On Playa - performing at The Folly
By John Curley
(…) Who knows what exact combination of factors came together to persuade Keane to launch The Folly? But now here we are, and people are simply amazed at what he and his Folly Builders have accomplished at the far end of the playa. In the space of, oh, what seems like maybe 24 hours, a collection of wooden huts strewn all over the playa floor have been magically transformed into The Folly.
From the group’s site: “The Folly of Man has been described as the state or quality of being foolish; lack of understanding or sense. It is said that if a person commits no follies, they lose their wits through weariness. … In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of garden ornaments usually associated with the class of buildings to which it belongs.”
Keane’s initial premise for the piece was characteristically modest: “I wanted to build a big barn and have 50 kegs of beer and a load of Irish musicians,” he says on his fundraising page here . (By the way, that fundraising campaign is still active, and it could really use your help. Even though the project received an honorarium from Burning Man, that won’t cover anything close to the actual cost. People go broke doing art at Burning Man; won’t you help stop that from happening?) (…)
Read more about “The Folly” at Burning Man 2019 By John Curley
