Saturday, February 3, 2018
Friday, July 5, 2013
The Old Aggie Bonfire as Performance Art
The old Aggie Bonfire was held in a large open grassy area at the east or "front" side of campus in College Station, Texas, about an hour and a half mostly north of Houston. Campus bonfire was forced to close down after the wood pyramid stack collapsed and a number of Aggies were tragically injured or killed.
An off campus bonfire tradition continues that is not sponsored by the university.
I have not been to an off campus bonfire, so my comments will be limited to my observations of the on former campus bonfire which to many young people might seem long, long ago.
I won't be looking at bonfire from any conventional or traditional points of view. I am an artist and an outside observer who attended many of the campus bonfires, but I am not and never have been a student at A&M.
Tremendous amounts of alcohol were consumed by many who attended the campus bonfire. I once noticed a paddy wagon on campus from the local JP to bust any overly rowdy or drunk. The drinking part of bonfire resembles spring break celebrations held in Florida. The god that seems to be worshipped, under all the football hoopla, is Bacchus, and the celebration seems quite Dionysian with fire worship thrown in. Here the Aggies seem to be, like many college students, celebrating their pre-Christian pagan heritage. Things get pretty wild. I never saw anyone remove their clothes and start dancing around the stack, but in the nearby Harrington Building men and women's bathrooms were used indiscriminately and no once seemed to care if their private parts were revealed to strangers of the opposite sex.
The bonfire itself, as an object to be observed and appreciated, seemed to have been built to be as ugly as possible. At the focal point, the top of the bonfire, was constructed an old wooden outhouse of the kind that was used before plumbing. Defecating, or taking a poop, perhaps using a sheet from an old Sears catalogue to wipe your butt, is at the highest point, the point of greatest honor. This outhouse some see as merely a slam at the UT football team--A&M's former main rival--but clearly it means more. It signals a common undergraduate attitude about life, that things are all, to put it mildly, bovine feces. Personally, the old bonfire always gave me a big chuckle. It seemed to be a great tossing of a finger at life. Good for these kids.
I am not sure how conscious the worker bees on the old bonfire were about the artistic statement they were making. There are no independent music, painting, or drama departments at this school which focuses on agriculture (the A), engineer (M-for the old word mechanics). Aggies are not, in general, that concerned with art. If they were, they might attempt to make something attractive. Perhaps they sense the ugliness of what they have created, and that is why they pour petroleum on it and burn it up as soon as possible.
What we have is performance art. The process--the performance of making the bonfire--is what is important, not the final artistic product. Here is where the Aggies find their positive value. They work hard together, they form bonds that may last a lifetime, in the challenging process of cutting down many trees, piling them and wiring them together to make the bonfire stack. It is not the stack that really matters. It is the working together to build the stack. Final outcome is not important, nor is presevation of the final product.
I see the old bonfire as more honest that most art. Most art searches out those spots of beauty to celebrate in life. Most art wants to be preserved in museums and strive for a kind of immortality. Young people know we're all going to die. Young people know that all civilizations die. Carpe diem. Live hard, die young. There's quite a bit of ugliness in the world, sadly. Bonfire celebrates the ugliness and celebrates going out in a flash. It teaches that it is the process, the living of life, that is important. "Do not go gently into that good night, but burn, burn, burn against the dying of the light," a poet once wrote. Aggies have read a few poems, especially Homer in high school.
An off campus bonfire tradition continues that is not sponsored by the university.
I have not been to an off campus bonfire, so my comments will be limited to my observations of the on former campus bonfire which to many young people might seem long, long ago.
I won't be looking at bonfire from any conventional or traditional points of view. I am an artist and an outside observer who attended many of the campus bonfires, but I am not and never have been a student at A&M.
Tremendous amounts of alcohol were consumed by many who attended the campus bonfire. I once noticed a paddy wagon on campus from the local JP to bust any overly rowdy or drunk. The drinking part of bonfire resembles spring break celebrations held in Florida. The god that seems to be worshipped, under all the football hoopla, is Bacchus, and the celebration seems quite Dionysian with fire worship thrown in. Here the Aggies seem to be, like many college students, celebrating their pre-Christian pagan heritage. Things get pretty wild. I never saw anyone remove their clothes and start dancing around the stack, but in the nearby Harrington Building men and women's bathrooms were used indiscriminately and no once seemed to care if their private parts were revealed to strangers of the opposite sex.
The bonfire itself, as an object to be observed and appreciated, seemed to have been built to be as ugly as possible. At the focal point, the top of the bonfire, was constructed an old wooden outhouse of the kind that was used before plumbing. Defecating, or taking a poop, perhaps using a sheet from an old Sears catalogue to wipe your butt, is at the highest point, the point of greatest honor. This outhouse some see as merely a slam at the UT football team--A&M's former main rival--but clearly it means more. It signals a common undergraduate attitude about life, that things are all, to put it mildly, bovine feces. Personally, the old bonfire always gave me a big chuckle. It seemed to be a great tossing of a finger at life. Good for these kids.
I am not sure how conscious the worker bees on the old bonfire were about the artistic statement they were making. There are no independent music, painting, or drama departments at this school which focuses on agriculture (the A), engineer (M-for the old word mechanics). Aggies are not, in general, that concerned with art. If they were, they might attempt to make something attractive. Perhaps they sense the ugliness of what they have created, and that is why they pour petroleum on it and burn it up as soon as possible.
What we have is performance art. The process--the performance of making the bonfire--is what is important, not the final artistic product. Here is where the Aggies find their positive value. They work hard together, they form bonds that may last a lifetime, in the challenging process of cutting down many trees, piling them and wiring them together to make the bonfire stack. It is not the stack that really matters. It is the working together to build the stack. Final outcome is not important, nor is presevation of the final product.
I see the old bonfire as more honest that most art. Most art searches out those spots of beauty to celebrate in life. Most art wants to be preserved in museums and strive for a kind of immortality. Young people know we're all going to die. Young people know that all civilizations die. Carpe diem. Live hard, die young. There's quite a bit of ugliness in the world, sadly. Bonfire celebrates the ugliness and celebrates going out in a flash. It teaches that it is the process, the living of life, that is important. "Do not go gently into that good night, but burn, burn, burn against the dying of the light," a poet once wrote. Aggies have read a few poems, especially Homer in high school.
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