Burning Man festivals
Burning Man festivals are annual, temporary gatherings held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, where a diverse community of individuals come together to create a unique social and artistic experience. Originating in 1986 as a small beach bonfire in San Francisco, the event has evolved into a significant cultural phenomenon, attracting tens of thousands of participants who endure extreme temperatures to partake in a week-long celebration of radical self-expression and communal living. Central to the festival is the burning of a massive wooden effigy known as "the Man," which symbolizes the culmination of artistic efforts and shared experiences.
The festival operates under ten guiding principles, including radical inclusion, gifting, and the commitment to "leave no trace," ensuring a respectful and environmentally conscious approach to its temporary community. Participants are encouraged to bring their own supplies and engage in creative contributions, often inspired by a specific theme each year. Despite its anti-commercial ethos, Burning Man has faced challenges related to increasing commercialization and environmental concerns, prompting organizers to implement measures to maintain the festival's core values. While it has garnered attention from various demographics, including celebrities and tech entrepreneurs, the festival remains rooted in a spirit of communal effort and artistic exploration.
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Subject Terms
Burning Man festivals
THE EVENT Annual temporary art community
PLACE Black Rock Desert, Nevada
In 1986, a small, spirited, and artful party began the act of burning an effigy of “the Man.” This singular, semiprivate event evolved into an annual artistic tradition, a prolific, communal, anticommercial movement.
The character of Burning Man festivals is unique to the entire world: On the Monday of the week prior to Labor Day weekend, thousands of radically self-expressive and self-reliant individuals arrive at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, to endure eight days of triple-digit heat to create, commune, and share in the experience of the Saturday night burning of “the Man,” a massive wooden effigy. The camp created for the festival is called Black Rock City. Because Burning Man festivals are commerce-free, participants bring their own supplies, tools, and survival gear, as well as art materials and equipment. A predetermined theme inspires the attendees to contribute artistically through theme camps (which began in 1993, when Peter Doty walked the playa, the ancient lakebed where the event takes place, dressed as Santa Claus), interactive endeavors, temporary living structures, moving art pieces, or art installations. Themes included Fertility (1997), the Nebulous Entity (1998), and the Wheel of Time (1999). At the end of the festival, all participants break down their constructions and clean up to meet the only mandate of the week: Leave no trace. The only residual is the “afterburn,” the indelible memory of the collective, spiritual experience.
Core Values
When the first Burning Man festival took place in 1986, it was merely an intimate get-together, a ceremony in honor of the summer solstice. At Baker Beach in San Francisco, California, Renaissance man Larry Harvey conceived of the idea to burn “the Man.” Harvey and Jerry James built the eight-foot-tall construct, and the party of friends as well as a few beach bystanders watched as it was torched. An individual spectator held the wooden figure’s hand as it burned, making for the first impromptu performance art, while the event itself made for an annual ritual of expression, inspiration, and nonmaterial communing.
That first year, the effigy was a basic wooden structure. The number of persons attending the event was twenty. The event's popularity began to grow throughout the 1990s, as the festival relocated to the Black Rock Desert in northwest Nevada, about 100 miles from Reno. In 2006, nearly forty thousand attendees gathered to witness the burning of a forty-foot rising and falling Man built atop a thirty-two-foot-high interactive maze in the Art Deco Pavilion. By 2014, the festival had grown to 67,564 participants and the Man had grown to sixty feet. The tallest Man in the history of the festival was in 2014—105 feet. The improvised event had given rise to a planned annual social experience wherein participants involve themselves in the community, immerse themselves in interactive art, and carry the event’s apolitical and anticommercial tenets to the greater community of humankind throughout the rest of the year.
As the Burning Man festivals continued and grew, the established and perpetuated the core values of a sustained community experience. “Burners” appreciate their culture, champion communication, and respect relationships. While self-reliance, self-expression, and taking responsibility for oneself are axiomatic principles, making oneself a part of the culture that defines itself as “radically inclusive” is imperative. Also, the mission of Burning Man festivals has always included a devout sense of and respect for “immediacy”: Priority is given to experience over theory, morality over politics, effort over consideration of gain, and participant support over commercial support. These ideals are collected in ten principles that govern the festivals: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.
In the late nineties, the founders started a limited liability company (LLC) called Black Rock City LLC to run the festival. In 2013 the organization officially transitioned to a non-profit organization called Burning Man Project, after beginning the process in 2011. The company built a network or people and organizations to spread the culture of Burning Man beyond Black Rock City and also worked to promote the work of its artists and performers year-round.
Throughout the 2010s, as Burning Man's reputation grew, the festival also underwent what some viewed as increasing commercialization. While the festival remained popular with longtime "burners" and other countercultural groups, it was also increasingly promoted by new demographics, including social media influencers, celebrities, and wealthy tech entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, some of whom were viewed as helping push the festival away from its longtime ideals and promoting consumerism. In 2019 festival organizers took a number of steps to reverse this trend; they banned a provider of luxury campsites and overhauled the festival's ticketing system in order to offer more low-income tickets. Marion Goodell, CEO of the Burning Man Project, described these actions as a "cultural course correction."
During the 2010s, the festival was also marred by occasional tragedies; for example, in 2017, a man died after breaking through security and running into the Burning Man statue after it had already been set on fire. Despite these challenges, the festival remained popular and continued to generate significant revenue for businesses near Black Rock City.
Burning Man was also impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which spread around the world in early 2020 and led to travel restrictions, event cancellations, and other public health measures in much of the US. In response to the pandemic, organizers decided to cancel Burning Man in 2020. The festival was also canceled the following year despite rising vaccination rates in the US by that point. Despite these cancellations, unofficial and unsanctioned Burning Man events were held in the Black Rock Desert during both years. From late August to early September 2022, the official Burning Man festival was held for the first time in two years, drawing an estimated 80,000 attendees.
Impact
The Burning Man festivals and subculture have been referenced in various facets of popular culture, from music to television shows, and have spawned other regional events. In the early twenty-first century, the annual event received criticism for its environmental impact. Vehicle travel to and from Black Rock Desert, power usage and generation on the playa, art cars on the playa, and fire art all contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, Burners typically claim to denounce commodification and deny materialistic motives, adhering to the leave-no-trace philosophy. While the temporary community lives out the artistic and humane ideals for one week every year, the members continue to encourage “green” living throughout the event and every day of the year. By the early 2020s, the festival had also come under criticism for its increasing commercialization, which many longtime devotees felt was a shift away from Burning Man's original core values and purpose.
Bibliography
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Boucher, Ashley. "Burning Man Finally Fights Instagram Culture and Bans High-End Camp." The Guardian, 14 Feb. 2019, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/14/burning-man-finally-fights-instagram-culture-and-bans-high-end-camp. Accessed 21 Oct. 2024.
Bruder, Jessica. Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007.
Doherty, Brian. This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground. New York: Little, Brown, 2004.
Nash, A. Leo, and Daniel Pinchbeck. Burning Man: Art in the Desert. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2007.
Pierpont, George. "Are the Super-Rich Ruining Burning Man?" BBC News, 18 Feb. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47203978. Accessed 21 May 2024.
"The 10 Principles of Burning Man." Burning Man. Burning Man Project, 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.