Meet The Artist: David Best on “Temple” for “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man”
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David Best creates temples for Burning Man that are made of recycled wood and ritually burned at the end of the annual festival. In this video Best discusses the Temple he created for the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon, as a sacred space for people to reflect on loss.
The value of the temples is that they are temporary. It’s for those people that have had something really serious in their lives. The difference, of course is it’s not in the desert, but my intention is the same. It’s important that the temples are burned. I kind of shoot myself in the foot by doing that, because all my art, I don’t have any art, it’s all burnt. I have nothing to show for the last twenty years. I’m not that great of an artist that I can make a structure that’s going to last for a thousand years or 200 years. I think there’s a quality of a temporary temple is what is the most important part of it.
In the temples like what we are making, no matter how much craftsmanship and finesse I put into it, it’s that person that comes and works on it that has no skill at all that puts the spirit in the project. That’s that invisible sacred. For me, craftsmanship is not the most important thing, the most important thing is that the person that has something to get out of their soul and out of their body gets to get it out. The temple is a nondenominational temple. It’s open to Republicans and Democrats, Atheists, and people with tattoos, and people with straight ties on. It’s a place where someone can go to be forgiven or to seek forgiveness or to seek solitude from grief.