"Vivos voco. Mortuos plango. Fulgura frango, 

I call the living, I mourn the dead, I repel lightning."

Friedrich Schiller – "Song of the Bell"

UPDATE!!

Thank you so much for getting us this far. We have 20 days to go and we're so close - you rock!!!

We are proud to introduce our final design for the Tower of Nowhere - check out the new video above this update, and then there's the sauce - our amazing HOODIE and T-SHIRT designs! Please get them while they are HOT!

Thanks for your support!

This year the UK Regional Burning Man Community is to create one of the largest collaborative art projects from this side of the pond, it is called:  

The Tower of Nowhere

The Tower of Nowhere is a 20-foot bell tower and a physical manifestation of our virtual community. It represents our hopes, dreams, memories, life, death and eventually rebirth. It will be planned in the UK and built from scratch in Black Rock Desert.

Throughout the week, the tower will play host to a multitude of events, including a tea party, weddings, recitals and acts of interactive participation.

First, we have the Casting of the Bells. This will be a performance choreographed by mad alchemists, taking gifts of metal which will be sacrificed in a ritual fit for a Playa King or Queen.

Second, the Wednesday will be a Day of Contemplation. The Tower of Nowhere becomes an empty stage or canvas, just like the once unoccupied plains of Black Rock Desert. Ring the bell, find your inner-peace, perform a ritual, meditate, get married or simply read the messages on the bunting/flags created by the UK and Nowhere burner communities. (If you have an event you'd like to stage, please get in touch).

Third, join us as we watch the Tower of Nowhere Burn,alongside effigies from other regional groups, and celebrate the only thing left standing - our bell -  rebirthed into the world, carrying all the hopes and dreams manifested in its creation.  

The Tower 
Inspired by traditional UK architecture, from monastic towers to ornate arches, we have created a design that reflects both the long tradition of bell founding and Nowhere, our regional burn event in Spain. 

The Tower of Nowhere is a four-legged structure - a collaboration between two members of the UK burner collective –  adorned, embellished and enriched with a series of flags created by members of the community. 

The Bells 

This project brings to life the extraordinary excitement and wonder of a working foundry, to recreate the medieval tradition of bell casting on the Playa at Burning Man. The Tower will play host to five bronze bell castings, bringing together a sense of alchemy, theatre and occasion. 

The Bell Founding
The bell founding takes place on the Tuesday night, beside the Tower of Nowhere. We will cast five bells, a large central one which hangs as the centrepiece and four others encircling this, hung on each support. 

The bell casting is surrounded by ritual and theatre, with people being invited to gift jewellery* to the molten metal and become a part of the bells themselves. Imagine the atmosphere filled with chaos and fervour, a performance of gruff sooty people running around with fanatical looks in their eyes...

The grand finale and denouement sees the great reveal, as the crucible is lifted out of the fiery furnace, the blazing phosphorescent bronze liquid, glows as it is poured into the bell mould.

The Community's Role 

The spectacle of a working foundry on the Playa and the pouring of molten bronze into a bell mould is a ceremonial act taken to an alchemical and homeopathic dimension, particularly when participants put their memory-laden gifts* into the founding. 

*copper, brass, bronze, tin, zinc, gold, silver. Not steel, titanium etc

How Bells Are Made 

We are using a hybrid of old and new technology using the lost wax process that has been used for over 5 millennia, and the ceramic shell technique, something only developed in the last century.

These methods will be used to create a shell to shape the molten bronze which will be heated to 1300ºC, and used to craft a beautiful and emblazoned sonic device (or bell for short.)

Artist Bio (Dave Snoo Wilson)

'I am an artist working mainly with metal. I've been teaching metal work and foundry skills for the last five years at City and Guilds Art School, which has fed and developed my practice hugely.  Outside of making metal work sculpture, I like to do event-based art.'

'Last year at the Nowhere Festival (European Regional Burn in Spain) I organized and led the opening and closing ceremonies. This consisted of a live bell casting in front of a huge audience. I am looking forward to building the experience at this year's Burning Man Festival.'

What We Need & What You Get

We need funding to pull this project off. The distances and logistics of bringing a project of this magnitude across the pond means that we have to buy most things afresh, from tools to bronze to propane, and we need your help achieving this. 

Logostics will be a major challenge, we need assistance to move a load of materials from San Francisco to Reno for an initial build. Afterwards we need a bigger truck to take everything to the Playa. Trucks, fuel and bronze aren’t cheap...

Your generous donation will help assist us with tools, transportation costs, materials, fire safety, leaving no trace and, of course, the final completion of this aspiring project itself. 

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can’t contribute financially, there are other ways you can help us. This is a participatory project, requiring the input of the crowd on the Playa. Please tell your friends at Burning Man to search us out, get involved and give some metal to be used.

You can also share this campaign on Facebook, Twitter or any of your social networks. Let people know.

Appendix: A Brief history of mobile bell founders in pre-industrial Europe.

In pre-industrial Europe, ‘bell founders’ travelled to different towns and villages, casting bells in churchyards. This would always be a big community event, where people contributed in various ways, such as digging the foundry pit (usually in the churchyard) or contributing charcoal to melt the bell bronze.

Once the metal had been melted in its crucible the founders would entreat local dignitaries to give gold and silver to the crucible in order to strengthen the bells resonances.