‘No fate but what we make’ — Ukrainians transform storm-destroyed Burning Man installation

When a storm in Nevada destroyed a Ukrainian art installation at this year’s Burning Man festival, the Ukrainian team turned a setback into a symbol. Drawing on resilience forged in more than three years of Russia’s full-scale war, they created a new piece out of the remnants within days.  

The original installation, “Black Cloud” — 15 meters high, 17 meters wide, and 30 meters long — was meant to symbolize the looming threat of a new world war.

The warning comes as Russia, backed by a number of authoritarian regimes worldwide, shows no signs of ending its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is widely believed to be preparing further aggression against Europe.

Burning Man is a music and art festival known for its “radical self-reliance and self-expression,” held annually in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, the United States.

Hurricane-force winds destroyed the “Black Cloud” just a few hours after it had been built. According to the team behind the project, the fate of the installation mirrors the harsh reality in Ukraine: a relentless effort by Ukrainians to create and preserve life while Russia seeks to obliterate it.

Not looking for a dark omen amid the installation’s destruction — it happened on Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day — the team behind the project expressed “a quiet hope” in their press release that “this storm has taken the threat (of a world war) with it.”

The team unveiled a new installation on Sept. 1, the final day of this year’s Burning Man festival.

The new installation “No fate” — short for “There is no fate but what we make” — was made with the salvaged pieces of the “Black Cloud.” According to the project’s producer, Ukrainian volunteer Vitaliy Deynega, the title symbolizes people taking control of their own destiny and refusing to give up, no matter what obstacles come their way.

“When we were thinking about this year’s work, the image of Sarah Connor (from the ‘Terminator’ series), shouting this phrase to the world to warn of danger and the need to stop it, came to mind very often,” Deynega wrote on Facebook on Sept. 1.

“I am absolutely convinced that if Western nations do not urgently jump into the arms race and military technology race, it won’t be long before they face the consequences as well.”

Deynega is the founder of Come Back Alive, Ukraine’s largest foundation that has been supporting the Ukrainian army through weapons supplies and other vital assistance since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Last year, Ukraine’s Burning Man installation, “I’m Fine,” was created from the remnants of items damaged by Russian attacks, symbolizing the toll Ukrainians endure amid the ongoing full-scale war.

The installation weighed 19 tons and rose seven meters high, with items — like bullet-riddled street signs — collected from liberated Ukrainian territories.

“People stand and look (at the installation). Sometimes for a very long time. The braver ones touch the sharp edges,” Deynega wrote during last year’s Burning Man.

“Our absolutely inadequate life situation has become normal for us — we have learned to be strong and celebrate life even under these circumstances. We react less and less to rockets and death, sorrow and the tremendous effort required just to avoid losing our minds from the fears of war and the guilt of not doing enough.”

What Russia stole, these Crimean Tatar authors endeavor to reclaim with literature

To much of the world, Crimea is mostly synonymous with the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine — once a precious Black Sea resort, the peninsula was seized at gunpoint in 2014 and transformed into a fortified military outpost. But behind the headlines of Russia’s ongoing occupation of Crimea is a deeper, often overlooked story: that of the Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of the peninsula, who have endured centuries of repression and now face yet another struggle for survival under Russi

The Kyiv IndependentKate Tsurkan