ryskan ([info]ryskan) wrote in [info]burning_man,
2009-03-03 13:59:00
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Antipodal Burning Man: Moscow, Russia, February,28, 2009





If someone decides to celebrate half of the Burning Man-year, could he come up with something better than burning a snow-like man on the opposite side of Earth at the opposite time of the year?

Actually, we did not think about the exactness of the date, when making a spontaneous decision to replace the traditional Russian female figure of Lady Winter, which is usually being burned at the end of Maslenitsa, a traditional winter festival, with the Man.
(More about it Maslinitsa on Wiki)

We just changed the gender and made the figure more personal like the Burning Man tradition teaches us. (We hope that no BM rules were broken by making the figure look like the original Man:... well, let's call it His Northern Brother))


The place we chose was memorable for it’s rich history and beautiful nature, besides, it had a slight likeness to Baker Beach, which was important to us. As we know from history - the best way to make old problems go away is to invite some friends, make a figure and burn it!

Each of us took a pen and wrote, one after another, a few lines on His snow white body, like on the pages of a book. We all wrote something we wanted to be gone forever.
To keep our messages private we wrote in different languages.
We used Swedish, Hebrew, Japanese. The birth of a completely new hieroglyphics language also took place, those who knew just Russian and English drew some strange pictures :).

As far as we know it isn’t officially allowed to make a fire in the centre of Moscow so we went a few steps into the park, found a quite place and burned him there! He burned very quickly. Someone told me to start with the legs. Well, it was bad advice, the legs burned in a minute and He fell down.

We have no video documentation of the cleaning procedure, but I swear that we left no trace and removed every piece of dirty snow and brought it to the nearest garbage container.

It was such fun! Much more fun than I ever expected!
And I keep hearing the words – Masha, let’s burn something again)))
More photos of the event on facebook, please feel free to visit!

Amount of snow-burners: 8 grown-up persons, 1 baby, 1 dog.


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  • 32 comments

[info]sayaka

March 3 2009, 11:08:38 UTC 3 years ago

That is awesome. :)

[info]ryskan

March 3 2009, 11:39:31 UTC 3 years ago

thank you:)

[info]diesis

March 3 2009, 12:24:21 UTC 3 years ago

great idea :D And I like the structure design, its like a personalized sized burning

[info]ryskan

March 3 2009, 15:38:12 UTC 3 years ago

thanks a lot, I meant :)

[info]sierra4emu

March 3 2009, 14:45:40 UTC 3 years ago

I love that you substituted a seasonal cultural deity with "The Man". It was a very creative a great way to make something traditional multicultural.

[info]budhist_milf

March 3 2009, 15:24:38 UTC 3 years ago

Yes, Man instead of the Woman.
Men just do not have enough power in the world.

Long time ago Slavic tribes were matrelineal.....and then men came

[info]budhist_milf

March 3 2009, 15:23:03 UTC 3 years ago

I see copy rights lawyers coming....in hordes

[info]iridescentcold

March 3 2009, 15:31:15 UTC 3 years ago

This is so cool! Although, would it be a total opposite if you made the wo-man out of ice and let her melt? much less fun though probably

[info]ryskan

March 3 2009, 15:36:35 UTC 3 years ago

right you are)))
but I'm in love with the Burning Man, and icy women bore me)

[info]vikeshap

2 years ago

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[info]tmonsta

March 3 2009, 20:28:21 UTC 3 years ago

Awesome!! Thanks so much for sharing this.

[info]ryskan

March 4 2009, 08:27:09 UTC 3 years ago

welcome :)

[info]sunrise_bee

March 3 2009, 21:31:28 UTC 3 years ago

love it.

[info]ryskan

March 4 2009, 08:27:21 UTC 3 years ago

thanks)

[info]aika99

March 3 2009, 21:32:00 UTC 3 years ago

Burning Man Equinox, huh?
Very cool. I wish I were there with you :)

[info]ryskan

March 4 2009, 08:29:19 UTC 3 years ago

you always have this option, my dear)

[info]xhile

March 4 2009, 00:10:14 UTC 3 years ago

We founded "Melting Man"* two years ago in the South Island of New Zealand. I started planning a "We're Not Going to Burning Man" party for the same time as friends were going to the Nevada burn in August. It's winter in NZ at that time and it got renamed Melting Man 'cos we intended to burn a snowman.

Looks like the Russian one is much more extreme though - well done! :-) Although we visited snow, and went snowboarding, our actual campsite wasn't in the snow.

* Not to be confused with the most excellent www.kiwiburn.com regional burn, which is in February each year (Southern Summer)

[info]ryskan

March 4 2009, 08:51:29 UTC 3 years ago

oh wow!!! that was a great idea! congratulations))
thank you for sharing the link, I'm so much impressed of your beautiful burning tradition!

btw, while I was making my private burning man, one of my friends attended the traditional Maslenitsa and posted some photos in his blog. He saw taking the Snow Fortes by storm, burn of Lady Winter, even took part in a battle...

http://pavel-otdelnov.livejournal.com/62529.html - the blog is in Russian, but pictures talk for themselves.

[info]ryskan

3 years ago

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[info]bax

March 17 2009, 21:48:58 UTC 3 years ago

Wonderful.

[info]ryskan

March 18 2009, 21:37:14 UTC 3 years ago

thanks))

[info]gojiro0

March 18 2009, 20:40:51 UTC 3 years ago

This is great, thanks for posting!

[info]ryskan

March 18 2009, 21:37:01 UTC 3 years ago

thank you so much :)

[info]zaggy_fr

March 20 2009, 07:36:36 UTC 3 years ago

BRAVO !!!!

Here in France, we are very impressed. This is beautiful. In the snow.

Thank you for these beautiful photos.

French Burners
http://www.frenchburners.org/

[info]ryskan

March 21 2009, 14:54:05 UTC 3 years ago

sorry, bad input

God, you've got such an amazing collection of links!
Could I share them in my community for russian-speaking Burners?

[info]_tsvetkov_

March 20 2009, 13:42:22 UTC 3 years ago

Masha! you are an awesome opossum! :)

[info]ryskan

March 20 2009, 14:13:21 UTC 3 years ago

от опоссума слышу)))

[info]oleg8888

March 20 2009, 18:02:26 UTC 3 years ago

Молодцы!!!! Увидимся в пустыне

[info]ryskan

March 21 2009, 14:43:20 UTC 3 years ago

:) постараемся)

[info]burncast

March 21 2009, 05:14:25 UTC 3 years ago

Wow!

That was really, cool! Thanks for posting it.

[info]ryskan

March 21 2009, 14:44:58 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Wow!

you're sooooo very welcome))

[info]dalloftheabove

April 1 2009, 02:45:10 UTC 3 years ago

Happy Burn Day!

Hope it becomes a tradition!
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