By Steven T. Jones

If the Burning Man Project and its rebel-artist offshoot group, Borg 2, are really engaged in an "art duel," as its instigators have labeled it – a competition over who can bring more and better art to Black Rock City this August – then it appears the upstarts are losing big.

This year the Burning Man Project received more art-grant applications (140), awarded more money (almost $400,000, going to 30-plus projects), and made its funding decisions earlier (March 1, with the formal announcement made March 13) than ever before.

Of course, the rebels are still claiming victory.

Although all the funded projects are being created for temporary display in the Nevada desert, the San Francisco-based limited liability corporation that stages the annual Burning Man festival is one of the largest single funding sources for the Bay Area's industrial artists, a growing subsection of the art world that is centered right here.

"We have some major projects, bigger projects than we've had before. And if they succeed, I think it will be just stunning," Burning Man founder Larry Harvey told the Bay Guardian.

Bay Area artists received almost half this year's grants, including eight from San Francisco, two each from Oakland and Petaluma, and one each from Sebastopol and San Jose. Among the grants are $23,000 to help the Flaming Lotus Girls create Angel of the Apocalypse – a massive sculpture of flaming steel wings, a cavelike body of driftwood, and a screaming head with a mouth full of fire – out at the Box Shop in Hunters Point. "They funded us at almost 100 percent of what we asked for, so now we're able to just leap in and get started," Rebecca Anders, who designed Angel, told us. "It's a wonderful vote of confidence."

The Flaming Lotus Girls is one of several groups that supported the Borg 2 movement (see "State of the Art," 12/8/04) but still sought funding from Burning Man. In fact, several of the nine members of the Borg 2 Art Council asked their nemesis for cash, although only Atlanta artist Zachary Coffin got funding for his project. Even Borg 2 itself unsuccessfully asked for funding – sort of – when founder Jim Mason made an animated film requesting $50,000. "It wasn't a proposal," Harvey told us. "It was a cartoon."

Borg 2 has been struggling to move forward since its big Burning Pig fundraiser last month (see "Art, Danger and Democracy," 2/9/05), from which it obtained the $1,000 in pennies it plans to give as its first art grant after a popular vote March 18.

Borg 2 recently obtained nonprofit status through SomArts Cultural Center and claims to have raised more than $30,000 so far, although it is still figuring out its art-grant process, how to use guest curators from the Madagascar Institute of New York (aside from just forking over the 8.25 percent of total proceeds they seek), and what the Borg 2 camp will look like.

"Creating a corporation in a month and a half has been very difficult," admits Borg 2 Art Council president Charlie Gadeken (who also runs the Box Shop and works with the Flaming Lotus Girls). "It would almost make sense to disband the Art Council now because we created the organization."

Yet he and Mason are already saying their revolt prompted a series of reforms within the Burning Man organization, including more art-grant funding and a less slavish approach to making art projects comply with the annual theme.

Harvey and LadyBee, Burning Man's art curator, don't accept that assessment, noting that these changes were already in the works before the revolt began in December. But they both agree that the resulting attention has triggered more and bigger art proposals.

"We're funding 30 really cool projects," LadyBee told us. "It's going to rock."

For more from our Burning Man series, go to www.sfbg.com/burningman.

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