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performance & interactivity

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The Talmud says, "Three things are a foretaste of the world-that-is-coming: Sabbath, sunshine, and sexual intercourse" (Talmud Berakhot 57b). In various ways, all three of these tastes of the messianic era are to be had at Burning Man, the weeklong festival that takes place in late August near Reno, Nevada.

First is the sunshine. There is lots of it on "the playa," an ancient Black Rock Desert lakebed that is a flat and lifeless alkali expanse prone to severe dust storms. This is the site to which over 50,000 people bring all they need to temporarily construct Black Rock City, which annually appears and disappears like a desert mirage. It is simultaneously an arts festival, a performance festival, and a music and dance party where participation and immediacy of experience are valued, and various combinations of costuming and nudity are common.

According to the Burning Man Organization, the festival is an experimental community that "challenges its members to express themselves and rely on themselves to a degree that is not normally encountered in one's day-to-day life." There is an almost complete prohibition of commerce (you can only buy ice and coffee), including a prohibition of corporate sponsorships of projects (i.e., no branded gifts, no commercial logos). Participation, self-reliance, decommodification, and the gift economy are key. This is not a Club Med all-inclusive, or a music festival that is all about the headline acts, with the ticket holders mere interchangeable and passive consumers. Rather, the organizers create only the infrastructure for the participants who give each other their art, performances, and presence, thereby making the event.

Like Fenton Johnson, whose essay "Burning Man, Desire, and the Culture of Empire" in Tikkun's Summer 2012 issue prompted these reflections, I first attended Burning Man in 2010. Unlike Johnson, who ultimately rejects Burning Man for being insufficiently critical of "transnational corporate rule or wars of aggression" and being another expression of "the absolute need of white men to impose our will on every landscape," I have found myself drawn back each year since. I think Johnson's rejection is too simplistic, overlooking ways in which Burning Man encourages a sustained critique of what "burners" call "the default world." Nevertheless, his thoughts about the festival's emphasis on immediate experience and how this expresses a yearning "for union, for communion with what many would label God" got me thinking about my strange attraction to the festival, especially since my experience has little to do with the stereotype of it being "a party with sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll in the desert" ( Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2010).

The view I've come to is that Burning Man provides a version of the messianic "world-that-is-coming," expressing deep resonances with themes of Jewish tradition and Western culture as a whole. To be clear, I am not saying that Burning Man has explicitly religious elements. Rather, I'm suggesting that we see a shared human impetus for ritualized gatherings relating to the desire for freedom and transformation, and that certain practices have evolved at Burning Man that are surprisingly similar to ancient Jewish observances concerning Sabbath and festivals that articulate and arouse a yearning for a better world.

A Dusty Garden of Eden

The volunteers who briefly orient new arrivals to Burning Man greet them with the phrase "Welcome Home." By the time we've gotten there we're pretty exhausted after spending many hours driving and waiting in line, and these volunteers might seem annoyingly like Wal-Mart greeters-but then we realize that their costumes are not blue Wal-Mart vests, and the simultaneous sarcasm, irony, and hopefulness of "Welcome Home" tells us "we're not in Kansas anymore." Exhaustion transforms into exhilaration as we arrive at a dusty playa dressed up as a postmodern American version of the Garden of Eden. Illuminated with bright sun by day and bright lights and fire by night, this is a through-the looking-glass inversion of Las Vegas, that other Nevada version of paradise.

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How to Read the Rest of This Article

The text above was just an excerpt. The web versions of our print articles are now hosted by Duke University Press, Tikkun's publisher. Click here to read an HTML version of the article. Click here to read a PDF version of the article.
(To return to the Summer 2013 Table of Contents, click here.)
Ron H. Feldman, Ph.D., is the author of Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah and the co-editor of The Jewish Writings of Hannah Arendt. His dissertation on the tension between the rhythms of the week and the moon in ancient Jewish calendars, as well as other publications on the themes and scholarship discussed in this essay, are available at ronhfeldman.com/jewish-time-calendars-and-nature.html

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The Talmud says, "Three things are a foretaste of the world-that-is-coming: Sabbath, sunshine, and sexual intercourse" (Talmud Berakhot 57b). In various ways, all three of these tastes of the messianic era are to be had at Burning Man, the weeklong festival that takes place in late August near Reno, Nevada.

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"Folly & Fire" play in the desert. Mark Zupan.

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Folly and Fire: A Space of Play in the Black Rock Desert

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In Nevada's Black Rock Desert, there is a city that appears for one week each year and then vanishes, leaving no trace of its existence except ruts in the dusty clay. The inhospitable, barren salt flat that the city is built upon is fraught with turbulent dust storms and scorching temperatures.

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Lee Gilmore, purchased and Ebrary & NX510.N48 G55 2010

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theater in a crowded fire: ritual and spirituality at burning man

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black rock desert (nev.) - religious life and customs

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black rock desert (nev.) - religous life and customs

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black rock desert (nev.);religious life and customs.

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mexicans - family relationships - united states

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social science / anthropology / cultural & social

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social science / anthropology / cultural & social

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Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man

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Every summer, thousands gather from around the world in the blistering heat of Nevada's Black Rock Desert for the seven-day celebration of art, community, and fire known as Burning Man. Culminating in the spectacular incineration of a wooden effigy, this festival is grand-scale theater for self-e...

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(also known as relevant articles that don't centrally treat BM, but are important foundational readings to understand the BM movement)

Florida, Richard. "Rise of the Creative Class"

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1

Pablo Helguera (2013) Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook.

Patricia Romney. "The Art of Dialogue." Animating Democracy. http://animatingdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/documents/reading_room/art_of_dialogue.pdf

Leon Botstein (2015) “Are We Still Making Citizens?” from Democracy Journal online, 2015 http://www.democracyjournal.org/36/are-we-still-making-citizens.php?page=2

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4294977557

"Art and the Power of Placement" by Victoria Newhouse

"Conversations at the Castle:Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art' by Mary Jane Jacob

"The Lure of the Local:  Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society" by Lucy Lippard.

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* The Exhibition: How does Burning Man function as an "art exhibition"? What techniques are applicable, what historical models are referenced? How does it challenge and push the characteristics of both exhibitions and festivals/fairs?

* The Catalog: what is its function broadly, and applied to BM? Harm or help the cause?

* Social Practice Art: How does Burning Man art fit into emergent social practice art (esp. Helguera's framework)? Where does it diverge?

* History/the Cultural Movement: How can we understand BM art as an evolution of historical art movements such as Surrealism, Dada, Pop Art, Earth Art? How are similar motivations/values contextualized in today's digitalized, globalized society?

* Business Strategies: What strategies can BM use to disseminate its culture more broadly/effectively?

* Production: How does Burning Man art get produced? How is that different or similar to the neoliberal art market?

* Postmodernism is OVER: How Burning Man demonstrates that the public's sensibilities for detached, meaningless pastiche and chaotic spectacle are waning in influence and a new era seeking authenticity, emotion, and connection are on the rise.

* Time: how does BM understand concepts of time and duration differently than other exhibitions and events?

* Anonymity: what does it mean to publicly attribute a BM work to an artist or collective? what does it mean to make it difficult to learn who the creator is? (primacy of collective good? shared resources/ownership - enabling connection/reducing boundaries between individuals and communities?)

* Public Pedagogy & Social Transformation - how BM creates informal learning spaces in a civic communities, teaches specific values through example and discourse and enforcement, and how those permeate into broader culture

* Privilege at Burning Man: the potlach. the decommercialization and the entrenched and hidden commercializations. comparing BM to the developing world. Sustainability of decommodification. Race and wealth.

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video from a curator who thinks about BM

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Library Guides: Burning Inquiry: Burning Man at UNR: 2014: Paul Baker Prindle: Reno as arts destination

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Library Guides: Burning Inquiry: Burning Man at UNR: 2014: Paul Baker Prindle: Reno as arts destination

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TodFox

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Here is a collection of sources which can be integrated into articles about Burning Man or the subculture in general. Please add them to the appropriate category below, or make a new category if there is not an appropriate one. Please only add links to this page.

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"Representing the Present" - Larissa Quaak

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"Representing the Present" - Larissa Quaak

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master's thesis. See Chp 5, 66-81.

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curatorial overview

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I always had faith that art-making was important, but I wasn't sure why it was important. I went to graduate school for painting. I used to spend plenty of time trying to get shows in galleries, trying to get jobs teaching in universities, and trying to get grants.

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in Leonardo, 2003

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Efforts to define the fire art of Black Rock City raise the question, "Is it a science experiment or is it art?" The wonder of Burning Man is that projects that may be perceived as other than "art" are elevated to the status of art by being presented in a very public context in which participants are encouraged to use their gifts and skills to create whatever they're passionate about and have the skills and knowledge to make.

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Burning Man: Art in the Desert, by A. Leo Nash and Daniel Pinchbeck

Harry N. Abrams, 2007. ISBN 978-0810992900.
Black and white photographs and text by Leo Nash, introduction by Daniel Pinchbeck. ”A loving tribute to the art of Burning Man.”

At Bobst: (TR680 .N338 2007 Oversize)

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SPECTACLE by David Rockwell with Bruce Mau, Phaidon, 2006.

12 page chapter on Burning Man, with 8 photos, essays by the author and and interview with Larry Harvey.

At Bobst: (GT3405 .R63 2006)

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Turner, Fred
(2009) “Burning Man at Google: a cultural infrastructure for new media production.” New Media & Society 11, no. 1-2: 73-94.

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"This is BM: Underground" (purchased on amazon)

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this is burning man: the rise of a new american underground

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black rock desert (nev.);social life and customs.

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popular culture & media: general interest

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This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground

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This Is Burning Man tells the story of how the simple burning of a wooden man came to attract more than thirty thousand anarchists, Internet millionaires, ravers, academics, hippies, gearheads, punks, and suburban parents who travel to the Black Rock Desert each year to create an entirely alterna...

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Chen, Katherine K.
(2012). “Laboring for the Man: Augmenting Authority in a Voluntary Association.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 34:135-164.
***(2011). “Artistic Prosumption: Cocreative Destruction at Burning Man.” American Behavioral Scientist 56(4): 570-595.
(2011). “Lessons for Creative Cities from Burning Man: How organizations can sustain and disseminate a creative context.” City, Culture and Society 2(2): 93-100.
***(2009). Enabling creative chaos: The organization behind the Burning Man event.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
(2009). “Authenticity at Burning Man.” Contexts 8(3): 65-67.
(2005). “Incendiary incentives: How the Burning Man organization motivates and manages volunteers.” In L. Gilmore & M. Van Proyen (Eds.), Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man (109-128). Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
(2003). “Coordinating contributing members: How the Burning Man organization forms an ‘alternative’ artistic community in the Nevada Black Rock Desert.” Pp. 56-61 in People Shaping Places Shaping People Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) Proceedings 34. Eds. Julia W. Robinson, Kathleen A. Harder, Herbert L. Pick, and Virajita Singh

1. (2003). “Burning Man lights a fire: The Nevada desert event doesn’t just produce art, it produces citizens.” In the Fray. [http://inthefray.org/2003/12/burning-man-lights-a-fire/ ]

(2003). “Growth at Burning Man: An anthropological view.” Blacktop Gazette: Decompression Issue 2(3).
(2002). “The alternative in the desert: On the Burning Man organization.” Alumni Quarterly Colloquy: 16. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Harvard University.

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Scholars and academics have long found Black Rock City ripe for research projects and scholarly analysis. Burning Man's Communications Department has served as a liaison to these projects by providing access to the Burning Man archives, photo and video passes on the playa, staff and participant interviews, and other forms of support for research and educational efforts.

History

In 2010, the Jack Rabbit Speaks newsletter issued an invitation to scholars, educators, and academics to attend the first official "Burning Nerds" Meet and Greet, held on Friday, September 3rd at Hotel Ashram Galactica in Black Rock City. Over 200 academics attended; sociology, anthropology, performance, art, business, spirituality and religion, business, and dozens of other disciplines were represented at this lively affair, and several researchers took the stage to provide insights into their current or planned projects about Burning Man and our related culture. Based on the enthusiasm from that event, we formed a Burning Nerds Google group, built this webpage, and now we meet annually in Black Rock City.
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Related Academic Reading, Articles, and Collaborations

The Black Rock Census is a collaborative research project that began in 2002. Volunteers include professors and students from universities in Canada and the United States representing a range of disciplines. The Census results are distributed in the AfterBurn report online, on the playa, and in academic publications. The information is also used by the Burning Man organization to better represent the interests of the people of Black Rock City in negotiations with authorities in the state of Nevada and the US federal government. Thank you to those of you who have filled out the Census form in the past. Knowledge is power! You can become one of our volunteers simply by emailing census (at) burningman (dot) com and telling us about yourself and your interest in the Census.

Peruse a full list of books, featuring a wide variety of topics including photography, art and/or radical culture - but all featuring the Man - in the Burning Bibliography.

Are you interested in connecting with other Burning Man academics and scholars? Join the Burning Nerds Google Group to stay updated on recent, relevant, and ongoing research about our collective experience in Black Rock City, and find out about meet-ups, collaborations, and future events. One Burning Nerd, Lauren Christos of Florida International University, has created a digital academic bibliography of Burning Man called Burning the Man, Academically.

Burning Man's annual AfterBurn Report is the year-end overview of the Burning Man Project, our objectives, and the successes and obstacles we encounter each year. If you seek data about participants or departmental/organizational information, you'll find it here, dating back to 2001. (Note: each year's annual report is typically available the following spring.)

Read what Founding Director Larry Harvey has written about Burning Man.

To send us a message regarding works you'd like to see listed on this page, request information for your own research, or to contact us about other academic opportunities, email us at academics (at) burningman (dot) com.

Interested in what the press has to say about the event? Media coverage of the event is archived here.
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Center Camp Cafe Speaker Series

You have a brain. And expertise. And no fear of dialogues with strangers. Speak on the Playa. Contact sleepless (at) burningman (dot) com to find out more.
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Published Academic Work on Burning Man
Authors and Subject
Bowditch, Rachel: Performance & Ritual
Chen, Katherine: Organization & Sociology
Clupper, Wendy: Performance Art & Erotic Politics
Doherty, Brian: American Underground

Gautier, Francois: Gifting; Religion; Global diasporisation and efflorescence
Gilmore, Lee: Spirituality & Ritual
Hockett, Jeremy: Ethnography & Self

Hoover, Duane: Organization & Management

Ji, Yuan: Business Law
Kehoe, Kara Leeann: Communications
Kozinetz, R. & Sherry Jr., John: Marketing, Social Media & Consumer Culture
Kristen, Christen aka Lady Bee: Art Curation
Larsen, Dawn: Theatre Studies
McRae Kateri & Heller, Megan, et al: Emotion Regulation
Morehead, John W.: Religion and Culture

Pike, Sarah: Comparative Religion
Quaak, Larissa: Cultural Anthropology

Radziwill, Nicole & Benton, Morgan C: Integrated Science & Technology
St. John, Graham: Electronic Dance Culture
Turner, Fred: New Media Production

Bowditch, Rachel
(2010). On the edge of Utopia: Performance and ritual at Burning Man. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.
(2010)." The somatic city: Rehearsing utopia at the Burning Man festival." XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. Urban Feel. #23
(2007). "Temple of tears: Revitalizing and inventing ritual in the Burning Man community in the Black Rock desert of Nevada." The Journal of Religion &Theatre, Vol. 6, No. 2, 140-154.
(2007). "Dancing with fire: The ultimate effigy." Puppetry International Magazine Issue 22.

Chen, Katherine K.
(2012). " Laboring for the Man: Augmenting Authority in a Voluntary Association." Research in the Sociology of Organizations 34:135-164.
(2011). " Artistic Prosumption: Cocreative Destruction at Burning Man." American Behavioral Scientist 56(4): 570-595.
(2011). " Lessons for Creative Cities from Burning Man: How organizations can sustain and disseminate a creative context." City, Culture and Society 2(2): 93-100.
(2009). Enabling creative chaos: The organization behind the Burning Man event. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
(2009). " Authenticity at Burning Man." Contexts 8(3): 65-67.
(2005). "Incendiary incentives: How the Burning Man organization motivates and manages volunteers." In L. Gilmore & M. Van Proyen (Eds.), Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man (109-128). Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
(2003). " Coordinating contributing members: How the Burning Man organization forms an 'alternative' artistic community in the Nevada Black Rock Desert." Pp. 56-61 in People Shaping Places Shaping People Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) Proceedings 34. Eds. Julia W. Robinson, Kathleen A. Harder, Herbert L. Pick, and Virajita Singh
(2003). " Burning Man lights a fire: The Nevada desert event doesn't just produce art, it produces citizens." In the Fray.
(2003). " Growth at Burning Man: An anthropological view." Blacktop Gazette: Decompression Issue 2(3).
(2002). " The alternative in the desert: On the Burning Man organization." Alumni Quarterly Colloquy: 16. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Harvard University.

Clupper, Wendy
(2011). "Darwin loves you: The evolution of performance art thanks to Burning Man." Festivals and Faires in the United States. New York: Mellon Press.
(2009). "The erotic politics of Critical Tits: Exhibitionism or feminist statement?" Political Performances: Theory and Practice. New York/ Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.
(2007). "Burning Man: Festival culture in the United States, Festival Culture in a Global Perspective." Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture. New York/Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.

(2007) "The Performance Culture of Burning Man." Dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park. School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/7405/1/umi-umd-4825.pdf

Doherty, Brian
(2004). This is Burning Man: The rise of a new American underground. New York NY: Little, Brown & Co.
Gauthier, Francois
(2013) "The Enchantments of Consumer Capitalism. Beyond Belief at the Burning Man Festival," dans F. Gauthier et T. Martikainen (dir.), Religion in Consumer Society. Brands, Consumers and Markets, Farnham : Ashgate, pp.143-158.

(2011) "Les HeeBeeGeeBee Healers au Festival Burning Man. Trois récits de guérison," Ethnologies, Vol.33, No.1 : 191-215.

(2010) "Du bon usage des drogues en religion. Consommations néo-chamaniques à Burning Man," Drogues, santé et société, Vol.8, No 1 : 202-237.

(2010) "De l'errance à l'extase : les quêtes du Festival Burning Man," dans Nicolas Ducournau, Jocelyn Lachance, Louis Mathiot et Meryem Sellami (dir.), La recherche d'extase chez les jeunes. Troubles alimentaires, Scarifications, Psychotropes, Errances, Ste-Foy (Québec), Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 63-71.

Gilmore, Lee
(2010). Theatre in a crowded fire: Ritual and spirituality at Burning Man, University of California Press. Gilmore, L., & Van Proyen, M. (Eds.).
(2005). Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man. Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
(2003). "Fires of the heart: Ritual, pilgrimage and transformation at Burning Man." In L. Gilmore & M. Van Proyen (Eds.), Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man (43-62). Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Hockett, Jeremy
(2005). "Participant observation and the study of self: Burning Man as ethnographic experience." In L. Gilmore & M. Van Proyen (Eds.), Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man. Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Hoover, Duane J.
(2008). "Realizing the artful in management education and development: Smoldering examples from the Burning Man Project." Journal of Management and Organization. November.
Ji, Yuan
(2013) "Burning Man: A case study of altruism thriving in a for-profit organiational form and the rationales for LLC -to-nonprofit conversion." In Hastings Business Law Journal. Vol 9-3. p.449-484. UCLA.

Kehoe, Kara Leeann
(2011). Thesis: " Burning Man Was Better Next Year.a phenomenology of community identity in the Black Rock counterculture." California State University, Sacramento. Communication Studies Department.

Kozinets, Robert V & Sherry Jr., John F.
Kozinets, Robert V & Sherry Jr., John F.
(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.
(2007). "Comedy of the commons: Nomadic spirituality at Burning Man." In R. Belk & J.F. Sherry Jr. (Eds.), Consumer Culture Theory, Vol. 11 of Research in Consumer Behavior (119-147). Oxford: Elsevier.
(2005). "Welcome to the Black Rock Café." In L. Gilmore & M. Van Proyen (Eds.), Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man (87-106). Albequerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
(2004). "Dancing on common ground: Exploring the sacred at Burning Man." In G. St. John (Eds.), Rave Culture and Religion (287-303). New York and London: Routledge.
(2003). "Sacred iconography in secular space: Altars, alters, and alterity at the Burning Man project." in Contemporary Consumption Rituals: A Research Anthology, eds. Cele Otnes and Tina Lowrey, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 291-311.
(2003). "The moment of infinite fire." In S. Brown & J.F. Sherry Jr. (Eds.), Time, Space, and the Market: Retroscapes Rising (199-216). New York: M. E. Sharpe.
(2002). "Can consumers escape the market? Emancipatory illuminations from Burning Man." Journal of Consumer Research, 29 (June), 20-38.
(2002). "Desert pilgrim." Consumption, Markets and Culture. 5 (September), 171-186.

Kristen, Christen aka Lady Bee
(2007) "Fire Art of Burning Man. Playing with Fire." Leonardo online Vol 40, no. 4
(2006) "Reconnecting Art and Life at Burning Man." Raw Vision. Issue 57:Winter.
(2003) "The Outsider Art of Burning Man" Leonardo on-line vol. 36, no. 5.

Larsen, Dawn
(2012). Burning Man: Professor Coaxes Theatre Students 'Out of Their Boxes' with Annual Field Trip to Counterculture Festival. Southern Theatre 53.2 (Spring 2012): 22-25, 29.

McRae, Kateri S., Heller, Megan, John, Oliver P., & Gross, James J.
(2011). "Context-Dependent Emotion Regulation: Suppression and Reappraisal at the Burning Man Festival." Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 33:4, 346-350 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2011.614170

Morehead, John W.
(2013). "Burning Man and Rituals of Inversion". Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. Sage Publications.
(2011). " Burning Man Festival: A Life-Enhancing, Post-Christendom, 'Middle Way'". Saarbrücken, Germany: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.
(2010). "From a Marginalized Community to a New Spiritual Order: Lessons at Burning Man Festival, in Perspectives on Post-Christendom Spiritualities" (119-144). Sydney: Morling College Press.
(2009). " Burning Man Festival in Alternative Interpretive Analysis", Sacred Tribes Journal 4, no. 1: 19-41.
(2009). " Burning Man Festival", Sacred Tribes Journal Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements.
(2009). " Alternative Cultural Events ", Sacred Tribes Journal Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements.
Pike, Sarah
(2010) "Performing Grief in Formal and Informal Rituals at the Burning Man Festival," in: Weinhold, J. & Samuel G. (eds.) "The Varieties of Ritual Experience," in Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual. Volume II - Body, Performance, Agency and Experience, ed. by Axel Michaels et al. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz

(2005) "No Novenas for the Dead: Ritual Action and Communal Memory at the Temple of Tears," in Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man, edited by Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen. University of New Mexico Press

(2001) "Desert Goddesses and Apocalyptic Art: Making Sacred Space at the Burning Man Festival" in God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, edited by Katherine McCarthy and Eric Mazur. New York: Routledge, Inc.

Quaak, Larissa
(2017). Re-presenting the present. The (r) evolution of the Burning Man Festival, Master Thesis, Cultural Anthropology.
Radziwill, N. M. & Benton, M. C.
(2013) "Burning Man - Quality and Innovation in the Spirit of Deming." Journal for Quality and Participation, April, p. 7-11

St. John, Graham
(2009). " 12 noon, Black Rock City." Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture. 1(1).
(2007/11/09 - 3:22pm). " Begoggled in the mega-vibe @ Burningman." Undergrowth.

Turner, Fred
(2009) "Burning Man at Google: a cultural infrastructure for new media production." New Media & Society 11, no. 1-2: 73-94.

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Scholars and academics have long found Black Rock City ripe for research projects and scholarly analysis. Burning Man's Communications Department has served as a liaison to these projects by providing access to the Burning Man archives, photo and video passes...

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interview, great mention of "Garden of Eden"

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[RS Gallery] * Kate Raudenbush is a self-taught interactive installation sculptor and photographer living in New York. Working within themes of social commentary and the expressive materials of fire-cut metal, wood, mirrors and light, her dynamic sculptures have been exhibited for the last four years at the Burning Man Festival.

MR: What is your personal mantra?

Create with intention. Remain open. Breathe.

What does the role of the Artist mean to you?

Artists are the conscience of our age reflected in physical form. The act of creation is enormously powerful; it is the ability to bring into being something that existed only in the mind, in potential energy, in the space between the atoms. What is created is their conscious thought manifested in physical form. This brings with it enormous responsibility.

Artists are the mirrors of our society. In a way they are also portals to the future. This sounds absurd at first. However, imagine our current civilization being unearthed in the future: it would be the art that would give these archeologists the most clues about what we revered, what we valued, and what reflected our identity.

Unfortunately, now is a time when the "art market" is being perverted by commercialism. What is seen as remarkable is the orgy of cash being spent on works of art and the vapid consuming spectacle around it – not the art itself. The archeologists of the future might say that this civilization puts money on a pedestal more than the art – that culture is merely an object that can be bought.

Thankfully, many artists not part of that circus are producing some amazing work for those of us with enough awareness to understand that art is not valued for its auction price. Its real value is discovered in its immediacy, by the experience and insight art creates. These visceral artists are the antidotes to what ails this society. They create art that feels alive because they are not merely creating an object – they are creating a living experience, a culture, a reflection of ourselves. Witness, for example, the work created at Burning Man in recent years. Imagine unearthing that in the future.

What is the driving force behind your creativity?

To communicate, as best I can, humanity's place in our world and to reflect us, with all our potential, back to ourselves. I am driven by the desire to create an interactive gathering space for community to connect with each other and together be inspired by their collective and individual experience. I seek to distill an idea down to its essential form, its essential question, its essential metaphor, and to build unity from opposites in the most harmonious and elegant way possible. My intention is to create a sculpture that you can feel, that possesses it's own energy, that is transporting.

What transformative experiences have influenced your life and how has that manifested in your work?

When I was a kid, I grew up moving every two to three years to a new place overseas, and then back to the States. The opportunity to start over and reinvent oneself in a new world was ingrained, so that throwing myself into various forms of artistic expression became natural and inevitable to me. My love of observing and reflecting the culture around me grew into my first passion and profession: photography.

Yet in 1999, almost 10 years ago, I first set foot on the Playa at Burning Man and discovered what seemed to be a world that defied capturing. It was a world where you did not define it; it defined you. I had the sense that I had been looking for this place all my life, but didn't realize it until I got there. Over time, I found that photographing ( observing) Burning Man pulled me away from participating in the visceral, multi-sensory, fleeting and liberating experience of it. In 2004, with my Vault of Heaven sculpture, I decided the best way to contribute creatively to that vast living culture was to invent my own little world inside that universe. The decision was a release and a turning point; instead of documenting the experience for myself, I chose to create one for others. That is how I came to teach myself how to build my sculptures. I have been making my yearly pilgrimage to the desert and contributing to that limitless tabula rasa ever since.

How long does it take you on average to complete a piece of work, and do you ever do several pieces simultaneously?

It really depends on the scope of the project. The Gear Chandeliers took about three months and I made them at the same time I built Duel Nature. From conception to reality, creating one of my Burning Man sculptures takes about nine months. It feels like you are creating a child. I simultaneously do photography work. I sell my fine art prints and I work on smaller long-term projects like building prototypes of my experimental furniture. I always have to be creating something. That is when I feel most alive.

Why should people check out your work?

My sculptures are made with intention yet open enough to be a set piece for your own experience. In my photographic work there is often a playful seriousness or formal dignity even in the most saturated image. I put enormous energy into imagining how people can connect through my creations.

When I conceived Guardian of Eden (the lotus flower) I thought about the different ways people would gather inside and underneath the sculpture and what allegorical experience it would create by our interaction with it. In Hindu creation myth, when a lotus flower opens it reveals the seat of the Creator, Brahman, who sets into motion the birth of the next cycle of existence. I wanted to build a living sculpture that would give us the opportunity to sit in that place of creation and contemplate the nature of our current world and imagine, if we were the Creator God, what kind of world would we invent if we had that kind of creative power. I wanted to create a surreal gathering space for perfect strangers to meet and cross-pollinate their energy and ideas inside a symbol for enlightenment.

How does your work affect consciousness, and what are your views on the evolution of consciousness?

Essentially, I create to communicate an idea. I create with a specific intention and hope that people intuitively resonate with it on that same frequency. Distilling it into a few rough themes, I have attempted to communicate ideas that reflect humanity, and our interconnected relation to Creation ( Guardian of Eden), our own destructive and constructive nature ( Duel Nature), our perceptions and judgments of ourselves ( Stadium of the Self), our conception of linear time ( Gear Chandelier), and our illusion of subjective observation ( Observer/Observed). It is a privilege and a responsibility to be given the opportunity to create an environment that opens a window from which to view the world and see ourselves.

I think the world is heading toward greater consciousness, although when you read the newspapers, it's hard to believe. There is an increasing amount of fanaticism because of clashing ideologies, nationalism and struggle for domination of natural resources for an economically imbalanced, overpopulated and over-consuming world. This is the reality on the ground. I feel that we are experiencing the push and pull of simultaneously connecting and disconnecting. And in many ways this chaos is because we are destroying our natural habitat, and therefore our humanity. Perhaps part of this expanding consciousness is born out of this crisis: we lose the physical world only to connect more in non-physical realm, for there is nothing that will awaken you more to the fragility and the interconnectedness of life than to realize that it's all disappearing. We are blindly, foolishly participating in a planet-wide game of musical chairs, and there are fewer and fewer seats because we are paving and mining and chopping down all the wood in our home. What diabolical maniac is in charge of this game? We are. We may be resourceful living beings, but there is no virtual, technological substitute for a tree. Nor is there a replacement for visceral human connection, or a proxy for real experience.

Our relation to nature is symbiotic. We are beings that evolved out of this earth, and living in harmony with nature not only elevates our consciousness, it's essential for our physical survival. If we lose our connection to our earth, if we modern humans fail to respect and reconnect to that Gaian mind, where will we find our own consciousness and ourselves? This is our task – the greatest challenge of our time. Our evolution and our hope lie in the fact that many people are realizing this. More and more people are growing conscious of our own interconnectivity. But let's get real. Unless we act with this evolved consciousness and apply it boldly, globally and physically in our daily lives – unless this consciousness gets truly catalyzed- – our evolution will remain in the imagination.

This brings to mind words spoken by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Radio City Music Hall this past fall. Pressing his palms together in front of his chest, he closed his speech saying, "I don't really believe in the power of prayer." Making gentle fists of his hands, he continued, "I believe in the power of my own hands – working with my own honest effort."

It's up to us to create our own reality. We have work to do.

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Sculptures You Can Feel: A Talk with Kate Raudenbush - Reality Sandwich

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RS Gallery] * Kate Raudenbush's massive Burning Man sculptures are reliably among the festival's most evocative and dramatic. "[People] would sit for hours up above the playa," she recalls, "reclining languorously in the air in the curve of the giant lotus petals lit by the amber glow of the mirrored seed-pod."

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interview

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in-depth recent interview. Super interesting.

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CONNERSMITH - founded in 1999 - mobilizes the careers of artists who excel at communicating powerful concepts in diverse media.

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The best view in San Francisco is again of the Bay Bridge

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precursor to Bay Lights

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Sandra Gering Inc. - Leo Villareal: Volume

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Exhibition page for Leo Villareal: Volume. Includes press release, images, press, associated artists, and associated publications.

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The San Jose Museum of Art is presenting my first-ever museum survey show and features 20 sculptures dated from 1997 to the present.

My work is focused on stripping systems down to their essence to better understand the underlying structures and rules that govern how they work. I am interested in lowest common denominators such as pixels or the zeros and ones in binary code. Starting at the beginning, using the simplest forms, I begin to build elements within a framework. The work explores not only on the physical but adds the dimension of time combining both spatial and temporal resolution. The forms move, change, interact and ultimately grow into complex organisms. Inspired by mathematician John Conway's work with cellular automata and the Game of Life, I have sought to create my own sets of rules. Central to the work is the element of chance. My goal is to create a rich environment in which emergent behavior can occur without a preconceived outcome.

I believe in being an active participant, serving as editor in the process through the careful selection of compelling sequences. These selections are then further refined through combination with other sequences through simple operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication.

The sequence's opacity, speed and scale can all be manipulated through custom software. Ultimately, complex compositions are formed and then displayed in random order and for a random amount of time in the final artwork. The visual manifestation of the code in light is my core interest.

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The Essence Of Light: Thirteen Years Of Exploration (PHOTOS)

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The San Jose Museum of Art is presenting my first-ever museum survey show and features 20 sculptures dated from 1997 to the present. My work is focused on stripping systems down to their essence to better understand the underlying structures and rules that govern how they work.

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Villareal show in NY (2007)

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Gering & L? Gallery
730 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street
Through April 28

When you think about artificial intelligence, Mark Rothko isn't the first name that comes to mind. But ''Field,'' the software-driven sculpture at the heart of Leo Villareal's third New York show, makes the leap. A computer code written by Mr. Villareal generates an autonomous system that illuminates thousands of colored LEDs, hidden behind a panel of opaque acrylic. Soft-edged shapes float on luminous grounds in sequences of pattern and palette that in theory never repeat.

The panel's elongated horizontality and monumental scale (it spans 24 feet) evokes Monet's ''Waterlilies,'' igniting visions of a holodeck Giverny. (Also on view are a stainless-steel wall embedded with randomly flashing white lights and an erratic network of orange LEDs installed on the ceiling.)

On one visit, as ''Field'' cycled through break-of-dawn lilac, midday cerulean and the blood-orange of sunset, the piece seemed to compress the passage of an entire day into a few short minutes. This hypnotic meditation on the elasticity of time recalls Kandinsky's theories of painting as visual music; Mr. Villareal has orchestrated a soundtrack for eternity. ''Field,'' unfortunately, is something of an also-ran: Jeremy Blake tackled digital animations of Color Field paintings in 2002.

In 2004 Mr. Villareal made a prequel of sorts to ''Field'' that used rows of Flavin-like tubes in lieu of a sheet of acrylic. That choice of materials felt like a bid for legitimization by an artist whose work could err on the side of high-ticket party decorations. But with this hypnotic update of systems-based art, Mr. Villareal comes into his own, pairing customized software with some of the most stunning hardware around. ANDREA K. SCOTT

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Gering & López Gallery 730 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street Through April 28 When you think about artificial intelligence, Mark Rothko isn't the first name that comes to mind. But ''Field,'' the software-driven sculpture at the heart of Leo Villareal's third New York show, makes the leap.

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(anecdotal)

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Interview with Leo Villareal - Cool Hunting

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Interview with Leo Villareal - Cool Hunting

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by Michael Slenske

Two decades ago, New York-based light sculptor Leo Villareal attended Burning Man (the annual week-long art event in Black Rock City, Nevada, which culminates around a wooden sculpture of a man set on fire) and the experience changed his life. A few years later Villareal returned to the Nevada desert with a 16-strobe light beacon of his own design, which he fixed to the roof of his group's RV so that they could find their way home. "I was tired of getting lost, so I made my first piece which was sort of just a utilitarian thing to help me stay oriented. But then I thought, 'Wow, that's a very powerful combination: software and light,'" recalls Villareal, who brought the work home to NYC, laid a translucent cover over the top and had just produced his first gallery-worthy light sculpture, "Strobe Matrix."

Villareal spent the next 10 years broadening the scope of his work with increasingly larger, more technically complicated architectural interventions. Many were commissioned as temporary works, and many have ended up being permanent or semi-permanent. To wit: six years after it was installed, the 41,000 LED, three-years-in-the-making "Multiverse" still envelops the 200 foot-long walkway between the east and west buildings of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The artist's "Stars" remains in the windows of the Brooklyn Academy of Music years after it was scheduled for de-installation; the Buckminster Fuller-inspired "Buckyball" that lit up NYC's Madison Square Park in 2012 is currently being shown outside Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it is now part of the institution's permanent collection. The 25,000 algorithmically-controlled LED lights that make up "The Bay Lights," which just marked its one-year anniversary, continues to illuminate the night sky across the Bay Area, and may continue to for another decade or so.

The latter-likely the most technologically challenging public art installation ever-is also the subject of a new documentary, " Impossible Light." The film premiered at SXSW and details the project's numerous challenges: raising $8 million in private funding over two years, overcoming epic industrial, national security and environmental concerns not to mention finding the right people to get behind the project (from local engineers to public art éminence grise Christo, who wrote letters of endorsement on Villareal's behalf). On the heels of the film's premiere and the installation's anniversary, Villareal checked in from D.-where he was taking some time to absorb the ambient glow of "Multiverse"-to talk about his trajectory from Burner to Bay Area icon, what technology means to his work and what's next.

If you look back on the strobe light piece you did for Burning Man, could you have ever imagined this kind of trajectory for your work?

Absolutely not. The first year I went to Burning Man was 1994, and I made the strobe piece in '97. That got me going and then over time I did my first large-scale architectural piece in 2003 at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, and it just went incrementally from there. But I never thought I'd do anything like "The Bay Lights." It's cool what you can do with light.

Were you ever interested in the pioneers of California's Light and Space movement? Was that something you were thinking about?

I had an art history background, and my family is from Marfa, Texas, so I certainly knew about Donald Judd and Dan Flavin and [James] Turrell. But I studied sculpture and then I got into technology in the early '90s and I wasn't quite sure how I was going to fuse all these new tools I was using into my art-making practice. That's what happened in '97 [with "Strobe Matrix"], and I realized this is very powerful and this is what I want to pursue. But I would say it was definitely a combination of the Light and Space guys, plus Burning Man, plus technology being in the right place at the right time over and over.

How has your work evolved as technology has advanced?

Certainly I would not be able to do the work I do without LED technology. Solid-state lighting is remarkable in its robustness and in how energy efficient it is. I'm also very involved in creating my own LED circuit boards and control systems and all the software I use is custom-written. I'm working with my programmers-I only go so deep myself-but at the end of the day I'm using the tools that have been custom-made for me, and then I'm very involved in the sequence-making. But I'm all for innovation and I wish it would go faster. I'm really excited for LEDs that last a million hours instead of just 100,000 hours.

What's your process like when creating public installations?

I'm there to capture that 1% of the time when something exciting happens and I can bring that back-something I've harvested-and then I can continue to layer and evolve it. It is a very painterly process, it's very compositional, very similar to the way you'd compose music. There are certain motifs that repeat at different scales at different tempos. There's background layers and foreground layers and layers that subtract light, so you're dealing with negative space.

Since "The Bay Lights" went up on year ago, have you been inundated with projects of that scale?

It's been unbelievable. We've had over half-a-billion media impressions and that was several months ago. The story went from local to national to international and it's inspired huge amounts of interest in my work and for doing monumental public art. I think what's exciting is that with "The Bay Lights," it's not only a piece of art 50 million people will see in two years, but it's also good for the city. It's bringing in, conservatively, $100 million to San Francisco in restaurants and hotels.

Are you involved in the campaign to keep "The Bay Lights" running through 2026?

Yes, we just announced that on 5 March. It's really about the people of San Francisco. They've really fallen in love with the artwork and they want it to remain, which is great. But like I said in the film, this is something that needs to come from the public, not the artist saying, 'My piece has to be permanent or here for [another] 10 years.' I just feel honored to have had it up for this long. I'm okay with temporary art; that's how it is on [Burning Man venue] the Playa, you have to let it come and go. But if something can become iconic and part of the city, of course I'm thrilled to participate in that.

When you walk through cities, do you see the possibilities in the architecture?

Definitely. Over the years my ability to create 3D simulations and visualizations has evolved, which is very important in my work and a lot of projects start like that: showing people what it could look like. That's how "The Bay Lights" started, with a one-minute animation showing people what it could be.

Is there a new space you'd really love to explore?

I want to get out in nature. There's some test pieces out in spaces in Texas. Places like Marfa, I think would be very exciting to explore. That's going in a whole other direction.

Are there any new items on the tech front you're thinking about the way you might have thought about LEDs years ago?

The control of LEDs used to be very, very expensive. Now you can buy this stuff on a roll from China and, for a couple hundred bucks, you can be sequencing LEDs, which was never possible before. I would like for there to be more really revolutionary innovations in light, but I still think there's a lot left to do with LED.

What other new projects are you working on at the moment?

I've been focusing more on gallery shows and museums. I'm doing some different group shows, one called "The Light Show," which is traveling to New Zealand and Australia. I'm currently in the Cartagena Biennial. We're going to be showing "Buckyball" sometime this year; we're making a scale model of it.

This is the indoor version of the outdoor work?

Yeah, it's about a three-foot diameter sphere on the outside and then another sphere within that. I'm all about making smaller pieces and learning at different scales. I'm just really regrouping. Two-and-a-half years working on the Bay Lights was pretty consuming. I just moved studios and have a new studio out in Brooklyn in Industry City. MakerBot is out there.

Is the new studio helping out with the work?

I can think straight with having enough space. I was in the same studio for 15 years in Chelsea, right in the middle of the art world and that was great but it's just a lot of noise. Going to a place where I can think and work is very important. That's what the new studio is about. For me it's really about assessing where I'm at and figuring out the next moves. But it's definitely an exciting time.
"Buckyball" images courtesy of Leo Villareal Studio, "The Bay Lights" images and "Double Scramble" image courtesy of James Ewing, "Impossible Light" images courtesy of Jeremy Ambers

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by Michael Slenske Two decades ago, New York-based light sculptor Leo Villareal attended Burning Man (the annual week-long art event in Black Rock City, Nevada, which culminates around a wooden sculpture of a man set on fire) and the experience changed his life.

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ritual at BM -NYU Bobst NX510.N32 B63 2010

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This is a slightly longer version of a piece that was originally published at The Point, a Chicago-based print journal on contemporary life and culture. It will also be printed in Issue 6, and here's the Issue 6 Annotated Table Of Contents.

* * *

When I wake up at the hotel in Reno, my memories are a messy pastiche. I reach for an image to encapsulate my review of Burning Man, but everything I grasp feels like a flat cliché. Dancing beside a fluorescent art deco bus and a fire-belching metal octopus. Bonding with a new friend by solving a maze's secret doors. Randomly encountering a fake film crew composed entirely of trenchcoated noir buffs, who welcome me into their game. Accepting, with gratitude, the recitation of a poem about self-awareness and another about kissing. Walking to the edge of a desert dance floor to stretch and greet the dawn with an exhausted grin.

Each of these are all of it, and yet the smallest piece. So I'll start at the beginning.

* * *

I am in a garage with a neuroscientist, a sales executive, a teacher, a bike co-op manager, and some dude whose deal I don't know. Me, I'm a feminist sex writer specializing in S&M and moonlighting as a new media consultant. We're loading a truck with toolboxes, barrels, bicycles, and more. This camp's theme is watermelons; the garage is strewn with watermelon umbrellas, and we pack in a bike rack painted to look like a giant watermelon slice. Unknown Deal Dude doesn't recognize it for a full minute. "Ohhh! It's supposed to look like a watermelon!"

"Maybe that's a sign that the theme has become too abstract," I say to Bike Co-op Manager.

"Maybe it's a sign that it's become abstract enough," he says serenely.

I wander into the back and pick up a plastic bag full of sequined watermelon pins. "Where did these come from?" I ask the teacher. She shrugs. In the corner, someone is wrapping a cooler packed with dry ice in a Mylar space blanket. The plan, apparently, is to transport an ice cream cake to the desert. Apparently, there will also be many watermelons.

The executive is "working from home" during the 40-hour drive, using a batch of car chargers and a cellular uplink. As he clicks away on his laptop, we discuss the philosophy of social networking sites; the neuroscientist's latest research on rat brains, and her anxieties about handling her undergraduate mentees; the people in our lives who we wish we hadn't lost touch with; the ethics of eating human meat; plus the spiritual usage of psychedelic drugs.

I learn a new phrase: "thinky thoughts." The co-op manager tells me that it describes "thoughts one has on acid that seem really deep, and are."

A few hours in, we pull up at the "World's Biggest Truck Stop." (Their words, not mine.) I wander through the place with Unknown Deal Dude. We are floored and astonished by this culture clash. I am so floored that I text my best girlfriend.

Me: Sold here: wolf and horse t-shirts; confederate flags, "don't tread on me" snake flags, "mess with the best die like the rest" US marine flags; John Wayne DVDs; auto tags for "redneck girl"; infinite self help books

Her: I'VE BEEN THERE OMG

Me: Is there any vegan food?

Her: Haha.

Me: Fritos it is!

Me: Dude, on the way out I noticed the door says "support independent truckstops."

I emerge, slightly shell-shocked. "That place is confusing," I say to Bike Co-op Manager.

He grins. "Confusion is an important state of mind."

* * *

Burning Man began in 1986 when the founder Larry Harvey decided, on a whim, to Burn a wooden Man on a San Francisco beach. Five years later, Harvey had acquired some dedicated co-conspirators and the event had morphed into a bigger, artier free-for-all in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. Twenty years after that, it's an internationally-famous camping-out festival that drew over 50,000 attendees in 2012.

I first heard about it as an Internet junkie in the 90s; one of my online friends enthused about the explosions and gun usage, another about the drugs. Apparently, when the Burner population got too large and a basic "no gun" rule was instituted, some folks felt this was an unacceptable infringement of their freedoms that made it not worth going anymore. But plenty continued to attend, and the sheer size of the crowd led to further mild regulations and infrastructure. This included the development of a circular layout with street signs, a medical station, a Department of Mutant Vehicles, a post office, radio stations, an airport, etc. The year 2000 marked the creation of the Temple, which became one of the most important structures: a space to meditate, reflect, and mourn loss. The temporary city of Burning Man - which is only fully-realized for a single week per year - is called Black Rock City.

In 2004, Larry Harvey tried to pin down Burner culture by laying out " ten principles." These are:

Radical Inclusion: Anyone is invited and welcome.

Gifting and Decommodification: The event is devoted to "unconditional gift-giving." Thou shalt not engage in commercial transactions, sponsorships, advertising, or barter.

Radical Self-Reliance: "Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources."

Radical Self-Expression: Do as thou wilt, but don't hurt anyone.

Communal Effort and Civic Responsibility: Collaborate, cooperate, and take care of each other. Oh, and don't break the law.

Leave No Trace: Don't hurt the earth, and especially not the federally-protected environment of the Black Rock Desert.

Participation: "We make the world real through actions that open the heart."

Immediacy: "No idea can substitute for this experience."

There are critiques to be launched. So many critiques. Perhaps those of you who share my Advanced Degree In Social Justice Snippiness, claws honed by hundreds of Internet catfights, spotted critiques in my first few paragraphs. For example, while Burners may Leave No Trace upon the surface of the desert, an awful lot of fossil fuels are burned to get there. Scarce resources are used when - say - transporting an ice cream cake in a dry ice freezer. And my spidey sense for "Third World exploitation" was tweaked by those cheap, beautiful, mass-produced sequined watermelon pins.

Plus, the Burning Man organization charges for tickets, which arguably puts a cramp in Radical Inclusion. To be fair, the event has enormous costs to cover, like a $750,000 land usage permit. There are also "low-income" tickets available for a mere $160 apiece (most 2012 tickets ranged from $240-$420), but the bigger individual costs are equipping oneself and getting there. You can already see certain demographics represented in the crew I drove out with - and in our reaction to the World's Biggest Truck Stop. All my campmates had degrees from prestigious universities, and included a doctor and a Google engineer. Also: I can count the number of people of color I met on one hand.

According to 2010 statistics from the Burning Man census, 20 percent of Black Rock City makes over $100,000 per year (compared to 6 percent of the USA's general population). A bit over 30 percent of the city makes under $30,000 (compared to a bit over 50 percent of the general population). As a writer, I myself wouldn't have gone if my journey weren't heavily subsidized and I hadn't been given a free ticket by generous, well-heeled friends. And let's face it: I may not be at my friends' earning level, but I'm still in their social class. Offering me that access isn't nearly as Radically Inclusive as offering it to Joe the Plumber would be. But here we have the perennial problem of class segregation: none of us know Joe the Plumber.

Burning Man came from San Francisco, and to San Francisco doth most attendees return. 1986-2012 has seen San Francisco shift from hippie beach town and radical sexuality haven to Silicon Valley boom times. If a bomb hit Black Rock City, then the Valley would need a new crop of CEOs. My understanding is that even the art of Burning Man reflects this evolution. The hippie and radical sex elements remain, but attendees who have watched for ten years say it's shinier now, costlier, with an "engineered" feel to it.

A worthy comparison might be the super-hippie Rainbow Gathering, which stemmed from a late-60s San Francisco group and first came together in 1972. The Gathering moves from forest to forest each year, is free to attend, does not have a single leader at the helm, and is considerably more working-class than Burning Man. There's less art at the Gathering and more environmental issues; the Burning Man organization purchases a permit that helps the government deal with its impact on federal land, something the Rainbow Gathering has apparently resisted. On the other hand, the Gathering seems to help genuinely down-and-out folks, like marginalized homeless kids.

With all that said: our Advanced Degrees In Social Justice Snippiness are important, but if I lay mine aside for a moment, I can't help liking Burning Man. A lot of things are just plain cool, like the art. I love the whimsy of bringing an ice cream cake, even though it uses lots of resources. But most importantly, despite my considerable grumpy skepticism, the festival keeps surprising me.

* * *

Our driving crew pulls ridiculous shifts and we nap in the back of the van when we're tired, refusing to stop, like teenagers. I've got the last shift driving, but everyone's awake as we pass into cloud-grey desert with steel-blue mountains behind it. I've only attended once before - 2010 - so I keep quiet as veteran Burners note landmarks, like the guy selling "Indian tacos" with a handwritten sign by the side of the road. Last stop before Black Rock City is Gerlach, which Wikipedia describes as a "hamlet." Population: less than 200.

The main watermelon camp organizer applied for Early Access passes so our crew could enter the gates of Black Rock City and build some stuff before the event officially begins. We turn off the road soon after Gerlach, and our tires instantly kick up dust on the playa - the ancient dried-out lakebed that forms the Black Rock Desert. Playa dust is a phenomenon unto itself, permeating every aspect of life in Black Rock City. Absent unusually wet conditions, the dust swirls and eddies at every turn. It whitens dark garments, chokes bike chains, corrodes electronics, and occasionally slams the city in blinding storms that can last for hours.

Burners carry goggles and masks and scarves, but the dust still clots eyes and throats. Playa dust is dry, weirdly sticky, and highly alkaline; overexposed skin can crack unless it gets moisturizer and lemon baths. Despite my best efforts to filter my air, I contracted pleurisy this year (a lung ailment). Two years ago, I got a sinus infection. As for hair, unless it's braided, the wind and dust can convert it to dreadlocks in days. The term of art is "playafied."

Obviously, there's no water in the desert. There's also no food - and none is available for sale, because the Center Camp of Black Rock City sells only café drinks and ice. (Most proceeds are donated to charity.) It's barely possible to find Internet or cell phone network access; since I can't count on it, I put up an "out of town" email response before I left. My campmates and I brought everything we need to survive - and will dispose of it, cleanly, afterwards. (The one exception is that the Burning Man organization provides ranks of Port-A-Potties.) Sunblock is crucial; the day is very hot. The night is very cold. The elevation is 4,000 feet, and it's normal to spend the first 24 hours queasy as the body adjusts. The common cold gets passed around like candy.

Building the city is a not a minor task. Teams of volunteers start big projects like the Temple several weeks in advance. This year, the Temple was designed by David Best, who also designed the first temple in 2000. The 2012 version is an awe-inspiring, multi-tiered, Asian-looking structure in a courtyard 150 feet by 150 feet. Each piece is machine-cut, gorgeously intricate, like wooden filigree. Some production costs are defrayed by the Burning Man organization; Burners have also donated tens of thousands of dollars. Like the Man and much of the other art, the Temple will ultimately burn.
The Temple, 2012. Photo credit to TWITA2005 and the Yahoo editors' Burning Man gallery.
After we arrive, I help my friends at the watermelon camp set up for a while. Through a haze of dust and exhaustion, we hammer down stakes and page through the Black Rock City guide, where different camps have listed themselves and their offerings. The sales executive says, "Hey guys, here's a challenge: find the weirdest type of yoga class." We settle on Emotional Freedom Yoga.

There are relatively tame events like tequila lounges or body painting or meditation or mask making, and more extreme ones like Double Penetration: Learn To Make Yourself Airtight. The musical emphasis is electronic, but events range from jazz to goth/industrial to A Cappella Dubstep. Oh, and karaoke, which I end up doing for five hours straight one day. (Don't judge.) There are thinky events: lectures on basic physics or international charity organizations, or Stand-Up Philosophy. Science-fictional ideas abound. I am transfixed by a lecture on cryonics, which is delivered by someone who seriously works in that field. Afterwards, I say to the speaker: "Do you think about Egyptian pharaohs a lot? You must think of them, like, constantly."

"Er... I could," he responds, and pointedly turns to another questioner.

Some camps are kind of like social services, such as the camp that does Coffee & Aspirin every morning. Or the Hiney Hygiene Station, where a polite and delicate gentleman will gladly don gloves and swab down your chafed nether regions. Not to mention the Human Carcass Wash, where people are trained to wash each other using a minimum of water and a maximum of respect: the event is not just a bath, it's a workshop on how to deal nicely with other people's personal boundaries. Some camps serve food or give other gifts, like Black Rock City postcards. And then there's Career Ending Footage: "Hate your crummy job but too pussy to quit? Get caught in compromising situations in our Career Ending Footage office."

There are also countless S&M classes, and several camps devoted to educating folks about polyamory (open relationships). I have friends and professional connections at some of them, and I keep meaning to stop by, but over the course of the week I never get around to it. I don't even make it to the class on jalapeño fisting, although I must admit I've never done that before. In fact, I end up attending exactly zero of the listed daytime events, except the one serving vegan coconut ice cream.

When sunset deepens the sky over the watermelon camp, I travel several blocks to find the friends I'll be camping with myself. Some are old friends, and some are new; my camp is only 15 people, and we're in such close proximity that we're bound to bond. My campmates have been on the playa for several days and have built shady hammock havens, a kitchen and a parlor. Just as importantly, they've done a lot of work on the camp art project. Pipe Dream is a twenty-foot-tall, two-ton, cube-shaped steel lattice of pipes; each is the width of an arm and capable of bearing many people's weight. It's basically a giant cubic jungle gym. I feel lucky that I know artistic, clever engineers as I climb to the center of Pipe Dream and help assemble a streamlined chandelier.
Pipe Dream. Photo credit to arbitragery.
From the top of Pipe Dream, we gaze over the playa and the developing city. The streets are lined with teahouses and cinemas; everything lights up at night. There are lots of geodesic domes and, less romantically, RVs. The Man stands at the center atop a structure several stories tall. Most everything becomes more enormous and fantastical toward that looming figure.

We can't see it all from here, but I'll discover it throughout the week: a camp whose front is painted like a giant Tetris display; a roller derby with disco music; a life-size ship, internal shelves stocked with books and bottles and lanterns, more intricate than a movie set, which appears to be "sinking" sideways into the playa; a full-size plywood maze with ladders, secret doors, and misleading signs. This year's most political art project comprises several huge, satirical Wall Street buildings with logos like "Chaos Manhattan" and "Bank of UnAmerica." When they're burned, the project makes headlines from Huffington Post to Business Insider.

There's a kind of stereotypical Burner fashion sense that meshes gender-bending, raver sparkles and playa practicality. I find myself thinking, Oh, there's another man in a tutu with a many-pocketed belt and pink dreadlocks woven with LEDs. There are plenty of exceptions, though, and in the streets and plazas and vast open space at the city's center, some Burners wear horse heads while others wear evening gowns. Or t-shirts. It's all good.

Those who feel tired of walking or biking can jump on a passing art car, which is usually easy because the speed limit is 5 miles per hour. In order to be allowed through Black Rock City, cars must be suitably whimsical and approved by the Department of Mutant Vehicles. Sometimes people just decorate existing cars or buses, but they are often far more ambitious. There's a car that looks just like a Western saloon, and several shaped like giant cupcakes. There's a magic carpet rippling a foot above the road, wheels hidden by tasseled fringe. My favorite art car is an enormous crouching dragon, each scale lined with red lights that occasionally shimmer blue. That one belches fire, of course, much like the tentacles of the rearing octopus-shaped car built from garbage cans. At night, when Black Rock City becomes dominated by techno clubs, many art cars boast DJs. (For my money - haha, see what I did there? - the best DJ set this year was a collaboration from Dr. Toast and DJ Ganucheau.)

* * *

The religious right is obviously displeased about Burning Man. The most intense online rant calls the festival "Satan's Birthday." Its Christian author goes on to assert that Burning Man is to blame for the stock market crash plus various natural disasters because God is punishing us, etc. Lucifer is laughing at our self-immolation, he says.

I was raised Unitarian, so this kind of imagery presumably doesn't resonate with me like it does for those with more traditional upbringings. But I discover it burrowing into my mind one night as I bike along the playa, weaving through hellish glowing clouds of dust, surrounded by topless revelers. LEDs flash, neon burns, everyone is wearing lights. Fire blooms everywhere I turn: fire dancers, fire sculptures. In 1996, the Burning Man theme was actually based on Dante's Inferno, and one of the founders played Satan. In 2007, Burner artists exploded 900 gallons of jet fuel and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane from an oil derrick, creating a mushroom cloud 300 feet high. (Perhaps ironically, the piece was intended to raise consciousness about environmental issues. Some environmental activists were perturbed.)

Next to a huge dance-club geodesic dome, I run into a man who I once met for a date in San Francisco. He has an elegant face, moves with perfect grace, and is so smoothly expressive that I can't bring myself to trust him. But I like him anyway - he's got a quick mind and does interesting technological charity work.

He's also got a way with his hands: he digs them into my back, and I breathe out slowly. Flutter my eyes closed against the pain. "The way you react when I play with you is interesting," he says. "Other women sigh with relief, or they ask me to go softer. But you hiss, like you've been dropped in hot water."

This particular dance-club dome has nets at the top: you can climb a tall ladder up the side, lie down and observe the dancers below, with nothing holding you but string. There's also a slide, and my graceful friend convinces me to try it. Naked terror freezes me in place when I reach the top. I wonder if I could survive an accidental fall. I'm shaking. I can't bring myself to slide down.

I take a deep breath, look out across the blazing dusty playa, at the brilliant art cars and installations lighting the horizon. The Man, outlined in neon, shines stark white against the night. I'm thrilled and extravagantly afraid. I think of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. I think, again, of damnation. I recently read about a study that found countries with a higher rate of belief in Hell have lower crime rates; the same does not hold true for belief in Heaven.

"No rush," says my partner below me, "it's not like there are lots of people coming up below us on the ladder," so I force myself onto the slide. At the bottom, I'm giddy with relief and throw myself into his arms. "It's extraordinary up there, isn't it?" he says. "Sitting on those nets is sitting on a thousand years of human history. Centuries of physics went into designing that dome."

"That's a nice way to imagine it," I say.

"How do you imagine it?"

I make a moue. "I don't want to think about it right now," I say. "But I find myself imagining the history in terms of war and suffering. The imperious global context allowing us to build a desert hallucination, while children starve in Africa." In another time and place, I'd feel self-conscious about my pretentious words. Right now I bury my face in his shoulder to banish my thoughts. Then I gaze at him, caught by the exquisitely balanced planes of his face. "Do you ever worry whether you're an angel or a demon?" I ask.

"I don't think about these questions the way you do," he says, putting his hands on me and clenching them. I arch into his grasp and whine a little. His eyelids go heavy, like a cat's.

"I'm going to call you Mephistopheles," I say.

He smiles. Lets go. My body feels abandoned; I wasn't ready for the pain to stop. "That's a long nickname," he says.

"Mephisto," I say. "For short."

"Maybe I'll get it tattooed on my knuckles," he says, and clenches his fists so he can playfully count off the fingers. "M-e-p-h-i-s-t-o."

* * *

A review of Burning Man would be incomplete without discussing drugs, especially hallucinogens. The event has ancestors in the San Francisco hippie scene, and is often compared to a giant rave; both subcultures are heavily associated with drugs. Most Burning Man art fits the genre of "visionary art," which Wikipedia describes as derived from "symbolism, surrealism and psychedelic art." Some of the more stereotypical examples I saw in 2012 were paintings by Android Jones and Alex Grey at the Fractal Nation camp; they were placed under a color-shifting light that dramatically changed their color balance, moment to moment. One piece showed an exploding head with fiery eyes. Another showed ornamented skeletal and muscular systems. When red-lit, they almost seemed to be different pictures from the blue-lit versions. (The picture to the right is from Android Jones' website, and was painted in honor of Burning Man 2012.)

I should note that plenty of people come to Burning Man and don't do drugs. For one thing, it's against the law, as the Burning Man website and Survival Guide will remind you. There are police at the event and some are undercover. Some attendees allege that there are more police this year, in fact - perhaps because Burning Man is more popular than ever. Many Burners content themselves with alcohol, which is both plentiful and obviously legal. (And no, I don't understand why alcohol occupies this privileged cultural space, despite being described by prestigious medical journal The Lancet as eight times more dangerous than ecstasy.)

Speaking of drug studies, there's been a resurgence in recent years. For example: findings have documented the ways that carefully-used hallucinogens can help with mind-body problems like addiction or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's not just researchers talking about them, either; when Apple founder Steve Jobs died, his New York Times obituary noted that he once described LSD as "one of the 2-3 most important things he had done in his life." Psychedelic drugs have never been mainstream, but we seem to have reached a pendulum-swing in the cycle where they're becoming less feared and reviled. Perhaps this is part of why Burning Man, too, has become a bigger deal in the mainstream. Of course, it's probably more to do with its current connections to wealth and privilege and hyper-fashionable tech companies.

(Speaking of which, let's take a moment to imagine what would happen to a hypothetical drugged-out festival mainly composed of people of color. I'll content myself with a single statistic: African-Americans use and sell drugs at similar rates to whites, but are thirteen times as likely to be arrested for doing so. Thirteen. Times. Have I convinced you that Black Rock City is built on privilege yet?)

I don't personally believe hallucinogen use should be an irresponsible free-for-all with no regard for potential consequences - any more than alcohol use should be. Or Ritalin for that matter. For every Steve Jobs or Hunter S. Thompson, there's a Charlie Sheen or a Cat Marnell. And even the "enlightenment" drugs - e.g. acid and mushrooms and ecstasy - are not in themselves a path to enlightenment. Yet when mixed with safe spaces and focused exploration and new ideas, they appear effective for some people. (Admittedly, the line between acid as a spiritual guide and acid as a party drug can wear thin.)

I don't know how safe it is to request illegal drugs from random Burners; I've never tried. Conversation is easy to come by, though. One event describes itself as: "Two nurses and a shrink share their knowledge about the true benefits and consequences of drug use. Come as you are and learn ways of ensuring that your drug experiences are fun and positive."

While watching a sunset from Pipe Dream, I talk to one guy who nonchalantly calls himself "very accustomed" to LSD. He tells me that, "There's Burner art you'll never understand if you don't take acid. Burning Man has refined the genre - art that causes aesthetic pleasure mingled with a 'What the fuck?' moment."

When I ask for an experiential description, he says, "Acid goes like this: first, my stomach rebels and food becomes puzzling. I know it's really kicking in when lights and fire become exceptionally interesting, and my skin gets happy and sensitive. Then my creativity leaps. I make connections faster than usual. I find many new metaphors. Hallucinogens never make me see things that aren't actually there; I merely put the world together differently."

A lot of people talk about Burning Man as being about togetherness, integrating with people. But it's also about integrating new experience: altered consciousness, altered states, altered perspectives. Many participants are intimately familiar with how hallucinogens can hurl them into explorations of personal and conceptual space, and accordingly the culture celebrates them. But again, they're not required. The sheer enormity of Black Rock City can swallow people in itself. While hiding in a shade structure during a dust storm, I meet a woman who says that when friends ask her about Burning Man, she tells them: "It's a lot like life."

* * *

My first year at Burning Man, I was underwhelmed. I remember thinking: Well, I can see how this festival would seem like a big deal to people who don't have access to alternative sexuality, or good dance music, or intentional communities, or hippies, or smart people, or fire art, or San Francisco. Since I have semi-regular access to all those things, I was unconvinced that it was worth the considerable trouble and expense to see them in Black Rock City.

I also felt - and still feel, sometimes, despite my best efforts - some eye-rolling resentment at the "tourism" aspect. If this social experiment is so compelling, then why compartmentalize it? Why is it useful to question assumptions about cities, economies, social norms, if people leave those questions in the desert behind them? I once heard an aphorism that has always stuck with me: that artists exist to take society's blame for the things we explore. Seeing things I love hemmed in so thoroughly makes me uneasy. Like we're being made into easier targets.

Yet I remind myself that people often need a safe and/or different space to try new things. Even I - now a pro S&M writer - had some of my seminal S&M experiences on vacation to distant cities. Something about drastic scene-changes allows us to shake up our psyches. So although I'm uncomfortable with the idea that Burning Man is a utopia, there's something compelling about it as an inspirational pilgrimage.

In 2012, I deliberately avoid pre-scheduling; I also avoid things that I already know a lot about, and I find the city very different. The difference starts with a woman I dance with at one of the raver tents. She's a former dominatrix and teaches writing at a community college, so we bond right away. After an hour of conversation, she tells me and my companion that she has to run, but she wants to offer us a gift first: poetry recitation. She lets us choose from a list of five topics; my friend chooses "kissing," and I choose "self-awareness." The teacher throws back her shoulders and offers wide, dramatic gestures as she speaks. The poems make her eyes blaze.

On another late night, I'm walking back to camp when I come upon a group clad in khaki-colored trenchcoats and sunglasses. They've set up a small table with a rotary phone in the middle of an intersection. One is sitting in a folding chair with a megaphone; another holds a camcorder. As I watch, they flag down a passing couple. "You're late for your scene," exclaims the woman with the megaphone, who is wearing dark red lipstick. A dude with a huge pad of paper bounds forward and opens it in front of the bewildered couple; a classic film noir line is written on the first page, something about where the money's at. The group convinces the couple to play out a full scene, during which the rotary phone is a crucial prop. Then the couple departs, laughing.

Many onlookers have gathered. Two ask if they, too, can play a scene. The director becomes excited: "Wow, no one's ever requested to play a scene before!" I watch the event over again with the new actors, and then ask the group if I can join. For a brief and glorious time I am their makeup artist, rushing up to recruits and brushing their faces with invisible cosmetics. (Some recruits decline to participate, but always politely.)

The next evening, I drop by the film crew's camp: a 1920s-style office with a picture-perfect iron lamppost, and Deus Ex Detective Agency stenciled on the door. They're hosting a speakeasy party in back, but I spend half the night being interrogated by a handsome detective in the office - until he turns the tables and puts me behind the desk to receive walk-in cases.

All this is undoubtedly awesome, and it's beginning to win me over, but I've seen it before. (I recommend the group Improv Everywhere for clever street-based pranks in major cities.) For me, the clincher pops up on my last day. The Burning Man organization sells ice at various locations across the playa, and every day someone in our camp volunteers to grab some for our coolers. I'm several blocks from Pipe Dream when I buy today's batch; I stagger outside with three full bags and look at my bike, realizing just how awkward and unpleasant this task will be.

Then an art car pulls up. It's decked with animal print couches, paisley hangings and Tibetan prayer flags. "Jump on," invites the driver, and climbs down to help with my bike. He also picks up two more ice-carrying dudes.

As I sink gratefully into one of the couches, a lady in a spangled white harem costume passes me a hookah full of grape-and-mint-flavored smoke. "We love doing ice runs," she explains. "It improves people's day so much when we offer them a ride, plus we get to explore the city. What's your name?"

I don't know if it was my own energy or the festival's, in 2012 - perhaps a combination of both - but it took a second visit to Burning Man for me to know the magic of it: emergence. Sure, there are brilliant artists, and some are world-class professionals. It's also true that this community is biased, that it is not perfectly inclusive or even-handed or open-minded. And plenty of people will experience Black Rock City as no more than an incredible rave, or meditational gathering, or place to find a hookup and experiment. Which is fine by me. The city is all those things, and those things are great (in moderation).

But what's better is that those things combine to create an inspiring stage for imaginative generosity, for cooperative art. It sounds so corny that I'm embarrassed to quote it, but as the Principle of Participation puts it: "we make the world real through actions that open the heart." Emergence is born from people choosing active engagement with a place that's designed to surprise. Black Rock City is the most total monument to creativity that I have ever seen.

* * *

On my last day I track down the poetry-reciting teacher at her camp so I can give her one of my books. (I bring six copies to the playa for gifts, and by the end I wish I'd brought more.) Her camp is called Love Potion; they distribute tiny two-dose glass bottles of herbal aphrodisiacs, to be shared with a lover. She ties a string around a bottle, then ties it around my neck. It's my only souvenir.

I arrived a little early and I'm leaving a little early, but right before I go, I watch the Man burn from Pipe Dream. The Black Rock City skyline is so vivid: most of the glowing art cars have gathered at the base of that familiar icon. Lasers spear across the sky. Fireworks spray. I'm not close enough to see them, but I know performers are twirling around the Man's base, many dancing with fiery hula hoops or fiery sticks or fiery fans. A few days after the festival ends, I will realize I'm not sure what the Man officially represents and call one of my campmates. "It's like an anti-establishment thing, right?" I'll ask. "As in: 'Damn the Man'?"

"Huh," she'll say, "you know, I've been going for years and I never thought about it. I guess I figured that the Man represents ego, and we're seeking ego-dissolution."

It will require fifteen full minutes of Internet research to find an old, brief statement from Larry Harvey: "Representing nothing, the Man becomes tabula rasa: any meaning may be projected onto him."

Harvey, whose personality has been described as "messianic," recently announced his intention to oversee the spread of Burner culture throughout the world. Indeed, this is already happening: plenty of major cities, including Chicago, have Burner events year-round, up to and including camp-out "regional Burns." (This year, I heard about a South African regional Burn.) The Chicago community also awards a microgrant for community activism.

Burner art is increasingly placed in parks and museums. There's a funny phenomenon of wealthy people hiring experienced Burners to guide them around the playa, which one such guide defended by saying that "it makes rich, important people friendly towards Burning Man." Because so many technological innovators attend, some inevitably think up and field-test projects on the playa, like the inventor Vinay Gupta, whose cheap and durable temporary "hexayurt" shelters were first used in Black Rock City. Hexayurts are now standard in disaster relief.

I have reservations about Burning Man - more than most of my friends. I get impatient with people who can't see the class issues, and - call me a cynic - I suspect that this batch of activists and artists wouldn't have nearly the pull that they do if it weren't for the wealth of Black Rock City. If the difference between "high art" and "low art" is nothing but the difference in privilege between artists, then Burner art is turning into "high art" as we watch because its associated industry has gained so much status in our economy.

There's also the creepy cult comparison. One might wonder how long we have before we start seeing missionaries. (Please, somebody, write a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel in which Burning Man has become the state religion.)

Yet. Personally? I love the culture of Burning Man, and I love the creativity. And I look forward to seeing the culture spread, combine and recombine with new things.

On my way out of the city, I spot Bike Co-op Manager. "Did you have a good Burn?" he asks, and I nod. "It was better next year," he says; we grin at the standard Burner line, and give each other a hug.

* * *

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This is a slightly longer version of a piece that was originally published at The Point, a Chicago-based print journal on contemporary life and culture. It will also be printed in Issue 6, and here's the Issue 6 Annotated Table Of Contents.

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"Enabling Creative Chaos" - Katherine Chen

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"Enabling Creative Chaos" - Katherine Chen

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(requested on NYU EZ Borrow)

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In the summer of 2008, nearly fifty thousand people traveled to Nevada's Black Rock Desert to participate in the countercultural arts event Burning Man. Founded on a commitment to expression and community, the annual weeklong festival presents unique challenges to its organizers. Over four years Katherine K.

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WHy would anyone go to Burning Man?

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Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1986, Larry Harvey and a few friends built an 8-foot-tall man out of wood, dragged the sculpture onto a beach in San Francisco, and set it aflame. A small crowd of strangers gathered to watch. It couldn't have been more than 20 people. The wind pushed the flames in one direction, and a woman ran to the unburning side of the man to briefly hold his hand before the spreading fire engulfed it.

Harvey isn't quite sure, if you ask him now, what he was trying to accomplish that evening. He has hinted that he was mourning a traumatic break-up with a girlfriend. He's also suggested it was simply a random act-inspired by his lifelong fascination with sacred ritual, and steeped in the bohemian, Bay Area subculture he counted himself a part of in those days.

Whatever his purpose, Harvey burned the man again the next year, and each year after that. Word spread and the crowds built steadily until they numbered in the hundreds. When the ceremony outgrew the beach, in the early 1990s, the burn was moved to a barren alkali flat in an empty corner of northwest Nevada. Still, people came.

In 1993 there were 1,000 participants. In 1996 the attendance was 8,000. 1999: 23,000. 2006: 39,000.

This year, for the first time, the event sold out. Despite face-price tickets ranging from $220 to $360. (Scalped tickets soared to well more than $500.) The population of the weeklong festival this year-according to Burning Man's volunteer media relations team-reached a peak of 53,000 on the Saturday when the man was burned.

Among the faces in the flickering firelight were me and my photographer pal Sam. We'd been sent by to explore a phenomenon a quarter-century old, yet still expanding-and one that, to most of America, is still either a mystery or an easy punch line. What, I wondered, could lure a population roughly the size of Biloxi, Miss., out to a remote desert encampment providing no plumbing, no food, no trash service, and almost nothing in the way of commercial entertainment? What was this cult of unshowered vegans, ecstasy-gobbling ravers, nerdy techies, and jet-setting art freaks?

In short: Why would anyone go to Burning Man?

Well, for one thing, you get to baffle your friends. "Which bands are playing?" pals would ask me when I told them I was going, thinking the event was something akin to Coachella or Bonnaroo.

"No bands that anybody has heard of," I'd answer. "It's more about creating a new kind of utopian society that exists for only one week each year. Also, there's some weird, interactive art. And a lot of drugs and nudity. And no running water." This last part was generally met with open-mouthed stares. "Think of it," I'd helpfully suggest, "as a combination of Woodstock, Jonestown, and the Park Slope Food Co-op."

A good friend who's been to many Burns but (to his tremendous disappointment) couldn't make it out to the desert this year insisted that I visit him at his New York apartment to receive some pre-Burn instruction and advice. "Burning Man is an effort to reinvent the culture of Earth," he told me, in dead serious tones. "If you go, you must surrender to the spirit of the endeavor. You have a duty to participate. You can't just observe. You'll bring everybody down." He then solemnly handed me a white fur vest, a spangly blue cowboy hat, and a pair of ski goggles. I wasn't sure what I was meant to do with them. He assured me all would become clear soon enough.

The flight out to Reno featured a female passenger in rainbow dreadlocks and six-inch platform boots, and a man wearing a top hat with a red rose tucked into its band. They nodded at each other knowingly. As Sam and I drove our rental car north on two-lane Nevada highways, we passed an increasing flow of buses and RVs with psychedelic paint jobs and strange objects lashed to their roofs-40-foot-long bamboo poles, giant stuffed animals, bicycle frames covered entirely in thick, purple fur.

At the gates, after we'd rumbled down a long dirt road in a caravan of Burners, a shirtless man in a tutu commanded us to hop out of our car. He told us his name was Sweet Cheeks, and he had us ring a gong and then threw some desert dust on our clothes. "You're going to love it here," he said. "Where else can a straight man wear a tutu and look right at home?" As we got back in the car he yelled after us: "Remember, no means no. And yes means yes. And if you're at all on the fence about it, you should probably say yes."

The plan was for us to meet up with a large camp of people who'd be providing us shelter and food for the week. But as we pulled into the encampment-really a makeshift city-we couldn't find our group. And the sun was setting. We gave up, parked the car, and began to wander around.

And this is when my brain melted a little.

Out in the open desert, beyond the tents and cars, we encountered the most bizarre, most visually stimulating environment I've ever seen. A giant metal octopus rolling across the sand, with actual hot flames spewing out of its tentacles. A pirate ship blasting eardrum-crushing hip-hop music, with a slew of bare-chested women writhing atop its decks. A frigging full-scale Thunderdome, complete with shrieking spectators rattling in its rafters, and a pair of gladiators in animal costumes attacking each other with Nerf bats. Lasers careened across the sky. Choking dust storms howled into our eyes and noses. Everyone was in aviator goggles, and knee-high leather boots, and fur vests.

At a road-blocked intersection labeled "Terminal City," people started shouting at us with bullhorns. A half-naked woman demanded my identity papers. I stammered. "We accept bribes," she said with a wink. I gathered I was now supposed to engage in some sort of improvised scene-I should kiss her on the cheek, or recite a poem, or show her my wang. But I wasn't yet ready to be anything more than an observer.

Sam and I wandered away. We had no lights or glowsticks on us, and when a bicyclist nearly hit Sam because she couldn't see him she angrily shouted, "Watch out, darky darktard!"

We still couldn't locate our camp, so we went back to the rental car and slept in the front seats. Techno music boomed outside all night. The dry desert air stabbed at my nasal passages each time I spasmed awake.

When dawn came, we unfolded our limbs and stumbled out into the quiet morning, still dazed. We'd only walked a short way when a bearded man in his 60s came out of his RV and strode right toward us. He was holding a tray of individually wrapped cinnamon buns, which he offered us with a smile as kind as any I've ever seen. He told us his name was Chuck. He asked if we'd been to Burning Man before-though I'm certain he could deduce from our shellshocked faces that we hadn't. We hungrily munched on our pastries as he recounted his first time here, more than a decade ago.

"It was a happening then," Chuck said, his eyes in a faraway place. "It was all new, and primal, and pagan. Now it's an event. It's a re-creation of what it once was. Everyone sits around and waits to say 'huzzah' when the man burns."

But you're still coming here, we pointed out.

"It's still the best place on earth," he said with a laugh. " This is the real world, out there is fake," he proclaimed, surveying our freakish desert city with pride.

We thanked him for breakfast and ambled away. A short while later, I finally spotted our camp. We were welcomed with hearty hugs. I felt tranquil. At home. Ready at last to play my own part in this madness.

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It's Just Unshowered Vegans, Jet-Setting Art Freaks-and Me

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Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1986, Larry Harvey and a few friends built an 8-foot-tall man out of wood, dragged the sculpture onto a beach in San Francisco, and set it aflame. A small crowd of strangers gathered to watch. It couldn't have been more than 20 people.

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BM Coverage

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Burning Man | RGJ | Reno Gazette-Journal

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The latest news and in-depth coverage of Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

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full time staff at Reno Gazette to cover BM

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This summer will be Jenny Kane's first trip to Burning Man. No surprise-last year, six out of 10 attendees were new visitors to the experimental city that rises each summer in Nevada's arid Black Rock Desert. The difference with Kane is that she'll be going as the Reno Gazette-Journal 's first full-time, year-round Burning Man reporter.

The new beat is both a product of the restructuring of newsrooms at Gannett-owned papers and a reflection of how the annual event two hours outside Reno has reshaped the cultural landscape of the surrounding area.

Having covered Native American territory in New Mexico for The Daily Times and crime in the Caribbean at The Virgin Islands Daily News, Burning Man attendees-'Burners'-will be another cultural group to cover for the Reno native.

"I'm interested in fringe cultures in general, so that's the biggest draw," said Kane, who started the new role on Monday.

The tribe grows annually. Black Rock City, as the site is called, had 66,000 visitors last year, up from 36,000 a decade ago. Attendees have included Diddy, Jeff Bezos, and even The Simpsons, and spin-off 'burns' can be found as far afield as South Africa and New Zealand. At the movement's core are 10 principles that regulate the community, including a gift economy, "radical self-expression" and an order to leave no physical trace behind when the city packs up.

While websites like Burners.me and Burn After Reading pitch themselves to burners, and mainstream publications like The Atlanticunpack the phenomenon for national audiences, the Gazette-Journal is focused on the questions this wandering city leaves for Reno.

"It's part of our community that we aren't currently connecting with. And we haven't covered it in the way that we probably should have. It matters to our economy and it's part of our culture," said Kelly Scott, the Gazette-Journal's executive editor (who has been to Burning Man "a couple of times.") "The overarching focus question of this beat is: How does Burning Man connect to northern Nevada, and what does it mean for here?"

The beat involves both arts and watchdog coverage, said Scott. Burning Man transitioned from being an LLC to a nonprofit last year, and scrutinizing its finances matters when pre-sale tickets have gone up to a cool $800. Previous coverage has looked at the culture clash between burners and local Native American communities, and another aim will be to draw the connections between Burning Man and the local art museums and tech community. "People credit Burning Man with the development of a creative class in Reno," said Scott.

The Gazette-Journal is betting on enough Burning Man issues to last year-round, though current media coverage of the phenomenon tends to begin and end with the week of the event. Mainstream publications also tend to focus on Burning Man's more outlandish tendencies-usually involving liberal drug use, nudity, and EDM-with mild bafflement and gentle derision. More often than not, they are first person narratives.

Yet Black Rock City has the infrastructure that any other city would, and so has stories to tell about its hospital, airport, DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles) and urban planning.

"You're creating a city for a week, in the desert, with people from all over the world," said Katrina Raenell, the last reporter at the Gazette-Journal to cover Burning Man as part of the arts beat. "Once you get there, there's no money. People lose their materialistic self, lose their identity, and try to mesh in a different sort of world while surviving the elements. It creates a human camaraderie unlike any other place probably in the world."

At heart, Burning Man is about an experimental culture-a utopia, for some-and the consequences, both good and bad, which flow from it. Reporting should involve the arts, infrastructure, and investigations, but ultimately the traditional beat that's closest in comparison is perhaps religion.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.

Chris Ip is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisiptw.

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This summer will be Jenny Kane's first trip to Burning Man. No surprise-last year, six out of 10 attendees were new visitors to the experimental city that rises each summer in Nevada's arid Black Rock Desert. The difference with Kane is that she'll be going as the Reno Gazette-Journal 's first full-time, year-round Burning Man reporter.

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Review of Burning Man Art

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Out on the playa of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, more than 50,000 participants gathered last week to form Black Rock City, a temporary city that became the home of the 26th annual Burning Man Festival. Every year, participants from around the world descend on the playa -- performers, artists, free spirits, and more -- to form a self-reliant community, to dance, to express themselves and take in the spectacle of the festival. Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart spent the week on the playa, and returned with these photographs, taking us along on a virtual visit to Burning Man 2012.

View this page Hints: full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.

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Out on the playa of Nevada's Black Rock Desert, more than 50,000 participants gathered last week to form Black Rock City, a temporary city that became the home of the 26th annual Burning Man Festival.

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interview with Raiser

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To the uninitiated, the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert is part rave, part craft fair gone awry. To devotees, Burning Man is something bigger: A weeklong exercise in consciousness-raising, spurred by colossal artworks set amid a sprawling campground where 70,000 visitors collaborate to survive.

If you focus on the dance parties, embellished nudity, drugs and the burning of a wooden effigy at the end of the event, it's easy to overlook that the festival is actually centered on art. A new coffee-table tome, "Burning Man: Art on Fire" (Race Point Publishing, 208 pages), by San Francisco's Jennifer Raiser (photo inset), showcases ingenious, breathtaking and downright wacky installations by amateur and professional artists from around the globe, with color photographs by Sidney Erthal and Scott London and descriptions of the works in the artists' own words. (The introduction is written by Burning Man founder Larry Harvey.)

The book hits stores this week and should give those who've never attended Burning Man a newfound appreciation for the gathering, if not the way artists use the wide-open playa as a metaphor for the infinite possibilities of the imagination. Burning Man occurs Aug. 25 to Sept. 1 this year, but armchair travelers will find plenty to explore from home. Raiser, a retired businesswoman and Harvard MBA, is treasurer of Burning Man Project, the nonprofit that runs the festival. She discussed the book with Style.

Q: How did someone who managed senior care communities end up at Burning Man?

A: I sold my business and then my best friend from high school, with whom I'd gone to Harvard, convinced me I would love it. I went for the first time in 2006. About 15 minutes into it, I said, "Why have you been keeping this from me my whole life?" The open-heartedness, the sense of playfulness, the costumes and the gifting captivated me. The spirit of inclusiveness said to me that this is how people want to be and are afraid to be most of the time.

Q: What do you make of the artwork at Burning Man?

A: Everything is dwarfed by nature - the desert is so big and the mountains are so big. No matter how big the art is, it's minuscule compared to nature and how big the universe is. And that puts the human experience into extreme context: We're so small. Collaboration and cooperation are essential. This is the reset button for consciousness, which is why people go every year.

Q: How do some of the artists use their work as social commentary?

A: Kate Raudenbush has a piece on page 29 that's a re-creation of the dome of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., rendered in Native American imagery. Her premise was: What if the Native American peoples had defined the government structure? Inside the dome are Plexiglas steps with quotes from Indian chiefs. You look at it and think, "It's a gazebo" or "It's a wedding chapel," but it's a powerful statement about who we are as a nation and a culture. The theme of Burning Man that year was " American Dream."

Q: Are most of the artists from California?

A: The majority are, because Burning Man is here. Zac Carroll's "Front Porch," on page 77, is a building from which he served moonshine and chocolate chip cookies. He's a Mill Valley carpenter. Duane Flatmo's "El Pulpo Mecanico" on page 79 shows his mechanical octopus. He's from Humboldt County and uses scrap aluminum from thrift shops and the dump - muffin tins, colanders, pie pans, rusted garbage cans. Burning Man gives them a place for expression and exposure to a wider audience. And for Duane, repurposing is part of his art. If he had to buy materials, he'd have to get a sponsor.

Q: What do you want people to get out of the book?

A: A sense of their own creativity - that anyone can be an artist. And an appreciation for the gift artists bring when they create, which is under-recognized. Would van Gogh have been a Burner? Maybe. At the time, everyone thought he was crazy for not creating according to expected norms and listening to his own inner direction. Not all Burning Man art is great art, and that's OK. It's about creation, and if the end product is superlative, that's wonderful. It's the process of creation, collaboration and participation that really matters.

"Burning Man: Art on Fire," by Jennifer Raiser, with photography by Sidney Erthal and Scott London (Race Point Publishing, 2014); $35.

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To the uninitiated, the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert is part rave, part craft fair gone awry. To devotees, Burning Man is something bigger: A weeklong exercise in consciousness-raising, spurred by colossal artworks set amid a sprawling campground where 70,000 visitors collaborate to survive.

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Transformational Festivals

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It was 3 a.m. in Bradley, Calif., in the middle of a dusty dry lake bed, and Carl Weiseth, 33, was shoeless, shirtless and regaling a gathering crowd about last night's escapade. "I didn't make it back from the dance floor until the sun was starting to rise," he told his audience, adding that he "passed out to the gentle vibrations of thumping electronic music for three to four hours."

A 1960s Volkswagen van was painted with the words "Give Peace a Chance," surrounded by fresh-faced bohemians sporting flower crowns, acid-washed jean shorts, seapunk teal-dyed hair and psychedelic leggings. "It's the feather-and-leather crew," one festivalgoer said.

To the casual observer, this post-New Age convergence of monumental art, all-night dancing and "Kumbaya" spirituality could be mistaken for Burning Man, the weeklong arts festival in the Nevada desert. But unlike Burning Man, which marked its 28th year last month, this festival called Lightning in a Bottle offers paid lecturers, headlining music acts like Moby, and V.I.P. packages with deluxe tents and fresh linens for $2,500.

"L.I.B. is one of the pinnacle festivals of West Coast conscious culture," said Mr. Weiseth, using shorthand for Lightning in a Bottle, among a new type of gathering called "transformational festivals." They could be described as the slightly smaller, psychedelic-art-and-electronic-dance-music-centered, commercialized progeny of Burning Man.

"It is the ultimate convergence of visionary art, electronic music, yoga, spirituality, nutrition, fashion and dance-culture, where people gather who appreciate both nature and spiritual consciousness, and who want to co-create an unpretentious dance party in celebration of sacred art and community," added Mr. Weiseth, who attends dozens of similar festivals a year, where he sells handmade pinecone necklaces for upward of $360 under his lifestyle business, Third Eye Pinecone s.

Held over four days in May and billed as a "heart and mind expanding oasis," Lightning in a Bottle, in its ninth year, drew 15,000 participants, one of the largest and more influential of these festivals.

Such festivals have spread beyond their West Coast stronghold and now take place year-round throughout the United States, as well as Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. They are an amalgamation of several cultural forces: the rise of electronic dance music, the maturing of the rave culture, the popularity of TED-like talks, the mainstreaming of yoga, and the YOLO spirit of festivalgoers who spread the word on social media.

Unlike more mainstream music gatherings like Coachella and Lollapalooza (with their focus on pop music, celebrities, alcohol and fashion brands), transformational festivals embrace feel-good values like ecological sustainability, organic food, community building and wisdom sharing. With names like Beloved and Wanderlust, Envision and Lucidity, these festivals seem like bastions of the nouveau hippie, grandchildren-of-the-Woodstock generation. And, to a certain extent, they are.

At Archaic Revival, held June 6 in a plantation outside of Houston, revelers spent three days dancing (including a form called "Flowetry in Motion"), meditating at sunrise in a drug-and-alcohol-free zone. At Costa Rica's Envision Festival, held last February in beachfront jungles, participants covered themselves in "healing mud," chose among two dozen yoga instructors and bathed in bamboo showers with filtered water.

"This is not a retro-nostalgic Woodstock," said Jeet-Kei Leung, 44, a documentary filmmaker from Vancouver, British Columbia, who has chronicled this scene in a web series called " The Bloom," as well as in a 2010 TEDx talk. "This is a forward-thinking culture that is embracing social entrepreneurship, permaculture, spirituality, self-actualization and conscious living."

It was the first day of Lightning in a Bottle, a blisteringly hot Thursday with temperatures over 95 degrees. A yellow school bus and trailer drove to the far end of the San Antonio Recreation Area, a lakeside camping ground in central California, and dropped off mounds of gear and festivalgoers, some in elaborate costumes.

Three men in animal-shaped onesies (a giraffe, a red bull and a white cartoonish character) inquired whether there was any chicken to eat. (There was not: It is officially a pescatarian festival.)

Attendees, clutching their still-charged iPhones, pored over the schedule. There would be countless opportunities to dance, do yoga, see art, sit in workshops, watch performances, listen to speakers and meet like-minded truth seekers.

Moby, Phantogram and the avant-garde circus troupe Lucent Dossier shared the five stages with acts like the Polish Ambassador and the Earth Harp. There were poets, Ayurvedic yogis, West African drummers, gong masters, professional hula hoopers and essential oil "wizards."

For those seeking a more mind-expanding experience, there were more than 100 workshops and talks on topics like organic food ("Seitan for the Masses"), plant medicine ("Reishi Mushroom & Spiritual Consciousness"), gender studies ("The Art of Healthy Feminine Leadership") and sex ("Tantric Lap Dance Workshop").

Among the first-timers was Alicia Henry, 27, a model and actress from Los Angeles. She was lying under a tree on what is called Meditation Mountain, wearing a flower crown, a bindi, velvet olive floral fringe kimono and Minnetonka boots.

Accompanied by a group of friends from Venice, Calif., she had prepared for the festival by repeating her mantra, "Heart open, mind open." She came to Lightning in a Bottle in search of a "magical, sacred experience," she said.

That language of neo-spirituality and personal growth is common.

"This is a safe space - a space free of judgment, criticism, punishment," said the effervescent Dream Rockwell, a festival founder, who was standing backstage while a man played a didgeridoo, an ancient Australian instrument. "Creativity is accepted in all forms. 'No shirt, no shoes, no service' obviously does not apply here."

These festivals, after all, are billed as more than just a dance party in the woods.

"People are transformed every year," said Jesse Flemming, another founder. "Their minds are completely blown by how nice people are to each other. They think, 'If 15,000 people can be like this here, why can't we be like this at home, instead of being mean.' " It may sound hippie, Mr. Flemming said, "but the world needs a little more of that," adding, "Maybe with a little less tie-dye and patchouli."

Maura Malini Hoffman, 49, a former Procter & Gamble executive who now gives spiritual talks at festivals, put it this way: "Transformation is about realizing there's more to life than making money, having a good job, fame and fortune. People go to these and they're never the same. They don't just go back to eating McDonalds and watching TV."

Even here, consumerist pressures exist. This year, organizers offered a luxury EZ Camping option. The $2,500 packages, which included a prefab tent, plush bed, cooler, private restrooms, power outlets and a "skinny mirror," were sold out.

One of the luxury tents went to Misty Meeler, 29, an interior design assistant from Houston, who came with her 37-year-old sister. Ms. Meeler wore a gold headdress, rainbow bikini, a leather utility belt and purple leg warmers. Speaking through a heart-shaped dust mask, she explained that Coachella was too "Hollywood see-and-be-seen" for her taste. This festival, she said, "has a hippie scene that makes the whole experience better, whether you're looking to eat healthy, live clean, meditate, yoga or want to party the whole four days with no sleep."

By 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, an air of exhausted bliss had settled across the 250-acre festival site, and a small crowd had gathered at Amore's Casino, a burlesque club set up in the middle of the festival.

The crowd included James Oroc, a writer from New Orleans, who was waxing philosophical. Best known for his psychedelic tome, "Tryptamine Palace," he is an outspoken and sometimes cantankerous critic of festival culture.

At 6-foot-2, he cut an imposing figure, wearing a gunmetal fur robe, gold shoulder pads over a pinstripe suit, leather top hat and huge fossilized shark's tooth necklace. A veteran of Burning Man, Mr. Oroc hadn't been to this festival in a while and wanted to check in, he said. His verdict? The crowd was "very hip, very beautiful," he said, though he was concerned that the festival had become too "fashion" and "very L.A."

"You get a lot of Burners who haven't actually been to Burning Man," he said. "They just have the clothes."

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It was 3 a.m. in Bradley, Calif., in the middle of a dusty dry lake bed, and Carl Weiseth, 33, was shoeless, shirtless and regaling a gathering crowd about last night's escapade.

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Billionaires - fashion & style

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Disruptions

There are two disciplines in which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs excel above almost everyone else. The first is making exorbitant amounts of money. The second is pretending they don't care about that money.

To understand this, let's enter into evidence Exhibit A: the annual Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nev.

If you have never been to Burning Man, your perception is likely this: a white-hot desert filled with 50,000 stoned, half-naked hippies doing sun salutations while techno music thumps through the air.

A few years ago, this assumption would have been mostly correct. But now things are a little different. Over the last two years, Burning Man, which this year runs from Aug. 25 to Sept. 1, has been the annual getaway for a new crop of millionaire and billionaire technology moguls, many of whom are one-upping one another in a secret game of I-can-spend-more-money-than-you-can and, some say, ruining it for everyone else.

Some of the biggest names in technology have been making the pilgrimage to the desert for years, happily blending in unnoticed. These include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, and Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon. But now a new set of younger rich techies are heading east, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, employees from Twitter, Zynga and Uber, and a slew of khaki-wearing venture capitalists.

Before I explain just how ridiculous the spending habits of these baby billionaires have become, let's go over the rules of Burning Man: You bring your own place to sleep (often a tent), food to eat (often ramen noodles) and the strangest clothing possible for the week (often not much). There is no Internet or cell reception. While drugs are technically illegal, they are easier to find than candy on Halloween. And as for money, with the exception of coffee and ice, you cannot buy anything at the festival. Selling things to people is also a strict no-no. Instead, Burners (as they are called) simply give things away. What's yours is mine. And that often means everything from a meal to saliva.

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Burning Man in 2013. Credit Jim Urquhart/Reuters

In recent years, the competition for who in the tech world could outdo who evolved from a need for more luxurious sleeping quarters. People went from spending the night in tents, to renting R.V.s, to building actual structures.

"We used to have R.V.s and precooked meals," said a man who attends Burning Man with a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. (He asked not to be named so as not to jeopardize those relationships.) "Now, we have the craziest chefs in the world and people who build yurts for us that have beds and air-conditioning." He added with a sense of amazement, "Yes, air-conditioning in the middle of the desert!"

His camp includes about 100 people from the Valley and Hollywood start-ups, as well as several venture capital firms. And while dues for most non-tech camps run about $300 a person, he said his camp's fees this year were $25,000 a person. A few people, mostly female models flown in from New York, get to go free, but when all is told, the weekend accommodations will collectively cost the partygoers over $2 million.

This is drastically different from the way most people experience the event. When I attended Burning Man a few years ago, we slept in tents and a U-Haul moving van. We lived on cereal and beef jerky for a week. And while Burning Man was one of the best experiences of my life, using the public Porta-Potty toilets was certainly one of the most revolting experiences thus far. But that's what makes Burning Man so great: at least you're all experiencing those gross toilets together.

That is, until recently. Now the rich are spending thousands of dollars to get their own luxury restroom trailers, just like those used on movie sets.

"Anyone who has been going to Burning Man for the last five years is now seeing things on a level of expense or flash that didn't exist before," said Brian Doherty, author of the book " This Is Burning Man." "It does have this feeling that, 'Oh, look, the rich people have moved into my neighborhood.' It's gentrifying."

For those with even more money to squander, there are camps that come with "Sherpas," who are essentially paid help.

Tyler Hanson, who started going to Burning Man in 1995, decided a couple of years ago to try working as a paid Sherpa at one of these luxury camps. He described the experience this way: Lavish R.V.s are driven in and connected together to create a private forted area, ensuring that no outsiders can get in. The rich are flown in on private planes, then picked up at the Burning Man airport, driven to their camp and served like kings and queens for a week. (Their meals are prepared by teams of chefs, which can include sushi, lobster boils and steak tartare - yes, in the middle of 110-degree heat.)

Some of the technology elite who have attended Burning Man, include from left, Larry Page, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin. Credit Jeff Chiu/Associated Press, Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images, Rick Wilking/Reuters, David Ramos/Getty Images, Robert Galbraith/Reuters

"Your food, your drugs, your costumes are all handled for you, so all you have to do is show up," Mr. Hanson said. "In the camp where I was working, there were about 30 Sherpas for 12 attendees."

Mr. Hanson said he won't be going back to Burning Man anytime soon. The Sherpas, the money, the blockaded camps and the tech elite were too much for him. "The tech start-ups now go to Burning Man and eat drugs in search of the next greatest app," he said. "Burning Man is no longer a counterculture revolution. It's now become a mirror of society."

Strangely, the tech elite won't disagree with Mr. Hanson about it being a reflection of society. This year at the premiere of the HBO show "Silicon Valley," Elon Musk, an entrepreneur who was a founder of PayPal, complained that Mike Judge, the show's creator, didn't get the tech world because - wait for it - he had not attended the annual party in the desert.

"I really feel like Mike Judge has never been to Burning Man, which is Silicon Valley," Mr. Musk said to a Re/Code reporter, while using a number of expletives to describe the festival. "If you haven't been, you just don't get it."

Non-tech Burners who have been may "get it" but don't like all this excess, and are starting to push back. This month, the Key Group, a Swiss luxury concierge service, announced that it would be offering a Burning Man Concierge Service that seemed more like a cruise liner vacation than a week in the dusty desert. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)

Among the dozens of options offered by the Key, there is the "establishment of a camp with electricity, water and satellite Internet Wi-Fi connection," "cooks and fresh buffets for every meal" and - not a small task by any means given the distance from the real world - the "possibility of ordering goods and products from outside Black Rock City every day."

When the website Burners.me, which blogs about the festival, posted a link to the Key's site, the Burning Man community seemed generally confused as to whether such extravagance was actually real or if someone was playing a joke. When it turned out to be quite real, people railed against the service, and the Key removed the Burning Man concierge option from its site.

Of course, you won't likely see pictures on Instagram or Facebook of the $2 million camps, chef-cooked meals, the Sherpa helpers and concierge services, or private and pristine toilets. That would mean that the tech elite actually cared about money - which would just go against the entire Burning Man spirit.

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Disruptions There are two disciplines in which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs excel above almost everyone else. The first is making exorbitant amounts of money. The second is pretending they don't care about that money. To understand this, let's enter into evidence Exhibit A: the annual Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nev.

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on billionaire burners

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"We're not building a Marxist society," jokes Burning Man Founder Larry Harvey in response to a series of recent stories detailing the annual festival's multi-million-dollar balance sheet and its buddy-buddy relationship with Silicon Valley billionaires. More seriously, he says, "you can make a lot of money and do good with it. Elon Musk has made a lot of money."

Musk and his elite brethren have become part of the changing face of the week-long rave fest in the Nevada desert, known for its principle of "radical inclusion" and the tens of thousands of Bohemians who load up broken campers to let their inner free-spirit out during a retreat from the button-down corporate world.

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly helicoptered in to hand out grilled cheese. Larry Page, who was spotted one year donning a skin-tight silver onesie, said he hired Chairman Eric Schmidt, in part, because he was a Burner alum. Musk reportedly first dreamed up the solar-powered project that would eventually become his idea for the super-fast transit system, Hyperloop, on a road trip to Burning Man in 2004.

An early Tesla prototype, reportedly captured in 2007.

In recent years, Burning Man ticket prices have soared and Silicon Valley-themed camps are awarded with sizable real-estate on the desert campus. So what does an art and music festival -- made famous for its drug-fueled, 24-hour mobile dance clubs and its elaborately dressed half-naked artists - want with millions of dollars and the tech elite?

I sat down with Harvey on the last day of Burning Man, surrounded by the hymn of de-toxing party monsters deconstructing their themed camps with fork lifts, to find out.
Burning Elite
"The opportunities of all these folks coming out who have command of wealth is to help us in extending our culture throughout the world," explains Harvey. "A typical pattern is that they might stay for a day or two, and then it dawns on them that there's a manifold of profound things to be gained." Harvey and Google execs are known to wax philosophical over dinner at his personal camp.

As sappy as Harvey's perception sounds, the experience evidently inspires tech founders' affinity for radical experimentation. "Maybe we can set aside part of the world," Google CEO Larry Page recently mused. "I like going to Burning Man. As a technologist maybe we need some safe places where we can try things and not have to deploy to the entire world."

To that end, Harvey's friends in the tech community are heeding his call to expand Burning Man-like villages around the world. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is setting up a satellite burner installation within his project in Downtown Las Vegas, aimed at creating a model for city innovation.

Hsieh has spent a portion of his personal $350 million investment on a tight-knit community of startups that feed off of one another's idealism and experimental creativity. The otherwise run-down outskirt for low-budget Las Vegas tourism is starting to resemble the Burning Man campus, with monster-size art sculptures and retail shops in shipping containers.

Burning Man has come under criticism for the fully catered luxury camps that greet wealthier participants. I was granted an inside look at one of these so-called "turnkey" camps this year; other than fancy dining, the experience seemed pretty typical: bike around the campus during the day, meditate on a personal struggle, then rage all night.

It is true, however, that few high-end participants have time to create the elaborate art structures that they themselves enjoy. "It's okay if they don't drive an art car," says Harvey. Although, apparently, the experience does compel some to give generously. Harvey admitted that one of the Google executives donated hundreds of free bikes to the festival.

"I'd like them to have a soulful experience. I'd like them to feel connected to the great human experience in ways that will constructively influence the course of world affairs."
Burning Consumerism, Not Money
Burning Man's ban on selling anything (except for ice) has created the misperception that the festival is anti-capitalist. Burners persist on a gift economy, where food, services and labor are generously doled out. Unlike a barter economy, immediate reciprocation is actively discouraged.

Half-naked attendees who solicit attendees to stop by for a gratis drink and body paint don't have to think twice about freely enjoying one of the elaborately constructed group showers/dance clubs (yes, you read that right).

But, Harvey insists that Burning Man was never anti-money. "Anything much more ambitious than a family picnic would require that you responsibly deal with money." Instead, the millions in revenue that goes to infrastructure and payouts to the local authorities are meant to conceal the complexities of money from participants, so they can concentrate on uninhibited experimentation.

"We just create things and give people time to pursue their own projects, and we don't ever think about monetization."

His unorthodox business philosophy finds a home in the tech industry's risky reliance on free services, largely built from the contributions of users. For instance, Google Engineer Michael Favor, who piloted an early version of Google Maps 3D walk-thru at Burning Man, explained, "The power of Google is that they don't do all the work. People posting content do. The same is true here at Burning Man. Citizens create the vast majority of things." [ PDF]

To be sure, Harvey is no fan of laissez-faire capitalism. "[Burning Man has] always been a sustained critique of the commodification of society and culture, that it isolates people from one another in their role as consumers." As a counter example, he argues that crowdfunded artwork through sites like Kickstarter is a way to build community and make money at the same time. "Even before an artwork gets here, hundreds of people have contributed to it and identified with it."

Intentional or not, however, Burning Man's lucrative potential has brought with it entrepreneurs looking for inspiration and generous venture capitalists, which Harvey insists represent at most "a distinct minority" of the festival's temporary population of nearly 70,000.

I scanned the dust storms looking for opportunistic tech people but came up empty-handed. During my visit to the massive " Silicon Village " multi-camp site, all I found was techies heads-down in rather unusual projects. One veteran Bay Area engineer proudly showed off his automatic water mister and "Orgasm Yurt" (a female-only joystick-shaped personal massager, tucked away inside a foil Yurt, complete with shag bedding).

If semi-wealthy tech carpetbaggers had crowded out Burning Man's usual fare, I couldn't find them.
A Stereotypical Idealism
For those of us steeped in the unbridled utopianism of Silicon Valley, Harvey's philosophy is no shocker. So long as capitalism is centered on innovation, the philosophy goes, money does not exclude social good. With this rather idealistic underpinning, billionaire friends and a cash-cow event series are necessary to spread a cultural vision.

Regardless, the festival's impact has made friends in high tech places. And to the extent that Burning Man culture seeps into technology's influence in our lives, expect our world to get a little more...exciting.

[ Image Credit: believe, temple, dancer]

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Burning Man Founder Is Cool With Capitalism, And Silicon Valley Billionaires

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"We're not building a Marxist society," jokes Burning Man Founder Larry Harvey in response to a series of recent stories detailing the annual festival's multi-million-dollar balance sheet and its buddy-buddy relationship with Silicon Valley billionaires. More seriously, he says, "you can make a lot of money and do good with it.

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BM Coverage

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News about the Burning Man Festival. Commentary and archival information about the Burning Man Festival from The New York Times.

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There's something disheartening about returning from Burning Man to resume your practice as an art critic. The "First Thursday" back, if you've recovered in time to attend (which I did not this year), is underwhelming. It's not because the art on display is worse or less radical than what you've seen in Black Rock City. Or because you won't find any art that you can pee or have sex or take a nap on. Or because nothing will be set on fire. Or because everyone is wearing pants.

As pat as it might sound, it's because you are different. You spend a week in a physically punishing, sensorially ravishing environment where to enjoy even non-interactive art-of which there is very little-necessitates surmounting a litany of discomforts and disorienting factors. You're hot, lashed by corrosive alkaline dust, dehydrated, underslept, and off your tits. You haven't checked email or Facebook in days. Your breakfast was likely champagne and Emergen-C.

In such harsh, isolated conditions, anything you can't experience in the moment is no longer important. Every performance or art installation you witness represents a sublimation of the spoiled body's nagging, an overcoming of the niggling mundanities that usually distract and disperse your attentions. When you stand in front of one of Black Rock City's many art projects (or crawl under it, or sleep inside it, etc.), you feel you've earned your place there, like you're able to take in more of it because there is less of you in the way. The low-pitched drone of everyday concerns-career, relationships, groceries-falls silent.

The author dancing in front of John Chandler's Aztec Car. Photo: Wesley Frederick.

In Black Rock City, you are at your most open, patient, and focused. You spend more time with an artwork than you would in a gallery or museum. You observe other people regarding it and guess at the thoughts passing behind their eyes; no Burner will think you're strange for staring. You revisit pieces at different times of day, noting their transformations under the change in light, temperature, and peripheral noise. You also become an aficionado of destruction, discovering that there can be as much beauty in a work of art while it burns to the ground as it possessed while it stood.

This attentiveness is difficult to replicate in the default world, where the body might be under less duress but external distractions are far more numerous and aggressive. The challenge for the art critic returning from Burning Man, then, is to keep the eyes she earned on the playa: to patiently observe the objects of her gaze in all their subtler incarnations, unbothered by the quotidian, as if her body were chastised by the elements and her mind left tired but open.

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Tripping the Ballz Fantastic: On Being an Art Critic at Burning Man | Art Practical

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In Black Rock City, you are at your most open, patient, and focused. You spend more time with an artwork than you would in a gallery or museum. You observe other people regarding it and guess at the thoughts passing behind their eyes.

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(on kindle)

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art festivals - nevada - black rock desert

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photography / subjects & themes / celebrations & events

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photography/subjects & themes - celebrations & events

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photography / subjects & themes / celebrations & events

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photography/subjects & themes - celebrations & events

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Every August, tens of thousands of participants gather to celebrate artistic expression in Nevada's barren Black Rock Desert. This vastly inhospitable location, called the playa, is the site of Burning Man, where, within a 9-mile fence, artists called Burners create a temporary city devoted to ar...

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desert art preview

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One of the very best things about Burning Man, the week-long, post-apocalyptic celebration of creative expression that pops up in the Nevada desert each August, is the awe-inspiring collection of art on display.

The installations and the "art cars" roaming through the two-mile stretch of temporary city render humanity's capacity for imagination limitless. Where else in the universe would a giant, fire-breathing steampunk octopus glide past a 55-foot tall, LED-powered homage to the female form?

The Huffington Post was lucky enough to preview a handful of the projects that will be on hand at this year's event, which kicks off in mere weeks and is built around the theme " caravansary." As artists scramble to put the finishing touches on their brainchildren and raise the final funds to bring their weirdest dreams to life, we've rounded up what will undoubtedly be some of the most influential works of Burning Man 2014.

From a giant, glowing vagina to a collection of mechanical lotus flowers that light up to the rhythm of your heartbeat, take a look at some of the bizarre creations that will grace the world's dustiest canvas this year ( Grover Norquist not included):

Though enormous in scale, the piece is simple -- a 72-foot sculpture of two figures embracing. But creator Matt Schultz hopes his work will convey a deeper message to onlookers, one that was inspired by the loss he felt when his stepfather passed away two years ago. "Embrace is a reminder to take the time out of your busy life to spend time with those that you love," he told HuffPost. "We hope that people will think of all of the relationships in their lives, past present and future, and consider what has made them so important."

The Super Pool is a bigger and more badass version of the legendary Burning Man installation The Pool. For this new and improved iteration, sculptor Jen Lewin has created a 5,000 square foot immersive LED playground where participants can interact with circular pads of light through their own unique movements. "Imagine a giant canvas where you can paint and splash light collaboratively," Lewin told HuffPost in a statement.

Bryan Tedrick's climbable psychedelic totem pole first debuted at Burning Man in 2010, and he's reprising it this year. "This lighthouse of the desert draws people to it and naturally becomes a point to gather and meet," he explained, adding that the trip to the top is not for the weak of mind or body. "The climb can be arduous, a gritty challenge progressing from the coarse to fine, from the earth to the sky, from the physical to the spirit."

The all-female designed and produced installation features a massive spinning wheel emblazoned with tarot card designs, a gazebo area where spectators can relax and, of course, a chandelier made of fire. And it's all powered by solar energy, to boot. "It's made of salvaged and reclaimed materials and will also act as a large compass, a place for personal reflection, card readings, high teas, and insight," project designer Jill Sutherland told HuffPost in a statement.

Who's more fit to build a behemoth tribute to the female anatomy than a group called the Clitterati? The 18-foot tall, LED-lit vagina will also feature video projections of feminine forms and sensory fabrics called the "erogenous zone." "We're delighted when the name makes someone uncomfortable," the Vulvatron's lead designer, Rebecca Frisch, told HuffPost in a statement. "We're using this opportunity to engage in conversation, and we're eager to help each other explore our triggers and push social boundaries imposed by our culture."

An entirely interactive experience, Pulse and Bloom is made up of 25 mechanical lotus flowers. When participants touch the flowers, they light up to the specific rhythms of their heartbeats. "We want to use technology to make our inner invisible worlds more visible," artist Saba Ghole told HuffPost.

More art caravan than art car, the Lost Tea Party will traverse the playa as a train of enormous teapots breathing real steam. Revelers are encouraged to climb aboard and will be guided by "bedouin tea-pod pullers dressed in traditional desert garb." According to the artist Wreckage, who's spearheading the project with the Mutoid Waste art collective, the piece looks like the unlikely union of Alice in Wonderland meets Lawrence of Arabia.
The Wheels of Zoroaster
This year's Wheels is the sixth iteration of a series of human-powered spinning fire wheels that artist Anton Viditz-Ward told HuffPost are inspired by watching Burning Man's legendary fire dancers.

Celestial Mechanica

Viewers are encouraged to interact with artist Jessika Welz's churning, 50-foot replica of our planets revolving around the sun. "We'll provide the opportunity to experience our solar system's beauty and power with all five of your senses," Ashley Ortega, who volunteers on the team creating the piece, told HuffPost. "At night, each planet will glow from within."

First time Burning Man artist Dan Benedict, who hopes to keep the aesthetics of his piece a surprise until it debuts, describes the project as "a large ring of red parasols that pass through a human figure while closed. As the parasols exit the figure and rise they open, blossom toward the apex and close again on their way down." He added that, as a former member of the Mormon church, he often turns to his art as a means of connecting with others.

"We are the only art installation you're supposed to lock your bike to," artist Tyler Fuqua told HuffPost of his octopus-shaped creation, which first made an appearance at last year's Burn and has since been updated with new tentacle sections. "I mean, who will forget they locked their bike to a giant octopus?"

Charles Gadeken's 50-foot-tall tree, made entirely of LED-lit cubes attached to square steel tubing, "reflects the universe of complexity, mystery, and serendipity that defines our journey through time and our emergence into the future age," he told HuffPost in a statement. "The tree provides shade during the day and a magical light show when from dusk till dawn."

The Tree of (Im)permanence rises from a tiny toy piano that, when it's played, activates tubular bell chimes that form its branches. At night, the branches light up as their note is played, and creator Nick Geurts hopes individuals will lead yoga and meditation sessions beneath it. "This is meant to be not only an auditory experience but a journey of self-discovery," he told HuffPost.

A house that will haunt the darkest corners of your psyche, the Last Outpost is an "immersive experience" that tells the story of a group of Burning Man volunteers who mysteriously disappear. "I love slow, psychological, horror and science fiction and fantasy, and this installation is pretty much like building a set for an insidiously scary play that no one has written yet," artist Shing Yin Khor told Huffpost. "I hope that people will wander through this house, and spend some time unraveling the mystery within it."

Designer Josh Haywood drew his inspiration from the Moorish buildings he studied as a graduate student of architecture. He hopes his "tiny palace named for love" will serve as a physical and spiritual retreat for passersby. "The structure provides a refuge from the heat of the sun and an intimate spiritual place for people to gather and rest," he told HuffPost. "During the night the four pillars illuminate like a giant lantern."

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An Exclusive First Look At This Year's Burning Man Art

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One of the very best things about Burning Man, the week-long, post-apocalyptic celebration of creative expression that pops up in the Nevada desert each August, is the awe-inspiring collection of art on display. The installations and the "art cars" roaming through the two-mile stretch of temporary city render humanity's capacity for imagination limitless.

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It's hard to believe the hundreds of stunning creations that rise from the dust each Burning Man are collectively enjoyed for a mere week, only then to be burned to the ground or carted off the remote stretch of Nevada desert.

This year's Burn was bigger than ever, and the art installations on display reflected the sheer scale of the pop-up utopia. Below, 16 of the most gorgeous, awe-inspiring pieces from the playa:

Truth Is Beauty

Marco Cochrane's 55-foot tall sculpture of a female silhouette, which glittered with colorful LEDs at night, was the most buzzed-about piece at this year's event.

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16 Awe-Inspiring Art Installations From Burning Man

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It's hard to believe the hundreds of stunning creations that rise from the dust each Burning Man are collectively enjoyed for a mere week, only then to be burned to the ground or carted off the remote stretch of Nevada desert.

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topic "Burning Man"

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Subscribe to the all-new Rolling Stone! Everything you need to know from the authority on music, entertainment, politics and pop culture.

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"Trippy" photos from 2014

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The desert festival's coolest cars, happiest campers and most mind-blowing art installations

For a glorious week, Burning Man returned to Nevada's Black Rock desert, along with the custom art, outrageous outfits, eye-grabbing vehicles and inventive technology participants had been preparing for months in advance. A journey through the playa - the festival's main grounds, a little pop-up metropolis in the literal middle of nowhere - is like a trip through time and space. Here's what it looked like. Photos by Scott London

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The desert festival's coolest cars, happiest campers and most mind-blowing art installations For a glorious week, Burning Man returned to Nevada's Black Rock desert, along with the custom art, outrageous outfits, eye-grabbing vehicles and inventive technology participants had been preparing for months in advance.

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photo gallery - 2011

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Magic mushrooms, nude dancers, wild infernos and more

Scott London4/24

People climb on "Star Seed," an installation by artist Kate Raudenbush, on a windy and dusty afternoon at Burning Man 2012.

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Magic mushrooms, nude dancers, wild infernos and more People climb on "Star Seed," an installation by artist Kate Raudenbush, on a windy and dusty afternoon at Burning Man 2012.

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"Default World Dreaming" exhibition

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This exhibition explores these aspects of profound effects on the quotidian life around us, breaking through the rigidity and conformity to unleash something original, vital and iconoclastic in our existence. Here we chart a path of originality through the establishment, questioning its "reality" by creating our own.