Burning Man
Encyclopedia
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert
in northern Nevada
, in the United States
. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day
holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy
on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community
, radical self-expression
, and radical self-reliance
.
Burning Man is organized by Black Rock City, LLC
. In 2010, 51,515 people attended Burning Man. 2011 attendance was capped at 50,000 participants and the event sold out on July 24. In April 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the Org had begun the process of transitioning management of the festival over to a new non-profit called the "Burningman Project".
in 1986 when Larry Harvey
, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach
in San Francisco and burned a 9-foot (2.7-meter) wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. Harvey has described his inspiration for burning these effigies as a spontaneous act of "radical self-expression".
The event did have earlier roots, though. Sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey's girlfriend Janet Lohr, held solstice bonfire gatherings on Baker Beach for several years prior to 1986, some of which Harvey attended. When Grauberger stopped organizing it, Harvey "picked up the torch and ran with it," so to speak. He and Jerry James built an 8-foot (2.4-meter) wooden effigy for 1986, which was much smaller and more crudely made than the neon-lit figure featured in the current ritual. In 1987, the effigy grew to almost 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall, and by 1988, it had grown to around 40 feet (12 meters).
Harvey swears that he did not see the movie The Wicker Man until many years later, so it played no part in his inspiration. Accordingly, rather than allow the name "Wicker Man" to become the name of the ritual, he started using the name "Burning Man".
on the remote and largely unknown dry lake
known as Black Rock Desert
, about 110 miles north of Reno
. Evans conceived it as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone
with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. He asked John Law, who also had experience on the dry lake and was a defining founder of Cacophony Society
, to take on central organizing functions. In the Cacophony Society's newsletter, it was announced as Zone Trip #4, A Bad Day at Black Rock (inspired by the movie of that name
).
Meanwhile, the beach burn was interrupted by the park police for not having a permit. After striking a deal to raise the Man but not to burn it, event organizers disassembled the effigy and returned it to the vacant lot where it had been built. Shortly thereafter, the legs and torso of the Man were chain-sawed and the pieces removed when the lot was unexpectedly leased as a parking lot. The effigy was reconstructed, led by Dan Miller, Harvey's then-housemate of many years, just in time to take it to Zone Trip #4.
Michael Mikel, another active Cacophonist, realized that a group unfamiliar with the environment of the dry lake would be helped by knowledgeable persons to ensure they did not get lost in the deep dry lake and risk dehydration and death. He took the name Danger Ranger and created the Black Rock Rangers.
Thus the seed of Black Rock City was germinated, organized by Law and Mikel, based on Evans' idea, along with Harvey and James' symbolic man. Since John Law worked in the sign business, he prepared custom neon tubes for the Man in 1991 so it could be seen as a beacon at night. The community grew by word of mouth alone. It consisted of participants only. There were no paid or scheduled performers or artists, no separation between art-space and living-space, no rules other than "Don't interfere with anyone else's immediate experience" and "no guns in central camp".
1991 was the first year that the event had a legal permit with the BLM (the Bureau of Land Management
). 1996 was the first year a formal partnership was created to own the name. 1996 was also the last year that the event was held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert and had no fence around it. Serious accidents occurring with motorized vehicles that year and pressure from county law enforcement compelled the organizers to limit driving and to create a grid of roads for all subsequent events. Rod Garrett is credited with the concentric design that continues to be used today.
1997 marked another major pivotal year for the event since moving from the beach. By 1996, the land-speed-record-holding open playa had hit a critical mass with 8,000 attendees and was deemed too dangerous to continue in the same way with unrestricted driving. To implement a ban on driving and re-create the event as a pedestrian/bicycle/art car-only event, it was decided to move to private gated property. Fly Ranch with the adjoining Hualapai mini dry lake-bed just east of the Black Rock desert was chosen. This brought Burning Man into the jurisdiction of Washoe County
permitting, also circumventing issues with Pershing county and the BLM. To comply with the new permit requirements and to manage the increased liability load, the organizers formed Black Rock City, LLC (a limited liability company
).
With the success of the driving ban, having no vehicular incidents, 1998 saw a return to the Black Rock desert; along with a temporary perimeter fence. The event has remained there since.
As the population of Black Rock city grew, further rules were established in relation to its survival. Some critics of the event cite the addition of these rules as impinging on the original freedoms, altering the experience unacceptably, while others find the increased level of activity balances out the changes.
Another notable restriction to attendees is the 7-mile-(11 km) long temporary plastic fence that surrounds the event and defines the pentagon of land used by the event on the southern edge of the Black Rock dry lake. This 4-foot (1.2 meter) high barrier is known as the "trash fence" because its initial use was to catch wind-blown debris that might escape from campsites during the event. Since 2002, the area beyond this fence has not been accessible to Burning Man participants during the week of the event.
At 1:25 AM on August 28, 2007, at the exact moment of the Total Lunar Eclipse
, Paul Addis, a well known, longtime Burning Man participant and gadfly of BMorg (the Burning Man Organization), who had previously pranked the Man as early as 1997, set the Man on fire four days ahead of schedule. A replacement effigy was built on-site and installed in time to be burned on Saturday as planned. In June 2008, he pled guilty to the felony charge of destruction of property over $5,000 and was sentenced to 1–4 years in prison. Addis is reported to have been granted parole effective February 2010.
An earlier agreement stated that each member of the LLC would only receive "sole compensation for many years of service, a golden parachute of $20,000". But the board members all agreed to an out of court settlement in which each member of the board would receive undisclosed sums.
Marian Goodell, board member and head of communication, addressed concerns about the lack of transparency with this statement: “When you’re in the middle of a storm, if you’re going to explain all of how you got there, and how you’re going to get out, it often sets more panic among the survivors than if you just sail the boat out of the darkness.”
Note: The man itself has remained close to 40 feet (12 meters) tall since 1989. Changes in the height and structure of the base account for the differing heights of the overall structures.
The statistics above are to illustrate the growth of the Burning Man event.
The event has gone through several changes, including growing from a small handful of people to over 49,500 people attending the event in 2008. The scale of the event has increased enormously, and Black Rock City, LLC
has become more structured since its creation in 1997.
Burning Man 2006 was covered extensively for television for the first time by subscription television channel Current TV
which handed out cameras to participants and broadcast daily updates via satellite from the dry lake. "TV Free Burning Man" also provided TV viewers an hour-long live feed of The Burn and was shown without commercial sponsorship. TV Free returned in 2007 and 2008; the 2007 coverage was nominated for a news Emmy Award
Black Rock City is not considered a Census-designated place
according to the United States Census Bureau
. If it were, the year 2000 event attendance would have placed it between Carson City
and Pahrump
, making it the 7th largest city in the state of Nevada at the time. Since then, Paradise
, Sunrise Manor
, and Spring Valley
(all suburbs of Las Vegas
) experienced proportionally larger population growths than the rest of the state, pushing Black Rock City to the 10th largest city in Nevada according to 2004 census estimates (still between Carson City and Pahrump)
Because of the variety of goals fostered by participatory attendees, known as "Burners," Burning Man does not have a single focus. Features of the event are subject to the participants and include community, artwork, absurdity, decommodification and revelry. Participation is encouraged.
The Burning Man event is governed by 10 principles, which are radical inclusion
, gift
ing, decommodification
, radical self-reliance
, radical self-expression
, communal
effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace
, participation, and immediacy.
Since 1995, a different theme has been created, ostensibly by Larry Harvey, for each year's event. For 2006, the theme was Hope and Fear, and for 2007, it was The Green Man. The 2011 theme was "Rites of Passage". It determines to some extent the design of the Man (although his design and construction, while evolutionary, has remained relatively unchanged) and especially the structure on which he stands (an Observatory for "Vault of Heaven," a Lighthouse for "The Floating World"). These themes also greatly affect the designs that participants employ in their artworks, costumes, camps and vehicles.
Burning Man primarily features outsider art
and visionary art
, though a great variety of art forms appear during the event. Creative expression through the arts and interactive art are encouraged at Burning Man. Numerous Theme Camps, registered and placed by the LLC, are created as event and residence centers by sizable sub-communities of participants and use extensive design and artistic elements to engage the greater community and meet the LLC's interactivity requirements. Music, performance and guerrilla street theatre are art forms commonly presented within the camps and developed areas of the city. Adjacent to the city, the dry lake bed of Lake Lahontan serves as a tabula rasa
for hundreds of isolated artworks, ranging from small to very large-scale art installations, often sculptures with kinetic, electronic and fire elements.
Artwork is generally viewed as a gift that the artist makes to the community, although art grants are available to participants from the LLC via a system of curation and oversight, with application deadlines early in the year. Grants are intended to help artists produce work beyond the scope of their own means, and are generally intended to cover only a portion of the costs associated with creation of the pieces, usually requiring considerable reliance on an artist's community resources. Aggregate funding for all grants varies depending on the number and quality of the submissions (usually well over 100) but amounts to several percent (on the order of $500,000 in recent years) of the gross receipts from ticket sales. In 2006, 29 pieces were funded.
Various standards regarding the nature of the artworks eligible for grants are set by the Art Department of the LLC, but compliance with the theme and interactivity are important considerations. This funding has fostered artistic communities, most notably in the Bay Area of California, the region that has historically provided a majority of the event's participants. There are active and successful outreach efforts to enlarge the regional scope of the event and the grant program. Among these is the Black Rock Arts Foundation
(BRAF).
While BRAF does not fund any installations for the event itself, it relies on the donations from the LLC for a significant portion of its funding, and does facilitate presentation of work created for the event in outside venues as well as offering its own grants for artworks that typify interactivity and other principles and traditions the event.
(a thin, flexible tube that glows with a neon-like effect when energized with electricity) to create intricate patterns over the frame of the bike. Every night during the festival, thousands of bikes and art cars drive around, creating a visual display similar to Las Vegas at night, except that the lights are mobile.
, and closing with I'm Keith Hernandez, directed by Rob Perri.
from 2000 to 2004.
In 2005, Best stepped aside to allow for another artist, Mark Grieve, to build his own interpretation of a Temple. Grieve's temples were seen in both 2005 and 2006. However, in 2007 David Best took over the temple building duties for one last time. The 2007 Temple was named "The Temple of Forgiveness." Best has stated that it is time to hand the Temple over to the community, and in 2008 the "Basura Sagrada" Temple was a collaboration of Shrine and Tucker Teutsch 3.0, built with the extensive help of their friends and the greater Burning Man community.
In 2009, the "Fire of Fires" Temple for Burning Man was built in Austin, Texas. In 2010, the Temple of Flux was designed and orchestrated by artists Rebecca Anders, Jess Hobbs and Peter (pk.) Kimelman who formed the Flux Foundation. This group was notable for drawing from a broad section of the Burning Man community, including the large-scale sound camps and other existing BM art groups. The Flux Foundation has since continued to make large-scale public art outside of Burning Man. The Temple of Flux broke from tradition and was highly abstract in nature, appearing as a series of landforms with canyon and cave-like spaces. The tradition of participants inscribing on the surfaces of the piece has continued though all of the iterations and are usually of a highly personal nature. The 2011 Temple was the first Temple built in Reno, Nevada. The International Arts Megacrew, helmed by Chris "Kiwi" Hankins, Diarmaid "Irish" Horkan and Ian "Beave" Beaverstock returned to a more traditional style. The Temple of Transition took the form of a 120-foot tiered, hexagonal central tower, surrounded by five 58-foot tiered, hexagonal towers. The towers were vaulted and lofty, cut with a profusion of gothic style arches.
The innermost street is named the Esplanade, and the remaining streets are given names to coincide with the overall theme of the burn, and ordered in ways such as alphabetical order or stem to stern, to make them easier to recall. For example, in 1999, for the "Wheel of Time" theme, and again in 2004 for "The Vault of Heaven" theme, the streets were named after the planets of the solar system. The radial streets are usually given a clock designation, for example, 6:00 or 6:15, in which the Man is at the center of the clock face and 12:00 is in the middle of the third of the arc lacking streets (usually at a bearing
of 60° true from the Man). These avenues have been identified in other ways, notably in 2002, in accordance with "The Floating World" theme, as the degrees of a compass, for example 175 degrees, and in 2003 as part of the Beyond Belief theme as adjectives ("Rational, Absurd") that caused every intersection with a concentric street (named after concepts of belief such as "Authority, Creed") to form a phrase such as "Absurd Authority" or "Rational Creed". However, these proved unpopular with participants due to difficulty in navigating the city without the familiar clock layout.
The Black Rock City Airport is constructed adjacent to the city, typically on its southern side. The airport serves a variety of aviation traffic, including private airplanes, helicopters, hot air balloons, ultralights, gliders, and skydivers.
Theme camps are usually a collective of people representing themselves under a single identity. Villages are usually a collection of smaller theme camps which have banded together in order to share resources and vie for better placement.
Theme camps and villages often form to create an atmosphere in Black Rock City that their group envisioned. As Burning Man grows every year it attracts an even more diverse crowd. Subcultures form around theme camps at Black Rock City similar to what can be found in other cities.
agencies as well as the Bureau of Land Management
Rangers
. Burning Man also has its own in-house group of volunteers, the Black Rock Rangers, who act as informal mediators when disputes arise between participants and law enforcement.
Firefighting, emergency medical services (EMS)
, mental health, and communications support is provided by the volunteer Black Rock City Emergency Services Department (ESD). Three "M*A*S*H"-like stations are set up in the city: station 3, 6 and 9. Station 6 is staffed by physicians and nurses working with REMSA, the Reno based ambulance provider, while Stations 3 and 9 are staffed by Black Rock City ESD personnel. While Station 3 and 9 provide emergency services and Basic Life Support, the volunteers are generally doctors, nurses, EMTs
/paramedics, and firefighters. Both station 3 and 9 have a small fire engine available in addition to a smaller four-wheel drive fire suppression unit and Quick response vehicle for medical emergencies.
San Francisco, seven hours away by car, is the nearest airport with a high volume of international service.
, which is set up before each event and completely erased afterward. Pilots began camping there about 1995, and once compelled to add structure, it was established in a form acceptable to the BLM in 1999 through the efforts of Tiger Tiger (Lissa Shoun) and LLC board member Mr. Klean (Will Roger). In 2009 it was officially recognized by the FAA and designated 88NV. Though it receives logistical support from BMOrg and operates an event gate and box office for them, it is technically an independent entity (theme camp). It is found on the Klamath Falls Sectional
, using a CTAF
of 122.9 MHz. Black Rock Unicom
and the airport are operational on that frequency
from 6:00am to 7:30pm PDT each day during the event. The runway
is simply a compacted strip of playa, and is not lighted. Because of the unique air traffic and safety issues associated with the airport, pilots are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with the published information and procedures at the official airport website portofentry.org. Because of the changes of the surface each year information about the airport is subject to change.
and while not inhabited by humans itself, the area around the playa is home to many animals and plants.
Supporters of Burning Man point out that participants are encouraged to leave no trace
(LNT) of their visit to Black Rock City (BRC) and not to contaminate the area with litter, commonly known as MOOP (Matter Out Of Place). Despite the BLM and LLC
's insistence on the practice of LNT, the amount of residual trash at the site has increased over the years.
Even water is not to be dumped on the playa, and used shower water must be captured and either evaporated off, or collected and carried home with each participant. Methods used for evaporating water normally include a plastic sheet with a wood frame. The playa dust often blows into these catch basins and some participants end up with a muddy mess to take home. Careful design of small scale evaporating ponds has become an engineering competition, to see what works best.
The Bureau of Land Management
, which maintains the desert, has very strict requirements for the event. These stipulations include trash cleanup, removal of burn scars, dust abatement, and capture of fluid drippings from participant vehicles. For four weeks after the event has ended, the Black Rock City Department of Public Works (BRC – DPW) Playa Restoration Crew remains in the desert, cleaning up after the temporary city in an effort to make sure that no evidence of the event remains.
In 2007 Burning Man's "Green Man" theme received criticism for Crude Awakening, the 99-foot oil derrick that consumed 900 gallons of jet fuel and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane to blast a mushroom cloud 300 feet high into the sky.
In an attempt to offset some of the event's carbon footprint, 30- and 50-kilowatt solar arrays were constructed in 2007 as permanent artifacts, providing an estimated annual carbon offset
of 559 tons.
.
A Burning Man spokeswoman replied that the policies are not new, were written by a former head of the EFF, were used when suing to block pornographic videos and ultimately arose from participant concerns: "We’re proud that Black Rock City (a private event held on public land) is widely acknowledged as a bastion of creative freedom. [B]ut that protection [of participants' freedoms] does necessitate the acceptance of some general terms of engagement when it comes to cameras... EFF seems to think that anyone attending any event somehow has an absolute right to take photographs, and then to do whatever they want with those images without any effective restriction or manner of enforcement. While we believe that such rights do make sense for any of us taking pictures in purely public spaces, this is not true in the private space of Burning Man — if it were it would mean that Burning Man couldn’t protect participant privacy or prevent commercialization of imagery."
The Burning Man organization has since worked with the EFF and with Creative Commons
and other parties, and has revised and clarified the photography policies.
In recent years, burners wishing to experience Burning Man more frequently than once per year, without the need for travel to Nevada, or otherwise free from the specific restrictions of the Black Rock City event, have banded together to create local regional events such as SOAK http://www.burningmanportland.com in Oregon; Critical Massive near Seattle; InterFuse in Missouri
; Lakes of Fire in Michigan
; Element 11 in Utah
, Xara Dulzura
and Fuego de los Muertos
in San Diego; Apogaea
in Colorado
; Playa del Fuego
in Delaware
; Firefly
in New England
; Burning Flipside
in Texas
; AuraMan in Indiana
; Recompression
near Vancouver
, British Columbia
; Kiwiburn
in New Zealand
; Burning Seed in Australia
; Rebirth in Hawaii; Source in Maui; Transformus
in North Carolina; Alchemy in Georgia; Toast in Arizona; Freezer Burn between Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta, Canada; AfrikaBurn
in South Africa
and NoWhere
near Zaragoza
in Spain
.
Some of the events are officially affiliated with the Burning Man organization via the Burning Man Regional Network. This official affiliation usually requires the event to conform to certain standards outlined by the Burning Man organization, and to be substantially coordinated by a "Burning Man Regional Contact," a volunteer organizer with an official relationship to the Burning Man Project via a legal Letter of Agreement. In exchange for conforming to these standards, the event is granted permission to officially advertise as a Burning Man Regional Event.
Black Rock Desert
The Black Rock Desert is an arid region in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan...
in northern Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day
Labor Day
Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers.-History:...
holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy
Effigy
An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...
on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
, radical self-expression
Emotional expression
In psychology, emotional expression is observable verbal and nonverbal behaviour that communicates emotion. Emotional expression can occur with or without self-awareness...
, and radical self-reliance
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
.
Burning Man is organized by Black Rock City, LLC
Black Rock City, LLC
Black Rock City LLC is the company that organizes and administers the annual week-long Burning Man festival ending on Labor Day, on the dry lake of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. Headed by a board of 6 LLC members, the company conducts the year-round, behind-the-scenes work needed...
. In 2010, 51,515 people attended Burning Man. 2011 attendance was capped at 50,000 participants and the event sold out on July 24. In April 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the Org had begun the process of transitioning management of the festival over to a new non-profit called the "Burningman Project".
1986 to 1989
The annual event now known as Burning Man began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solsticeSolstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
in 1986 when Larry Harvey
Larry Harvey
]Larry Harvey is the main co-founder of the Burning Man festival, along with his friend Jerry James. What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach, which then...
, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach
Baker Beach
Baker Beach is a public beach on the peninsula of San Francisco, California, U.S.. The beach lies on the shore of the Pacific Ocean to the northwest of the city...
in San Francisco and burned a 9-foot (2.7-meter) wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. Harvey has described his inspiration for burning these effigies as a spontaneous act of "radical self-expression".
The event did have earlier roots, though. Sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey's girlfriend Janet Lohr, held solstice bonfire gatherings on Baker Beach for several years prior to 1986, some of which Harvey attended. When Grauberger stopped organizing it, Harvey "picked up the torch and ran with it," so to speak. He and Jerry James built an 8-foot (2.4-meter) wooden effigy for 1986, which was much smaller and more crudely made than the neon-lit figure featured in the current ritual. In 1987, the effigy grew to almost 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall, and by 1988, it had grown to around 40 feet (12 meters).
Harvey swears that he did not see the movie The Wicker Man until many years later, so it played no part in his inspiration. Accordingly, rather than allow the name "Wicker Man" to become the name of the ritual, he started using the name "Burning Man".
1990 to 1996
In 1990, a separate event was planned by Kevin Evans and John LawJohn Law (Burning Man)
John Law is an American artist, culture-jammer, and co-founder of the Cacophony Society. He is also a co-founder of the Burning Man Festival which evolved out of the spirit of the Cacophony Society when a precursor solstice party was banned from San Francisco's Baker Beach and merged with another...
on the remote and largely unknown dry lake
Dry lake
Dry lakes are ephemeral lakebeds, or a remnant of an endorheic lake. Such flats consist of fine-grained sediments infused with alkali salts. Dry lakes are also referred to as alkali flats, sabkhas, playas or mud flats...
known as Black Rock Desert
Black Rock Desert
The Black Rock Desert is an arid region in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan...
, about 110 miles north of Reno
Reno
Reno is the fourth most populous city in Nevada, US.Reno may also refer to:-Places:Italy*The Reno River, in Northern ItalyCanada*Reno No...
. Evans conceived it as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone
Temporary Autonomous Zone
T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism is a book by anarchist writer Hakim Bey published in 1991 by Autonomedia...
with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. He asked John Law, who also had experience on the dry lake and was a defining founder of Cacophony Society
Cacophony Society
The Cacophony Society is “a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.” It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now defunct Suicide Club of San Francisco....
, to take on central organizing functions. In the Cacophony Society's newsletter, it was announced as Zone Trip #4, A Bad Day at Black Rock (inspired by the movie of that name
Bad Day at Black Rock
Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 thriller film directed by John Sturges that combines elements of Westerns and film noir. It tells the story of a mysterious stranger who arrives at a tiny isolated town in a desert of the southwest United States in search of a man...
).
Meanwhile, the beach burn was interrupted by the park police for not having a permit. After striking a deal to raise the Man but not to burn it, event organizers disassembled the effigy and returned it to the vacant lot where it had been built. Shortly thereafter, the legs and torso of the Man were chain-sawed and the pieces removed when the lot was unexpectedly leased as a parking lot. The effigy was reconstructed, led by Dan Miller, Harvey's then-housemate of many years, just in time to take it to Zone Trip #4.
Michael Mikel, another active Cacophonist, realized that a group unfamiliar with the environment of the dry lake would be helped by knowledgeable persons to ensure they did not get lost in the deep dry lake and risk dehydration and death. He took the name Danger Ranger and created the Black Rock Rangers.
Thus the seed of Black Rock City was germinated, organized by Law and Mikel, based on Evans' idea, along with Harvey and James' symbolic man. Since John Law worked in the sign business, he prepared custom neon tubes for the Man in 1991 so it could be seen as a beacon at night. The community grew by word of mouth alone. It consisted of participants only. There were no paid or scheduled performers or artists, no separation between art-space and living-space, no rules other than "Don't interfere with anyone else's immediate experience" and "no guns in central camp".
1991 was the first year that the event had a legal permit with the BLM (the Bureau of Land Management
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately , or one-eighth of the landmass of the country. The BLM also manages of subsurface mineral estate underlying federal, state and private...
). 1996 was the first year a formal partnership was created to own the name. 1996 was also the last year that the event was held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert and had no fence around it. Serious accidents occurring with motorized vehicles that year and pressure from county law enforcement compelled the organizers to limit driving and to create a grid of roads for all subsequent events. Rod Garrett is credited with the concentric design that continues to be used today.
1997 to present
Washoe County, Nevada
Washoe County is a county located in the U.S. state of Nevada. The population was 421,407 at the 2010 census. Its county seat is Reno. Washoe County includes the Reno-Sparks metropolitan area.-History:...
permitting, also circumventing issues with Pershing county and the BLM. To comply with the new permit requirements and to manage the increased liability load, the organizers formed Black Rock City, LLC (a limited liability company
Limited liability company
A limited liability company is a flexible form of enterprise that blends elements of partnership and corporate structures. It is a legal form of company that provides limited liability to its owners in the vast majority of United States jurisdictions...
).
With the success of the driving ban, having no vehicular incidents, 1998 saw a return to the Black Rock desert; along with a temporary perimeter fence. The event has remained there since.
As the population of Black Rock city grew, further rules were established in relation to its survival. Some critics of the event cite the addition of these rules as impinging on the original freedoms, altering the experience unacceptably, while others find the increased level of activity balances out the changes.
- A grid street structure.
- A speed limit of 5 mph (8 km/h).
- A ban on driving, except for approved "mutant vehicles" and service vehicles.
- Safety standards on mutant vehicles.
- Burning your own art must be done on an approved burn platform.
- A ban on fireworks.
- A ban on firearms.
- A ban on dogs.
Another notable restriction to attendees is the 7-mile-(11 km) long temporary plastic fence that surrounds the event and defines the pentagon of land used by the event on the southern edge of the Black Rock dry lake. This 4-foot (1.2 meter) high barrier is known as the "trash fence" because its initial use was to catch wind-blown debris that might escape from campsites during the event. Since 2002, the area beyond this fence has not been accessible to Burning Man participants during the week of the event.
At 1:25 AM on August 28, 2007, at the exact moment of the Total Lunar Eclipse
Lunar eclipse
A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes behind the Earth so that the Earth blocks the Sun's rays from striking the Moon. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned exactly, or very closely so, with the Earth in the middle. Hence, a lunar eclipse can only occur the night of a...
, Paul Addis, a well known, longtime Burning Man participant and gadfly of BMorg (the Burning Man Organization), who had previously pranked the Man as early as 1997, set the Man on fire four days ahead of schedule. A replacement effigy was built on-site and installed in time to be burned on Saturday as planned. In June 2008, he pled guilty to the felony charge of destruction of property over $5,000 and was sentenced to 1–4 years in prison. Addis is reported to have been granted parole effective February 2010.
Transition to non-profit
In April 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the LLC was beginning a three-year process to transfer ownership and control of the event over to a new non-profit called the "Burningman Project". The move towards becoming a non-profit was the result of "bitter infighting" between members of the board. At one point it looked like all of the board members were going to hire lawyers. Corporate appraisers were brought in to determine how much the company is worth, which Larry Harvey found "abhorrent" and against all of the values that Burning Man stood for.An earlier agreement stated that each member of the LLC would only receive "sole compensation for many years of service, a golden parachute of $20,000". But the board members all agreed to an out of court settlement in which each member of the board would receive undisclosed sums.
Marian Goodell, board member and head of communication, addressed concerns about the lack of transparency with this statement: “When you’re in the middle of a storm, if you’re going to explain all of how you got there, and how you’re going to get out, it often sets more panic among the survivors than if you just sail the boat out of the darkness.”
Timeline of the event
| Year | Height from ground to top of Man | Location | Participants | Ticket price | Theme | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | 8 ft (2.4 m) | Baker Beach, San Francisco | 20 | Free | None | Larry Harvey & Jerry James build & burn wooden man on Baker Beach on the summer solstice, following a ritual bonfire tradition begun by Mary Grauberger |
| 1987 | 20 ft (6.1 m) | Baker Beach | 80 | Free | None | |
| 1988 | 30 ft (9.1 m) | Baker Beach | 150-200 | Free | None | |
| 1989 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Baker Beach | 300+ | Free | None | First listing of Burning Man in the San Francisco Cacophony Society newsletter, "Rough Draft" under "sounds like cacophony." |
| 1990 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Baker Beach / Black Rock Desert, Nevada | 500 / 120 | Free | None | Figure erected at Baker Beach on Summer Solstice (June 21) but not burned. Man is invited to San Francisco Cacophony Zone Trip #4 on Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. |
| 1991 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Black Rock Desert | 250 | None | First year of neon on the man. | |
| 1992 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Black Rock Desert | 600 | None | ||
| 1993 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Black Rock Desert | 1,000 | None | Theme camps: 1 - "Christmas Camp" | |
| 1994 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Black Rock Desert | 2,000 | None | First year of wooden spires and lamplighting | |
| 1995 | 40 ft (12.2 m) | Black Rock Desert | 4,000 | $35 | None/ (Good and Evil; unofficial) | |
| 1996 | 48 ft (14.6 m) | Black Rock Desert | 8,000 | $35 | None/ (The Inferno; unofficial) | Theme featuring Dante's Inferno/HELCO. First year the man is elevated on a straw bale pyramid and guns banned in central camp. First fatality in motorcycle collision. 3 people seriously injured in a tent run over by a car. 10 of 16 BLM stipulations violated, putting BM on probationary status for next year. An injury claim drives liability coverage up by a factor of 6. Featured in an article in Wired magazine. Theme camps 130+ |
| 1997 | 50 ft (15.2 m) | Hualapai Playa Hualapai Flat Hualapai Flat is a valley in northwestern Nevada located northwest of the Black Rock Desert. The two valleys are separated by the Calico Hills. The Granite Range marks the southern and western edges of Hualapai Flat. To the north the valley is constrained by the Granite Range and the Calico Mountains... |
10,000 | $65 | Fertility: The Living Land | The BM org. forms management structure, the DPW to meet strict permit requirements newly imposed. First year the city has grid streets and driving banned. Washoe County officials impounded gate receipts to ensure payment after the fire and protection fees along with more than 100 new fire and safety conditions are imposed before the event. Registered theme camps: 400+ |
| 1998 | 52 ft (15.8 m) | Black Rock Desert | 15,000 | $80 – $90 | Nebulous Entity | Burning Man returned to the Black Rock Desert although much closer to Gerlach than before. The "Nebulous Entity" was Harvey's satirical concept of alien beings who thrive on information - who consume it but do not understand it. |
| 1999 | 54 ft (16.5 m) | Black Rock Desert | 23,000 | $65 – $130 | Wheel of Time | Listed in the AAA's RV guide under "Great Destinations." Registered theme camps: 320 |
| 2000 | 54 ft (16.5 m) | Black Rock Desert | 25,400 | $200 | The Body | First active law enforcement activity, 60 Bureau of Land Management Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately , or one-eighth of the landmass of the country. The BLM also manages of subsurface mineral estate underlying federal, state and private... (BLM) and police arrests and citations. Most are for minor drug charges following surveillance and searches. Registered theme camps: 460 |
| 2001 | 70 ft (21.3 m) | Black Rock Desert | 25,659 | $200 | Seven Ages | See Seven Ages of Man. Over 100 BLM citations and 5 arrests. Registered theme camps: 466, placed art: 150 |
| 2002 | 80 ft (24.4 m) | Black Rock Desert | 28,979 | $135–$200 | The Floating World | First year for FAA Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration is the national aviation authority of the United States. An agency of the United States Department of Transportation, it has authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S... approved airport. 135 BLM citations and 4 Sheriff citations. Registered theme camps: 487, placed art: 120 |
| 2003 | 79 ft (24.1 m) | Black Rock Desert | 30,586 | $145–$225 | Beyond Belief | Dogs are banned for the first time. 177 BLM citations, 9 police citations, 10 arrests and 1 fatality. Registered theme camps: 504, placed art: 261 |
| 2004 | 80 ft (24.4 m) | Black Rock Desert | 35,664 | The Vault of Heaven | 218 BLM citations, some issued from decoy 'art car'. Camps giving away alcohol subjected to state law compliance examinations and 1 arrest. Pershing County Sheriff's office: 27 cases, 4 arrests, 2 citations. Nevada Highway Patrol: 2 DUI arrests, 217 citations, and 246 warnings were issued. Malcolm in the Middle used burning man in one of their episodes. Registered theme camps: 503, placed art: 220 | |
| 2005 | 72 ft (21.9 m) | Black Rock Desert | 35,567 | $145 – $250 | Psyche - The Conscious, Subconscious & Unconscious | The Man, perched atop a "fun house" maze, can be turned by participants, confusing those at a distance who use it to navigate. Dream related art work. 218 BLM citations, 6 arrests and 1 fatality. Registered theme camps: 485, placed art: 275 |
| 2006 | 72 ft (21.9 m) | Black Rock Desert | 38,989 | $185 – $280 | Hope and Fear: The Future | The Man goes up and down reflecting a hope/fear meter. Voting stations were set up around the playa, allowing residents to cast a Hopeful or Fearful vote for the future of Man. If the vote was hopeful he would burn with his hands in the air- not- hands down. FYI- they voted hopeful- and his arms were raised till the end. 155 BLM citations and 1 arrest. Pershing County Sheriff's office: 1 citation and 7 arrests. Nevada Highway Patrol: 234 citations, 17 arrests, and 213 warnings. Placed art: 300 |
| 2007 | 65 ft (19.8 m) | Black Rock Desert | 47,366 | $195 – $280 | The Green Man | The Man set on fire around 2:58 AM, August 28, during full Lunar eclipse. A repeat Burning Man prankster, Paul Addis, was arrested and charged with arson, and the Man was rebuilt for regular Saturday burn. Addis pleaded guilty in May 2008 to one felony count of injury to property, was sentenced to up to four years in Nevada state prison, and was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution. 331 BLM citations. Registered theme camps: 681, placed art: 300 |
| 2008 | 100 ft (30.5 m) | Black Rock Desert | 49,599 | $210 – $295 | American Dream | First year that tickets are not sold at the gate. The size and layout of the city is enlarged to accommodate a larger central playa and a longer Esplanade. Because of excessively high winds and whiteout conditions on Saturday, the burning of the Man was delayed for over an hour and a half and the fire conclave was canceled. Many long time contributors opted out allegedly due to the chosen theme, jailing of dissenter Addis, and the founders' rift. The perimeter of BRC extended to 9 miles. The BLM made 6 arrests and issued 129 citations. Registered theme camps: 746, placed art: 285 |
| 2009 | 66 ft (20.1 m) | Black Rock Desert | 43,435 | $210 – $360 | Evolution: A Tangled Bank | Tickets sold at the gate once again. As the result of some criticism, the size and layout of the city was returned to roughly the same as the 2007 event. The BLM officials said that as of noon Saturday, 41,059 people were at the festival, and the crowd peaked at 43,435 at noon Friday, a noted decline after years of steady attendance growth, due mainly to the 2008 stock market crash Stock market crash A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors... . BLM issued 287 citations and 9 arrests. Registered theme camps: 618, placed art: 215 |
| 2010 | 100 ft (30.5 m) | Black Rock Desert | 51,454 | $210 – $360 | Metropolis: The Life Of Cities | Attendance over 50,000 mark, for first time. The gate opened early, at 6pm Sunday, for first time. Coincided with the inaugural Black Rock City Film Festival. BLM issued 293 citations and 8 arrests. Registered theme camps: 700, placed art: 275 |
| 2011 | 104 ft (31.7 m) | Black Rock Desert | 53,963 | $210 – $360 | Rites of Passage | According to Black Rock LLC, 27,000 tickets (all discounted tiers) were sold by midday the day following the opening of ticket sales. For the first time in Burning Man history, tickets sold out before the event on July 24, 2011. |
| 2012 | ? | Black Rock Desert | ? | $240 – $420 | Fertility 2.0 | Due to the sellout of the event in 2011, the BMOrg opts to evolve to a "lottery" system of ticket sales. Minimum number of available tickets for sale highest ever at 56,500. |
Note: The man itself has remained close to 40 feet (12 meters) tall since 1989. Changes in the height and structure of the base account for the differing heights of the overall structures.
The statistics above are to illustrate the growth of the Burning Man event.
The event has gone through several changes, including growing from a small handful of people to over 49,500 people attending the event in 2008. The scale of the event has increased enormously, and Black Rock City, LLC
Black Rock City, LLC
Black Rock City LLC is the company that organizes and administers the annual week-long Burning Man festival ending on Labor Day, on the dry lake of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. Headed by a board of 6 LLC members, the company conducts the year-round, behind-the-scenes work needed...
has become more structured since its creation in 1997.
Burning Man 2006 was covered extensively for television for the first time by subscription television channel Current TV
Current TV
Current TV, or Current, is a media company led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. Comcast owns a ten percent stake of Current's parent company, Current Media LLC....
which handed out cameras to participants and broadcast daily updates via satellite from the dry lake. "TV Free Burning Man" also provided TV viewers an hour-long live feed of The Burn and was shown without commercial sponsorship. TV Free returned in 2007 and 2008; the 2007 coverage was nominated for a news Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
Black Rock City is not considered a Census-designated place
Census-designated place
A census-designated place is a concentration of population identified by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes. CDPs are delineated for each decennial census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places such as cities, towns and villages...
according to the United States Census Bureau
United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data...
. If it were, the year 2000 event attendance would have placed it between Carson City
Carson City, Nevada
The Consolidated Municipality of Carson City is the capital of the state of Nevada. The words Consolidated Municipality refer to a series of changes in 1969 which abolished Ormsby County and merged all the settlements contained within its borders into Carson City. Since that time Carson City has...
and Pahrump
Pahrump, Nevada
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 24,631 people, 10,153 households, and 7,127 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 82.7 people per square mile . There were 11,651 housing units at an average density of 39.1 per square mile...
, making it the 7th largest city in the state of Nevada at the time. Since then, Paradise
Paradise, Nevada
Paradise is an unincorporated town in the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Clark County, Nevada, United States. The population was 223,167 at the 2010 census...
, Sunrise Manor
Sunrise Manor, Nevada
Sunrise Manor is an unincorporated town in Clark County, Nevada, United States, located on the western base of Frenchman Mountain, east of Las Vegas. The population was 189,372 at the 2010 census...
, and Spring Valley
Spring Valley, Nevada
Spring Valley is an unincorporated town in Clark County, Nevada, United States located two miles west of the Las Vegas Strip. The population was 117,390 at the 2000 census.-Background:...
(all suburbs of Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
) experienced proportionally larger population growths than the rest of the state, pushing Black Rock City to the 10th largest city in Nevada according to 2004 census estimates (still between Carson City and Pahrump)
Principles
The Burning Man event is governed by 10 principles, which are radical inclusion
Inclusion (value and practice)
Miller and Katz presents a common definition of an inclusive value system where they say, “Inclusion is a sense of belonging: feeling respected, valued for who you are; feeling a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so than you can do your best work.” Inclusion is a shift in...
, gift
Gift
A gift or a present is the transfer of something without the expectation of receiving something in return. Although gift-giving might involve an expectation of reciprocity, a gift is meant to be free. In many human societies, the act of mutually exchanging money, goods, etc. may contribute to...
ing, decommodification
Decommodification
Decommodification as a concept comes from the idea that in a market economy, individual persons are commodified. Given that labor is the individual's primary commodity in the market, decommodification refers to activities and efforts that reduces individuals' reliance on the market for their...
, radical self-reliance
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
, radical self-expression
Emotional expression
In psychology, emotional expression is observable verbal and nonverbal behaviour that communicates emotion. Emotional expression can occur with or without self-awareness...
, communal
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace
Leave No Trace
Leave No Trace is both a set of principles, and an organization that promotes those principles. The principles are designed to assist outdoor enthusiasts with their decisions about how to reduce their impacts when they hike, camp, picnic, snowshoe, run, bike, hunt, paddle, ride horses, fish, ski or...
, participation, and immediacy.
- Radical inclusion - Anyone who can afford a ticket is gladly welcomed and there are no prerequisites to be part of Burning Man. All participants are expected to provide for their own basic needs and follow the minimal rules of the event.
- Gifting - Instead of cash, event participants are encouraged to rely on a gift economyGift economyIn the social sciences, a gift economy is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards . Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community...
, a sort of potlatchPotlatchA potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States. This includes Heiltsuk Nation, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures...
. In the earliest days of the event, an underground barterBarterBarter is a method of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral, and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a...
economy also existed, in which burners exchanged "favors" with each other. While this was originally supported by the Burning Man organization, this is now largely discouraged. Instead, burners are encouraged to give gifts to one another unconditionally. - Decommodification - No cash transactions are permitted between attendees of the event, which is in accordance with the principles of Burning Man. Cash can be used for a select few charity, fuel and sanitation vendors as follows:
- Café beverages such as coffeeCoffeeCoffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
, chai, lemonadeLemonadeLemonade is a lemon-flavored drink, typically made from lemons, water and sugar.The term can refer to three different types of beverage:...
, etc., which are sold at Center Camp Café, operated by the organizers of the event. - IceIceIce is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...
. Ice sales benefit the local Gerlach-EmpireGerlach-Empire, NevadaGerlach-Empire is a census-designated place in Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The combined population was 499 at the 2000 census. A former company town for United States Gypsum Corporation, Empire was once home to more than 750 people. It is part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan...
school system. - Tickets for the shuttle bus to the nearest Nevada communities of Gerlach and Empire which is operated by a contractor not participating in the event: Green TortoiseGreen TortoiseThe Green Tortoise is a bus tour company founded by Gardner Kent in 1974 and based in San Francisco, California that hosts tours in North America, mostly within the United States. It operates a bus line and two hostels...
. - A re-entry wristband, which allows a person to leave and re-enter the event and may be purchased at the gate upon exit.
- An airport use fee, payable at the airport upon first entry.
- Diesel and biodiesel sold by third-party contractors
- RV dump service and camp graywater disposal service.
- Private portable toilets and servicing, which can be arranged with the official contractor.
- Café beverages such as coffee
- Radical self-reliance - Because of the event's harsh environment and remote location, participants are expected to be responsible for their own subsistence. Since the LLC forbids any commerce, participants must be prepared and bring all their own supplies with the exception of the items stated in Decommodification.
- Radical self-expression - Participants are encouraged to express themselves in a number of ways through various art forms and projects. The event is clothing-optional and public nudityPublic nudityPublic nudity or nude in public refers to nudity not in an entirely private context. It refers to a person appearing nude in a public place or to be seen from a public place. It also includes nudity in a semi-public place, where the general public is free to enter, such as a shopping mall...
is common, though not practiced by the majority. - Communal effort - Participants are encouraged to work with and help fellow participants.
- Civic responsibility - Participants are encouraged to assume responsibility and be part of a civil society in which federal, state and local laws are obeyed and communicate this to other participants.
- "Leave No Trace" - Participants are committed to a "leave no traceLeave No TraceLeave No Trace is both a set of principles, and an organization that promotes those principles. The principles are designed to assist outdoor enthusiasts with their decisions about how to reduce their impacts when they hike, camp, picnic, snowshoe, run, bike, hunt, paddle, ride horses, fish, ski or...
" event. They strive to leave the area around them in better condition than before their arrival to ensure that their participation does not have a long-term impact on the environment. - Participation - Burning Man is about participation.
- Immediacy - Participants are encouraged to become part of the event, to experience who and what is around them and to explore their inner selves and their relation to the event.
Art
Art on the dry lake is assisted by the Artery, which helps artists place their art in the desert and ensures lighting (to prevent accidental collisions), burn-platform (to protect the integrity of the dry lake bed), and fire-safety requirements are met.Since 1995, a different theme has been created, ostensibly by Larry Harvey, for each year's event. For 2006, the theme was Hope and Fear, and for 2007, it was The Green Man. The 2011 theme was "Rites of Passage". It determines to some extent the design of the Man (although his design and construction, while evolutionary, has remained relatively unchanged) and especially the structure on which he stands (an Observatory for "Vault of Heaven," a Lighthouse for "The Floating World"). These themes also greatly affect the designs that participants employ in their artworks, costumes, camps and vehicles.
Burning Man primarily features outsider art
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
and visionary art
Visionary art
Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.-Definition:...
, though a great variety of art forms appear during the event. Creative expression through the arts and interactive art are encouraged at Burning Man. Numerous Theme Camps, registered and placed by the LLC, are created as event and residence centers by sizable sub-communities of participants and use extensive design and artistic elements to engage the greater community and meet the LLC's interactivity requirements. Music, performance and guerrilla street theatre are art forms commonly presented within the camps and developed areas of the city. Adjacent to the city, the dry lake bed of Lake Lahontan serves as a tabula rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabula rasa is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects...
for hundreds of isolated artworks, ranging from small to very large-scale art installations, often sculptures with kinetic, electronic and fire elements.
Artwork is generally viewed as a gift that the artist makes to the community, although art grants are available to participants from the LLC via a system of curation and oversight, with application deadlines early in the year. Grants are intended to help artists produce work beyond the scope of their own means, and are generally intended to cover only a portion of the costs associated with creation of the pieces, usually requiring considerable reliance on an artist's community resources. Aggregate funding for all grants varies depending on the number and quality of the submissions (usually well over 100) but amounts to several percent (on the order of $500,000 in recent years) of the gross receipts from ticket sales. In 2006, 29 pieces were funded.
Various standards regarding the nature of the artworks eligible for grants are set by the Art Department of the LLC, but compliance with the theme and interactivity are important considerations. This funding has fostered artistic communities, most notably in the Bay Area of California, the region that has historically provided a majority of the event's participants. There are active and successful outreach efforts to enlarge the regional scope of the event and the grant program. Among these is the Black Rock Arts Foundation
Black Rock Arts Foundation
The Black Rock Arts Foundation was established May 2001 in order to promote public, community-based art installations. It is a not-for-profit organization, founded by several people who also direct Burning Man...
(BRAF).
While BRAF does not fund any installations for the event itself, it relies on the donations from the LLC for a significant portion of its funding, and does facilitate presentation of work created for the event in outside venues as well as offering its own grants for artworks that typify interactivity and other principles and traditions the event.
Mutant vehicles
Mutant Vehicles, often motorized, are purpose-built or creatively altered cars and trucks. Participants who wish to bring motorized mutant vehicles must submit their designs in advance to the event's own DMV or "Department of Mutant Vehicles” for approval and for physical inspection at the time of the event. Not all designs and proposals are accepted. The event organizers, and in turn the DMV, have set the bar higher for what it deems an acceptable MV each year, in effect capping the number of Mutant Vehicles. This is in response to constraints imposed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which grants permits to hold the event on federal property, and to participants who want to maintain a pedestrian-friendly environment. Vehicles that are minimally altered, and/or whose primary function is to transport participants, are discouraged or rejected. One of the criteria the DMV employs to determine whether an application for a proposed Mutant Vehicle is approved is "can you recognize the base vehicle". For example, if a 1967 VW van covered with glitter, dolls' heads and old cooking utensils can still be recognized as a VW van, it is considered to be "decorated not mutated" and is less likely to be approved. This criterion led to the exclusion of some "Art Cars", which historically have been a staple of the event. There were over six hundred approved Mutant Vehicles at the event in 2010.Bikes
Bicycles and tricycles are extremely popular for getting around on the dry lake. Mountain bikes are generally preferred over road bikes for riding on the dried silt, which is normally hard but becomes loose with traffic. Participants often decorate their bikes to make them unique. Since lighting on the bikes is critically important for safety at night, many participants incorporate the lighting into their decorations, using electroluminescent wireElectroluminescent wire
Electroluminescent wire is a thin copper wire coated in a phosphor which glows when an alternating current is applied to it. It can be used in a wide variety of applications—vehicle and/or structure decoration, safety and emergency lighting, toys, clothing etc.—much as rope light or Christmas...
(a thin, flexible tube that glows with a neon-like effect when energized with electricity) to create intricate patterns over the frame of the bike. Every night during the festival, thousands of bikes and art cars drive around, creating a visual display similar to Las Vegas at night, except that the lights are mobile.
Films
Beginning in 2010, a series of short films selected from around the world screened as part of the Black Rock City International Film Festival, whose name was shortened to Black Rock Film Festival in 2011. 29 films were selected for the inaugural 2010 festival, which spanned four evenings. Ten films were selected to screen on the climactic evening of the burning of the Man, opening with Susan's Big Day, directed by Jeffrey UhlmannJeffrey Uhlmann
Jeffrey Uhlmann is an American research scientist who is probably best known for his mathematical generalizations of the Kalman filter. Most of his publications and patents have been in the field of data fusion...
, and closing with I'm Keith Hernandez, directed by Rob Perri.
The Temple
In addition to the burning of the Man, the burning of a Temple has become an activity at the event. David Best's temple projects were ritually burnedArt destruction
Art destruction involves the damaging or destruction of works of art. This can happen through a natural process, an accident, or deliberate human involvement.-Natural destruction:...
from 2000 to 2004.
In 2005, Best stepped aside to allow for another artist, Mark Grieve, to build his own interpretation of a Temple. Grieve's temples were seen in both 2005 and 2006. However, in 2007 David Best took over the temple building duties for one last time. The 2007 Temple was named "The Temple of Forgiveness." Best has stated that it is time to hand the Temple over to the community, and in 2008 the "Basura Sagrada" Temple was a collaboration of Shrine and Tucker Teutsch 3.0, built with the extensive help of their friends and the greater Burning Man community.
In 2009, the "Fire of Fires" Temple for Burning Man was built in Austin, Texas. In 2010, the Temple of Flux was designed and orchestrated by artists Rebecca Anders, Jess Hobbs and Peter (pk.) Kimelman who formed the Flux Foundation. This group was notable for drawing from a broad section of the Burning Man community, including the large-scale sound camps and other existing BM art groups. The Flux Foundation has since continued to make large-scale public art outside of Burning Man. The Temple of Flux broke from tradition and was highly abstract in nature, appearing as a series of landforms with canyon and cave-like spaces. The tradition of participants inscribing on the surfaces of the piece has continued though all of the iterations and are usually of a highly personal nature. The 2011 Temple was the first Temple built in Reno, Nevada. The International Arts Megacrew, helmed by Chris "Kiwi" Hankins, Diarmaid "Irish" Horkan and Ian "Beave" Beaverstock returned to a more traditional style. The Temple of Transition took the form of a 120-foot tiered, hexagonal central tower, surrounded by five 58-foot tiered, hexagonal towers. The towers were vaulted and lofty, cut with a profusion of gothic style arches.
Black Rock City
Black Rock City, often abbreviated to BRC, is the name of the temporary city created by Burning Man participants. Much of the layout and general city infrastructure is constructed by Department of Public Works (DPW) volunteers who often reside in Black Rock City for several weeks before and after the event. The remainder of the city including theme camps, villages, art installations and individual camping are all created by participants.City planning
The developed part of the city is currently arranged as a series of concentric streets in an arc composing, since 1999, two-thirds of a 1.5-mile (2.4-km) diameter circle with the Man Sculpture and his supporting complex at the very center (40°46′9.48"N 119°13′12.36"W in 2007). Radial streets, sometimes called Avenues, extend from the Man to the outermost circle. The outlines of these streets are visible on aerial photographs.The innermost street is named the Esplanade, and the remaining streets are given names to coincide with the overall theme of the burn, and ordered in ways such as alphabetical order or stem to stern, to make them easier to recall. For example, in 1999, for the "Wheel of Time" theme, and again in 2004 for "The Vault of Heaven" theme, the streets were named after the planets of the solar system. The radial streets are usually given a clock designation, for example, 6:00 or 6:15, in which the Man is at the center of the clock face and 12:00 is in the middle of the third of the arc lacking streets (usually at a bearing
Bearing (navigation)
In marine navigation, a bearing is the direction one object is from another object, usually, the direction of an object from one's own vessel. In aircraft navigation, a bearing is the actual compass direction of the forward course of the aircraft...
of 60° true from the Man). These avenues have been identified in other ways, notably in 2002, in accordance with "The Floating World" theme, as the degrees of a compass, for example 175 degrees, and in 2003 as part of the Beyond Belief theme as adjectives ("Rational, Absurd") that caused every intersection with a concentric street (named after concepts of belief such as "Authority, Creed") to form a phrase such as "Absurd Authority" or "Rational Creed". However, these proved unpopular with participants due to difficulty in navigating the city without the familiar clock layout.
The Black Rock City Airport is constructed adjacent to the city, typically on its southern side. The airport serves a variety of aviation traffic, including private airplanes, helicopters, hot air balloons, ultralights, gliders, and skydivers.
Center Camp
Center Camp is located along the mid line of Black Rock City, facing the Man at the 6:00 position on the Esplanade. This area serves as a central meeting place for the entire city as well as contains the Center Camp Cafe, Camp Arctica and a number of other city institutions.Villages and theme camps
Villages and theme camps are located along the innermost streets of Black Rock City, often offering entertainment or services to participants.Theme camps are usually a collective of people representing themselves under a single identity. Villages are usually a collection of smaller theme camps which have banded together in order to share resources and vie for better placement.
Theme camps and villages often form to create an atmosphere in Black Rock City that their group envisioned. As Burning Man grows every year it attracts an even more diverse crowd. Subcultures form around theme camps at Black Rock City similar to what can be found in other cities.
Safety, policing and regulations
Black Rock City is patrolled by various local and state law enforcementPolice
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
agencies as well as the Bureau of Land Management
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately , or one-eighth of the landmass of the country. The BLM also manages of subsurface mineral estate underlying federal, state and private...
Rangers
Park ranger
A park ranger or forest ranger is a person entrusted with protecting and preserving parklands – national, state, provincial, or local parks. Different countries use different names for the position. Ranger is the favored term in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Within the United...
. Burning Man also has its own in-house group of volunteers, the Black Rock Rangers, who act as informal mediators when disputes arise between participants and law enforcement.
Firefighting, emergency medical services (EMS)
Emergency medical services
Emergency medical services are a type of emergency service dedicated to providing out-of-hospital acute medical care and/or transport to definitive care, to patients with illnesses and injuries which the patient, or the medical practitioner, believes constitutes a medical emergency...
, mental health, and communications support is provided by the volunteer Black Rock City Emergency Services Department (ESD). Three "M*A*S*H"-like stations are set up in the city: station 3, 6 and 9. Station 6 is staffed by physicians and nurses working with REMSA, the Reno based ambulance provider, while Stations 3 and 9 are staffed by Black Rock City ESD personnel. While Station 3 and 9 provide emergency services and Basic Life Support, the volunteers are generally doctors, nurses, EMTs
Emergency medical technician
Emergency Medical Technician or Ambulance Technician are terms used in some countries to denote a healthcare provider of emergency medical services...
/paramedics, and firefighters. Both station 3 and 9 have a small fire engine available in addition to a smaller four-wheel drive fire suppression unit and Quick response vehicle for medical emergencies.
Commercial airports
The airport with regular commercial service closest to the event is the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Reno, Nevada, approximately a 3-hour drive. An airport spokesperson said in 2009 that 15,000 burners arrive to the event via the airport annually, making it the second-busiest time for them. In 2008 and 2009, an information desk for burners was organized in Reno airport.San Francisco, seven hours away by car, is the nearest airport with a high volume of international service.
Temporary airstrip
A section of the Playa is used for a non-permanent airportAirport
An airport is a location where aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and blimps take off and land. Aircraft may be stored or maintained at an airport...
, which is set up before each event and completely erased afterward. Pilots began camping there about 1995, and once compelled to add structure, it was established in a form acceptable to the BLM in 1999 through the efforts of Tiger Tiger (Lissa Shoun) and LLC board member Mr. Klean (Will Roger). In 2009 it was officially recognized by the FAA and designated 88NV. Though it receives logistical support from BMOrg and operates an event gate and box office for them, it is technically an independent entity (theme camp). It is found on the Klamath Falls Sectional
Sectional Chart
In United States aviation, a sectional chart, often called sectional for short, is a type of aeronautical chart designed for navigation under visual flight rules.-Overview:...
, using a CTAF
Common Traffic Advisory Frequency
Common Traffic Advisory Frequency , is the name given to the VHF radio frequency used for air-to-air communication at U.S., Canadian and Australian non-towered airports....
of 122.9 MHz. Black Rock Unicom
UNICOM
Universal Communications or as known by its abbreviation, UNICOM, is an air-ground communication facility operated by a private agency to provide advisory service at uncontrolled aerodromes and airports.-Description:...
and the airport are operational on that frequency
Radio frequency
Radio frequency is a rate of oscillation in the range of about 3 kHz to 300 GHz, which corresponds to the frequency of radio waves, and the alternating currents which carry radio signals...
from 6:00am to 7:30pm PDT each day during the event. The runway
Runway
According to ICAO a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and take-off of aircraft." Runways may be a man-made surface or a natural surface .- Orientation and dimensions :Runways are named by a number between 01 and 36, which is generally one tenth...
is simply a compacted strip of playa, and is not lighted. Because of the unique air traffic and safety issues associated with the airport, pilots are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with the published information and procedures at the official airport website portofentry.org. Because of the changes of the surface each year information about the airport is subject to change.
Shuttles
There are prepaid shuttles, originating in Reno and San Francisco, that move participants to and from the event. During the event there is also a paid shuttle between the event and the nearby towns of Gerlach and Empire. Exiting and reentering the event requires an additional fee, and is highly discouraged.Concerns regarding the "Leave No Trace" policy
Burning Man takes place in the middle of a large playaSink (geography)
A geographic sink is a depression within an endorheic basin where water collects with no visible outlet. Instead of discharging, the collected water is lost due to evaporation and/or penetration...
and while not inhabited by humans itself, the area around the playa is home to many animals and plants.
Supporters of Burning Man point out that participants are encouraged to leave no trace
Leave No Trace
Leave No Trace is both a set of principles, and an organization that promotes those principles. The principles are designed to assist outdoor enthusiasts with their decisions about how to reduce their impacts when they hike, camp, picnic, snowshoe, run, bike, hunt, paddle, ride horses, fish, ski or...
(LNT) of their visit to Black Rock City (BRC) and not to contaminate the area with litter, commonly known as MOOP (Matter Out Of Place). Despite the BLM and LLC
Black Rock City, LLC
Black Rock City LLC is the company that organizes and administers the annual week-long Burning Man festival ending on Labor Day, on the dry lake of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. Headed by a board of 6 LLC members, the company conducts the year-round, behind-the-scenes work needed...
's insistence on the practice of LNT, the amount of residual trash at the site has increased over the years.
Damage to the playa
While fire is a primary component of many art exhibits and events, materials must be burned on a burn platform. At one time, burning was allowed to take place directly on the ground of the playa, but this practice allowed burn scars to form and was discontinued. Burn scars left from 1996 (numbering 250) were finally eradicated in 2000 due to pressure from BLM Winnemucca district director Terry Reid, who was alerted to scars remaining by two of the founders of the Friends of Black Rock / High Rock (Garth Elliott & Sue Weeks). Some believe burn scars (fired clay-like playa surface) could take thousands of years to weather away. On the last day, public shared burn areas are prepared for participants to use. While Burning Man does provide instructions on how to build a Burn Platform and what not to burn, there are concerns on whether some participants do not follow these instructions to the detriment of the environment and the participants.Even water is not to be dumped on the playa, and used shower water must be captured and either evaporated off, or collected and carried home with each participant. Methods used for evaporating water normally include a plastic sheet with a wood frame. The playa dust often blows into these catch basins and some participants end up with a muddy mess to take home. Careful design of small scale evaporating ponds has become an engineering competition, to see what works best.
The Bureau of Land Management
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately , or one-eighth of the landmass of the country. The BLM also manages of subsurface mineral estate underlying federal, state and private...
, which maintains the desert, has very strict requirements for the event. These stipulations include trash cleanup, removal of burn scars, dust abatement, and capture of fluid drippings from participant vehicles. For four weeks after the event has ended, the Black Rock City Department of Public Works (BRC – DPW) Playa Restoration Crew remains in the desert, cleaning up after the temporary city in an effort to make sure that no evidence of the event remains.
Burning Man and its effect on the environment
Burning Man's carbon dioxide footprint is primarily from transportation to the remote area. The CoolingMan organization has estimated that the 2006 Burning Man was responsible for the generation of 27,000 tons of carbon dioxide, with 87% being from transportation to and from the remote location. The Sierra Club has criticized Burning Man for the "hundreds of thousands" of plastic water bottles that end up in landfills, as well as ostentatious displays of flames and explosions.In 2007 Burning Man's "Green Man" theme received criticism for Crude Awakening, the 99-foot oil derrick that consumed 900 gallons of jet fuel and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane to blast a mushroom cloud 300 feet high into the sky.
In an attempt to offset some of the event's carbon footprint, 30- and 50-kilowatt solar arrays were constructed in 2007 as permanent artifacts, providing an estimated annual carbon offset
Carbon offset
A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere....
of 559 tons.
On-site photography restrictions
The terms of the Burning Man ticket require that participants wishing to use video-recording equipment (including, in practice, most digital cameras) sign over copyright in their images to Black Rock City, and forbid them from using their images for anything other than personal and private use. This has been criticized by many, including the Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
.
A Burning Man spokeswoman replied that the policies are not new, were written by a former head of the EFF, were used when suing to block pornographic videos and ultimately arose from participant concerns: "We’re proud that Black Rock City (a private event held on public land) is widely acknowledged as a bastion of creative freedom. [B]ut that protection [of participants' freedoms] does necessitate the acceptance of some general terms of engagement when it comes to cameras... EFF seems to think that anyone attending any event somehow has an absolute right to take photographs, and then to do whatever they want with those images without any effective restriction or manner of enforcement. While we believe that such rights do make sense for any of us taking pictures in purely public spaces, this is not true in the private space of Burning Man — if it were it would mean that Burning Man couldn’t protect participant privacy or prevent commercialization of imagery."
The Burning Man organization has since worked with the EFF and with Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
and other parties, and has revised and clarified the photography policies.
Regional events
The popularity of Burning Man has encouraged other groups and organizations to hold events similar to Burning Man.In recent years, burners wishing to experience Burning Man more frequently than once per year, without the need for travel to Nevada, or otherwise free from the specific restrictions of the Black Rock City event, have banded together to create local regional events such as SOAK http://www.burningmanportland.com in Oregon; Critical Massive near Seattle; InterFuse in Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
; Lakes of Fire in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
; Element 11 in Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, Xara Dulzura
Xara Dulzura
Xara Dulzura was an annual art, music and creative mythology festival lasting several days. It took place at the Madre Grande Monastery in late April, generally on or before the time of the traditional Beltane holiday, each year from 2003 through 2006....
and Fuego de los Muertos
Fuego de los Muertos
Fuego de los Muertos is an annual, Burning Man affiliated, regional decompression event. It is organized by burners from San Diego and Orange County and is hosted in the rural and semi-arid eastern part of San Diego County....
in San Diego; Apogaea
Apogaea
Apogaea is an annual collaborative outdoor arts and music festival, held in late spring as a Colorado regional counterpart for the Burning Man event...
in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
; Playa del Fuego
Playa del Fuego
Playa del Fuego, also known as "PDF" by its participants, is a regional event inspired by the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. The event is held in Delaware twice a year, with the spring event being held over Memorial Day and the fall event being held over Columbus Day weekend...
in Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
; Firefly
Firefly Arts Collective
Firefly Arts Collective is a non-profit organization that facilitates the annual New England regional burner festival 'Firefly'. Firefly is a regional event inspired by the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. Firefly is held in Vermont typically during July 4 weekend...
in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
; Burning Flipside
Burning Flipside
Burning Flipside is an annual alternative arts and performance festival staged in Central Texas near Austin. Modeled on and loosely associated with Burning Man, Flipside is one of several Regional Burns around the USA....
in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
; AuraMan in Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
; Recompression
Recompression
Recompression is an annual gathering hosted by the Vancouver Burning Man community. It is inspired by and shares values with the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. The event endeavours to create a Temporary Autonomous Zone...
near Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
; Kiwiburn
Kiwiburn
Kiwiburn is a regional Burning Man event celebrating principles such as inclusion, radical self-expression, gifting, participative art and culture.-History:...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
; Burning Seed in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
; Rebirth in Hawaii; Source in Maui; Transformus
Transformus
Transformus is an annual arts festival hosted on private land within the boundaries of Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. Transformus celebrates the principles of radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical...
in North Carolina; Alchemy in Georgia; Toast in Arizona; Freezer Burn between Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta, Canada; AfrikaBurn
AfrikaBurn
AfrikaBurn is a Burning Man regional event, held annually in the Tankwa Karoo in South Africa.-History:Afrika Burns Creative Projects was created in 2007 as a Not-For-Profit Company, with the intention that it would serve as a vehicle for the co-ordination of a South African Burning Man regional...
in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and NoWhere
NoWhere (event)
Nowhere is a European arts-based event inspired by Burning Man. It is held annually in July near Zaragoza in north-eastern Spain.Nowhere embraces the Burning Man principles of radical self-expression, radical self-reliance, no commerce and leave no trace but its cultural and geographical distance...
near Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
.
Some of the events are officially affiliated with the Burning Man organization via the Burning Man Regional Network. This official affiliation usually requires the event to conform to certain standards outlined by the Burning Man organization, and to be substantially coordinated by a "Burning Man Regional Contact," a volunteer organizer with an official relationship to the Burning Man Project via a legal Letter of Agreement. In exchange for conforming to these standards, the event is granted permission to officially advertise as a Burning Man Regional Event.
See also
- ApogaeaApogaeaApogaea is an annual collaborative outdoor arts and music festival, held in late spring as a Colorado regional counterpart for the Burning Man event...
- Art CarArt carAn art car is a vehicle that has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art cars are often driven and owned by their creators, who are sometimes referred to as "Cartists"....
- Brian Doherty (journalist)Brian Doherty (journalist)Brian Doherty is an American journalist. He is a Senior Editor at Reason magazine. He is the author of This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground , Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement and Gun Control on Trial: Inside the...
- Cacophony SocietyCacophony SocietyThe Cacophony Society is “a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.” It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now defunct Suicide Club of San Francisco....
- Culture jammingCulture jammingCulture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...
- DadaDadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
- Dust & Illusions, documentary film about Burning Man
- John LawJohn Law (Burning Man)John Law is an American artist, culture-jammer, and co-founder of the Cacophony Society. He is also a co-founder of the Burning Man Festival which evolved out of the spirit of the Cacophony Society when a precursor solstice party was banned from San Francisco's Baker Beach and merged with another...
- Larry HarveyLarry Harvey]Larry Harvey is the main co-founder of the Burning Man festival, along with his friend Jerry James. What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach, which then...
- List of regional Burning Man events
- Rainbow gatheringRainbow GatheringRainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.Rainbow...
- Scandinavian Institute of Comparative VandalismScandinavian Institute of Comparative VandalismThe Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism is a non-profit cultural institute based in Denmark.It was founded in 1961 by the Danish artist Asger Jorn, Peter Glob and Werner Jacobsen from the National Museum of Denmark and Holger Arbman of the University of Lund, Sweden, after Jorn left...
- Situationist International
- Temporary Autonomous ZoneTemporary Autonomous ZoneT.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism is a book by anarchist writer Hakim Bey published in 1991 by Autonomedia...
- Wickerman FestivalWickerman FestivalThe Wickerman Festival is an annual music festival held near to Dundrennan in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Dubbed 'Scotland's Alternative Music festival', the festival will celebrate its 10th Birthday in 2011 on Friday 22nd & Saturday 23rd July....
- ZozobraZozobraZozobra is the name of a giant marionette effigy which is built and burned every autumn during Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, usually during the second week of September. As his name suggests, he embodies gloom; by burning him, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous...
Further reading
- Bőnner, Bertine 2005. Das Burning Man Projekt - Religiosität und Spiritualität in Black Rock City? Eine ethnologische Perspektive. Magisterarbeit. Grin Verlag
- Bruder, Jessica 2007. Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man. New York: Simon and Schuster
- Chen, Katherine 2004. The Burning Man Organization Grows Up: Blending Bureaucratic and Alternative Structures. Dissertation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
- Chen, Katherine K. 2009. Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
- Chen, Katherine K. and Siobhán O’Mahony. 2009. “Differentiating Organizational Boundaries.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 26: 183-220.
- Doherty, Brian 2004. This is Burning Man. The Rise of a New American Underground. Boston/New York: Little, Brown and Company
- Cortez, Donn 2005. The Man Burns Tonight: A Black Rock City Mystery.
- Hockett, Jeremy 2004. Reckoning Ritual and Counterculture in the Burning Man Community: Communication, Ethnography, and the Self in Reflexive Modernism. Dissertation. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico
- Kozinets, Robert V. 2002. Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man. In: Journal of Consumer Research, 29, June 2002, 20-38.
- Kozinets, Robert V. (2003), “The Moment of Infinite Fire,” in Time, Space, and the Market: Retroscapes Rising, ed. Stephen Brown and John F. Sherry. Jr., New York: M. E. Sharpe, 199-216.
- Kozinets, Robert V. and John F. Sherry, Jr. 2005. “Welcome to the Black Rock Café,” in Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man, ed. Lee Gilmore and Mark van Proyen, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 87-106.
- Kozinets, Robert V. and John F. Sherry, Jr. (2004), “Dancing on Common Ground: Exploring the Sacred at Burning Man,” in Rave Culture and Religion, ed. Graham St. John, New York and London: Routledge, 287-303.
- Kreuter, Holly 2002. Drama in the Desert: The Sights and Sounds of Burning Man. San Francisco: Raised Barn Press
- Kristen, Christine: Reconnecting art and life at Burning Man. in: Raw Vision, Nr. 57 (Winter 2006), S. 28 - 35.
- Morehead, John W. 2007. Burning Man Festival as Life-Enhancing, Post-Christendom 'Middle Way'. MA Thesis. Salt Lake City, Utah: Salt Lake Theological Seminary
- Nash, A. Leo 2007. Burning Man: Art in the Desert, Introduction by Daniel PinchbeckDaniel PinchbeckDaniel Pinchbeck is an author living in New York’s East Village, where he is editorial director of Reality Sandwich, a blog website centered around New Age philosophy and activism. He is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism and 2012:...
. New York: Harry N. Abrams - Pike, Sarah M. 2001. Desert Goddesses and Apocalyptic Art. Making Sacred Space at the Burning Man Festival. In: Mazur, Eric Michael/McCarthy, Kate (Hrsg.): God in the Details. American Religion in Popular Culture. London/New York: Routledge, 155-176
- Roberts, Adrian, ed. "Burning Man Live: 13 years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City's alternative newspaper" San Francisco: RE/Search Publications.
- Sherry, John F. Jr. and Robert V. Kozinets (2007), "Comedy of the Commons: Nomadic Spirituality and the Burning Man Festival," in Russell W. Belk and John F. Sherry, Jr., ed. Research in Consumer Behavior, Vol. 11: Consumer Culture Theory, Oxford: Elsevier, 119-147.
- Sherry, John F., Jr. and Robert V. Kozinets (2004), “Sacred Iconography in Secular Space: Altars, Alters and Alterity at the Burning Man Project,” in Contemporary Consumption Rituals: A Research Anthology, ed. Cele Otnes and Tina Lowry, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 291-311.
- Sherry, John F. Jr., Robert V. Kozinets, and Stefania Borghini, and. (2007), “Agents in Paradise: Experiential Co-Creation through Emplacement, Ritualization, and Community,” in Consuming Experiences, ed. Antonella Carù and Bernard Cova, London and New York: Routledge, 17-33.
- Traub, Barbara 2011. Desert to Dream: A Dozen Years of Burning Man Photography. San Francisco: Immedium
- Van Proyen, Mark/Gilmore, Lee (Hrsg.): AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man. New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press
External links
- Burning Man page Annual coverage from SFGate.com and the San Francisco Chronicle
- Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man A scrapbook-style account of Burning Man with interviews, photographs and ephemera. By Jessica Bruder.
- Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event An ethnography of the growing organization that runs Burning Man. By Katherine K. Chen
- BURNcast.tv A video/audio podcast spreading the flames about the art, culture and community of Burning Man
- Burning Man: Summer in the Desert - slideshow by Life magazine
- The Biggest Festival on Earth: Photo Story- Meredith Price describes the magic of Burning Man through photos.
- 12 Noon, Black Rock City Embedded Freakological Report from the field of the 2008 Burn, published at Dancecult. By Graham St John.
- The Regional Burn Showcase at Vox Ignis
- Burning Man by Barbara Traub. Book published by Hardwired; 1st edition (April 1997)