Fundamental Mythos

The Giant Anus is a magic mirror brimming with secrets. It talks, even sings, but also listens. It smokes, and rumbles like a dyspeptic volcano. It spews shit in vast quantities, and when satisfied non-chalantly lights its own fart. Then it shits, and shits again, and it's shit is true gold - not the gold of misers, but the perverse gold of prophets. This gold is the detritus of half-digested divinities, and decaying pantheons festering in somnambulent grandeur. This is the shit of dreams, and the Giant Anus, epitome of the physical, is the tribunal of the flesh to which all spirit must eventually submit. To the Giant Anus all dead souls must come when they hunger for incarnation. It is here that they beg for the chance to be born anew.


"Participants" enter the Giant Anus by night

The Giant Anus was one of the central attractions of Burning Man 2000, and was an essential part of that year's "Body" theme. The above drawing is the initial conceptual drawing executed in Bangli, Bali. It's ultimate form was a two story tall wood sculpture complete with inflating and deflating rectal tissues, an interactive sound system, sequencing Las Vegas style lighting, two mighty legs, a slide out the back, wax-cast faces of the seven sins, and a dysfunctional control room in the base. I estimate that most of the people present at the festival experienced its sphinctral pulchritude, so perhaps more than 20,000 people passed through the Anus . . .


. . . and by day.

The construction of the Anus was a weirdly epic adventure. Perhaps not since the latter days of rome has such a pompous obscenity been contrived. I made the initial proposal while in Bali, Indonesia and forfeited a sailing trip to the Solomon Islands to join with a half-mad group of helpers and hangers on to foist this monstosity upon the world . . . and the world was befoisted, as it appeared in Time magazine, and various foreign television broadcasts.

Technically it was a daunting endeavor. The concept my collaborator, Maximus, and I shared was one of overbuilding for tremendous solidity. We were fairly serious about the symbolic identification with the "Root" Chakra (Muladara) of Yogic philosophy. Our interpretation was that as Muladara it must be like a mighty anchor to the whole of the "Body", and indeed an anchor to all of the Burning Man Festival.

Max engineered the thing like a Sherman tank. The great cylinder that comprised the orifice was built with amazing precision using a computer controlled saw, and so it was this sort of double gusseted perfect circle and when it was finished we actually rolled it up the slide that came out the back of the Anus - a dramatic construction spectacle.


The burning of the Anus.

The Inflating and Deflating rectal tissues were contracted out to an engineer named Boris who is a specialist in the manufacture of Paragliders. The Rectal tissue was composed of dacron sail cloth spraygunned pink and then sewn into wedge shaped bags which lined the inner diameter of the sphincter, and were illuminated from within, as well as fed by a number of high powered blowers. The principal was not unlike the children's bouncy castles seen at carnival midways.


The Hemmorhoidal Faces that depicted the seven sins and death.


The "Hemmorhoidal Faces" which lined the sphincter were cast in sections from pigmented paraffin. This was a technically troubled procedure. There was much concern that the heat of the desert sun would cause the faces to melt off the anus, leaving an unsightly mess, and so we experimented with all manner of fiberglass armatures, and sawdust fillers, until eventually it seemed we were not doing much more than playing with scalding hot "ca-ca". As it turned out the weather was very cool out in Black Rock that year, and so the faces were very stable. They were a hard won, but essential element of the piece.

Another fine contribution was the interactive sound system designed by electronics whiz, Barney. This was simply and effectively a looping machine which would pick up an ambient sound and then broadcast it and then, of course, pick up what it had broadcast, so that very quickly a rich and rhythmic texture developed. This was the "voice" of the Anus.

For me, however, as fascinating as all of this sculptural endeavor was, it was of secondary importance to the production of a "Broadway style musical" for which the Anus was merely a grandiose stage. This was:


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Sorry. No video currently. I'll put it up when I have transcoded it from Realmedia to Quicktime . . .