Notice: The weather may call for a splash of rain, but the Thesis Defence will proceed as scheduled at 2PM at 142 Blair Road. The forecast also calls for some wind, so hold on to your hats and umbrellas!
You are cordially invited to enter ‘The Zone’ – a place outside our expectations where we will observe, explore, and create the untold secrets held by the ivory tower of academia. On this journey, we will travel through the tree-lined streets of West Galt to a remote location, where Captain Goldstar (aka Mark Zupan) will share and defend his thesis research on the Burning Man festival from within ‘The Pearl Palace’. You will be invited to invest your experiences and intentions on an effigy that will be burned to relinquish old ideas about academia, and renew a sense of possibility in the purifying flames. The event will begin at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Tutu-Tuesday, the seventeenth of June, at 142 Blair Road in Cambridge, Ontario. The site is a fifteen-minute mosey up the hill from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. You are encouraged to arrive on foot or by bicycle, as parking is limited. While some seating will be provided, you may be more comfortable if you bring a blanket or lawn chair.
In the spirit of the rituals that are the subject of the thesis, the event will embrace principles that embody the festival community’s ethos. Self-Expression and inclusivity invite you to come as you are, or as you wish to be, to wear what you want, to say what you want, to create what you want, and to permit others the same freedoms. Participation and immediacy encourage you to maintain an active, spontaneous presence and engagement throughout the event. Decommodification and gifting create an environment unmediated by advertising or commercial sponsorship, and substitute patterns of consumption with the unconditional value of gifting, which does not implicate a return. Communal Effort fosters the creative collaboration that will cultivate social networks, public space, and the communication that supports such interactions. Civic Responsibility upholds the values of civic society, assuming responsibility for public welfare and upholding local, provincial, and federal laws. Self-reliance charges you to rely on your own resources to meet your own needs for the duration of the event. The Leave-No-Trace principle protects and respects the environment where we gather, aiming to leave the place in a better state than we found it. Lastly, gratitude encourages us to recognize and honour the opportunities or experiences we have been afforded.
With these principles in mind, you are invited to participate in this thesis defence with an open heart and mind. Your attendance will be valued and appreciated.
ABSTRACT by Mark Zupan
In Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, there is a city that appears for one week each year and then vanishes, leaving no trace of its existence except ruts in the dusty clay. The inhospitable, barren salt flat that the city is built upon is fraught with turbulent dust storms and scorching temperatures. But this does not stop participants from gathering there to build Black Rock City in order to host the Burning Man festival. Now in its twenty-eighth year, the festival is constructed and demolished by 70,000 people coming from around the globe to participate in this extraordinary ritual.
Burning Man is a space of play that defies the stifling mores of Western civilization, and acts as a catalyst for an outpouring of creative collaboration. I attended the festival and its affiliated local events as a participant observer to document the stories that are shaping the architecture of this festival tradition. Through my research I learned about the role of play in fostering innate, creative instincts, and discovered the cathartic value of building and burning for those who are suffering. Burning Man’s creative rituals invite the redefinition of our modern myths, and embody new narratives in their architecture. This thesis tells the story of how I came to know a more compassionate, loving approach to making architecture through the festival and its community.
Supervisor:
Dr. Elizabeth English, University of Waterloo
Committee Members:
Andrew Levitt, University of Waterloo
Dr. Robert Jan Van Pelt, University of Waterloo
External Reader:
Dr. William Woodworth, William Woodworth Architecture and Design
The Defence Examination will take place: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 2:00 PM 142 Blair Road, Cambridge, ON
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