Endless Summer
by Phill Arensberg and Kay Morrison
The big deal about Burning Man used to be going to Burning Man. For the past 25 years people from around the world have made the hajj to the Black Rock Desert in Northwestern Nevada to create, participate, and revel in an experiment in temporary community. Reaching a population of almost 50,000 people in 2008, Black Rock City - Nevada's third largest city for a few days - is a tribute to personal, artistic, and community expression. Famous for it perceived veneer of excess, Burning Man is an arts festival held every year in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Started on San Francisco's Baker Beach in 1986, the event took up residence in the Black Rock Desert for the first time in 1991. Do-as-thou-wilt was the unstated ethos of the group of predominantly Bay Area people who met on the dry prehistoric lake bed every year, giving rise to such attractions as the Drive-By Shooting Range and endless raves, as well as spectacular art. In 1997, though, the size and scope of the event demanded some kind of organization, some rules, if it was going to survive both the scrutiny of government agencies (the event takes place on federal land) and the peril to its own integrity. The principles of Immediacy, Self-Reliance, Gifting, Leave No Trace, Inclusion and Expression have stood as the guiding ideals for both the Burning Man Organization (BMOrg) and the tens of thousands of participants who arrive in the Black Rock Desert every year. Once adopted, though, this value system is not easily put away.
The Burning Man event has spawned a cultural movement in the United States and has given rise to regional outcroppings around the planet. One of the effects of the explosion in regional communities is that the Burning Man Festival has transcended its identity as solely an event in the desert and has evolved into a culture whose values are being applied in peoples lives and in their home towns all year round. Organizations of various structures and sizes, goals and methods are working to apply the tenants of this central event to the rest of their year, and ultimately the rest of their lives.
With a combined 17 years of attendance at Burning Man, we have filled our sashes with Burning Man merit badges : building theme camps and art cars, throwing fundraisers and parties, experiencing the physical and emotional highs and lows that come with 7 days in a desert, getting hurt, getting saved, falling in love, learning new skills, embracing costumes, giving up costumes and doing it all with our very closest friends. But like the nature of the event, the character of our experience has also evolved. Instrumental in the creation and continual management of Ignition Northwest, a successful Seattle-centric nonprofit arts organization developed out of the Seattle burn culture, our “burner summer” is now 365 days a year. Or rather 355. We do take a 10 day trip to Nevada.
For us, like an ever increasing number of burners, our hobbies, our community service, our friends and sometimes even our jobs and families are deeply rooted in Burning Man culture. Instead of coming together to create temporary projects for the desert we now focus on building and maintaining businesses and communities here in Seattle. Instead of attending parties and events we now participate in endless meetings and the occasional conference. No longer satisfied with an exclusively temporary annual experience, an ever growing population of motivated burners are embracing the values and relationships experienced at the festival in a permanent frame year round. This is Burning Man's “Next Big Thing.” It's evolution.
It is impossible to describe what we did on our summer vacation without showing what we do in the rest of our lives. Here, via excerpts from our calendars, is a snapshot of the life of a year round burner.
MARCH 6, 2009
Wow, talk about Burner Nation. There is no "I" in "Cult," only you...
Back from a great Regional Leaders Summit at Burning Man HQ.
Our summer began in March of 2009 when we attended a summit of regional organizations and leaders at the Burning Man Headquarters in San Francisco. The summit was started three years ago as a way to put in one room all of the Burning Man appointed Regional Contacts, whose job is to provide information and assistance to people in their default world communities who have questions about attending the event in Nevada, or about getting more involved with the burner community locally. This year's summit was different. The rapid proliferation of independent regional for profit and nonprofit organizations based on the Burning Man ethos, but not legally affiliated with Burning Man, necessitated the broadening of the summit roster. This year's summit included not only the Regional Contacts, but also board members, and community leaders from all around the world.
These organizations once few and far between, are now becoming the businesses structure behind local burner community development. There is no one model for these organizations,
each one faces unique challenges of geography, economy, and civic interaction as well as working to meet the specific goals set out by their community. But what they have in common is that regardless of whether they are based in New York City, Cleveland or Taiwan they all have an intentional connection to the Burning Man Organization in San Francisco.
The Burning Man Regional Contacts network was formed as a direct result of the transformative nature of the the event. By 1997 Burning Man was attended by people from all over the country who did not have knowledge of, or connection to burners in their home towns. So profound was the experience on playa that people started looking for a way to bring that experience to their everyday lives. Initially, the job of the Regional Contact was solely to connect burners to other burners, and share information about the event with those who were curious. In this endeavor they were successful. Small groups of people reminiscing over slides quickly progressed into regular social gatherings. By 2004 the role of a Regional Contact was a legally binding contract between the RC and the Burning Man Organization. A few years after that communities across America were identifying a need for local development that reached beyond the shared experience of going to the desert. People wanted to facilitate art, events and their brand of community on the home front. To do this, organizations began forming, with and some without the blessing of the BMOrg. This is one of the major shifts in the story. Instead of regional communities asking BMOrg for permission to create Burning Man inspired culture, they were simply doing it. Ownership of the experience had become decentralized, and was rapidly moving into a locally driven paradigm.
April 15, 2009
Producer chosen and contracts signed for Critical Massive. Best regional event evarr (hopefully).
Events are the first step in re-creating the experience of Burning Man. Like children mimicking sounds and the mechanics of speaking before they have words, burners driven to continue their experience tend to start by imitating their experience of Burning Man - fire performers, DJ's, burlesque, costumes, big art, etc. It is easy to see these events as a simpler and smaller version of the Festival, but these little events eventually beget organizations which can handle the money side of things, which in turn enables more and larger events. While the increased scope of these events certainly helps create stronger, more creative local communities, the cumulative effect of these happenings goes much deeper. For us, overseeing the production of an event like the Northwest's Critical Massive, which broke previous attendance levels in 2009 ticking in over 700 attendees, demands a level of professionalism suited to interacting with city government, insurance agencies, the fire department and the police.
The longest running and arguably most successful of these regional events is Burning Flipside, held annually outside of Austin. Started in 1998 by a handful of Burning Man attendees who wanted to create their own little slice of burner heaven in Texas, Flipside is now so popular that the organizers hold a random lottery to disperse the available tickets - of which there were 2,468 in 2009. Flipside is a perfect example of how the Burning Man experience builds relationships, which builds community, which builds events, which builds businesses, which creates local ownership and identity. Flipside is certainly not Burning Man, but Flipside would not have been born without the Burning Man Festival. Take a look at the description of the event:
Burning Flipside is a regional art and music festival inspired by Burning Man. It is a place for radical self expression and an experiment in temporary community building. It is a place of acceptance, inclusivity, and respect. It is organized entirely by volunteers. The art and entertainment is created solely by participants. There are no spectators. No cash transactions are permited at Flipside. Even bartering is discouraged. There are no concession stands. This is a sincere experiment in creating a gift economy. If you need something, ask for it. If you have it, gift it! There are no garbage cans. Participants pack out their garbage. This is a Leave No Trace event.
So successful is Flipside in creating a locally relevant event, that many attendees of Flipside refer to themselves not as burners, but as Flipsiders. Many Flipsiders have not, and never plan to, attend Burning Man. And Flipside is not an anomaly. The regional event phenomenon has exploded, nationally and globally. Check it:
FrostBurn - Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, Kiwiburn - Whakamaru Domain, Mangakino, New Zealand, BC Recompression - Vancouver, BC, PreHeat - Lakeland, Florida, Dark Skies - Meadview, Arizona, InterFuse - Boonville, Missouri, Toast! - Witch Well, Arizona, Playa del Fuego - Odessa, Delaware, Burning Day & Burning Night - Paris, France, Apogaea - Front Range, Colorado, SF Precompression - San Francisco, California, Scorched Nuts - Rutland, Ohio, Gateway - Saint Louis, Missouri, Element 11 - Grantsville, Utah, Soulstance - Los Gatos, California, Lakes of Fire - SW Michigan, Soak* - Portland, Oregon, Freezer Burn - Stettler, Alberta, Otherworld – Victoria, BC, Holos - Trapper Creek, Alaska, Firefly - Vermont, Nowhere - Zaragoza, Spain, Critical Massive - Mt. Vernon, Washington, mOOseman - Toronto, Canada, AfrikaBurn - Tankwa Karoo, South Africa, Chicago Decompression - Chicago, Illinois, Alchemy - LaFayette, Georgia, LA Decompression - Los Angeles, California, Myschevia - North Texas, San Diego Decom - San Diego, California, Burn Out - Portland, Oregon and UnScruz - Santa Cruz, California.
The skills necessary for large scale event production do not go away when the event ends. These skills are applicable to a wide range of mainstream culture jamming.
JUNE 13, 2009
Drove Stuart to the airport. Lucky SOB is on his way to the Figment Project in NYC.
Producing smaller, Burning Man-inspired events provides communities with the experience, reputation and confidence to understand laws, write contracts, and conduct a successful business. With these skills, community organizers across the world are bringing the Burner ethos – art, community, participation and self-reliance – to the world at large. The act of recreating the transformative experience in Nevada has itself transformed into a culture bearing vehicle.
The form and method of these endeavors is often a direct response to a specific community’s need. One of the earliest and most visible of these projects is Burners Without Borders (BWB). The seeds of BWB, an early-response disaster relief organization, were planted at the 2005 Burning Man Festival as an immediate response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast during the Festival . The people who had just designed and built the infrastructure of a large, temporary city in the desert packed up their tents and tools after the event and traveled directly from Nevada to Mississippi to offer their help. First helping to rebuild a demolished Vietnamese temple in Biloxi, the growing number of burner volunteers then moved their efforts to Pearlington, Mississippi. In Pearlington the crew set up a temporary camp, built with the structures and supplies they had used on playa. They started tearing down destroyed houses only after checking each house and removing any salvagable keepsakes. Over the course of eight months, BWB volunteers gifted over $1 million dollars worth of reconstruction and debris removal to the residents of Mississippi. But it was more then physical labor that the burners brought to Mississippi, they also brought their creativity and their desire to build community in a very discouraged place. They started building art from the wreckage, and in true burner style, burned it each night. At Christmas, the BWB volunteers salvaged decorations, built a chair for Santa out of a broken bed frame, and gave out donated gifts to all the children in town. This group of burner freaks brought the dogma of the burn culture to the Gulf Coast, and enabled hope in a broken community. These days BWB has a much more broad scope: beach clean ups, food drives, supporting Habitat for Humanity, and even distributing Stimulus money for community development projects. It's a do-ocracy, dude.
The need is not always as blatant and shocking as hurricane relief. In Seattle, an email thread dedicated to bitching about lousy jobs gave rise to Biznik. Originally subtitled “radical self-promotion," Biznik is a business networking organization dedicated to honest, fair and profitable collaboration and promotion. Since its creation in early 2006 Biznik has grown well beyond its identity as the “Burner Business Group." Biznik now encompasses professionals and businesses around the world, the majority of whom do not identify as burners, but connect with the concepts of collaboration, honesty, and participation, more than they do with competition. Biznik is not just a website either, face-to-face events are a major component of being a Biznik member. From their website:
Biznik is online AND face to face. Social networks are great. But nothing beats the power of a face-to-face meeting to build real, lasting business relationships.
Burners and burner culture, however, are never too distant from artistic expression. Organizations have emerged to deal solely with the creation, production and curation of public art. As anyone who has labored over a giant piece of art in the blistering Nevada sun knows, the completion of the piece is not the object, the collaboration is. Bringing their belief in the value of immediacy and participation to bear, burners use art and the creative process as an initiation. The creation of public art is a tool for community growth and imbues people with ownership of a public space. Art as the engine driving positive social change.
That is exactly what is happening in New York City with Figment.
In the summer of 2007, on the 172 acre Governor's Island - a decommissioned military base in the New York harbor - Figment emerged. Created by a small group of NYC burners as a way to combine the do-ocracy attitude of the Burning Man culture and the bursting New York arts scene to produce a free, all-inclusive participatory arts festival for one weekend a year. 2,600 attended the first Figment, and participation jumped to 10,000 in 2008. Figment is run by a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and is not an ordained Burning Man event. It is however, the manifestation of the 10-principals done New York style. From their website:
As a free, public, non-profit event, we aim to advance social and personal transformation through creativity. FIGMENT is uninterrupted by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. Selling or advertising goods or services is not permitted. Neither our artists nor our planners and staff are paid – everything that you see at FIGMENT is born from a simple desire to share imagination with each other and the public.
JULY 28, 2009
I hate children. Met 15 year old today who, when I told him I attended Burning Man, responded with, "Oh yeah. My dad goes there." Little punk.
Meeting later with Ignition Northwest Board re: extending funding for public art space.
Sharing a bottle of wine we watched Rusty, a local burner, make his basic cable debut on a build ‘n destroy show for the Discovery Chanel called “Weaponizers.” As we watched our fellow burner shoot up an airport shuttle bus with a mini-gun, we considered the degree and manner to which the burner aesthetic has permeated American pop culture. Up until very recently Burning Man was unknown to all but a select few. It was the event for the outsider of the outsiders. A trip to the Burning Man Festival had no cultural cache, imbued no hipster cred, because it was simply too far off the radar. Not any more.. Burning Man is now emblematic of a certain type of American cool. One can gauge the level of cool by the relative hipness of the media outlet in which it is referenced. “Robot Chicken”, “Reno 911” and Cartoon Network's “Lucy: Daughter of the Devil” are not mainstream destination points on America’s cable box, but they are the bleeding edge of young, hip pop humor. The fact that there is a large enough population that will understand and appreciate the seven levels of irony implicit in any pop culture reference illustrates the degree to which the Burning Man iceberg rises above the surface of the water.
The growth of Burning Man as a cultural meme runs parallel to the relative age and success of the majority of its participants. People who first encountered the festival in their late teens and early twenties are now teetering on the precipice of middle-age. They have children and marriages, mortgages and careers, to say nothing of their collective money and influence. Yesterday’s hippies are today’s Vermont-based Ice Cream magnates, after all. These people do not see their material success in opposition to their burner ideals. Take, for instance the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), a nonprofit formed by the Burning Man organization to support and promote community-based interactive art and civic participation. A quick perusal of the BRAF Advisory Board reveals a collection of men and women who are leaders in their fields. Executives and directors from Pixar, Morgan-Stanley, MoveOn.org and Tribe.net actively participate in increasing the effectiveness and reach of BRAF. Just because someone dresses up in furry shorts with a musketeer hat, doesn’t mean they don’t posses money and the cognitive tools to decide what to do with it. There are direct cultural results of this increase in burner age, wealth and influence. For instance, every year the New York Times Arts section covers the art and identity of the festival for the entire week. Companies such as Microsoft, Google and Daewoo work with Burning Man organizations on artistic and humanitarian projects.
AUGUST 11, 2009
This is my vacation? Next year, going to a resort. This time I mean it.
Worked all day at shop, got sunburn from welder on inside of elbows. Later, need to vacuum seal 15 gallons of chicken tikka masala and freeze for BM.
It is a week before our annual trek, and the deadline for finishing preparations draws close. For those involved in burner culture year round, there is a temptation to discount The Festival itself. It is, after all, a tremendous expenditure of time, energy and money that, by definition, leaves no permanent trace. Burning Man has changed. It isn't what it was in 1988 or 1998. Broader awareness of Burning Man has resulted in a huge influx of people who never would have known about it even three years ago. The increase in the number of "muggles" or tourists, while not taming the nature of the event, has somewhat diluted the spiritual and participatory aspects of the burn. There is an unmistakable cheeseyness that has established itself at Burning Man, and perhaps it's not for the bad. You never know what will happen out in the middle of the desert. The most cynical, beer soaked, breast-obsessed frat boy is capable of life altering experiences as much as a NorCal reiki worker wearing faerie wings. One of the strengths of the event has been its willingness and ability to embrace new movements. Art and Community were once newcomers to Burning Man. It's impossible now to conceive of the event without these components as central aspects of the experience. The inherent ambiguity in this approach is unsettling to many, but the results are evolutionary. The physical and psychological impact of the event tests these movements. Their survival is a product of natural selection
The move on behalf of BMOrg to embrace and support the independent organizations who are applying the tenets of Burning Man to the default world is another expression of this approach. By providing a network of communication and, when requested, some guidance, Burning Man allows its message to spread in an organic manner. The process of evolution moves on. Organizations and individuals apply the concepts that worked so well in the urban setting of Black Rock City uniquely to their own communities. There is no one way to be a burner, in the desert or in West Palm Beach. If Burning Man: The Event has experienced a decrease in its impact and stature, Burning Man: The Movement is a juggernaut. The combination of burner ideals with effective business and organizational structure is having a concrete impact on communities all over the world. And the effect is not limited to burners. Burner culture is not unobtrusive. Big public art and radical self-expression in the default world has the effect of transmogrification through osmosis. People are made aware of possibilities and opportunities they never thought about before. Just as Burning Man fundamentally changes individuals, individual burners working together are changing their world.
Now, seriously, we need to go pack.
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