On October 10th last year (2018), our annual call for Creative Grant applications to be sent in went out – and once again, we’re amazed by the wild & inventful creations that our community have got up their sleeves!
We’re very happy to announce that this time round, the amount distributed through our Grant programme comes to no less than R1,000,000 – making this our greatest amount of funding yet allocated to artworks and associated projects! To see the projects that have been awarded in the 2019 round, scroll down – and if you’d like to know how the process of awarding Grants works, take a look at our Grant Assessment page, which describes the full process, and explains who’s involved in the assessments.
 

Project: Exploring Dreams
Collective: ActionArte
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
This year we wish to take our rigging and make a shady, dreamy atmosphere to create workshops and one big performance. It’s a high mental rigging with four legs and a round top. It would be covered with a stretch material that is opened up on the four sides with poles and tie down the points. In the back there will be a backdrop of a bid dream catcher made out of a metal ring, fire ribbon covered with colourful strings. On the sides around there will be around 100 smaller dream catchers hanging (they are being created in workshops at AfrikaBurn and before in the process of the creation around Cape Town).
The “lucid daydreaming” show will be an inspirational, self-discovering, creative process for both participants of the daily workshops and the audience of the show. They will experience and see a story of how we can take part of choosing how to connect with our inner strength, dreams and choices of life. It will be told by using different circus expressions like acrobatic, juggling, dance and fire as examples.
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Project: Be Hold
Collective: Be Hold
Location: Gauteng
Artwork Description:
A raised deck sculptured into the shape of an outstretched hand – drawing you in to the nest and pause on its palm, beholding the magnificence and beauty of your surroundings… reflect upon the hand that gives… the one that receives… or that which sets you free…
One approaches the Be Hold from the top of the ridge (where Non-Compliance the Elephant was positioned 2018) moving West, looking down the slope the view resembling that of one’s own outstretched hand… Once arriving, the arm and wrist from a ramp up to the palm, bringing you to the elevated platform.
A shady spot is to be found beneath the structure, made of braced gums poles in tripods holding up beams that timber deck is laid on. The fingers are then sculptured in thinner timber in a matrix of trusses and cross braces. The structure is then covered in reeds or wattle vine. Gum poles are fixed to rebar pins where they meet the ground.

 
Project: Bebe Deliverance – A new born Elephant Puppet
Collective: Deliverance
Location: Western Cape
Artwork Description:
Life size new born elephant puppet (approx. 1,0m tall). To be externally controlled by three handlers (puppeteers). The weight of the puppet will partially be carried by a mono-wheel, affixed to the “backbone”. A steel skeleton, welded up from bicycle tube and parts, will support the “sculptured” polystyrene limbs (covered with foam and fabric), body and head (steel and/or wire frame covered with foam and fabric). Handlers will have extended control arms two allow then to walk at Bebe’s side and give him ample space to fall about as baby elephants do.
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Chimera
Collective: Chimera
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
A huge dream catcher by night and by day a meditation hut with activities such as crocheting meditation mats, which can be donated (left behind) so that it can be used afterwards for fundraising or donations to a charity organisation. My charity of choice is Cotland’s Somerset west as well as Hally Trust also situated in Somerset west. Burners can also just lay under dream catcher on a mat and look up at the patterns and colours made by the sun thru Chimera or write your dreams on a piece of cloth and tie it on to the art installation. All materials will be provided. 
The materials will be mostly recycled. Scraps of fabric (from a clothing manufacturer), reused gum poles, metal, screws etc. 
 

 
Dancing In The Dust
Collective: 463
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
It is a Dust Devil. A six-sided gum pole structure with wattle woven around until it represents a dust devil. A metal frame will be welded together and where the arches connect the metal frame will be connected to the inner gum. This will create the top half shape. 3 arches from the ground to create strength. A sphere at the top of the dust devil inside the centre. Materials are wattle, gum and metal, with a metal frame welded together and where the arches connect the metal frame will be connected to the inner gum. This will create the top half shape.
 

 
Project: Dial-A-Confession
Collective: Stof
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
The artwork is made up of two pieces. Two phone booths, similar in size and structure to your classic London telephone booth but decorated in a way that is more reminiscent of confession booths. The booths sit on either end of the Binnekring, facing different directions. Each booth has a telephone inside it, and the phones are connected so that they can call one another. The idea is that you could be walking past one and suddenly hear the phone ring. When you pick it up, you can have a conversation with an anonymous stranger on the other side of the Binnekring. There will be instructions above the phone which will suggest that you make a confession to the person on the other end of the line.
 

 
Project: DLULIMIDA
Collective: Masiphumelele Youth Empowerment Project
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
“DLULIMIDA” is a Xhosa name meaning crossing borders/ stepping over boundaries/ pushing the edges.
Through 4 eye-catching pop-up performances that will weave their way through the Tankwa Town streets, Dlulimida asks questions about our relationships within and between communities, our personal freedoms and our physical vices.
Provoking its audience to cross their own boundaries of thought and engage in new creative conversations about how we choose to interact in this world, Dlulimida blurs the divide between audience and performer, inviting people to join the action!
Our ensemble of physical performers takes you on intense interactive 5-minute journeys exploring controversial social issues in playful and fun ways, using contemporary clown, physical theatre, choral voice and bold design.
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Project: Ephemeropoly
Collective: Board Gamers
Location: West Coast – Moorreesburg
Artwork Description:
Never again will friendships be broken up by who owns Clifton or Llandudno, but rather the oke who landed on Camp Anvil first has to gift anyone who lands on it something or hand the camp over. We’ve eliminated the bank and modelled the game around a gift economy. Everyone plays until they’ve had enough, and no one goes to jail.
Ephemeropoly will be a large-scale parody of the board-game Monopoly putting a spin on its capitalist theme. We plan to use it to educate people on the principles, as well as volunteering – both highlighting all 11 principles throughout the gameplay as well as engaging around the culture of volunteering and the hard work volunteers put in.
The board will have eleven blocks per side to symbolize the eleven principles, and so we don’t get sued for using Hasbro’s IP. Each block will be a board of ply with a vinyl sticker over it.
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Project: ESOMOYA ISTIMELA
Collective: ESOMOYA ISTIMELA
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
A 7m long 2.4m wide 2.8m tall trailer and sound system with a fold down stage and 3D built Artwork for projections on top. The trailer’s foundation will be built in the theme of the 1960’s Airstream: an aluminium shell with a hybrid steel and aluminium frame. We will create detachable horns and other animalistic and African decor.
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Project: Gondawana Digitata
Collective: Afrika Digitata
Location: Western Cape
Artwork Description:
The piece will be made in 3 parts each measuring approximately I m and to finally stand at roughly 3 m in height with a base diameter of 2 m. It will be made out of a steel frame that will be clad in cane, secured by rivets then painted and embellished with flowers (please note that in line with the theme Ephemeropolis; the baobab flowers once a year only). We will take this knowledge to present a piece that inspires this unique moment in a temporary space.

 
ILUKULUKU – Temple of Curiosity
Collective: ILUKULUKU
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
The ILUKULUKU Temple of Curiosity is an interactive structure built out of a scaffolding base adorned with neon geometric patterns and shapes hand painted onto plywood. The colourful ambience created by the colour, pattern and words will bring a vivid change to the Tankwa landscape and also alter people’s perceptions of spaces into places. The structure comes alive by night when UV light reflects on the patterns.
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Project: Kite Train
Collective: Kite Chain
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
A kite train or arch with a length of 500m containing 500 Eddy kites with tails of 1.5m and reflectivestrips for night visibility.
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Project: LaserBurn
Collective: Light SWAT
Location: Chile
Artwork Description:
We produce our own lighting equipment, dismembering and reassembling electronic devices to our needs. We then use them to carry out large scale light art interventions in remote places in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile (and soon, in the woods in Southern Chile).
These interventions take the form of large geometric sculptures created with small lasers in a chosen site. Our sculptures are interactive laser mazes, inviting the visitors to plunge into its own sci-fi world in a natural and technological setting. We aim at taking people out of their beds at night and invite them to enjoy both the beauty of Nature and a comfortable dizziness created by our artefact.
The maze is made of laser beams reflected one or several times by distant mirrors (10 to 100 meters, depending air humidity, wind and other parameters) to create paths in the landscape inviting the visitor to enter the structure and the natural site in which it is set.
Along the laser paths, the visitors reach crossroads where they are invited to choose new paths. Mistakes lead to dead-ends. There, either all the lights are turned off and the visitor is forced back in the darkness. Or the visitors are submerged into various artworks made of solar lights, smokes, stroboscopes or black light with phosphorescent materials.
All the structure is powered by batteries. The various electronic devices create their own wireless network and communicate between each other to locate the visitors via sensors to provide them an interactive experience.

 
Project: LUPIS – Lobo’s Lover
Collective: Lupis Stage
Location: Western Cape
Artwork Description:
A 7m tall wolf with his howl directed at the moon (upward gaze). The structure will be solid and safe, with foundations into the ground (approx. 500mm deep). A sound system within its chest, and a fire-thrower or laser emanating from his mouth.
Made from wood panels & fabric/mesh to clad the panels for video-mapping onto.
 

 
Project: Mankala
Collective: Mankala
Location: Johannesburg
Artwork Description:
For 2018 Mankala was going to build a large performance art space but ended up used the Everland structures with some modifications. Mankala 2019 will renovate & make minor modifications to the existing structure for better wind and sun protection. It will be African music, dance & storytelling workshops and interactive performances.
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Project: Mariposa Perdida
Collective: Mariposa Perdida
Location: Germany
Artwork Description:
We will create a LED-lit butterfly out of MDF plates. The construction process (similar to the one for the Shrine of Lost Moment in 2018) will take place at a friends’ house in Cape Town. The final assembly will take place on the playa. The Butterfly will not be burned but will travel back to Cape Town and eventually fly across two continents back to Germany in order tell the story of its temporary beauty, born in the Tankwa desert, at regional burns all over Europe. After its ritual birth during the opening ceremony of Tankwa Town Mariposa Perdida will travel to a different location each night. His voyage will take place around sunset to art pieces, camps or dance floors. Mariposa will be placed to share his temporary beauty with his temporary host.
The LED’s will be attached to the wooden frame of a butterfly and be covered with stretchable textile. The size of Mariposa Perdida will be approximately 1x1m and a height of 50cm. The energy will for the LEDs will be provided by rechargeable power
bank.
 

 
Project: AfriKhayaLethu
Collective: Emzantsi
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
We propose a basic structure which can accommodate the meditations of as broad as possible a group as we can manage. We will commission a workshop series over the time leading to AB which produces the material components to create a ceremonial space. 
The space itself is neutral, a boma/yurt/kraal or Maloka Constructed out of wood – a circular frame consisting of 13 sections with a roof structure around a central pole. It will be clad with sticks in panels and embroidered blankets, roofed with appliqued fabric, carpeted and cushioned with hand made items produced in workshop. The sticks will be decorated by young men in workshops around masculinity so that each one carries the intention for a positive masculine expression.
The roof will be made of ties joined together to create the tent cover. The floor will be carpeted with a mat of Mphepu sewn into Hessian bags and covered with embroidered blankets and cushions.
The intention is that each, stick, cushion ,flag or panel is made by hand in a workshop with a focused intention to bring to consciousness an issue of concern. The structure will provide a space where the public can participate and add to the structure during the festival. Materials will be provided so that you can sew on or pin on something you have made or prayed, or decorate a stick. We would like it to keep growing.

Project: Octocrab
Collective: 2Cool
Location: Johannesburg
Artwork Description:
Octocrab is comprised of two sea creatures, the crab representing the masculine concepts of protection and boundaries and the octopus symbolising creation and regeneration. This is a wooden structure embodying both creatures, creating a space in which people can interact and observe others.
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Project: Our Workshop
Collective: Our Workshop
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
We would like to make a roving ‘workshop’ and ‘exhibition’ type space for our members to share their vibes and get to meet other event goers. Further to sharing our craft-skills by making stuff with guests (using a majority of ‘waste’ materials – upcycling – for example hand-stitching, crochet, wirework, cordless-drill-screwing, taping things up, rivets, upcycling, design-thinking etc… as well as our world-class Langa-chill) we would like to put these skills to even more use at the 2019 ephemeropolis event by fixing people’s shit. 
Things break. Things fall apart.
Sometimes they fall completely to pieces.
When the burners are in a bit of a fix, we’d like to offer them a bit of a fix by giving a ‘tinker service’ on a trolley that moves around the Binnekring. 
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Project: Psyche
Collective: Psyche
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
This year we have decided to make a butterfly (Psyche). You will be able to view the butterfly from two different sides, therefore having 4 wings. Each wing will be approximately 2.4m high and approximately 1.2m wide. It will be made out of wood and the wings are going be laser cut with a pattern. We are going to put a little seat in between the butterfly wings so people can take a moment to take in their surroundings. The antlers will be laser cut out of wood, with beautiful lighting in the evening. This art work is just something beautiful for people to look at and take amazing memories home with them. 
It will not have moving parts and will not have wheels, it will be a stationary butterfly.

 
SKOPX
Collective: SKOP
Location: Namakwa, Springbok
Artwork Description:
The design of the sculpture will make out a part of the project.

 
Project: SkyLabyrinth
Collective: SkyLabyrinth
Location: Worcester
Artwork Description: SkyLabyrinth is a 3-dimensional labyrinth. The creation gives a unique labyrinth experience, opening one’s mind and providing a raised labyrinth centre, from which the labyrinth walker gets an enhanced perspective of life from which enlightenment will come.
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Project: SKY LADDER
Collective: Kite Chain
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
A Stairway to Heaven in the form of a kite
 

 
Project: Spyrogyra
Collective: Spyrogyra
Location: Western Cape
Artwork Description: Dynamic, spiralling cascade of musical wind pipes.
 

 
Project: Stone 7
Collective: Swoon
Location: Germany
Artwork Description:
Stone Two Point Seven is a claimable peak of floating stones. There will be 7 stones in total, the first and last will be the lowest, resting on the ground, 5 will be suspended floating in air by wire rope supported by steel columns. Approaching from either side of the installation a visitor can climb up the first 4 stones before reaching the highest point of the installation with their feet about 3m above the desert floor. From there they can descend down the 3 stones to the other side. The stones will be secured, but left with the ability to wobble gently which will make the climb exhilarating. There will also be space under the stones allowing visitors to be underneath a 400kg stone as it hovers effortlessly above them.
 
 

 
Project: Sweet Love Gateway
Collective: No-fomosapiens
Location: Gauteng
Artwork Description:
We are aiming to build a gateway to the ‘Sweet Love Cinema’ with interactive LED lighting at night. The gateway is a parabolic hyperboloid. Four manila lashings at the points where the 11m blue gum poles intersect will secure the frame, with the whole structure suspended in mid-air by a tensile member mesh. The blue gum poles are treated before purchase which makes them withstand the elements better as well as making them fire retardant. The polyethylene twine does not burn either, reducing the likelihood of the structure being a fire hazard.
The structure is going to have laser trip-wires at the base that will trigger the LED strips running along the poles. The LED’s will be battery powered which will be charged by solar panels. We are looking to have 2400 LED lights that we can control individually via 4 Arduino DUE boards. There will be a master Raspberry PI coordinating the lighting effects of the Arduino boards as well as detecting motion from 3 laser trip wires. The LED strips are waterproof, and the Arduino & Raspberry PI boards will be housed in a plastic or metal container.
 

 
Project: Temple of Stars
Collective: Starlight Crew
Location: Johannesburg
Brief Artwork Description:
Temple based on 5-point star sacred geometry. The main tower of the structure will have a lattice cover made of recycled pallets and lit up from the inside to give a beautiful effect.
The structure will be surrounded by a perimeter barrier, that will create open space around the structure and prevent art cars to come close to the structure. This will help preserve the sacred space in the centre.
 

 
Project: The Dung Beetle
Collective: The Dung Beetle
Location: Capricorn District/Polokwane
Artwork Description:
The Dung Beetle is a moveable year-round art and environmental education platform creatively crafted like an African Dung Beetle, built by African artists for an Afrika Burn 2018 debut in association with Colorado-based not-for-profit alliance Earth. This exciting moveable art stage is based on a heavy-duty 1 ton 2 axle trailer, and can be pulled by any pickup truck with a trailer hitch. It is built from recycled metal and resembles the iconic African Dung Beetle, pushing its big ball of up-cycled poop across the desert floor.

 
Project: The Flaming Flamingoes
Collective: Tea & Crumpets
Location: Qatar
Artwork Description:
These are a series of sculptures of everyone’s favourite pink wading bird, each one constructed with recycled materials. Each bird can be made from a single pallet, with a cinderblock base. The only other material is the paint. Each one is comprised of three sections to allow ease of transportation; a body, the head and neck, and the leg, mounted in a cinderblock stand. The pattern is quite flexible and not especially accurate, to allow each one to have a bit of individuality.
Interactivity comes in this way; each bird will be left at a different location in Tankwa Town, with instructions painted upon its person to help re-unite the flock at a specific location and time. I’m sure another layer of interactivity will be developed around their backstory, below 🙂 I conceive of 6 sculptures in all on this occasion. Once the participants have helped bring them together then we can burn them! The only left overs will be the bases and a few screws and nails.

 
Project: The Prickly Parlour
Collective: Team Kyle
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
The prickly parlour is an old-fashioned lounge in the middle of the desert, with a contradictory twist. Every surface is covered in a colourful assemblage of handmade plushy cacti. It contains all you might find in your standard grandparents’ front room: armchairs, coffee table, standing lamps, and a ratty old carpet. A free-standing window, with lace curtains. A notable centrepiece is the old gramophone stand, covered in cacti, and housing a digital music player. This gramophone plays a collection of easy listening grooves, French chill, short stories, jazz, animal sounds, poetry, ghost stories, curated whispers, adding to the surreal atmosphere of the parlour.
As is tradition, a visitors book is left on the coffee table, in which visitors record their appreciation for the space, or the minutes of their meeting, or just their present frame of mind.
This artwork is quite scalable depending on budget. This year we want to make it bigger and better, with a few more fixed pieces (such as the gramophone and lampstand), to make the ensemble more lounge-like. There will be about 15 – 20 seats made from fabric covered foam attached to milk crates (see images attached). We also want to add as many little details as possible, like photo frames, ceramic bulldogs, ugly ashtrays and lace doily antimacassars, all improved with colourful cacti of course. 
 

 
Project: Space Sheeps
Collective: The Space-Sheeps
Location: France
Artwork Description: The performance I would like to bring this year, is a small play. 
With actors costumed as a shepherd for one and wolves for the others.  A flock of sheep sculptures are made from ply-wood and steel wool, there is about 20 sheep, similar in size to real ones. Each sheep has different details on it. (crazy eyes, sunglasses, necklace, wig)
On the occasion of Afrikaburn 2019 and for the first time , the festival is hosting
an amazing flock of Space Sheep! During the day time, the Burners will have the opportunity to meet and create contact with these very friendly creatures. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to stay extremely vigilant because desert wolves are never far away. And everyone should know that they can hardly resist the beat of techno music.

 
The Union
Collective: Union Crew
Location: Cape Town
Brief Artwork Description:
The “UNION” is an architectural artwork, made out of scrap & recycled wood, inspired by an “onion” that will bring people together in “union”: as they start peeling off the layers thus physically move closer to the core of the art piece. It’s a reference for emotionally peeling off the unnecessary layers that others/society have put around your authentic self. At the centre of the art piece (which is consisted as a tiny maze growing from more closed to more open in the middle) will be a miniature “onion” on which people can engrave messages/words of unwanted things, experiences to be shed. Around this “core” will be benches, also made out of wood, calling for a space to be together, to exchange stories, to write off your own unwanted layers, to get UNITED in the process. This art piece, made out of scraps, will burn at the end, thus releasing the negative energy and transforming it into ashes, new positive energy. Leaving us all with our authentic cores. Of course, the ashes will be taken care off at the end thus leaving no more trace.
The “UNION” stands for what AfrikaBurn is all about: shedding all the layers that aren’t necessarily yours and just being -you-, it’s about a place where this is possible without the constraints of the default world.
 

 
Project: Tip Top Bus Stop
Collective: Tip Top Bus Stop
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:
A bus stop, specifically two bus stops located at the tip and top of the Tankwa Town map layout. The bus stops are simply designed wooden structures including a tall wooden vertical street lamp. They are functional providing an information board including a map, theme camps, burn times etc. A chalk board for messages and possible pick up/drop off times. We will be installing solar panels to power the lighting and installing radios with low power speakers playing Radio Free Tankwa from both bus stops.
The purpose of the bus stops is to facilitate a space between the mutant vehicles and the walking burners as well as adding to the temporary city aspect of AfrikaBurn.
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Project: Twisted Da VinciX
Collective: Die Brandnetels
Location: Cape Winelands, Worcester
Artwork Description:
Recycling 2017 project for 3rd year. This time 189 of the triangular pyramids packed in 9 triangular groups in a circle with 9 paths leading to central chill zone. In the centre will be another artwork based on a Leonardo Da Vinci self-supporting structure.
Everything.
 

Project: Unhcegila in Flames
Collective: Zebracorns
Location: Hungary
Artwork Description: Unhcegila in Flames is an enormous wooden frame sculpture of a serpent moving through the desert. The core of the piece is a huge wood frame, decorated with lights. The massive snake’s body and motion is realistically captured, with an upraised head which looks down open mouthed upon festival goers from a height of 16.5m, with a total body length of 130m, undulating through the desert. The weaving length, or the length of the total space that the sculpture occupies, is 105m. Stability and strength of the artwork is assured by the use of a triangular wooden frame in construction, so that this is not only impressive, but also sturdy enough to withstand the rigours of happy AfrikaBurners interacting with the piece.
To decorate it to its full glory, the snake’s mouth and eyes are outfitted with a light show to make it appear as if the serpent is alive and all-powerful as it crawls through Tankwa Town. The sculpture is static and not mobile; and includes decking within, so that people can enter the build and walk through the belly of the snake.

 
Project: Untitled#1
Collective: A Work of Gaul
Location: Cape Town
Artwork Description:

• Untitled #1 is a collaborative sculpture built by the participants of AfrikaBurn.
• It is a garden of flowers surrounding a tree.
• Flowers will be built by participants during the event but participants will also be encouraged to build flowers before the event and bring them to the garden.
• After the event the flowers will be installed in and around surrounding towns shortly before the flower season. Participants who build flowers will be allowed to take their own flowers home with them if they please but will be encouraged to install them in public.
• The tree will be built exclusively at the event from Monday to Friday. It will be built flat on the ground.
• The tree’s leaves and trunk will be made from half round scrap wood and woven wattle or blue gum.
• On Saturday the tree will be raised by human power and burned shortly after it is raised, in the middle of the day.
• Before the burning tree falls onto the surrounding flowers the pin that holds the tree upright will be removed and the tree will fall flat into the empty space it was built in.
• Then we braai!
• Besides the structural timber of the tree the best effort will be made to use only recycled, salvaged, scrap or harvested (alien) wood and steel.

Stay tuned for a couple more updates to this list – we’re not (quite) done yet, as there are projects whose nature has changed, or have been awarded funds that were originally awarded to another cancelled project.