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Kurenivka 2025 — Mission

Building Presence.
Carrying Meaning.
Creating Impact.

This year, Kurenivka becomes the camp that delivers the highest number of impactful projects to the playa — each one honorarium-level in ambition, each one designed to be lived, felt, and remembered.

In 2025, Kurenivka arrives on the playa not as a single camp or artwork, but as a constellation of projects — each with its own voice, scale, and purpose, united by one mission:

"To bring Ukrainian presence, resilience, and future-oriented culture to Black Rock City through art, sound, and collective experience."

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215

camp mates

5

Art Projects

42

Artists

4000

galons of water

Our 2025 Mission

Kurenivka’s 2025 mission is built around three core ideas:

Presence

Ukraine is here. Not symbolically, but physically, creatively, and collaboratively.

Care

creating spaces for grounding, reflection, and human connection amid intensity.

Future-Making

showing how culture, technology, and community can coexist in resilient forms.

We do not separate camp life from art, or sound from meaning. Everything we build is part of one ecosystem.

Projects on Playa 2025

Soundhealing Lounge
The Point of Unity
Merman
The Lightning Tower
Blue Bull


Merman

Burning Man Honorarium 2019 

We are built to swim — even through fire.In 2019, our team from Ukraine was awarded a grant by Burning Man — a global experiment in community, art, and radical expression. Merman was meant to rise in this desert.But the world froze. The pandemic shut everything down.AND THEN — WAR.We stayed. We survived. We built him anyway.From steel and plywood — but also from smoke, grief, and stubborn love.He stood in the heart of Kyiv, under sirens, beside shelters, among people who kept living.Now, in 2025, he finally reaches the desert.Not just as a sculpture. But as a witness. As a message. As a creature that refused to sink.

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photo by Mark Fromson

Since the project’s selection in 2019, many people have contributed to its journey — from concept to construction to its long-awaited arrival in the desert.While the team evolved through time and circumstance, its core remained — steady, stubborn, and driven. Merman was conceived by artist Andrii Krapyvchenko and brought to life with engineer Oleksii Tronchuk, welder Viacheslav Gudenok, painter Vladyslava Tronchuk, project manager Maria Popova, and a wide circle of volunteers and makers. For the 2025 installation, Mitya Zinoviev joined as Construction & Logistics Lead, coordinating the build and on-site operations. This phase of the project was made possible thanks to the support of the Ukrainian Burners community and the Wonder Workshop team.  In 2025, Merman was physically assembled in Black Rock City by members of the Kurenivka camp, working as the Kurenivka Build Crew — artists, engineers, and volunteers who brought the sculpture together under desert conditions, as a collective act of care and persistence.

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Sound-healing Lounge

with Tea ceremonies, Performances and Piano 

The Sound Healing Lounge was conceived as the heart of Kurenivka — a space of listening, softness, and restoration inside the intensity of Black Rock City.

Throughout the week, the lounge hosted a daily program from morning to evening, weaving together sound healing, tea ceremonies, movement practices, voice work, meditation, and intimate musical encounters. Each day unfolded as a gentle rhythm rather than a strict schedule — allowing participants to arrive when they needed it most.

Daily Practices Included
• Sound healing journeys
• Tea ceremonies and ritual tastings
• Yoga and somatic movement
• Vocal therapy and guided meditation
• Ecstatic dance and music jams
• Artist talks and behind-the-scenes sharing

Facilitators, musicians, and healers from different countries held space together — creating a continuous, living soundscape rather than isolated events.

  • When the Storm Came
    During the week, the largest storm in the history of Burning Man hit the playa.
    The Sound Healing Lounge was completely destroyed.The stretch tent was torn apart. The structure collapsed. The space disappeared in minutes.
    But we did not let it end there.
    We repaired, glued, and re-erected the tent, piece by piece — refusing to let the space vanish. And even as the rain continued to fall, something unexpected happened.
    That night, Benny Benassi played an improvised set inside the rebuilt lounge.
    No announcements.No schedule.No crowd.
    Just an intimate, spontaneous gathering of camp members who happened to be there. A private moment, hidden from the city, known only to those who found themselves inside that fragile, reborn space.
    It was not documented.It was not promoted.And no one outside that tent will ever fully know how powerful it was.

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The Lightning Tower

The Lightning Tower was awarded a Burning Man Honoraria Grant for 2025.

The Lightning Tower is a large-scale neon art installation created for Burning Man 2025 by Italian artist Pepemaniak (Federico).
Rising from the desert as a modern totem of energy, the tower takes the form of a tall, slender structure cut by jagged, lightning-like lines. Built from hand-blown neon bars, it emits an intense, living glow — visible from afar and impossible to ignore at night.
The work balances between ancient ritual and contemporary pop aesthetics, turning light into a shared experience rather than a static object.
In 2025, Kurenivka became a truly international community, and The Lightning Tower is a clear expression of that shift. The project was created by an Italian artist, realized and supported within a Ukrainian-led camp that brought together participants from 21 countries, including a strong Italian presence.

The Point of Unity

The main unofficial chapel of Burning Man 2025 — home to 20+ wedding ceremonies

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Photo by Mykola Kabluka

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photo by Mark Fromson

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Photo by Mykola Kabluka.

The Point of Unity is a 2025 Burning Man art installation by Ukrainian artist Mykola Kabluka, created as a meditative structure that physically and symbolically connects the sky with the ground.At the center of the work stands a massive circular mirrored form — a precise, architectural gesture that transforms reflection into experience. The installation does not depict unity; it creates the conditions for it. The Point of Unity explores fundamental relationships: heaven and earth, human and nature, the present moment and the future.By rooting the sky to the desert floor through reflection, the piece invites participants to slow down, enter, and observe themselves inside a larger continuum of time and space. Beyond the personal experience, the work also functions as a symbol of international diplomacy and a clear Ukrainian voice on the playa — speaking through presence, balance, and restraint rather than noise. The installation is fully immersive and interactive. Visitors step inside a circular environment where: mirrored floors and panels dissolve spatial boundaries, the sky appears to surround and envelop the viewer, the horizon bends inward, creating a sense of suspension.The structure is completed only through participation — each person becomes part of the composition the moment they enter.During the day, The Point of Unity captures and refracts desert light, turning the sky and playa into a continuous reflective surface.At night, the space becomes calm and focused — a place of stillness amid movement. Advanced optical elements subtly amplify reflections, enhancing depth without distraction.Cultural SignificanceAs a Ukrainian artwork, The Point of Unity brings a message of balance, resilience, and continuity to Burning Man 2025.Following its presentation on the playa, the installation is intended to be relocated to Ukraine, where it will continue its life as a cultural landmark — carrying the experience of the desert back into a different context and time.

Mutant Vehicle — Blue Bull

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Blue Bull

In 2025, Blue Bull became the final connective element of the Kurenivka ecosystem — the force that tied together camp, art, sound, and people into one continuous flow.

Visually and conceptually, Blue Bull is inspired by the artwork of Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko — drawing from her bold colors, mythical creatures, and expressive, almost childlike strength. This inspiration shapes the vehicle’s character: powerful yet playful, protective yet alive.

It is not simply an art car — it is a living platform, carrying sound, people, and meaning across Black Rock City. Wherever Blue Bull appears, it temporarily reshapes the space around it — turning movement into gathering, and gathering into shared experience.

    Form and PresenceVisually striking and instantly recognizable, Blue Bull merges sculptural design with function. The vehicle hosts multiple levels, allowing participants to ride, listen, dance, and observe the city from within a moving artwork.
    At night, it becomes a glowing beacon — at day, a roaming meeting point.

    Sound, Light, and EnergyAt its core, Blue Bull is built around world-class sound and lighting, designed specifically for the desert environment.
    The system delivers a powerful yet precise sonic experience, supporting both high-energy sets and more intimate musical moments. Light elements are fully integrated into the structure, making the vehicle perform visually as much as sonically.But Blue Bull is not about volume alone — it is about curated journeys, where sound serves atmosphere, not ego.

    Cultural PlatformBlue Bull carries a strong Ukrainian cultural presence, woven naturally into its programming.
    Music, visual language, and human interaction come together to tell a story — not through explanation, but through lived experience. The vehicle connects camps, art installations, and people, acting as a moving bridge within the city.
    In 2025, it also became a place where international artists and participants met on equal ground — without hierarchy, without backstage, without separation.

    Community and MovementOperated by the Kurenivka community, Blue Bull embodies the same principles as the camp itself:
    - collaboration over spectacle
    - presence over performance
    - movement as connection
    It does not belong to one location. It exists in transition — appearing, disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere, carrying traces of every moment with it.

Kurenivka 2025: Our People

A living community across cultures, moments, and shared creation

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Brought to life by the Kurenivka Crew:

Yaroslav Diakiv - technical direction, Genie - Creative Alchemist ;), Maksym Studilko - Media Project Producer, Yevgeniy Zherebtsov - Doctor Zee, Pavlo Trapeznikov - Sound/Audio Engineer, Bohdan Karplevskyi - Light Designer, Ihor Savchuk, Arthur Osipov, Marina Malyarenko, Dmytro Pavlenko, Dmytro Zinoviev, Vlad Savitsky - bicycle man, Nataly Bobytska - artist management, Pavlo Makhrinsky, Kateryna Rublova, Ivan Applegod, Sergei Gulenkov, Dmytro Boiko, Ernesto Fernandes, Ivan Alexeev, Max Veremeyenko, Max Pichko - cameraman, Andriy Khokholkin - director of documentary, Roman Husar, Alan, Danylo, Dori, Anya, Ondryck.