Afrika Burns: Backwater Art Back In Fashion

The first-ever Afrika Burns was what you’d get if you sifted half a ton of Earthdance ballyhoo down to about 50 grams. A core smattering of around 1000 faithfuls was all it took to get the Karoo desert cooking this weekend with bizarre, interactive art installations, hideous, free-for-all open mike sessions and early morning psytrance. All negotiable with the DJ, that is…

Afrika Burns 2007: if you remember it, you were, in fact, there.

The spirit of genuine, ‘mi casa is tu casa’ hospitality and community was what impressed me the most. We’d hardly set up camp when the heavily prepared neighbours invited us over for a djembe/guitar jam and offered us some factor 40. Man, bless ‘em. That stuff’s expensive.

But money was not on the top ten list of concerns at the three-day escapist art fest, which was conceptually based on California’s Burning Man. In fact, the entire economy was gift-based, meaning that you’d be denied even if you did have the appropriate wallet wildlife to afford the Saloon Camp cocktails. Pegged to Tankwa Town roadside entrance signs were explicit recommendations for ‘radical self-reliance’, ‘civic responsibility’ and ‘decommodification’.

Twenty-one themed camps ensured that there was plenty to see on the half-mile wandel across the dust. With no fixed bearings, we would circumambulate laser-squirting party-hardy Camp Vuvuzela, fully functioning Burning Mail Post Office, idyllic Camp Pleasantville, amongst a host of other points of interest in the Binnekring.

The folks who rocked up were the most interesting. Moshe, a repressed Joburg creative, was one of the most striking. Adorned in a tea-doily cape and neon swimming goggles, the guy was the locus of attention practically everywhere he strolled, walking stick in hand. Even on the final day, when his group’s car had broken down, Mo was found blissfully walking the venue, with ‘no fixed plans’ on how to get home before everyone packed up and departed that evening.

Cars were parked, but aside from the occasional dust storm-chasing cyclist, foot was the medium of locomotion. Even under the luminous full moon, it was backwater Karoo-dark, and you just never knew what would next greet you out of the dark. Glowing fires were the gathering points. Some burned artworks, just some egte Karoo hout.

To be honest, there’s just too much to put into a short piece like this; under the desert spell, we saw and heard colourful trailblazing party vehicles, small nude communities, metalwork, live grunge, liquid fire and painfully temporary artworks of great beauty.

So, three days and two nights in the desert, and not a moment of boredom. If anything, a focused desire to share with my urban playmates the gifts I received from the imaginations of a devoted few organisers and the outer circle of strangely open people.

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