We’ve transpired through the mysteries of S P A C E and CREATION, and now, as we splash Out Of The Blue, we invite you to step into being, Through The Prism. This is where we begin: not with certainty, but with becoming, with something just on the edge of comprehension, a sound mistaken for song, a moment mistaken for meaning. Before the Earth had four corners – before there were spaces and places, plants, people...
In the beginning, everything existed as one in an ever-flowing expression of the force of creation – the great Primordial Ocean of life. While this ocean of energy danced, one of the droplets became aware of itself, and finding itself separate from the vastness, everything changed. Out of the Great Waters came Mantis, the great being known by the old people as /Kaggen. The forces of the great ocean threatened...
Before time, when silence was yet unbroken, there was SPACE, an incalculable expanse of possibility that lay in patient anticipation for a spark of inception. From this void sprung a symphony of existence; a creative catalyst set the stage of Quaggafontein for the biggest bang there ever was … Creation. If I, this mortal shell, am going to die, let me at least live on through my creations.J. M. Coetzee CREATION is...
AfrikaBurn 2023 invites you to embark on a journey through universes, to new worlds, through a glimmering wormhole and out the other side. Quaggafontein beckons with a circus in the stars, a field of imagination ripe for navigation and creation. Forge your own wonders, design cosmic delights and play with your weird and alien crew. This horizon beckons you. Breathe deep the night air, drink the moonlight moonshine. Stumble and...
Dearest artists, dreamers, miscreants, poets, builders, believers, renegades, anarchists, lovers and light weavers… whether you’re ON the Bus or OFF the Bus, we invite you to take a journey with us into that mythical liminal zone – that elastic upside down, inside out, uncomfortably delicious, deliberately serendipitous, threshold – between the desert and the default world… that we all call Home.
This year’s theme invites you to embrace the notion that what we co-create in the desert is an experiment. What do you want to achieve - and how are you going to achieve it? Do you want to find better ways of being, and doing? Are you interested in exploring new frontiers in electronics, sound or light? Are you an amateur pioneer in pyrotechnics, art or kinetic sculpture? Got a...
Ephemerality (from Greek – ephemeros) is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Rising like a dusty mirage out of the Karoo heat, there’s a city that many call home. A manifestation of our collective imagination, the culmination of our collective efforts. It comes and goes, and ebbs and flows. It’s transient, temporary and transitory. It’s neither here, nor there. It is real in its unrealness. “Out of nothing, we created...
Our theme this year invites you to engage with the level to which you are responsible for defining Tankwa Town, a temporary city in a participant-driven society. Larry Harvey has described how when the small handful of Cacophonist and Bohemians physically moved 'The Man' from Baker Beach to the Black Rock Desert, "...no one asked what it was, what its significance was or what it meant, the reason being, because...
Play offers us a portal: a magical doorway that connects locations, dimensions, or points in time. Where truths are to be found obliquely, where nonsense, irrationality and intuition are prized. Openings to these magic portals are varied and wondrous. It may be a fabled wardrobe, the break of day, an inviting smile, or the blank canvas of the burn. Step through the looking glass, fall down the rabbit hole, be...
Whether X stands for exoticism, taboo, or technological progress, it’s a reminder that Tankwa Town is made by you. Honour the builders who came before, upon whose creativity we stand. Let’s embrace the ever-constant drive for new and unexpected. We invite you to engage with this open thematic and participate in the new decade.
Another year has rolled round, and here we are again, with a fantastic theme for you to sink your head, heart and hands into. Ladies and gents, we give you THE GIFT!
AfrikaBurn is a jester, it is a call to play, to question, to catalyze change for the greater good. The burn was born out of impulse; to create freely, to experiment, to express, to dare, to do, to celebrate. Be a culture hero. Be brave, play the fool – be the Trickster and participate in inventing our world anew! Got it? Great! Pick it up, play with it, consider it,...
Unleash your inner trickster, mother, wise old man, divine child, spirit. Your joker, jester, your king and your queen. Are you very  good? And are you very wicked? A dragon or dragon-slayer? Does your animus have an anima? Or are you pure spirit animal? Male, female, misfit, mermaid, rebel, angel, force of nature ... bring the archetypes to life, to dance across the desert.
Mirage – a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce an illusion of water, people, or objects. What is there? What is real? And what is pure imagination? Is this a mirror of ourselves? A shimmering reflection. Temporary, transient. We gather on that lively line where the hot earth meets an aloof sky, and this is where we dance, sing, rejoice. But come quick, for...
STOF Is the Afrikaans word for dust. The Germanic word for matter. matter and energy, is the building material of everything, plofstof are explosives, ignition dust - Tankwa is all about dust, stuff – materials - the stuff we work with stuff- materialism…we have too much stuff, too many belongings kool stoff is carbon, the base of all life the stuff in my head…..what to do with it! Stof is...