Santa Cruz Film Festival 2008

In the Black Rock Desert in 2006, 90 artists from Belgium shipped 100 miles of wooden beams to the playa. A 15 story, 200’x100’ undulating Frank Gehry-esque space, described by Burning Man founder Larry Harvey as “the talk of the playa” appears. Dwarfing all other sculptures, the Burners nicknamed it the “Belgium Waffle.” The biggest draw at night, revelers packed into the cavern and danced to electronica, bathed in neon-green light. “We didn’t use a model, we just started at the bottom and kept adding as we went up,” said Jan Kriekels, who said he funded the entire $250,000 project, including buying $250 tickets for the volunteers who spent three weeks building it. Uchronia, named after a Belgian art movement, centered on a world without the concept of time, Kriekels said. “This piece is a symbol for a system that creates its own creators. We all did this together without being told how to do it — we are factory workers, bookmakers, editors, designers, artists, salespeople — and we can only do this if we refuse to be defined,” he said. This is their story.