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Photos: Elements Festival Brings Burning Man To Brooklyn
By
Gaby Del Valle
Published Aug 15, 2016
Modified Aug 15, 2016
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By
Gaby Del Valle
Published Aug 15, 2016
Modified Aug 15, 2016
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Nestled between the season's largest, most expensive music festivals—Governors Ball, Panorama, Electric Zoo, and The Meadows—is the Elements Festival, a more low-key option that manages to pack a weekend's worth of revelry into a single day. On Saturday, hundreds flocked to Red Hook for the BangOn!-produced fest, which was billed as "a dreamer's playground that feels like an affair between Berlin, Burning Man, and Bushwick." Combining Berlin's music scene, Burning Man's weirdness, and Bushwick's... certain something?... is no easy feat, but the crew definitely delivered on their promise. Even mother nature stuck to the theme: at one point, a lightning storm made its way toward the festival, threatening to drench partygoers.
Featuring 37 artists scattered across five themed stages—Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Fifth Element—at the abandoned Red Hook Grain Terminal, Elements provided no shortage of live music to dance to. Brooklyn-based producer/DJ Gramatik headlined the fest, and other acts from around the world, including French tropical house DJ Klingande and South African band BCUC, drew huge crowds despite the weekend's sweltering heat.
Those who needed a break from dancing/sweating could walk around the Terminal grounds, where they could get their faces painted or witness aerial performances, fire breathing, and immersive theatre performances hidden throughout various buildings. There was also a bounce house, a wakeboard stunt, and plenty of water being sprayed for festival-goers to cool down with. The overall aesthetic can only be described as "Burning Man Meets Brooklyn," branding be damned (or rather, branding be meticulously adhered to).
Burning Man is surrounded by overwhelming nothingness—beyond the festival, there's nothing but desert for miles—but Elements is better described as being surrounded by decay. It had all the fantastical elements of Burning Man, including fully-made up festival-goers and outlandish performers, but it was set in a post-industrial wasteland rather than a desert wasteland. "It feels like we're partying in a zombie apocalypse," one attendee remarked.
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