Every summer, tens of thousands of people travel to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert in search of inspirational art, cohabitation, hedonism, and more.
The event is an annual bacchanalia, although in official form, Burning Man took a break in 2020 and 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the popularity of Burning Man and worldwide recognition, many people still do not know about its origin and what kind of event it is. Here is a brief description of Burning Man:
What is a Burning Man?
Don’t call it a “festival”. Burning Man is like a festival, but the event can best be described as a countercultural arts event that lasts for about nine days. Burning Man is a surreal, dusty and whimsical desert party in northwestern Nevada. The event is known for its eccentric displays of art and self-expression, including fantastical, frilly vehicles; towering metal sculptures; and anything else his fans can think of. Burning Man is also known for its more hedonistic aspects, including sex, nudity, and drug use.
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Why is it called “The Burning Man”?
Burning Man takes its name from the giant humane sculpture that is the centerpiece of the annual event and changes from year to year. A sculpture called “The Man” is set on fire and burned to complete the event.
What is the origin of Burning Man?
What is now known as “Burning Man” began in 1986 in Baker Beach, San Francisco. Founders Larry Harvey and Jerry James organized an event dedicated to the burning of a sculpture in the shape of a man. In the 1990s, Burning Man’s popularity skyrocketed, and it was moved to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where it remains. Briefly, the name was changed to Black Rock Arts Festival before reverting to “Burning Man”.
What is the purpose of Burning Man?
Burning Man is about self-expression and the rejection of corporatism and capitalism. The purpose of Burning Man is to create and view art, and to live in the moment. Members are known to create a fleeting, self-sustaining community that (theoretically) leaves no traces or debris once completed. A key theme of the Burning Man experience is the use of loans, barter, and trade instead of exchanging money.
What’s going on at Burning Man?
About 80,000 people, known as the “Burners”, make an annual trek into the rugged stretch of northwestern Nevada and set up a huge but makeshift camp dubbed Black Rock City. They build elaborate villages, a medical center, an airport, and performance stages. From there it gets weird, but that’s the point. Over the course of approximately nine days, members test the limits of self-expression through art, costume and design, building a community and what they tout as a kind of utopia. However, the camp has its own problems, including drug use, arrests, and sexual harassment. Law enforcement officers patrolling the area include local deputies and federal agents, as well as Burning Man Black Rock Rangers volunteers.
What are the 10 principles of Burning Man?
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey laid out these 10 Burning Man principles in 2004:
Radical Inclusion: Anyone can be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. There are no prerequisites for participation in our community.
Present: Burning Man is about the acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. A donation does not imply a return or exchange for something of equal value.
decommodification: To keep the spirit of giving alive, our community is committed to creating a social environment that is free from commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We are ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We are against replacing shared experiences with consumption.
Radical self-confidence: Burning Man encourages a person to discover, train and rely on their inner resources.
Radical self-expression: Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one but an individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. Offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the donor must respect the rights and freedoms of the recipient.
Joint effortsA: Our community values creative collaboration and collaboration. We are committed to creating, promoting and protecting social networks, public spaces, works of art and communication that support such interaction.
Civil responsibility: We value civil society. Community members who organize events should take responsibility for the public welfare and try to convey to the participants civic responsibility. They must also take responsibility for running events in accordance with local, state, and federal laws.
leaving no traceA: Our community respects the environment. We strive to leave no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and try to leave places where possible in a better condition than when we found them.
Participation: Our community is committed to an ethic of radical participation. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can only come about through deeply personal involvement. We achieve being through action. We invite everyone to work. We invite everyone to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
immediacy: Direct experience is in many ways the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We strive to overcome the barriers that stand between us and the recognition of our inner self, the reality of the people around us, participation in society and contact with the natural world that transcends human capabilities. No idea can replace this experience.
Where is Black Rock City located?
A temporary city is built every year about 100 miles northeast of Reno on a playa—Spanish for “flat, dry space”—in the desert. The built-up portion includes concentric streets that extend outward from The Man, with the street known as the Esplanade at its center. The city is surrounded by villages and themed camps, which are usually a group of people with similar interests.