You Are Here helps you find your place in space and time. Enjoy an illuminating visit to the Black Rock City Historical Museum, which documents the rich history of our city over the centuries, then consider your new perspective on location in our eye-catching sculpture.
Museum visitors were encouraged to take a postcard with them as a memento of their visit.
At our camp we installed a giant red You Are Here arrow. At night,
it was lit by electroluminescent wire. The arrow is also a chair in
which people can sit and contemplate where they are in relation to the
city and what that means to them and to others. This simple sculpture
was wildly popular with passers-by.
During Exodus, the arrow was annotated by our neighbors to read You
Are Still Here. The arrow is just visible in an overhead
view.
In 2006, we posted over 100
laminated maps at street intersections all over the city.
We meticulously designed the maps to be useful and beautiful. Affixed
to each map was a red You Are Here arrow, exactly like the one in our
camp, and placed on the map to accurately indicate the position of the
real-life giant red arrow. To help people navigate using our maps, and
to avoid confusion, the maps were posted on street signs. While some
maps were left
unchanged, others were altered and annotated in both obvious
and more
imaginative ways.
We also
distributed Wish
You Were Here postcards featuring the map, as did our calling
cards.
We continued the project in 2007. Although most playa maps have the
6:00 Man-Temple axis pointing up, as did our 2006 map, our 2007 map
had north up. It simultaneously confounds local orientation and
supports global orientation, juxtaposing assumptions about the
traditions of Burning Man and the traditions of conventional
cartography. We knew our location in advance, being an official theme
camp, so the red arrow was printed onto the map under the lamination
rather than being a sticker that could be moved. Nevertheless, other
participants were still inspired to interact with the pieces. Another
juxtaposition was the location of camp "Over There", also documented
on our map.
In previous years, we were individually involved in L2K, Camp
Sunscreen, Roller Disco, Church of Mez, Burning Band, gASSo, and The
Evil Space Unicorns, and also volunteered significantly for a variety
of municipal service, infrastructure, and post-event cleanup
activities, as well as performing in the burn ceremony and running
safety and radio services for it. Collectively, 2007 was our 37th burn
since 1998.
Conceptual Cartography
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