Stadium of Self

Photo by Kate Raudenbush of New York, NY.

"On your initial approach, the Stadium of the Self suggests a venue of intense competition, judgment, fear, defeat, and triumph. As you venture around the onyx-walled structure, you discover the eighth wall missing. In its place, an elevated pathway of gold slices through to the structure's center and reveals an intimate chamber constructed of a dizzying vortex of luminous gold mirror. Seventy gold mirrored stadium steps encircle you with reflected light. The interior of this Coliseum holds only one individual participant in its center, and when looking into the stands for approval or judgment you are faced with an audience of one, simultaneously multiplied seventy times: the seventy panels of gold mirror are angled to reflect us back to ourselves, our own ego. In this Stadium of the Self it is only ourselves that we answer to."
--Funded Installations at Burning Man, 2005

Someday I too will go to Burning Man…