Event themes help us focus our attention and inspire our creativity, plus they're just fun to do!
The whole community is involved in brain-storming and coming to a consensus about Midwest Burner event themes.
Once the discussion on the
Midwest Burners Yahoo Group
starts sizzling, we collectively come up with some amazing stuff!
Listed in reverse chronological order.
Circus Maximus
Suggested by: Aldric
Theme used at: InterFuse 2011
Theme developed by the InterFuse 2011 Theme Team
Come one, come all, to the greatest Regional Burn on earth!
Hurry, hurry, hurry. Step right this way...
Through this portal on fabulously graveled roads is camped the greatest community of circus participants ever assembled, amateurs and professionals, first timers and seasoned souls, coming together from regions far and wide across this great land not to BE entertained, but to entertain each other for four days and three nights of unpredictable, unprecedented Circus Maximus! Only lucky tickets holders may participate in this unique social community experiment (sorry son, tickets will not be sold at the gate). Imagine it: NO advertising! NO selling or trinket booths! Self sufficiency is our secret here. You certainly won't see THAT at Cirque du Soleil, let me tell you.
Witness the awesome majesty, the sheer size and mind-boggling creativity of... the giant effigy! (No smoking near the effigy please, it's made of wood.) Don't miss the effigy ablaze on Saturday night, preceded by a performance for the ages: the stupendously skillful Pre-Burn Fire Procession!
You simply can't conceive of the life altering experiences at Circus Maximus. See... acrobats and jugglers, clowns and freaks, performers of comedy, balance, strength, and bravery, displays of fiery skill! Thrill and dance... to the body shaking beats at Big Sound Theme Camps. Taste... the delicacies only campfires and charcoal can provide. Be astounded... by the mental gymnastics necessary to build strange and exotic structures. Be inspired... by art in a thousand creative forms. Experience first hand... what could be the most dramatic Missouri weather since Poseidon called forth the ancient Tempest. Join in! Will you be costumed? What subtle or profound forms will your participation take?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Circus Maximus! Welcome home to InterFuse 2011.
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2010: A Spacial Oddity
Suggested by: Rusty Cat
Theme used at: InterFuse 2010
Theme developed online by group consensus
Our 2010 event theme involves space, all kinds of space: inner space, outer space, social space, camp space, imagination space, burn space…
The sky is literally the "spacial" limit.
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Aquatic Inferno
Suggested by: Trish
Theme used at: InterFuse 2009
Theme developed online by group consensus
Water covers around 70% of the Earth’s surface and is the basis for life as we know it. Water is a dynamic element, constantly changing shape, transforming, and moving all life within it. Liquid water is a symbol for many things like fertility, fluid adaptation, regeneration, refreshment, purification emotions, the Unconscious, and deep hidden secrets.
This theme is about all underwater life, especially the creative self-expressions that develop around the nexus of heat and water. Life in seas, rivers, lakes, streams, and ponds depends on heat from sunlight. Some of the most exotic life forms live around deep-sea volcanic vents, hot springs, geysers, and even cave pools.
Our Midwestern burner communities similarly grew, centered around heat, usually in wet environments. It rains almost every time we gather but we’ve always managed to burn regardless of how soaked we are. We’ll burn underwater if we have to! It's about time we celebrated the watery aspect of InterFuse.
At InterFuse 2009 you will experience the submergence of our community into a hydro-thermal playground! Our underwater universe will be teeming with aquatic creatures! Build a submarine to explore the Secrets of the Deep! Create a funky crab costume and scuttle about sideways! Construct an eerie garden of undulating tubeworms around an undersea volcano! Transform your camp into Poseidon’s realm and hold a soirée for all Atlantean gods, water-nymphs, mermaids, and sea monsters!
Two fire-breathing sea serpents guard the depths of this steamy, boiling Aquatic Inferno! Every water creature is invited to swim through and play in the serpents’ sea cave. You may leave the leviathans burnable gifts and write messages on the cave walls. On Saturday night, all denizens of the deep will display their unique skills of fire and celebration to inspire the serpents to shed their skins in the flames of regeneration and creativity!
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Technophilia/Technophobia
Suggested by: Ron H.
Theme used at: InterFuse 2008
Theme developed online by group consensus
Technology: Do we love it or hate it? Does it isolate us or bring us together? Does it make our lives easier or does
it add layers of complications? Do we own our tools or do they own us? Can we live without our technology? Can it
live without us? We shape the world through our technology but to what extent does our technology shape our world views?
This theme is a study of modern life that is very relevant to us as Burners. Modern technology is both a consumer
product and a means to promote consumption. Yet it can also be used to create art and to connect us. Technology
extremely enhances our creative abilities yet also enhances our destructive abilities. As we know from our experience
with the fire arts, destructive technology can also result in positive beautiful things.
Burners are especially suited for examining our relationships with technology. We are some of the most technologically
savvy people out there. We’ve used the tools of the Internet to connect with each other and build a community like no
other. We are intimately familiar with creating new uses for technology and subverting it to our own fun purposes.
At InterFuse 2008, we will mock, celebrate, exaggerate, demonstrate, and use technology to create. Bring your fearful
or hopeful vision of our technological present and future. All robots, cyborgs, couch potatoes, slaves to the machines,
Luddites, interactive tutorials, genetically enhanced humans, virtual selves, icons, nuts & bolts, flotsam & jetsam etc.
are welcome! You can take this theme in any direction! Unveil a new and enhanced IF08 Theme version 2.0. Come set up
your office cubicle camp, post-apocalyptic scenario, personal billboard, or cyber-utopia. Form a techno cult or create
a reality TV game that has gone horribly awry. Show off your inventions, bio-fueled art car, or invite people to add
to your open source installations. Create recycled trash art, build a DNA sculpture, or assemble something else so
engaging that people find themselves sitting around it for 36 hours straight sipping energy drinks.
At the center of this technological cacophony will sit that most loved and most hated icon of modern technology, that
mighty conduit of modern culture, that unmatched propaganda and marketing tool, THE TELEVISION! The TV will be
large enough to serve as an open performance stage and projection screen. We will be filling our giant television with
our own content. All participants are invited to create Premier Entertainment Programming and clever personal
advertising to display on our TV. There must be NO dead air time!
Our modern society churns out tons of STUFF! So, around the giant television will be piles of personal technology
sculptures created by YOU. Bring an effigy of whatever technology you fantasize about burning. Does your cell phone
drive you crazy? Build a larger than life cell phone with non-toxic materials like wood, cardboard, paper, cloth.
NO BURNING ACTUAL PLASTIC TECH DEVICES! You could give your effigy evil teeth or put something in the screen
to express it’s annoying qualities. Put your art on the pile around the TV and watch it all BURN on Saturday night
when we use our favorite medium, fire, to transform technology and reclaim it as an authentic tool of our imaginations.
Welcome to the Machine!
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The Afterlife?
Suggested by: Thoron
Theme used at: InterFuse 2007
Theme developed online by group consensus
We humans observe life-forms constantly begin and end around us. As self-conscious beings, we sense our own beginning
and ending. Human history is full of contemplation on this subject. This contemplation has always been expressed in
a rich variety of art in all forms. The artist seems best suited to capture the complex feelings the idea of Life and
Death provoke within us. This year at InterFuse, we are participating in this ancient attempt to convey our conceptions
of the Afterlife.
The Afterlife? theme is a meditation on the interplay of Life and Death. The theme involves a question mark as a symbol
of the questions this theme poses, such as: Is there an afterlife? If so, what will it be like? How does our
conception (or lack of conception) of the Afterlife affect our lives now? While the acceptance of the inevitability
of Death can prompt apathy, it can also prompt action in Life. Many people believe that what we do in this life affects
the afterlife, whether it's a paradise/hell or another cycle of reincarnation (or freedom from such a cycle). For
those who believe that we simply blink out, then Death can be a motivation to avoid wasting life, but rather drink
deeply of it and leave your mark. Likewise, the consciousness that we may die at ANY moment can help us live life like
it matters NOW instead of acting like we're going to live forever and become groggy with distractions and routine.
How would you spend the Moment Before the Afterlife?
InterFuse 2007 is your opportunity to express your ideas of the Afterlife OR Life without an Afterlife. When thinking
about bringing a camp, interactive game, costumes, and art, here are some things to consider. What process will take
us to the Afterlife? What do beings in the Afterlife look like? How do these beings interact? What will the Afterlife
look like? How does Life affect the Afterlife and the Afterlife affect Life? How do you feel we should honor Life
that inevitably ends? Whether you bring a monument to honor Life and those who live it, a Hell-themed camp, a
spirit-body costume, a giant slide into oblivion, a psycho-pomp service to ferry souls across Lake Gaia, an
eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die feast, an interactive karma game, or something vastly more clever and
original, participate like it’s your last minute on Earth!
Welcome All You Mortals!
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The Archaic Imagination
Suggested by: Zay
Theme used at: InterFuse 2006
Theme developed online by group consensus
One of the definitions of "Archaic" is: "Of or belonging to the early or formative phases of a culture or a period
of artistic development." Our artistic heritage is rooted in ancient peoples’ conception of the world. People have
always used many forms of art to question, struggle with, explain, enhance, and enjoy the experience of life. Early
imagination was inspired and expressed by stories, re-enactments, images, and sounds manifested around the community fire.
This year, around our communal fire, we will explore the many symbols, archetypes, feelings, and manifestations of
ancient myth, folklore, and fairy tale. This theme is all about expressing those elements of ancient creativity that
resonate most with us. We will use them to play with each other and, in doing so, create our own wonderful tale.
Feel free to take this theme in any direction. Both light and dark territories of our consciousness are manifested
in folklore. If you're not feeling the fairies and elves, then you could get with the Valkyries and Bluebeard.
Or you could create a new fairy-tale full of never-seen-before fantastical apparitions. Since we're not re-enacting
any specific story or period, we can delve into the Archaic Imagination, take what we want out of it, and add our own
modern interpretations (flame throwers, sound systems etc.). After all, our burner culture is a confluence of the
high-tech and the primal!
Come help us create all manner of mythical apparitions and enchanted spaces at InterFuse! Turn that roll of fake fur
into a satyr costume! Turn your theme camp into a phantasmagoria that entices and astonishes all who dare to enter!
Populate the hills and forests of Ozark Avalon with bedazzling chimeras that intrigue and charm those who encounter
them! Bring your symbols of intention and imagination to be immortalized in the flames of the Pantheon! Become the
Hero or Heroine in a marvelous adventure of your own design!
Once upon a time at InterFuse...
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Mad Science
Suggested by: Aldric
Theme used at: InterFuse 2005
Theme developed online by group consensus
This year we are celebrating the whimsical crack-pot inventor aspect of ourselves. InterFuse will be a mad social
experiment in Chaotic Fusion. Our hypothesis is that the close proximity of multiple interacting visionaries will
generate an endless supply of creative energy. We predict Chemistrophic Reactions of the Fourth Kind!
The Midwest Burners invite you to come test our hypothesis! Bring your monsters, loyal assistants, lasers,
Tesla coils, clones, dimensional doors, weather machines, rogue robots, psi-testers, solar ghost collectors,
time machines, alien technologies, strobes, and EL wire. Transform your camp into your personal workshop.
Conduct live demonstrations of your most radical creations. Volunteer to be a test subject for bizarre human
experiments. Cram that tesseract into your Mystery Machine and come create "chemistry" with fellow eccentrics.
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Celestial Disembarkment
Suggested by: Zay
Theme used at: HullabalU 2 (2004)
Theme developed online by group consensus
Coming back from a fantastic voyage through the Vault of Heaven, intrepid Midwest psychonauts return to base
for decompression, with many stories and artifacts from our cosmic journey.
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Theme concepts should also enhance inclusivity. Religious or social themes can be divisive.
Topics or questions in religion or society that can be interpreted according to personal belief are better.
The most successful themes are those that aren't so abstract. The Burning Man 2002
Floating World theme was wildly successful as people went all out with the ocean motif. The 2003 Burning Man theme,
Beyond Belief (going beyond the forms of religion to the immediate experience behind it), was harder to express physically
since the concept was so abstract.
These are all suggestions. Don't worry if you don't have a detailed theme plan. We want to
hear your ideas anyway! Many times people have offered a simple idea and it catches the imagination of the rest of
us, who fill in the details. That's the colloborative method in action!
Would you like to add to the list of themes we'll be considering for the next Midwest Burners event?
Fill out the form below and click the Send button. All serious suggestions will be added to the list for group consideration.
Good theme concepts are broad enough to inspire many forms of participation, including
Theme Camps, costumes, gifts, art installations, performances, etc. For example: when we picked the InterFuse 2006 theme,
people suggested various fantasy themes like the Wizard of Oz. A theme like this is considered "narrow" because there
can be only so many Lions, Scarecrows, Tinmen and Dorothys. So instead we went with The Archaic Imagination, which is "broad" because it
covers all folk tales, fairy tales, and myth.
Finally, when we're thinking about themes,
we must also consider how the Man/Main Effigy will work with the theme. The more participatory and interactive a themed Man idea is, the better.
For example: the InterFuse 2005 theme, Mad Science, featured a Der FrankenMann effigy. The effigy started with a huge table and torso and then artistic participants attached
home-made appendages to it (feet, arms, heart, heads, brain, etc.) during the event. The resulting creation was raised up and
we brought our monster to life in true mad scientist style on Saturday night!