Burning Man Festival Nevada, United States.
Burning Man [mainsite] http://www.burningman.com/
Official list of the Burning Man Project: http://www.burningman.com/blackrockcity_yearround/contacts/jrs_lists.html
Thier ‘Legal Advice Page’ http://www.burningman.com/preparation/event_survival/law_enforcement.html
Location Map: http://www.burningman.com/preparation/maps/reno.gif
Burning Man is a Labor Day gathering/party/festival that began in 1986 with the torching of an 8-foot stick man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach. Since 1990 it has been held in the remote Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. For a week, the desert “playa” becomes a canvas for some of the most beautiful, fantastic, and just plain weird art this side of Oz. The festival’s centerpiece now stands 40 feet tall.
Hundreds of people devote much of their lives to the festival’s planning — for little or no monetary gain whatsoever — and thousands of people travel from all over the world to attend. Experience Burning Man once and you’ll understand why.
Visit Nevada’s Black Rock Desert at most any time of the year, and you won’t find much there – just a barren desert formed by an ancient lake bed. But come around a week before Labor Day, and you’re likely to witness a transformation as awe-inspiring as any desert bloom: the creation of Black Rock City, a counterculture metropolis otherwise known as Burning Man.
It’s difficult to explain the concept of Burning Man to the uninitiated. Some call it a neo-pagan festival. Others think of it as this generation’s Woodstock. In truth, it is neither. Burning Man can really only be defined by experiencing it.
Miles from the nearest town, the thousands of participants must bring everything they will need to survive in the desert. Monetary transactions are not allowed at the festival. The climate is extreme, and creature comforts are minimal limited to what people can construct in a few days from materials they have brought in themselves. The ticket to Burning Man warns that participants risk serious injury or death by attending the event.
But participants assume the risks for the chance to create something extraordinary an ideal society that exists according to its utopian vision, if only for one week. The society is defined by the rules that have been established over the years, and by the feeling of community that develops through shared creative efforts.
Many participants form camps grouped around community projects. Each camp has an interactive element, with open invitations to all who wish to participate. Art, costumes, dancing, and music dominate the playa. In recent years, technology has greatly added to the mix, and this year marks the debut of PlayaNet, a wireless high-speed network that will serve as a festival-wide intranet.
Burning Man is a marriage of art, anarchy and technology. It’s a place where hippies, trendy beautiful people, brooding artists, goths and nerds can find something in common.
What impressed was that some of the art is actually good. It’s mostly ephemeral – meant to be burned or certainly taken down at the end, but some people with real talent go to BM to show off.
Also impressive is the tremendous effort that goes into the camps and structures. While some just set up a minimalist camp, many camps have impressive structures that clearly were quite some work to set up. People aren’t there to camp, they are there to show off what they can make.
Here you see a variety of shots of different camps. This is just a tiny sampling, and not even the most intersting. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of unusual camps. Some built giant towers or other structures
Some people, trying to get a smaller experience within what is now a large town of 15,000, build villages within the Black Rock City. They arrange a large cicular area, get common generators and other facilities and collect a group of camps. The Irrational Geographic Society and its stage are shown here on the right. “Drano” city on the left.
More strange camps, including one (Holmes on the Range) with three naked women on a giant penis. Who can resist taking a photo of that? A lot of the experience of BM is going around, enjoying the camps, and going into them, and meeting the people, perhaps offering to help out. In fact, in line with the BM “No spectators” ethic, this is almost mandatory.
All the streets were arranged in a hemicircle around the Man. In the center of that was a big cicular area called the Center camp, which included the one cafe and a stage in the middle, and some of the most established camps around it.
Near the end of the weeklong culture jam, participants burn a giant wooden effigy in a cathartic celebration that gives the event its name. And then the ephemeral city disappears, leaving no trace in the desert.
Collected links here, some really cool photography, check it out. All makes me want to go .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. … ….. ……. one day!
Abobe ‘Special feature on Burning Man
Adobe Panorama Day1
Adobe Panorama Day2
Adobe Panorama Day3
Burning Man Message Board 2002: http://bbs.burningman.com/
The Photographic book, ‘Burning Man’ from Amazon.
