Interview with David Best

17/03/15

David Best: interview

  

In recent years, Californian artist David Best’s temples have become synonymous with the annual Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA, where he first built one in 2000. Their burning on the final night of the week-long event offers a more peaceful and contemplative finale after the previous night’s burning man extravaganza. Over the years, Best’s temples have grown in size and attracted increasing numbers of visitors – many of whom bring personal artefacts, letters, photographs and items of clothing to pin to the interior or place at the altar, seeking, in the ultimate fire, a sense of release, often from violent and turbulent events, such as rape or suicide.

This March sees Best’s first grand-scale international temple being constructed – and ceremonially burned – in Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland, a place where bonfires have a significant past of their own dating from the Troubles. Studio International met Best (born 1945) in London shortly before construction began.

To read this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/david-best-interview-people-temple-burning-man-derry-londonderry