Will you or your gypset travel experience ever be the same after you’ve “burned”? Who knows, but it’s worth finding out! It all began with a bonfire ritual, held on the summer solstice in 1986, when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco and burned a 9-foot wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. Harvey described this event as a spontaneous act of “radical self-expression.” The event transpired over the years to become what it is today. There will be about 68,000 artists in attendance this year, with tickets priced at $380.
Burning Man is an annual experiment in which the otherwise desolate Black Rock Desert in Nevada is transformed into a temporary utopia for artists, bons vivants, gypsetters, and friends where they can collaborate, inspire and elevate one another from Monday, August 26th to Monday, September 2nd.
The attendees (or “burners”) are expected to be self-sufficient and encouraged to express themselves during the most inhospitable, creative and challenging weeks that will mystify some and enliven others. Burners work to express the idea that if you are open to miracles, you will find them in Black Rock City.
Innovative sculpture, installations, performances, theme camps, art cars, and costumes represent the various communities from which each artist hails. The “playa” is considered to be a tabula rasa, a blank canvas upon which many a fantastic vision has been realized. All attendees are encouraged not only to observe the installations throughout the city, but to be interactive. You only receive from Burning Man what you put into it. All burners are encouraged to bring their own art and set it up in their camp site.
Each year Burning Man is assigned a theme. Fertility 2.0, Rites of Passage, and Metropolis: The Life Of Cities, have all been themes from years past. This year the theme is based on John Frum and the Cargo Cults– a Melanesian millenarian movement which is derived from the belief that various ritualistic acts will lead to the bestowing of material wealth. In accordance with this year’s theme, the actual burning man will be set atop an enormous replica of the sky craft used to summon the Cargo Cult back to Earth.
The Burning Man event,and its affiliated communities, are guided by 10 principles written by Larry Harvey in 2004. These principles are meant to evoke the cultural ethos that has emerged from the event, and they include: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.On Saturday night all the attendees gather and watch the central man burn.
