camp Gymnasium at Burning Man 2017

Just on time, as Burning Man kicks off its ticket madness today, here is a recollection of events at our theme camp Gymnasium and beyond in 2017. If you would like to get engaged with our camp this year in any way, please e-mail us or leave a comment to this post! You can read more about the concept of our camp on its webpage, but overall our theme refers to the Ancient Greek institution for athletics, philosophy and socializing.

Traditionally, our first even was a running race – from the esplanade to our camp at 7:30 Plaza.

Being on the first day of the festival, the race was dominated by our own campmates,

and the winner turned out to be yours truly 😉

This time, we no longer used laurel wreaths ordered online – instead, we had them hand-made by two campmates from the Netherlands. They added a bit of a Dutch twist to it though: judging by the shape of the leaves, it was more of a ‘weed’ wreath 😀

Our Gymnasium also featured a massage station,

especially popular after sport events, and some lucky winners even got a four-hand massage.

Even though our theme camp was first conceived with an idea to revive the ideals of the Ancient Olympics, we keep on adding more elements to have a more complete ‘gymnasium’ in its original meaning – with philosophical discussions and arts as well.

2017 saw our first installment of a pottery workshop, which was a lot of fun, for campmates and guests alike!

It all started with a block of clay.

and after rolling a few pieces, we moved on to creating vessels using the coiling method.

Of course, our inspiration came from Ancient Greek vases,

more specifically, of black-figure type

(but not without some Burning Man twist to it).

Though only the most determined students remained until that stage of the workshop 😀

In 2016, we pumped up the acrobatics compartment of our Gymnasium by adding a gymnastics wheel, aptly fitting to that year’s theme of Burning Man,

but in 2017 one of the campmates brought and entire aerial rig!

Needless to say, it was a very popular attraction among our guests

and campmates alike.

Some poses seemed easier

than the others,

but all of them evoked flying!

The gymnastics wheel was busy too,

but not everyone needed equipment for their acrobatic tricks!

Surely, there was also plenty of fun to be had and art to be seen outside our camp,

and we had a couple of group outings.

A great aspect of art at Burning Man is that it is interactive,

and 2017 was particularly good in this respect.

Many art pieces were calling to incorporate you, to become their part!

The Tree of Ténéré was certainly one of the most popular installations day and night (you can see it by night in the video above).

This cylinder of LED stripes seemed like a pretty simple construction,

but once you got inside and someone spun it, it would turn into an amazing spectacle of color!

Inside this red circular tunnel, one could feel like on a spaceship mission.

And Incendia was our favorite sound camp to dance [naked] at night –

their roof was on fire, literally! 2017 was a hot year at Burning Man, but the nights were still quite chilly, so that fire felt nice.

It was hypnotizing to observe the fire from below, but if that wasn’t enough,

you could use special viewing glasses that multiplied the visual input.

We first saw this camp at FreeForm Festival in 2016, but at Burning Man their installation was much bigger. And thanks to that fire, we could dance naked all night long – till sunrise!

I was gifted glasses that transformed any source of light into a heart ❤ shape, so when I tried them with the rising sun, it was amazing!

The DJ who played that night – Seth Schwarz – was really good, my major music discovery of 2017. Along with mixing records, he played an electric violin, and it wasn’t just a gimmick but an essential and natural part of his set.

… Well, and if you have heard about our camp before, by this time you must be wondering about our famous naked oil wrestling. Of course this was the main feature of Gymnasium again!

Unfortunately, there was a mistake in the Burning Man app and  info center that showed our camp in a completely wrong location, which we found out only after a couple of days, but we still had a good attendance of our most popular event.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We had three wrestling events, with a winner in each, and one was particularly memorable. Despite seemingly having a disadvantage,

he knew what he was doing

and sent his opponents out of the ring with ease!

That golden laurel weed wreath was well deserved!

And here is a video with clips from some of the matches, enjoy!

Are you going this year? Let us know and join our events!