Cacotopia: The Story Behind Our Art Poster

Cacotopia – a 36 inch by 48 inch art poster. We made it for the Carnival Of Space & Time installation for our Eridu Society camp at Burning Man in 2015. This was years before we became Atomic Octopus. The event’s theme that year was Carnival Of Mirrors. We wanted to play on that. Subsequently, we decided to use it for our own art theme. Eridu Society often worked elements of steampunk and time travel into its installations. The premise was that members of the camp had traveled to future Burning Man events. Then we brought back the art theme posters to delight and inspire.

Trilo had been having conversations and Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey about art themes. Larry shared some insights, and that sent Trilo on a search for unusual words. Cacotopia is a real word, it comes from the idea of a cacophonous utopia where everything has gone completely wrong. The original idea was to create a poster that paid homage to Mad Max or its sequel The Road Warrior. Long-running Burning Man camp Death Guild has been bringing ThunderDome (from the third film) to the playa for decades, so Trilo figured that would make for a fun poster. However, early in the project it became clear that George Miller would finally finish and release Fury Road. As a result, we headed in a different direction and envisioned our own futuristic dystopia. It involved the cats of the internet taking over in steampunk style. Trilo was the art director on the future Burning Man future art theme poster series, Pani pushed all the pixels to create this steampunk masterpiece.

Exhibition

Trilo and Pani felt honored to exhibit their art theme posters at Burning Man headquarters in San Francisco during the weeks leading up to Burning Man 2015. The exhibition gave friends and staff members a chance to experience the artwork before it made its playa debut. At the same time, it playfully reflected Eridu Society’s theme of time travel by presenting the pieces weeks before the event itself.

After Burning Man 2015, the story continued. Several works from the series joined the permanent collection at Burning Man headquarters. As a result, the exhibition became both a memorable milestone and a lasting contribution to the Burning Man community. Click on the images below to see in higher resolution.