Timelapse Video Shows Burning of Londonderry Temple
Thousands of people gathered in Londonderry on Saturday, March 21, to watch a 75ft wooden temple be deliberately burnt. The Artichoke temple was created by US artist David Best with the help of local volunteers and was meant to reflect on individual loss and the part bonfires played in the loyalist and nationalist traditions in Northern Ireland.
Visitors left tributes and carved the names of dead relatives, friends and those killed in Northern Ireland’s Troubles inside the temple in the week before the bonfire. The temple in the Waterside area of Derry was not universally popular with Reverend Graeme Orr of Magheramason, County Tyrone, branding the event a ‘pagan’ ceremony.
California-based artist Best has built a series of nine temples starting in 2000 with a shrine at the Burning Man Festival, which marked the death of a young man who died racing his motorbike. Credit: YouTube/Tyler Collins
