the end of the year and by November, Blaze is pretty heavily kicked off as well. So, yeah.

And then if I go back, it's usually try to get back over Christmas. So, yeah, I wouldn't mind getting down there. It would be nice, but see what happens.

And then Modifyre. And then moving forward, there's talks of the Eclipse burn and things like that. So, the years fill up pretty quick.

[Nancy] (1:51:09 - 1:51:25)

They do fill up. And I'm going to the Bonza conference in Sydney at the end of the month. And then I also want to hear about the Eclipse burn and we have Blossom and then applications open.

And that's our whole life done again.

[Sara] (1:51:27 - 1:51:27)

Next cycle.

[Stevan] (1:51:28 - 1:51:45)

Yeah. Let's talk about this quickly. Talk about the cycle.

So, we have the Blazing Swan Recombobulation, Saturday the 22nd of August. And that's where the theme is announced usually. Yeah.

Traditionally, that's when it's announced. What are your thoughts on next year's theme? You guys got any submissions, any ideas?

[Nancy] (1:51:45 - 1:52:13)

There's a whole lot of submissions on there. I like Nostalgia Neighborhood. That's quite nice.

But they're also silly. So, Kinetic Kismet. That's a good one.

Are the submissions all public? They're all public and it's on the community page. It doesn't have so much action yet.

Usually, there's a few very popular ones, but now it's just a lot of submissions. So, I'm sure by August, we'll see.

[Sara] (1:52:13 - 1:52:14)

And then Recombobulation.

[Stevan] (1:52:14 - 1:52:23)

And then September. Yeah. Then September, November comes around.

So, when do you guys start planning? So, what's Temple submissions and stuff like that? When do they start?

[Nancy] (1:52:24 - 1:52:48)

Applications open around September, I believe. End of August and stuff for Temple. And Temple closes within a month.

And our applications have three rounds. Around August is when we'll plan out all the dates for everything and map that all out. And then just stick to the plan.

But hoping to do them earlier. So, we'll just have a little think and look back at this whole year and all of our lessons learned. And think if we want to bring the dates earlier or anything like that.

[Neesh] (1:52:48 - 1:53:29)

Yeah. I think with Temple, I'd really like to bring the date forward and just get a month or two out from event and just kind of recoup. And then, yeah, really start pushing forward to open those up and getting some applications in. Because we did open last year.

I can't remember the actual date. But it did take quite a while before we found Kym and Sar. We'd had a little bit of interest, but it was just applications and people's circumstances that didn't work for this year.

So, we might have some reapplications this year. But yeah, preferably open up a bit early and get the ball rolling.

[Sara] (1:53:29 - 1:53:47)

And basically, when our application got accepted, we started. Like, that was I think the seed was planted end of September. And within a couple of weeks, we had already started planning everything.

So there wasn't much window between that.

[Neesh] (1:53:48 - 1:53:49)

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:53:49 - 1:53:56)

Yeah. This is where you got to believe it first and then design it and then create it. The three-step process.

[Nancy] (1:53:56 - 1:54:23)

Part of the challenge as well is getting the Facebook algorithm to work for you and the comms around Blaze online. Even if they're open, it's hard to reach everyone sometimes. It's like you'll do a post about art opening and three people will see it.

But if somebody posts the Disco Snail photo, that'll go crazy. So, I think the comms have gotten a lot better over the last year, but the algorithm is very hard to read.

[Kym] (1:54:23 - 1:54:26)

I don't think I even saw Disco Snail on every post now. Yeah.

[Sara] (1:54:30 - 1:54:34)

I don't think I even saw a Facebook post with a temple application on it.

[Nancy] (1:54:35 - 1:54:51)

There would have been like two temple posts. And then when your temple design was then posted, though, that one received a lot. That was like the most traction of a post all year for Blaze.

But yeah, we'll just have to do it all again.

[Stevan] (1:54:51 - 1:55:05)

I think the committee is trying to do things in terms of communication-wise. They're trying to do a telegram. I think KiwiBurn has gone to Discord.

So there's different ways of reaching out, but it's not perfect.

[Nancy] (1:55:05 - 1:55:29)

Yeah, the telegram is good because if you're subscribed, you get that notification to your phone, whereas you don't necessarily get a direct notification from Facebook. But a lot of people that may apply aren't on that telegram yet, because it's new. But it is growing.

We'll just have to see. I think the word's gotten out now more, so we'll just have to put a big push out, open everything up really early, and then see what happens.

[Stevan] (1:55:30 - 1:55:41)

Cool. All right. Thanks, guys, for coming along to the panel and have a chat, talking about Temple, art, and mentoring other builders.

Insightful stuff. Thanks very much for all your comments and opinions.

[Nancy] (1:55:42 - 1:55:42)

Thank you.

[Neesh] (1:55:43 - 1:55:45)

Thanks, Stevan. Thanks for having us.

[Stevan] (1:55:45 - 1:55:49)

Definitely trying to get you guys mic'd up for the art talks next time.

[Nancy] (1:55:49 - 1:55:57)

Yeah. Well, we definitely could have been, but we all – yeah. It wasn't even going to be filmed, so that was just a last-minute thing as well.

[Stevan] (1:55:58 - 1:56:05)

Yeah. I'm interested in the institutional knowledge and how you guys do things, so it's a good learning exercise for everybody.

[Neesh] (1:56:05 - 1:56:07)

Now that it went – Will you be over next year, Stevan?

[Stevan] (1:56:08 - 1:56:11)

Next year? Probably, yeah. Try to make it next year.

I haven't been back in a while.

[Neesh] (1:56:12 - 1:56:12)

Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:56:12 - 1:56:18)

Yeah.

And if you're coming over east, definitely hook you guys up with other builders and other team members.

[Neesh] (1:56:18 - 1:56:19)

Yeah. Yeah.

[Kym] (1:56:19 - 1:56:19)

Sure.

[Sara] (1:56:20 - 1:56:21)

Wicked.

[Neesh] (1:56:21 - 1:56:21)

Yeah.

[Nancy] (1:56:22 - 1:56:24)

That's awesome.

When will this come out?

[Stevan] (1:56:25 - 1:56:36)

PY? Do we have a date? This is the first recording that we had since last time.

It's quite a while, I think. But we usually do a bulk recording, and then we release it.

[Nancy] (1:56:36 - 1:56:36)

Nice.

[Stevan] (1:56:36 - 1:56:39)

And I've got a burn next week to go to as well, so yeah.

[Nancy] (1:56:40 - 1:56:41)

Yeah. Sweet.

[Neesh] (1:56:41 - 1:56:41)

Yeah.

[Will & Kate] (1:56:47 - 1:56:47)

Bonzaar podcast.

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