'When We Are Fearless We Can Be Gentle With Anyone&%2339;

-A sculptural project by Kirsty Hulm

My proposal is to create a sculptural text intervention at this years Burning Man Festival in Nevada, U.S.A-

 It will read-

'When We Are Fearless We Can Be Gentle With Anyone.&%2339;

Burning Man is an event which transforms a desert salt flat in the middle of nowhere into the biggest public sculpture park in the world, for one week in September out of every year. The prestige, overwhelming experience and sheer volume of people (60,000) who will view the work in the week it is on display is why I have chosen Burning Man as the sculptural site.  I have attended the festival twice, and have seen the massive cultural, experiential and personal significance it has, for so many people. It can be hard to describe the festival, so please watch the attached video  and go to the website below for more information, images and explanations of the radical philosophy of the event (no money is spend during the event- only bartering between participants): http://www.burningman.com/ 

The sculpture will be 70cm high laser cut MDF letters, hand painted, well lit from the front, and supported on a metal  framework which will stand upright just above ground level. Viewers will be able to walk around and interact with the words on a bodily level/scale- an immense size which will compete with all the other stimulation around it. Burning Man is world renowned for its immensely scaled scultpure- here is one example below:

My project aims to foster social engagement between festival participants by creating a reflective space to question and understand the emotion of fear, and how it might be impacting them on a day to day basis. 

I believe it is pertinent for the work to be shown in the USA. It is a counterbalance to shock worthy news, or the government encouragement to keep 'fighting the good fight-' the work asks- who are we fighting, and why are we so afraid?

I am an emerging artist, writer and curator, originally from country Victoria. I moved to Melbourne seven years ago to study painting at Monash University, where I've received my Honours degree.

I am passionate about art which engenders social reflection, particularly public interventions. I have had a number of exhibitions in Melbourne, at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and Criterion Gallery in Hobart, and have recently been invited to produce work for the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in South Australia. I hope to be able to move more and more out of galleries and into working sculpturally within the public domain. I have had a highly publicised and critically acclaimed public artwork- a neon text piece on St. Paul's Cathedral, Flinders St, Melbourne for the duration of the 2009 Next Wave Festival (one month), reading 'Imagine Me & You, I Do.'

See below:

Changing the social and cultural landscape in a way which makes people more reflective is at the core of my aims as an artist.

I have the ability to manage sites, media, concepts and funding.  I struggle only as an emerging artist to gather the immense amount of funds necessary to create public art. 

My funding goal is $800, to assist with materials, labour and transport of the work in the United States to the Burning Man site, and to bring it home. Some of the production costs will be offset by in-kind support from One Hat One Hand LLC production company in San Francisco, California, my kind friends who will help me make the work.

I already have return flights to America and free entry to the festival (I work as part of the installation crew each year), so I am in no way looking for monetary support for those costs- everything will be going towards the artwork (and maybe a bit of help feeding myself while I'm there!)

Please help me to spread the overwhelmingly positive message of this artwork across the globe, so that we may all be wiser, calmer and more aware of ourselves in a time when these sentiments are not only discouraged, but often dissuaded. Any and all help will be so greatly appreciated to achieve my dream. 

Warmest Regards,

Kirsty