RE-PRESENTING THE PRESENT

Back in 1986, on a San Franciscan beach, two friends decide to burn a wooden man-like figure. Now, more than 20
years later, this ritual is the closing act of a weeklong art event held in the Black Rock Desert, where over 35.000
participants are greeted ‘welcome home’ at its dusty gates. The Black Rock Desert has become Black Rock City, and
the random burn of a man has become the Burning Man: a festival, community, and social movement.

Re-Presenting the Present

It is often said that trying to explain Burning Man to someone who has never been is like trying to explain color to
the blind from birth. This thesis takes up exactly that challenge, showing the remarkable story of Burning Man as
it went from the countercultural to the cultural; from reactive to proactive, from growing up to spreading out. It
tells the tale of how a spark to an effigy might just ignite a social revolution. Let the burn begin…
THE (R)EVOLUTION OF THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

THE (R)EVOLUTION OF THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

Larissa Quaak | Master Thesis Cultural Anthropology
 Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

- W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939 -

As found written on the Temple, Burning Man 2005
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Evan and Ghreg, John and John, Elena and Krista, and my housemates on
Acknowledgment Webster Patricia and Justin. In hindsight, even though I didn’t want to let
business and pleasure mix on such certain terms, their sociality and all-
inclusiveness formed a big and visceral part of my theoretical argument on
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement. - Ludwig Wittgenstein the communal ideology and social impact of Burning Man. The embodied
knowledge it brought made the theme ring all the more true.
Wittgenstein said many a just thing in his philosopher’s life, and the above Back at home, in the Amsterdam I love so much, Marijn should be on
quote only underlines his brilliance – and apparent good intellectual this page as well, always more than happy to prevent me from becoming an
influences. As for me, I would not have had the anthropological knowledge intellectually discouraged hermit. Nuriye who struggled with the same
as hopefully shown in this thesis without my guiding professor Yolanda van schizophrenic academic and creative split but who always made the
Ede. Throughout the university, both as a mentor and a teacher, she was combination appear a bonus. Roos and Rebecca who I happily shared my
there to skillfully guide me through. Never making it easy, but always house and many midnight cups of tea with, and Offer, Conan and Bas who I
letting the effort be all the more rewarding. In the end, next to intellectual could always cathartically and effervescently dance with. But most of all
stimulation, she provided me with the much needed willpower and there is the other significant half of LoLa Productions Incorporated: Loeki,
conviction to enter my research process and to stay with it, even when the as close and unconditional to a childhood friend I will ever have. Her sharp
accompanying frustrations and existential crises made me want to give up analytical mind, faith, humor, as well as great cooking and taste in wine
more than once. offered relief, inspiration and lucidity when needed most. She was always
At the University of Amsterdam, I also wish to thank my assessment there, and hopefully will be in many more years to come. Thanx babe!
committee in the form of Thomas Blom-Hansen and Mattijs van de Port, for Last, but as the cliché has it certainly not least, I am much indebted to
showing the amount of enthusiasm and constructive criticism they did. In my soul mate, my love, Martijn. First he had to let me go to San Francisco,
their busy schedule, I am sure having to read through, and comment on, enthusiastically on my own, and endure my long struggle for data – and
nearly 200 pages of text when 60 should suffice for a thesis was a feat of independence. When I got back, and we were finally sharing the same room
pure endurance. They kept showing curiosity for all aspects though, and again, the problems only just began. Where most people either saw the
when they gave the legendary feedback “We really, really want to visit laughing and bubbly Larissa or nothing at all, he was at home, stuck with
Burning Man now”, I knew I had done something right. the teary eyed, feeble, deeply insecure and frustrated one. He was always
I also wish to extend my university thanks to a more general level, the rock my frustrations could bounce off on. My Tefal man. I never once
where it offered me the platform and financial help to spend half a year ‘in got them rejected and projected back at me. Such patience, such stability,
the field.’ The University of Amsterdam is the only Dutch university where such care. Both on a practical, financial, technical, intellectual, spiritual,
such freedom and growth has to be experienced in order to graduate, and it physical, and emotional level, this final ‘product’ would truly never have
has broadened my anthropological ànd personal horizon tremendously. materialized without him. Matiyin, you are my own affirmative flame, and I
On an anonymous note, I want to thank all those photographers and thank the universe for letting us shine together.
random people who’s pictures and appearances I so shamelessly stole from
the Internet. I try to take comfort in the fact that the shamanic bricoleur
also never revealed his mystic sources; gathering and recombining imagery
and symbolism to make an often profane point. As in his case, the chosen
visual collage not only supports, but is often stronger than words. This will
never be published, and therefore the makers and represented will never
know how much they made the pages come alive. But I thank them for it –
and apologize for any fringe on copy-right and unauthorized nudity it might
present and/or privacy it is bound to invade.
I have never been much of the prototype academic-to-be;
brainstorming, testing theories and having stimulating arguments with
fellow students. Yet, Sandra, my dear friend and fellow anthropologist-
ahead-of-me has never ceased to offer me her critical anthropological ear
and insights, as well as a much cherished friendship. When all is said and
done, she is the reason why I chose to study anthropology – and I have now
nearly forgiven her for this path… ;-) Sunny, not a day goes by without me
cursing and blessing the adventurous nature of my friends, and wishing we
could finally and ordinarily sit on a sun-drenched terrace together again,
drinking wine, chatting, laughing or just being silent together. In the flesh,
and not just on Skype. Not a day goes by without me missing you and your
man.
There are many more friends that need mentioning, seeing how they
often picked me up and stayed by my side through the whole doctorate
process. Together, they gave inspiration or just much needed distraction –
processes that often seemed to go hand in hand. They kept me sane. First of
all, I want to thank the bunch at San Francisco, who welcomed me warmly
and immediately made me feel part of their community: Laura and Max,

1
 Theme Camps 68
Performance Art 69
Table of contents Art against Society
The Anaesthetized Society
71
72
Art in Reverse 75
Community versus Art 76
Acknowledgment 1 We Have a Dream: just sign here 76
Borg 2: more Woo Woo for Larry’s Hoo Ha 77
Introduction 4 The Core Conflict 78
- 6 - Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy 80
PART I: SOCIAL BACKGROUND 9
Why a Gift Economy? 81
- 1 - Every Now and Then: the Countercultural Package Deal 10 Community through the Gift 81
Counterculture in Theory 10 Re-presenting the Present 82
Counterculture in Praxis 13 The Gift versus the Commodity 83
The Beats 14 Theoretically unwrapping the Gift 84
The Hippies 15 Mauss’ reciprocal Gift Exchange 85
Guerilla Theatre 17 Hyde’s erotic Life of Property 86
Situationist Movement 18 Escaping the Market? 88
The Punks 20 The alluring shortness of being 89
Cacophony Society 21
PART IV: SOCIAL IMPACT 91
PART II: ESCAPING SOCIETY 23 - 7 - Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive 92
- 2 - Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob 24 Leaving Traces 93
Burning a Man 25 Black Rock City Year Round 94
A Man with a Vision 26 Going home to Decompress 95
The Burn that never Burned 27 The Regional Network 97
The Participatory Project 28 Social Capital 99
The Society of the Spectacle 29 A new Kind of Community 102
To Participate or Not to Participate 30 Ideology & Future Plans 103
The Spectacle of the Man 33 Katrina and the Burners without Borders 104
In the End 35 The Black Rock Arts Foundation 105

- 3 - Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z. 36 Conclusion 108

A new-found Location 37 References 110
It’s so Empty it’s Full 38
Rituals worth Repeating 40 Appendix A - Glossary 114
Where the Wild Things are 43
Pockets of Freedom 44 Appendix B - Respondents 116
Dust, Death & Doom 45
Appendix C – Finance 119

PART III: STRUCTURAL SOCIALITY 49

- 4 - Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man 50
A lesson in Civic Planning 53
Leave no Trace 53
From the Zone to Zoning 54
Binding a heterogeneous Community 56
Who goes to this, and Why? 56
A different kind of Law and Order 58
Organizational Structure 59
Law Enforcement 60
Utopia versus Heterotopia 62
- 5 - Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City 64
A City filled with Art 66
Art as Civic Structure 66

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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

3

Introduction
Community can’t be rushed or sought directly and self-consciously.
Community is neither a goal nor a means. It is, rather, a side effect resulting
from continued interaction between human beings. It enriches and facilitates
more interaction but it must stem from and be rooted in interaction. Men
must have something to do together before they can become a community,
and those who pursue community as an end in itself will be as disappointed as
those who pursue happiness as an end in itself. (Greeley 1968:78)
With few exceptions, the modern discourse of community seems to be
dominated by a pervasive sense of loss. From the Enlightenment onward
many great thinkers paralleled the passing of an allegedly organic world
with the alienation of the individual, the withdrawal into the self, social
disintegration, the end of collective ideals or, taken in its widest sense, the
public sphere, and, more recently, the decline of social capital in the West.
Productivist modernity, with its Nietzschean key figure of Prometheus and
subsequently its emphasis on an instrumental rationalizing logic of
performativity,1 classically analyzed by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), has allegedly caused an ongoing degree
of ‘Entzauberung’ or demagification of the world; placing us into a iron cage
of rationalization and turning us into ‘calculable’ beings.2 In Weber’s time,
this so called disenchantment process went along with bureaucratization,
secularization, materialization, scientization, and mathematization;3 each of
which opts for the precise, regular, constant, and reliable over the wild,
spectacular, idiosyncratic, and surprising (Dryzek e.a. 2006:214). No matter
whether the outcome of these processes is embraced as the fall of
superstition and confusion, or lamented as the loss of contact with a
meaningful moral universe, the inevitable price for modernity’s ongoing
series of transformation always seems to be a deficit of meaning and the
eclipse of wonder at the world (Bennett 2001:8).
Not only is there a psychic and emotional toll to be paid, but a social
one as well, resulting in another form of alienation, namely from each other.
In our present supposedly individualized era, the speed of technological
and social change, the increase in the pace of living caused by rapid
communications and mobilization, the ongoing degree of mass
consumption, and the much debated process of globalization have so
altered the world landscape that we stand bewildered and unable to
recognize existing forms of human associations. But communities do still
exist, albeit in different forms than we nostalgically envisioned them to be
in the world of tribal villages and pre-capitalist affective networks. Just as
the complexity of living has altered physical forms in the West, so its social
configurations have changed, taken new shapes, and morphed into
seemingly strange and ‘unorthodox’ patterns. These modern social
collectivities might not always be immediately visible as physical entities,
and are much less totalitarian, fixed and related to blood ties or
1 I use the term performativity here to refer to a technocratic view of society and knowledge,
aimed at efficiency and productivity (Maffesoli 1998).
2 As Weber states, in this disenchanted world “there are no mysterious, incalculable forces
that come into play, but rather […] one can, in principle, master all things by calculation.”
(Weber 1981:139-140)
3 The ‘tion’ form is important, for it emphasizes the extent to which these processes are
ongoing and never complete.
-1- The Countercultural Package Deal
geographical place than they once were, but they can tell us a great deal
about the fundamental theme of man together as opposed to man alone.
In fact, recently, especially within the social sciences, there is a
tendency to focus more on the other side of the communal coin. This side is
not made up by loss, that is, of a growing individualization, but by a
rediscovery of community in the modern world of the West. It is a world in
which the individualized mass is tribalized again, or, in Maffesoli’s words, a
world characterized by ‘le temps des tribus’ (1996:x). These tribes or
communities in general do not have the same longevity or fixity as we are
traditionally familiar with. Nor do they fully answer to the communal ideal,
depicted as this generally is as a group of people living in close proximity
with mutual social relations characterized by caring and sharing (Kozinets
2002:3). On the contrary, these so called neo-tribes are in many ways
directly related to the allegedly alienating and individuating mechanisms of
mass culture, organized as they are around the catchwords, brand-names
and sound-bites of consumer culture. Indeed, its members share lifestyle,
taste and everyday rituals as ways of belonging, and their choice to
participate is voluntary and mostly volatile. Because belonging has become
a matter of choice, dependent on the time and place of the day, it is
necessarily temporal. In the end, it is less a question of belonging to a
certain group than of switching from one group to another.
It follows then, that contemporary communities are inherently instable
and small scale. They have weaker social ties, no codified rules or
enforcement mechanisms, and no neighborly bonds or reciprocal exchange.
Lifestyles have become a choice rather than a ‘way of life’ (Bennett
1999:167). Even though there is a strong law of the milieu that is hard to
escape, it is based firmly in the present, and future concerns have been
overruled by the power of the basic sociality – the being together – of
everyday life. Neo-tribes are thus ‘trans-political,’ distinctly disengaged
from the political and returning to ‘local ethics’ or an ‘empathetic sociality’
(Maffesoli 1996:11). Summed up, neo-tribalization is a concept that implies
superficiality and a lack of commitment to a social group (Greener
2006:398).
A couple of years ago, I visited a week-long art festival in the middle of a
Nevadan desert, called Burning Man. There, I got a taste of the many things
that comprise and flow from what I have come to see as one of the most
radical ways to bridge the tension between contemporary individualism
and communal ideals: the so called ‘Burners’ community. In the middle of
one of the most inhospitable settings to be found in the West, I hit upon a
contemporary, temporal, intimate, and intentional community of over
35.000 participants from nearly all North-American states and global
continents. Once a year, at the end of summer, this diverse and organic
community forms itself around a wooden manlike effigy, only to vanish
again after having seen it go up in flames.
All participants are expected to leave no trace, and indeed, when the
festival is over there is not a sequin, boa feather or cigarette butt to be seen.
All that remains are those invisible bonds making up the worldwide
network of fellow ‘Burners’; a bond which provides its members with a
very concrete sense of social capital, and with a common ethos and
internalized way of life that is leaving more and more marks in everyday
civic life. In our disenchanted modern times, where individualism would
reign and man is apparently alienating from his fellows, Burning Man is
literally and physically rising out of these ashes, creating what many
participants have called a life changing communal experience, and which
can no longer said to be bounded within the spatial and temporal limits of
the festival.
Mainstream media overwhelmingly depicts the event as ‘the world’s
biggest, wildest, wackiest party,’ concentrating nearly solemnly on the most
4
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
obvious elements of hedonism, freakiness, nudity, drugs, sex and raves.
However, I have come to believe there are many more things going on
above and beyond this thin layer of glittery varnish. Sure, Burning Man
definitely provides unparalleled Bacchanalian spectacle and carnivalesque
excess, but that does not necessarily contradict the fact that it could have
any serious impact on its participants, or, in its latest phase, on society.
Precisely because Burning Man ìs such an outrageous party full of frivolous
expenditures of hedonistic energy, it stands outside normal society and
offers the visitors a week long experiment with alternate forms of being.
Here, they can transcend current time/space, connect with others, expand
and reveal their hidden Self, and experience a re-enchantment with the
world that is made to holds its magic long after the festival is over.
Burning Man is very obviously a celebration. It involves fire and
fireworks, exuberantly fantastic clothing, patchwork colors, and the
multiplication of apparently misplaced masks and costumes. However,
under this Mardi-Gras-like and highly Dionysian atmosphere lays an
Apollonian inclination for order, and a carefully crafted social experiment.
There is art that is made as a gift to the community, and a community that
makes art; there is art as a civic structure, and a civic structure that
promotes community; there is nothing that you can buy, and the gift that
unites all. On Burning Man, talk of community is not merely shorthand for a
loosely shared life-style, but a way of living and looking at the world that
extends itself beyond the dusty geographical and calendrical borders of its
one-week existence.
In this thesis I will argue that the physical and social infrastructure of
Black Rock City is devised with certain goals in mind, and that an effort is
made to create an environment that functions as an incubator of the social
process that gives rise to human culture. This, by extension, functions as a
critique of society at large that picks up on certain threads already loosely
woven within the counterculture, but that, instead of opposing society, is
made to affect it and thus create social and political change. It is a utopian
agenda that might appear grandiose, but, as I hope to show, very pragmatic
methods are actually employed in its creation, resulting in an ethos that
grew steadily as the event continued to grow. Every year the blank face of
the Black Rock Desert is literally wiped clean, and the world of Burning Man
originates anew. With lessons learned and a sociality that is constantly
evolving, Burning Man’s own transformation thus far knows no boundaries.
I still remember the transformative moment where I decided I really
wanted to pursue my interest in the mechanisms behind Burning Man
academically. It was in 2004, on the third day of my first year at the festival,
and the sun was just setting. I was once again alone, finding myself
completely lost in a surreal land. I can still feel the dryness of my skin there
and then, coated as it was by about three millimeters of the omnipresent
alkaline dust. Basic survival strategies no longer equaled sleep or food, but
digesting and embodying this surreal sensorium. I had lost my bike hours
ago, or at least, I could not for the life of me envision where I left it when I
left it, and I was surrounded by miles and miles of vast, inhospitable desert,
somehow inhabited by bizarre humanly creatures never previously before
encountered in any other setting. My senses were warped in endless
overloads, making everything feel like a crossover between Mad Max and
Alice in Wonderland - only then on acid, which would still not make it as
chaotic and psychedelic as this moment, this week.
I was slowly making my way towards a point I did not even know I
wanted to go to; nearly getting run over by a fluorescent chicken on an
electric skate board; trotting along my sixty year old neighbor dressed in
her homemade sparkling fairy outfit; hearing the thunderous roar of a
bunch of fifty or so ‘Satan Clauses’ in full Christmas gear handing out tubes
of lubricant in the distance; sidestepping so that the approaching giant
5
lobster of 25 meters plus (obviously on the run for this albeit slightly
smaller but much faster moving steel penis on wheels ejaculating fireworks
and flames) could get past me; getting my head jerked back with someone
shooting shots of god-knows-what-but-boy-this stuff-is fierce straight in my
gullet with his super-blast water gun; being overtaken by a bunch of people
dressed as carrots fiercely protesting the happening bunny march and
thereby interrupting a conversation Darth Vader was having with God over
a public phone, when it finally hit me: “this must be the happiest, most
amazing, most alive moment of my life, and even though I have no
recollection of any theoretical analyses done that could possible explain
this phenomenon, I want to devote some of my time at home searching for
them.” It seemed that, anthropologically, the ways to connect Burning Man
to the world it presumes to escape are as copious as the ways to experience
it are.
In my defense, contrary to how this might come across with someone
unfamiliar with Burning Man and my views on it, I did not choose my
subject to have an excuse for an extended party paid for by my university.
Neither did I choose my subject because I particularly enjoy dealing with 40
degrees temperatures and fierce dust storms in the middle of one of the
most inhospitable environments on this planet. I did not even choose my
subject because I was too lame to learn a new language. In fact, I chose to
have my life temporarily revolve around Burning Man because upon
visiting the festival for the first time, I experienced an overwhelming sense
of ritual and belonging and community and numerous things that in general
seem to be lacking in contemporary, individualized Western life, and they
seemed to work. And when I returned to San Francisco, these things still
seemed to work, confirming my belief that Burning Man would be more
than just an annual, bizarre party thrown in a godforsaken desert by some
rich white kids.
For me, and what I now know many others with me, the true story of
Burning Man is one that tells the tale of what happens to people - what they
do, what it means to them, how it changes them – when they can make a
temporary society qualitatively different in so many respects from their
everyday one. It is the tale of two friends burning a wooden man on a
beach, and twenty years later affecting the lives of thousands and
thousands of people, year round. It tells the story of how Burning Man the
event became Burning Man the Limited Liability Co., and it offers a
fascinating glimpse into how the wildest, least commercial ideas can, almost
against their will, become bankable. It speaks about an evolvement that
went from the counterculture to the culture; from reactive to pro-active,
from growing up to spreading out. It is the tale of Burning Man, and I will
try to tell it as unbiased as possible, narrating my explorations with
theoretical analyses and through many, many voices.
On the Burning Man website it reads: “trying to explain Burning Man to
someone who has not been is like trying to explain a color to the blind from
birth.” By replacing color with sex, New York City, or LSD, and the blind by a
virgin, alien, or teetotaler, different versions are possible, but the inevitable
message stays the same: ‘You just had to be there…’. It is an experience that
has to be experienced, not put into words, and that Victor Turner therefore
calls ‘meta-experience.’ In it, only celebration can adequately understand
celebration, “with language as just the tip of the intersubjective iceberg, the
dead husk of the living celebratory fruit” (1982:19).
However, looking back on Burning Man, this does not mean that
nothing can be said about it, or that I have just a priori declared my own
thesis to be necessarily inadequate and an unworthy substitute for ‘the real
thing.’ I believe that an anthropologist should not just be a participant
observant in the field, but also a writer in the field of ethnography. He or
she needs to translate culture in such a way as to convey an argument,

observations and experience, and bring it to life. Although often not the
most ‘lively’ material, theories are both necessary and beneficial to this
process. Theories color data, as well as give grip on the subject under
research. Therefore I now want to briefly sketch some theoretical analysis
through which’ glasses I have viewed Burning Man - in wide-eyed wonder.
Depending on who you talk to, Burning Man can be described as an art
festival, Dionysian potlatch, Disneyland in reverse, experiment in social
organization, survival test, communal catharsis, social movement,
pyrotechnic ritual, Satan’s purgatory, mosh pit, cyber-klatch, and many
things more. When it comes to Burning Man, discussions on the true nature
of the event are a favorite pastime of many, both before, during and after
the event, and the only thing that everyone seems to agree upon is the fact
that there is very little that everyone agrees upon. “‘Meaning’ is dog meat in
the face of experiment and experience” is how Village Voice writer Erik
Davis (1995) sums up festival-goers’ attitudes towards interpretations of
Burning Man. No matter how hard it can be to describe or interpret Burning
Man though, its significance easily shows itself in the fact that it is most
definitely a public event.
In perhaps the most comprehensive heuristic treatment of public
events, Handelman suggests that all such events are ‘closed phenomenal
worlds;’ occasions wherein “people undertake in concert to make more,
less, or other of themselves, than they usually do” (1990:16/3). By their
very nature, they are symbolic structures; “little worlds that point beyond
themselves” and that are “symbolic of something outside of themselves,
standing for, evoking or bringing into being something else, something
absent” (Ibid.12-13). As such, they would be, for both natives and
researchers alike, “privileged points of penetration” into socio-cultural
universes (Ibid.9). And indeed, I am certainly not the first anthropologist
interested in a public event. Many have gone before me, variously relating it
to ritual, ceremony, rite of passage, celebration, feast, carnival, festival,
spectacle, etc.
Like most public events, Burning Man is a temporary, festive world in
which visitors can step out of everyday mundane life and explore the world
of heightened celebratory consciousness. According to Ralph Rinzler in his
preface for the book Celebration, Studies in Festivity and Ritual, “Wherever
the human spirit is free, people celebrate” (in Turner 1982:7). Turner adds
to this that to celebrate is to experience ‘high tides,’ peak experiences in
social life which mark an occasion or an event with ceremony, ritual, or
festivity: “People in all cultures recognize the need to set aside certain times
and spaces for celebratory use, in which the possibility of personal and
communal creativity may arise” (Ibid.11-12). The word celebration is
derived from the Latin celeber, meaning ‘numerous, much frequented,’ and
relates to the vivacity generated by a crowd of people with shared purposes
and common values. It is through celebration and its vivacity that people
reach what the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim called
‘effervescence’: the supreme moment of the solidarity of collective
consciousness.
By opposing it to structure; society and social organization, Turner sees
this heightened state embodied in what he calls anti-structure. The two
states are complementary in their opposition, and societal order is
constituted by their perpetual oscillation (1995:140). If structure ensures
that the organizational requirements for a society are met, then anti-
structure simultaneously ensures that this structure does not maintain an
unbreakable grip, thus becoming sterile and inflexible. Within anti-
structure, the tyrannies of everyday life – whether imagined or not – are
suspended, subverted, and inverted in such a way as to liberate
considerable creativity; to release repression; to fulfill some sense of
people’s hidden potential; to evoke self-expression; and to unleash the
potential for self-transformation. Turner saw this to happen through two of
-1- The Countercultural Package Deal
anti-structure’s main qualities, namely liminality - a transitional moment
‘betwixt and between’ everyday life -, and communitas - an egalitarian state
of communion reminiscent of Durkheim’s collective effervescence -,
whereby the first would be a necessary mode of access to the latter.
As the tangible manifestation of anti-structure, the festival is a classic
‘time out of time,’ an independent critique of the society that brought it into
being, and hence a possible font of alternative ideas, values, motivations,
and designs for living. In the festival, the oppositions of work versus play,
duty versus pleasure, and individual versus group are overcome to produce
a third state of what Jean Duvignaud described as ‘unbridled social
hysteria,’ in which man transcends himself in a fantastic extension of the
social fabric, while suspending the rules and normal forms of communal
life. According to Duvignaud, “the sacred delirium is actualized in the
festival, and reaches beyond itself: collective consciousness is sublimated,
magnified, adoring the dramatic form of its own substance in dance,
agitation, confusion, transvestism, etc” (1976:14). Duvignaud argues that
especially today, the creation of a separate reality inside a fixed and
rationalized world is high needed. Going beyond just being a reaction
against apparently stifling conditions, the festival can be seen as a
necessarily ephemeral attempt at creating ‘another world’ (Ibid.23).
Instead of being another world or separate reality, French sociologist
Michel Maffesoli sees ritual and celebration to already be an indissoluble
part of today’s sociality, granting an immanent life force that is in direct
opposition to alienating, atomizing, rationalized, ‘disenchanted’ and
individualized modernity. It is all those forms of ‘being together’ which, for
the past few decades, metamorphosed society producing tribalization, a
culture of emotion and the social orgiastic. Maffesoli defines the ‘orgiasm’
as a universal form of sociality which, “contrary to a morality of ‘ought to
be’ […] refers to an ethical immoralism which consolidates the symbolic
link of all society’ (1993:2). It is foundational for being as it offers an
essential emotional outlet and passional logic that, while anomic in many
aspects, allows for the structuring or regeneration of community. We are
warned that:
[…] a city, a people, or a more or less limited group of individuals
who cannot succeed in expressing collectively their wildness, their
madness, and their imaginary, rapidly destructure themselves and, as
Spinoza noted, these people merit more than any ‘the name of
solitude’. (Maffesoli 1993:8)
Though Maffesoli reveals little evidence of its presence in everyday life, the
‘orgiasm’ clearly reaches a licentious, contagious and unrestrainable climax
in the festal - those moments in which social life is redeemed and
transgression becomes the norm.
It seems strange that Maffesoli not once accredits Turner, because, to
me at least, it seems that strong parallels between the two scholars exist.
Echoing Turner’s argument on the prophylactic role of ritual/festive
inversion and communitas, Maffesoli asserts that periodic resistance to
power and the transgression of norms precludes revolt: to refuse festival is
thus “to expose oneself to the return of the repressed, to encourage a brutal
and bloody explosion” (Ibid.95). In another way, Maffesoli produces a
trademark Turnerian (and thus Nietzschian) denotation of social reality,
stating: “confronted with the laborious Prometheus, one must show that the
noisy Dionysus is also a necessary figure of sociality” (Maffesoli 1996:21).
The opposing social phenomena carry a strong hint of Turner’s ‘structure’
and ‘anti-structure.’ And, like anti-structure, the orgiasm is eventually
regenerative - it reinstalls the status quo:
In the same way that revolt or revolution permit an energetic new
elite to supplant a sleeping, exhausting dictatorship, and through this
6
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
allows for a startling of the political and social, thus the disturbance
or festive orgiasm is a sacrificial expiation which allows the proper
virtue of the sociality to be restored. (Maffesoli 1993:97)
As St. John points out, the ‘proper virtue’ in this quote is only a slight
variation of the ‘society’ Durkheim saw recreated and given meaning via the
sacred cult (St. John 1999:233).
Falassi once again spells it out for us: “the festival has retained its
primary importance in all cultures, for the human social animal still does
not have a more significant way to feel in tune with his world than to
partake in the special reality of the festival, and celebrate life in its ‘time out
of time” (Falassi 1987:7). I could not have phrased it any better for Burning
Man. The location where it has been held for the last sixteen years, the
Black Rock Desert, makes it the ideal liminal space; temporal as well as
geographical secluded from everyday life. By turning the ordered world
‘topsy-turvey,’ in all its orgiastic ludism and excess, it offers a cultural
interstice in which people can experiment with alternative ways of being –
both on an individual as communal level. As Turner already saw happening
for ritual and entertainment in industrial society – what he called the
liminoid -, play and celebration hereby have paradoxically become a more
serious matter:
The play frame, where events are scrutinized in the leisure time of
the social process, has to some extent inherited the function of the
ritual frame. The messages it delivers are often serious beneath the
outward trappings of absurdity, fantasy, and ribaldry. (Turner in
Falessi 1987:77)
Seeing that contemporary play does not have the same ‘sacred’ connotation
that tribal ritual and the liminal once had, there can be a freer
experimentation with alternative forms, making play potentially subversive
as well as merely reversive. Henceforth, the liminoid does not only entail
activity without finality, as Johan Huizinga4 would have it, but also offers an
image of what life could and should be, different from what it is.
Burning Man excels in play; parody, satirical dissent, irony, inversion
and subversion. It is the festival’s classic manifestation of overindulgence,
transgression, chaos, excess, absurdity, and ‘wastrel prodigality;’ an
exhibition of ‘surplus and abundance’ (Schmidt 1995:8). However, what
makes it different from most festivals is that it is clearly an alternative
event, attractive mostly to those alienated with society; in search of
community and meaning in what Cohen calls ‘elective centers’ (Cohen et al.
1987). Existing largely outside the reach of corporate capital and state
surveillance, these elective centers or counter-spaces appear at “places on
the margin” within the borders of ‘home nations’ since the sixties (Shields
1991). St. John proposes to call the different tribes that flock to them
‘counter-tribes,’ as they are “temporary local ‘drifter communities’
accommodating contemporaneous antinomians and free spirits manifesting
a better, more communal and creative world” (1999:11).
Attracting bohemians and activists alike, Burning Man has evolved into
something more than just an annual, ephemeral escape from society
through which social order would eventually be reinforced. Although still a
liminoid event in the sense that social life is criticized and alternative
possibilities explored, the sense of social critique that lies at the roots of the
festival has now turned into an ethos that is as much about regulating
anarchy on the playa as it is about influencing social order ‘at home.’ The
weeklong sense of communitas has become a year round community of
4 Huizinga wrote the seminal study Homo Ludens. A study on the play element in human
culture (1950), in which he argued that some human activities are simply not meant to fulfill
a function or pursue an efficient goal. Play, but also the aesthetics of the festival, fall within
this category.
7
Burners, where the festival maintains its transformative and perpetuating
supremacy, but where its socio-political potential is slowly starting to flow
beyond its horizons. As one Burning Man participant phrased it: “After
having transformed ourselves, it is now time to transform the world”
(Laura, interview July 28th 2005).
Apart from the transformation participants go through on Burning
Man, and the possible transforming effect it might have on the world,
Burning Man as a festival has been through quite some transformations
itself. Throughout the years, what started as an event characterized by rule-
lessness, needed to formulate its own set of rules to protect and maintain
the rapidly growing event in the face of official, regulatory state
encroachments. As Burning Man has passed over two decades of annual
celebration, rebellion has given way to repetition has given way to
regularity, apparent in the increasing number and formality of its rules and
guidelines. Disorder, chaos and collective spontaneity are now contained -
and tamed - within a structural form.
In her essay on the Doo Dah Parade in Pasadena - which was initiated
as an improvised spoof to replace the postponed official Rose Parade in
1978, but has since then rapidly grown into a festive event in its own right -,
Denise Lawrence shows that the institutionalization of inherently unstable
socio-cultural forms, such as ritual disorder and spontaneity, would be
theoretically as well as pragmatically problematic (Lawrence 1987:134).
That is because, as we have just seen, the states of order and disorder
necessarily contradict and oppose one another. Whether it is believed to be
about modeling or mirroring, inversion or parallelization, reversal or
intensification, presentation or re-presentation, the festival’s ‘time out of
time’ offers a container in which ritual disorder and chaos can be lived out,
separated from everyday social order, structure and norms.
Between the trinity of the festive, community and society, Burning Man
had to find its own niche. It had to regulate play, as well as play with
regulation. It had to be liable, but still wild; organized, but still organic;
inclusive but still communal; spectacular but still participatory. It had to be
an ethos instead of a brand; a model instead of utopia; reaching out instead
of selling out. It had to let structure in, or disperse in disorder.
Burning Man’s evolvement has been erratic to say the least, and it seems
inevitable that the tale and thesis that chronicle it would follow the same
pattern. There are many issues that need to be addressed and questions to
be answered. In essence, there are two threads running through this thesis,
the first being Burning Man that turns the world upside down through
subversion and inversion, and the second Burning Man that embodies
dedication to changing what the world is. Both threads involve their own
specific interplay between the festival, community and society; running
from escaping society with a small community of kindred souls to re-
entering it with a highly heterogeneous network of so called Burners.
During this shift, I wonder what happens to the ‘liminoid’ nature of the
festival and the ‘communitas’ nature of being together when ideology
enters the equation.
Next to this evolvement, I am curious to see what it is that drives
people to this desert festival in the first place. Is it really just mindless
partying that has them travel vast distances into a no man’s land, as the
media would like us to believe? Why would they nearly unanimously smile
and beam upon being greeted by the words ‘welcome home’ at the gate,
when this home is in fact a barren, hostile and inhospitable stretch of dry
and dusty land; naturally devoid of water, electricity, plumbing, shade or
cell phone access? What ìs it that makes the citizens of Black Rock City flock
to ‘their’ city every year again, and talk about it and try to ‘live it’ and often
prepare for it during the other 51 weeks a year? What binds them together,
both in the creation of those stories as in the reliving of it all; knitting
 -1- The Countercultural Package Deal

stronger ties than those on any other festival I’ve ever experienced or know
of? And how is this sense of community felt and given shape to when the
tangible closeness of geographic space is gone?
I love the way Grimes defines a public celebration as “a rope bridge of
knotted symbols and performances strung across an abyss. We make our
crossings hoping the chasm will echo our festive sounds for a moment, as
the bridge begins to sway from the rhythms of our dance” (in Turner
1982:29). I can only hope that my own perilous bridge in the form of this
thesis will safely connect Burning Man to the world around it, echoing my
own experiential sounds for a moment. My bridge, however, does not just
connect the pre-liminal and the post-liminal; A to Z, or even introduction to
conclusion, but also Burning Man’s evolvement from 1986 to 2005. And
even earlier in time, for when we look at it chronologically, in my view at
least, it all started with the countercultural collectives from which Burning
Man sprang forth. This is why I want to look at some specific
countercultural predecessors and their direct or indirect influence in the
first chapter and part; Burning Man’s social background.
In the second and third chapter, the part that I have called escaping
society, I will then outline Burning Man’s birth and cup years in San
Francisco, and the move to the desert that signaled its adolescence. I will
show why participation became the first, necessarily, tenet, and how and
why anarchy and unstructuredness were not sustainable when the event
continued to grow and attract attention.
The fourth, fifth and sixth chapter can be read as Burning Man’s college
education, in which its evolving sociality is fully given shape. This part
forms the core of my thesis: the way Burning Man had become when I was
there as a participant observant in 2005. The chapters each describe what I
consider the most important elements of Burning Man’s ethos – its civic
structure, art and gift-economy – all directed mainly at promoting
community and cohesiveness in the ephemeral city, and celebration that is
Burning Man.
Like the first part, the last part exists of only one chapter, and deals
with Burning Man’s re-entry into civic life; its social impact. After more or
less having sprung forth from the counterculture, and after having
countered culture itself, in this part I will show the ways in which Burning
Man is now entering culture, sending off its ethos and offspring into the
world. Let the bridge begin to sway…

8
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Part I:

Social Background

9

-1-
Every Now and Then:
the Countercultural
Package Deal
Even though the event which, eventually, was turned into the yearly
recurring Burning Man festival got initiated in 1986 by Jerry James and
Larry Harvey, I do not think that this is where the true story starts. The
pinning onto individuals the actions of many has been an American
obsession since Paul Revere warned the Middlesex village networks and is
thus said to have privately started the American Revolution,5 but it will not
be adhered to in this context. For when looking at a certain phenomenon,
and trying to make some sense of it, I believe it is necessary to always start
by looking at the historical context of the subject under research. Eric Wolf
already made the eminent statement that “anthropology needs to discover
history” (Wolf 1997:xv), and I hope to follow his lead, although within
limits, by starting my argument with a closer look into Burning Man’s rich
historic and social background. A background made up by a colorful cast of
cultural dissidents and adversaries who inherently reflect a sense of social
critique, opposition, non-authoritarianism and zeitgeist. By exposing the
festival’s crumbly foundation, I hope to show how it is intimately bound to
San Francisco through a rather dense history of (counter-)cultural
collectives, their stance towards society and society’s reaction to them. For
in a city historically filled with groups and people opposed to the
established culture, Larry Harvey took this heritage, gave it several twists
and perpetuated its message of alternative ways of being. Not only was
Burning Man influenced by its countercultural predecessors, and directly
salvaged by one of them in particular, I believe that in many ways it started
as a countercultural phenomenon itself. But what is this thing called
counterculture in the first place?
Counterculture6 in Theory
I have colleagues in the academy who have come within an ace of convincing
me that no such things as ‘the Romantic Movement’ or ‘the Beats’ ever existed
- not if one gets down to scrutinizing the microscopic phenomena of history.
At that level, one tends only to see many different people doing many different
things and thinking many different thoughts […] It would surely be convenient
if these perversely ectoplasmic Zeitgeists were card-carrying movements, with
a head quarters and a file of official manifestoes, but of course they aren’t.
One is therefore forced to take hold of them with a certain trepidation,
allowing expectations to slip through the sieve of one’s generalizations in
great numbers, but hoping always that more that is solid and valuable
remains behind than filters away. (Roszak 1969:xii)
5 A myth-like story brilliantly captured by Malcolm Gladwell in his publication The Tipping
Point. How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000).
6 As McGregor (1975) points out, the term counterculture is arguable better used in the
plural, as there is no such thing as ‘The Counterculture’ but instead a succession of
heterogeneous groups.
-1- The Countercultural Package Deal
Cultural phenomena are extremely
multiplex entities, and therefore
any effort to define and make
generalizations about cultural
movements will be challenging to
say the least - as bemoaned above
by Theodore Roszak in the preface
to his 1969 book The Making of a
Counterculture. This is at least as
true when talking about those
cultural movements through time
whose only common divisor is the
fact that they are characterized by
values and mores that run ‘counter’
to those of the established culture.
Merriam-Webster’s digital
dictionary, for example, broadly
defines counterculture as “a
cultural group whose philosophy
and mores may be in opposition to
those of the mainstream.”7 As such,
it can be explained as the cultural equivalent of political opposition, or ‘the
principle of expansion’ as applied not to economies or political spheres of
influence but to aspects of personal life and creativity.8 Seen in this general
sense, Ken Goffman makes the arresting case in his book Counterculture
through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House (2004) to include historic
figures such as Prometheus and Socrates, and movements such as Judaism
and Taoism. In the foreword to this book, Timothy Leary joins in on the
argument by stating that
…counterculture [is] a perennial phenomenon, probably as old as
civilization, and possible as old as culture. […] [It] blooms wherever
and whenever a few members of a society choose lifestyles, artistic
expressions, and ways of thinking that wholeheartedly embrace the
ancient axiom that the true constant is change itself. (Leary in
Goffman 2004:ix-x)
When talking about counterculture as being a somewhat neat category, this
is in fact hard to maintain. The biggest problem here lies in the fact that its
constituents are not united under a single ideology or cause. To speak of a
united front of opposition or a comfortably amalgamated de-centrism is too
simplify things, as counterculture’s de-centralizing elements often show no
consensus around that which would constitute ‘the center’ or mainstream
culture. Different rejections of the ills as seemingly belonging to this center
activate an abundance of alternative ways of being, as vividly illustrated by
the ‘free love’ attitude of the hippies as contrasted by the punk’s slightly
less corporeal intended ‘fuck the queen.’
In general, I think we can more or less divide countercultures into two
groupings, namely those that seek to avoid defusing and those that enact
cultural diffusion. The first hereby is more inclined to remain underground,
on the edge, or in the gaps, whereas the second is trying harder to
disseminate their values, ideas and practices. A detectable ambivalence,
therefore, exists within counterculture’s adherents; a tension between the
desire to remain undiscovered and immediate, and the pro-active desire for
exposure and reform; between maintaining boundaries and breaking them
down; between de-centring and re-centring. It is a tension that, as I hope to
7 From Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary version 2.5 (digital). Downloaded on April
22nd, 2006.
8 On: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture, accessed September 4th 2006.
10
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
show, is far from resolved within Burning Man and has played an important
part throughout its existence.
Still, my argument states that Burning Man started off more
countercultural than it is now. Before we can even begin tracing its history
in order to prove such statement, we need to narrow the concept of the
counterculture down. When defining it as simply any lifestyle that differs
from the prevailing culture, it should really include traditionalist groups
like fundamentalist Christians or orthodox Jews; opposed as these might be
towards pluralism, abortion, sexual freedom, science, materialistic self-
indulgence, free speech and many other aspects that are more or less
mainstream in the Western world. Yet, such groups do not exactly have
resonance within Burning Man, and, personally speaking at least, rarely
spring to mind when considering exemplars of the counterculture.9
In order to more aptly distinguish countercultures from mainstream
society, as well as from subcultures, religious and ethnic minorities, and
non-countercultural dissident groups, Goffman argues for a threefold of
root principles, or meta-values (Goffman 2005:30-31). First, he sees
countercultures to assign primacy to individuality at the expense of social
conventions and governmental constraints. Second, they would challenge
authoritarianism in both obvious and subtle forms. And third,
countercultures would embrace individual and social change. Furthermore,
Goffman views his diverse array of counterculturalists to be joined by their
‘anti-seriousness’ as it were: the fact that they tend to be jokers, bohemians
and libertines. He stresses that while these qualities might subvert serious
analyses, their importance should not be diminished, as for many people,
and in many ways, the resulting antic behavior and easy sensuality are
precisely what makes them attractive (Ibid.37). Countercultural playfulness
here represents the non-authoritarian refusal to take oneself, any ideology,
or any code of righteousness too seriously - but that does not mean that the
countercultural message and critique should not be taken serious.
In the public imagination, the counterculture as a visible, tangible
cultural phenomenon is often linked with those deviant Western youth
cultures arising in the turbulent age of the sixties and seventies.
9 Saying that, searching for ‘counterculture’ in Google these days shows a vast array of links
in the direction of the ‘Christian Counterculture’, apparently based on Romans 12:2 “Do not
conform any longer to the pattern of this world…”, and which mostly goes against the
‘pollution of syncretism’ or ‘the sin of liberal Christianity’. (e.g. www.counterculture.ca;
www.worship.ca; www.desertstreambible.org, accessed November1st, 2006)
11
In fact, even though very few people will have an exact, handy
definition for what counterculture is, most of these people are pretty
convinced that they know it when they see it. And indeed, in the time when
the term counterculture became popular through Theodore Roszak’s
publication The Making of a Counterculture in 1969, one could literally see
the people who were to fit into his conception. Any male with long hair and
possible a beard, wearing raggedly-assed jeans, a bandanna, and maybe
even a tie-dyed T-shirt, was almost certainly a counterculturist. Any woman
with even longer hair, wearing a similar outfit or alternatively a peasant
dress, fitted neatly into the same category. In other words, almost every
young American attending college at that time could be considered as
belonging to the counterculture. In Roszak’s view, apart from these more
obvious aesthetics, the common ground between these youngsters was
their mutual rejection of the regime of corporate and technological
expertise that dominated industrial society, or, in short, what he labeled
‘technocracy.’ Because I think that the social critique already inherent in the
term counterculture is very significant, and also because I think that
Burning Man still resonates with some of the more specifically formulated
critiques by the counterculture of the sixties, I want to have a closer look
into this technocratic society as described by Roszak.10
Roszak starts by describing how, through time and as American society
progressed, more and more technology got incorporated into its citizen’s
culture and everyday lives. In the fifties, the American technological
industry gave way to a progress that promised security and affluence
(Roszak 1969:205). It offered an image which was much looked-for after
the insecurities that came with the Cold War period, the nuclear horrors of
Hiroshima, and the upcoming threat of U.S.’ military intervention in
Vietnam. However, with all these new technologies, society was advancing
but at the same time it became so vast and complex that the general public
started the deferring on all matters to those who were ‘experts.’ As Roszak
phrases it:
In the technocracy, nothing is any longer small or simple or readily
apparent to the non-technical man. Instead, the scale and intricacy of
all human activities - political, economic, cultural - transcends the
competence of the amateurish citizen and inexorably demands the
attention of specially trained experts. (Roszak 1969:7)
Accordingly, the mentality of the fifties is best described as the idea that in
order to be successful and reside on the more affluent or acceptable side of
society, one had to follow the rules and regulations of these experts. In turn,
technological advancements that were supposed to literally lead to the
‘advancement’ of society, turned into a controlling technocracy.
As a response to technocracy’s alienating and submissive model, there
developed two different types of realms in society. There was a generation
and societal gap between those who believed in order and the more
authoritative technocratic ways of life, and the opposing many that wanted
to counter this restrictive sense of societal status quo and started to revolt.
To have such revolt or protest towards the affluent dominant society is not
new, but what was different in the sixties was the fact that it was the young
affluent generation itself who felt oppressed and wanted to be heard; those
who “had enjoyed the richest, most pampered adolescence in the history of
the world [and] had now decided that it was crap” (Stevens 1998:292). For
these countercultural youth it was truly about ‘break and rupture’, as
Roszak specifies: “What makes the youthful disaffiliation of our time a
cultural phenomenon, rather than merely a political movement, is the fact
10 Roszak is not the only one attacking the technocratic society, or more in general what he
calls ‘technoculture’ or the ‘Promethean legend.’ In fact, his attack makes him part of a cabal
of countercultural critics that also includes Jerry Mander with his Four Arguments for the
Elimination of Television (1978), and Neil Postman with Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985).

that it strikes beyond ideology to the level of consciousness, seeking to
transform our deepest sense of the self, the other, the environment”
(1969:42/49). The counterculture so characteristic of the sixties was
therefore the development of not only questioning authority - traditionally
inherent in any counterculture - but also of questioning the whole
mainstream mindset. It hereby included the search for more concepts of
freedom in one’s society - and one’s mind. Furthermore, it questioned the
traditional definition of social change as a belief in progress, achievement
and betterment, and ended up altering the concept of social change itself.
Anton Zijderveld, writing in 1970, perceives a similar rationalization of
modernist society, and argues how the counterculture would stem from a
protest against the abstract and alienating structures of its institutions:
I obviously mean to say that modern society has become abstract in
the experience and consciousness of man! Modern man, that is, does
not ‘live society’; he faces it as an often strange phenomenon. This
society has lost more and more of its reality and meaning and seems
to be hardly able to function as the holder of human freedom. As a
result, many modern men are turning away from the institutions of
society and searching for meaning, reality and freedom elsewhere.
These three co-ordinates of human existence have become the scarce
values of a continuous existential demand. (Zijderveld 1970:54)
For Zijderveld, the search for ‘meaning, reality and freedom’ was not
exclusively the right of youth, or, more in general, to be limited to a specific
age or life phase. Instead, he saw it inherent to human nature to both
conform and resist the complex psychological, sociological, cultural,
political and economic structures of modernity. He calls this human
paradox the ‘homo duplex theorem’11 (Zijderveld 1970:3), and sees the
spirit of protest so characteristic of the sixties to be part of this complex
and multiple phenomenon.
Whether we view the sixties counterculture as part and parcel of the
technocratic society or as one side of the homo duplex theorem, fact is that
its (youthful) resistance turned out to be very ‘mediagenic.’ Mass media
was quick to pick up on the message of rebellion posed by these dynamic
youths, and recuperate, appropriate and assimilate it into popular culture.
Historian Thomas Frank even argues that the way we picture the
counterculture today is only its co-opted capitalistic version, full of
stereotypical psychedelic/hippie imagery. Frank hereby acknowledges that
11 Durkheim already mentioned his concept of the ‘homo duplex’ to refer to the two centers
of gravity that the human being unites in him or herself: a ‘lower pole’ that pertains to the
embodied individual, and a ‘higher pole’ that pertains to mind and society. For Durkheim
there was a similar sense of tension between the two poles of human beings. Durkheim saw
the ‘lower pole’ of this dualistic unity - the embodied individual – to be the stronger and
primordial one. However, this would not be without a certain sense of tension, much like
Zijderveld sees in his homo duplex.
-1- The Countercultural Package Deal
the counterculture might
have its roots in bohemian
and romantic antecedents,
but shows that this
originally adversarial
culture (as was still the case
with the beatniks) became
‘hegemonic’ during the
sixties. In his book The
Conquest of Cool: Business
Culture, Counterculture and
the Rise of Hip Consumerism,
he illustrates how American
capitalist marketers in the
sixties discovered the all-
powerful new potential of
youth;12 replacing the ‘old’
conformist mass products with the appeal to rebellious individualist
products and consumers.
Advertising played a pivotal role in the cultural transformation of this
era as it harnessed people’s skepticism of mass consumerism and mass
conformity, to consumerism itself. The new ads enabled people to reject
those mass values while at the same time they enticed them to buy, in great
masses, the products which would distinguish them from the masses.13 By
thus incorporating the critique of mass society in their ads, corporate
capitalists were able to co-opt14 that individualistic critique. Joseph Heath
and Andrew Potter go even further in The Rebel Sell: How Counter Culture
became Consumer Culture (2005) by suggesting that there has never even
been any tension between the counterculture and capitalism, and that the
mutual interests have always been compatible. In their view, the story of
capitalism since the sixties is the story of business absorbing so much from
the so-called counterculture of that decade and after, and vice versa, that
the two effectively merged. Like Frank, they see the counterculture’s
governing ideas of rebelliousness and ‘cool’ to have become the central
ideology of consumerism.
Ultimately, the question whether the sixties and seventies were a
matter of the ‘conquest of cool’ by corporate capitalists or whether the
counterculture in that time was their ‘creation of cool’ begs to differ. I think
that there was definitely a high degree of co-optation going on, and I also
think that Frank and Heath & Potter make a good point when they perceive
mass media’s appropriation of rebelliousness to subvert this rebellion, to
make it safe as it were. However, I do not believe in denying, as Frank
seems to do and Heath & Potter certainly do, that there was a real
counterculture that existed before and after The Beatles and the Beetles,
just as I do not share their opinion that all counter cultural values got co-
opted during this particular pivotal time.
12 In the words of Ulf Zimmerman when discussing the new marketing techniques used in
the sixties: “luckily you just had to think young to take part, so that no one was excluded” On:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi? path=17028900969687, accessed October
18th 2006.
13 The Volkswagen is a good example of this: first used (by the Nazi’s even) as a uniform
‘people’s car’ and then turned into an icon of American democratic dissent, linked to hippies,
free love and unlimited freedom. To perpetuate this association, the VW’s ads showed an
unbridled capacity to live outside capitalistic society - but of course you first had to buy a
VW to have such option.
14 ‘Co-optation’ was the word New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse first used to describe
the ‘cultural repression’ he saw around him. Roszak acknowledged it as the process in which
the cultural experimentation of the young was subject to ‘commercial verminization’ and so
of having the voice of its dissent dissipated.
12
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Burning Man did not originate in San Francisco for

nothing, just as it does not continue to leave its
strongest mark on this liberal city for nothing. Even
though nowadays the festival takes place on a desert
plain in Nevada, it is still a great deal more entwined
with ‘S.F.’ - as its locals lovingly call her - than with any
other place. San Francisco is not just the birthplace of
Burning Man, but also “its headquarters, its
philosophical home, its conscience, and its main conduit to the outside
world” (Jones 2006:16). It is the city where the office and its year round
staff reside and it is the city where the greater part of all Burning Man
related events take place. But above all it is the city whose past resonates
most strong in the event and whose future holds most promise to
incorporate its ideals. As Harvey puts Burning Man’s connection to the city:
San Francisco has always been a place apart, and a center of
eccentric and independent thinkers. And what we started here, I
don't think could have grown up anywhere else. […] You can create a
social context in which culture can be created, but you can't directly
However, I do believe, in relation to my argument, that Larry Harvey took create the culture. (Harvey in Jones 2006:16)
the perceived co-optation, commoditization, assimilation and appropriation
The creation of San Francisco’s specific social context goes back a long
of countercultural values and aesthetics as an important lesson, and that
way.15 As the last stop in America’s voracious westward expansion, the
this aspect of the sixties counterculture shaped the way Burning Man came
settlement and later city has always attracted artists, dreamers, and
to be as well. As I hope to show in the next part, the Burning Man
outsiders. On top of this, or maybe even because of this, the city has always
organization – and implicitly its participants – took, and continue to take,
been anti-authoritarian, making its more contemporary role as a catalyst
unequivocal steps to avoid turning into a mass marketed and mass
for social change, the avant-garde and a whole range of countercultures
mediated brand or commodity. What’s even more, on Burning Man the way
seem a likely outcome. In John Mickletwaith’s book on conservative power
mass media is said to appropriate all things (counter)cultural is turned into
in America, he states that San Francisco “is as edgy as America gets – a
yet another critique towards the parasitic and mediated nature of Western
peculiar mix of blue bloods and gays, dotcom millionaires and aging
society. In turn, what seemed to be a very conscious decision was made to
hippies” (2004: 375). This edginess gets translated into bizarreness by
try and infiltrate this society in order to change it - not to counter it. These
author Jan Friedman in his book Eccentric America, with the first lines:
premature conclusions have to part of a future discussion, though. I first
want to have a look at some of the countercultures that came to influence I never thought of myself as eccentric despite being from California,
Burning Man when they were still alive and kicking at society. the most eccentric state in the union, and San Francisco which I like
to think is the most bizarre city in the country. I grew up thinking a
nightly hot tub was a necessity, that everyone needs a hug, and that
Counterculture in Praxis protest marches were as much a civic duty as voting. With a
background like that I came to believe that all Americans are ‘free to
Many core aspects of the Burning Man experience stand out when viewed
express their individuality’. (Friedman 2004:ix)
against the historical context of some countercultural experiments […]. Of
course, tracing such roots and influence is a curious game when you are
dealing with an event that wants to scramble historical traces and turn all
traditions upside down. In successfully constructing a pocket universe where
radically different rules temporarily apply, the festival disguises its
connections – historical, economic, and cultural – to the ‘real’ world. This
allows for enormous joy, especially as the real world takes on the lineaments
of a cruddy Sci-fi dystopia, but it is nonetheless crucial to remember the
ancestors as well. (Davis in Gilmore 2005:17)
After having done some theoretical explorations into the subject of the
counterculture, I think it is high time to have a more pragmatic and
descriptive glance. Obviously, this thesis is not about ‘the history and
evolvement of countercultures,’ and I certainly have no ambitions to
discuss all things countercultural. My goal in this first part is to consider
Burning Man’s social background, and to answer the two interrelated
historic questions of ‘why there’ and ‘why then.’ It is therefore that I now
want to follow up on the above quote where Erik Davis urges us to
‘remember the ancestors,’ and try to unravel the indeed sometimes hard to
distinguish threads that bind Burning Man to a history filled with 15Founded in 1776 by Spanish Jesuits as ‘Yerba Buena,’ the name changed into ‘San
countercultural collectives and their critique towards society. Francisco’ when control of the town passed to the United States in 1946. In 1848 gold was
discovered, making the city’s population ion rise from 800 to 25.000 within two years time.
13

Needless to say that according to this same book, California holds the
highest density on the national ‘eccentricity map’ of the U.S. (as measured
by the amount of ‘weird, wacky, and outrageously fun things to see and do’),
and the entry on Burning Man starts with the sentence: “If any event in
America defines ‘bizarre’, it would have to be Burning Man” (Ibid.247). And
yes, by many standards this aspect probably holds true, and yes, individual
expression definitely reigns at Burning Man, but I think that to define the
festival just on its ranging in the ‘scale of quirkiness’ is to miss a point; a
point that relates directly to Burning Man’s communal and subversive
ideas. And I believe that this reflects back on a more recent history in San
Francisco, namely the advent of the ‘Beat Generation’ and the way its
adherents would question traditional values and eventually break with the
mainstream culture.
The Beats
On October the 13th, 1955, a crowd of young poets and poets loving youth
packed the Six Gallery in San Francisco. A small, neurotic Jewish
homosexual walked to the front of the room and, with all the solemn drama
he could muster, intoned the words: “I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterically naked. What sphinx of cement
and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and
-1- The Countercultural Package Deal
imagination?”16 Apparently, by the time Allen Ginsberg was finished
reading his epic poem Howl, he was crying, the audience was chanting, his
fellow poets were announcing the arrival of an epic bard, and, according to
Goffman in his book on countercultures, ‘the revolution had begun’
(Goffman 2005:228). Without necessarily agreeing with his bold deduction,
fact is that this moment is often singled out as the moment when an already
extant subculture of hipsters and beats finally blew up big. And indeed,
mass media popularization of that seemingly nihilist culture of visionary
rapture and apocalyptic alienation from America’s repressed society
followed directly on its heels.
In his work on the subterranean traditions of American youth, David
Matza saw the beats to be “a modern manifestation of the Bohemian17
tradition, committed to romanticism, expressive authenticity, and non-
authoritarianism” (Matza 1961:102). In the fifties, there was little room for
these values in the States. It was a time characterized by exhaustion after
the Depression and World War II - a war that had ended practically
overnight with the hydrogen bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 -, and
white conformist Americans were mostly pushing their nuclear anxieties
away by buying into the new consumer market. As Dostoevsky had already
prophesied when he talked about the realization of the socialist dream of
universal prosperity, as it was for many middle-class Americans in this
time, “men would suddenly realize that they have no life any more, no
freedom of spirit, no freedom of will and personality, that somebody has
stolen all that from them. People will become depressed and bored”
(Dostoevsky 1998 [1918]:27). And this was exactly what the American
youth felt: depression, boredom and disenchantment. It was time to break
loose.
Clellon Holmes had already
introduced the term ‘beat’ to the
world in a 1952 New York Times
article by the much telling title This is
the Beat Generation, in which he
argued that despite its excesses, the
post war generation was actually
moved by a desperate craving for
affirmative beliefs. The beat, having
nothing to lose, could at least be
honest, and live in the moment. And
although their intense ‘Now’ was
grounded in despair, with a gloomy
general mien, it still carried a sense of
unconstrained aliveness that was
missing in the carefully planned office
bureaucracies and suburbs. In
Understanding the beats, Edward
Foster describes the trap that this last
category of ‘squares’ found
themselves in:
Men were expected to be logical,
16 Howl was first published and distributed across America in 1957, and along with
Kerouac’s book On the Road – published in the same year – it earned the beats mass
recognition and popularization.
17 The term ‘Bohemianism’ emerged in 19th century France to describe outsiders living apart
from conventional society; untroubled by its disapproval. The 1862 Westminster Review
states: “The term ‘bohemia’ has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the
description of a certain kind of literary gypsy, no matter in what language he speaks, or what
city he inhabits. A bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or
unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art” (Noted at the Online
Etymology Dictionary).
14
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

efficient, and coolheaded. […] There was no place for the excitable, inhabited it adhered to a set of laws and rhythms completely
intense and independent personality exemplified by frontier America. different from the nine-to-five routine that governed straight society.
That was identified as adolescent, a stage responsible men were More than anything else the Haight was a unique state of mind, an
supposed to outgrow (Foster 1992:13). arena of exploration and celebration. The new hipsters cast aside the
syndrome of alienation and despair that saddled many of their Beat
The beats refused to conform to this unnatural state of being, as
forebears. The accent shifted from solitude to communion, from the
exemplified by beat writer Jack Kerouac’s famous lines: “the only people for
individual to the interpersonal. (Lee 1985:72)
me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be
saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or
say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn” (Kerouac 1957:1).
The beats became pioneers in the sense that they were the first
semiotic counterculture, exiling themselves from mainstream culture not
through physical isolation but through art, perception, argot and mode of
dress. But they also became pioneers through the way this shared aesthetic
got appropriated for mass audiences. Especially the new up- and coming
medium of television turned their original dissident aesthetic into
entertainment, putting style above content and hereby bereaving it of most
of its meaning. The romanticized image of the beat would draw dissident
youth from all over the country and in great flocks to the original beat
center in San Francisco’s ‘Little Italy’ North Beach, where rents were
traditionally low and cheap wine plentiful. It was not long before touring
busses started rolling in, rents rocketed sky-high, and the beats moved on
to greener pastures; leaving only echoes behind.
Nonetheless, these echoes run throughout all the forms of
alternative/counter culture that have existed since, and the beats left a
definite mark on the city, making the San Francisco Examiner in more
recent times state that “[…] the Beat attitude is integral to the Bay Area’s
identity” (Peters 1997:17). I think it is the beats’ attitude of non-
conformism, freedom and possibility that would also influence Larry
Harvey and the way Burning Man came to be. However, in turn, Burning
Man would not be Burning Man if this connection would not be ridiculed
under a thick layer of irony by its participants. In the year that I did my
research at the playa, my eye fell on a listing for the Post Beatnik Syndrome
camp:
Oh, we've got it bad. That syndrome. Everytime we see a set of
Bongos, the poetry just spills out. This unconscious sense of disrespect
for authority rises, and we have an urge to have a cup of coffee, sit on
a pillow, play and listen to music, and space out. It's so hard to get
anything done, but, what the hell, we don't care anymore, just want
to enjoy the remaining daze ahead. Come join us, and watch the sun
come up, waltz across the sky, and set into the western desert. (2005
theme camp guide)

The Hippies
The beats left a legacy that became fertile ground for the new generation of
cultural dissidents. In the hands of these so-called hippies, the beats’ overall
rather sullen anti-authoritarian and anti-materialist tendencies started to
evolve into a more playful, absurdist style. To the hippies in these days, it
seemed as though bureaucratic regulations, the rules of ownership and the
presumed necessity to sell one’s time for wages were simply tiresome
roadblocks to be ignored, danced around, or finally be overthrown. The
young people picking up on this message were speaking a language of
peace, love, community and ecstasy. Instead of North Beach, they gathered
in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, popularly called ‘Hashbury’, where
large ramshackle Victorian houses could once again be rented cheaply. In
his book Acid Dreams, Martin Lee observed:
By 1965, Haight-Ashbury was a vibrant neobohemian enclave. […] A
small psychedelic city-state was taking place, and those who
15
The hippies made non-conformism and the personal search for identity a
mass movement, and really put the word counterculture on the map as it
were; in many ways summoning forth new forms of conformity, group
identities and communal ideals. As Theologian Dr. Martin Marty put it,
“they reveal the exhaustion of a tradition: Western, production-directed,
problem-solving, goal-oriented and compulsive in its way of thinking.”18
The hippies instead sought individual liberation through means as various
as drug use, total withdrawal from the economy, and cathartic get-
togethers.
18Quote from Marty in Time Magazine article The Hippies July 7 1967 (from the archive:
author unknown)
 -1- The Countercultural Package Deal

I think that this last point is rather significant, and, as argued before, in a
way goes for all things countercultural in the prosperous times after the
fifties; it is simply much easier to reject money and materialism in times of
bounty. In the case of the hippies, surplus goods were more easily available
during the economic boom of the sixties, which followed a long period of
post-war prosperity. Nowadays it seems that the economic privileges that
brought these hippies and beats the leisure to dream such wild dreams
have struck up against – among other things - corporate consolidation, a
pervading model of capitalism, and the commoditization of countercultural
values and aesthetics themselves. In a way it is precisely those things
Burning Man opposes in its ethos. But maybe most Burners hereby fall
exactly in the same category of post-scarcity ‘safe’ nonconformists. Maybe,
These get-togethers were often large gatherings, characterized by its though, we have to look at it from another angle, and argue that Burning
visitors’ ubiquitous absence of physical, mental, emotional and even, or Man might not be about rejecting money or material per se, but about rising
sometimes especially, biological restraints. In my opinion, this meeting of above the estranging effects it is thought to have and instead using it to
the political and pleasure as it were; the ‘party’ and protest, or - for those enter the communal sphere again. But again: these are speculations for
fond of Greek mythology and/or Nietzschian philosophy - Apollo and later.
Dionysian, and the drive for an intense sense of togetherness and For now, suffice to say that what I think resonates most with Burning
collectivity in doing so, that is similarly exemplary of Burning Man. It is Man is the hippies’ emphasis on community rather than wealth, free
what Musgrove called ‘the dialectics of utopia:’ “a dynamic tension of expression rather than conformity, a shared playful aesthetic rather than a
political activism (resistance) and personal growth (aesthetics and play) Puritan ethic, and the possibility to do one’s own thing as a group thing.
which characterized the counterculture” (Musgrove 1974:16). This However, as said, Burning Man is definitely not Woodstock ‘the sequel.’
definitely shows in the culmination of the hippie era: Woodstock. Larry Harvey vitiates this in an interview by referring to the fact that
Although the three days of the ‘Woodstock Music and Art fair’ took Burning Man is a far cry from a youth movement, and that “it should be
place not in San Francisco but in upstate New York, Bethel, and there are at remembered that this is the 21st century, and most ‘hippies’ are concerned
least as many differences as there are similarities with Burning Man, I find about their kids, have passed 50 years of age, and, if they come to Burning
it important to mention the hippie Man, are more likely to do so in a rented RV with a shower than a painted
fest here. This is not just because school bus.” Additionally, Burning Man does not give its participants a
contemporary media often makes ready made musical program; people are expected to take their survival en
the oversimplified analogue in many thriving in their own hands; technology is much more integrated and hailed
articles on Burning Man, but because into the event; and, most of all, I dare to say that it is more radical in its
Woodstock as a festival shook notion of community. This is definitely partly due to the fact that everyone
America through the sheer size of the is expected to participate at the festival.
hippie youth and the potential power The hippies’ co-optation into culture and fall into structure has also left
of the spirit of community, and it did its mark, and has made the Burning Man organization conscious about how
so in a very non-confrontational to re-enter culture. According to Turner, they should not have bothered, for
manner. It even made Time the hippie movement, and similar types of ‘communitas,’ will always be
magazine state that Woodstock phases and not permanent conditions (Turner 1969:112-113, 138-139).
Following the communitas scheme, the hippie development can be outlined
[…] may well rank as one of the
as having started with the spontaneous communitas which occurred for
significant political and
example in Woodstock, but also in the many other get-togethers and
sociological events of the age. The
gatherings. Around these happenings a union of followers was normatively
revolution it preaches, implicitly
organized, with their own places and times where communitas could be
or explicitly, is essentially moral;
experienced on the margins of society at large. Eventually, throughout the
it is the proclamation of a new set
years, complete ideologies were developed to promote, ideally for all
of values. […] With a surprising
members of the society, the type of utopic communitas the hippies
ease and a cool sense of authority,
experienced. In the end, however, Turner sees the fate of any type of
the children of plenty have voiced
communitas to inevitably be a “decline and fall into structure and law,” as
an intention to live by a different
was the case with the hippie movement (Ibid.132). Just like anti-structure
ethical standard than their
and structure only exist through their juxtaposition, so too does the
parents accepted. The pleasure principle has been elevated over the
“maximization of communitas provokes maximization of structure, which in
Puritan ethic of work. To do one’s own thing is a greater duty than to
turn produces revolutionary strivings for renewed communitas” (Ibid.129).
be a useful citizen. Personal freedom in the midst of squalor is more
In the case of the hippies, it produced something that might have taken off
liberating than social conformity with the trappings of wealth. Now
during the hippie days, but that evolved into a whole new separate
that youth takes abundance for granted, it can afford to reject
counterculturally inflected subculture. This particular communitas and
materialism.19
participatory collective started with a theatre group, and ended in guerilla.
It is to them that I now want to turn.
19Taken from Time Magazine article ‘The message of history’s biggest happening’ August 29,
1969 (from Time Magazine’s online archive: author unknown)
16
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
Guerilla Theatre
Already in 1959, and thus some time before the hippies even got òn their
busses in order to ‘drop out’ at the Haight area, the city saw the birth of
another collective that would leave its mark, albeit in more moderate form.
This particular collective went by the name of ‘The San Francisco Mime
Troupe,’ and it emerged as a rather unique blend of the contemporary avant
garde (mostly beats or early ex-beats) and the radical left (mostly activists
from the civil rights movement). Members of the Mime Troup, with the
idea of ‘making public what is private,’ took their performances outdoors,
outside the private spaces of traditional theater and into public spaces like
the city parks. They were all about delivering high quality, absurdist and
improvised entertainment for free, or at least for no more than a simple
passing of the hat, whilst staying true to their message of moral and civic
responsibility.
In 1965, their vision of a theatre with a revolutionary political agenda
resulted in their first official manifesto under the name ‘Guerrilla Theatre.’
Underground theatres all over the country instantly adopted the phrase to
describe their work. In the manifesto, the fundamental mission of a
guerrilla theatre is described:
The motives, aspirations, and practice of U.S. theatre must be
readapted in order to: teach, direct toward change, be an example of
change. It is necessary to direct toward change because ‘the system’
is debilitating, repressive, and non-aesthetic. The guerrilla company
must exemplify change as a group. The group formation - its
cooperative relationships and corporate identity - must have a
morality at its core. The corporate entity ordinarily has no morality.
This must be the difference in a sea of savagery. […] For those who
like their theatre pure of social issues, I must say—FUCK YOU! buddy,
theatre IS a social entity. It can dull the minds of the citizens, it can
wipe out guilt, it can teach all to accept the Great Society and the
17
Amaaaarican way of life or it can look to changing that society ... and
that's POLITICAL. (Doyle 2002:75)
Guerrilla Theater was not intended to be a call to arms, but to verb a
cultural revolt aimed at replacing discredited American values and norms.
What this should be replaced with is vexingly vague, but that the artist
should be at the vanguard of the cultural revolution was certain. In order to
give form to this, in 1966 the Artist Liberation Front (ALF) was born, which
went against a mentality they themselves dubbed as ‘ArtOfficial’ or the
‘Edifice Complex:’ the official trend of constructing large municipal centers
of art instead of the small neighborhood centers the guerilla artists had in
mind to bring art to the people with. The ALF became a vehicle for working
artists outside the official arts establishment to band together for mutual
support. Together they organized underground arts festivals and so called
Free Fairs, which were all about communal celebration and participation.
The artists would set up kiosks with large rolls of paper and painting
supplies, kids (of all ages) could make their own art, and bands came to
play. When looking back on these happenings, ALF member Barbara Wohl
reminisces:
I didn't articulate it to myself at the time, but what the point of the
fairs was, was not to have artists displaying their works, finished
products, but to have the supplies there so people could make their
own art. [...] That was the basic idea of the fairs. It is not someone
coming to observe his picture, but where whoever happened to walk
up and see the paints could become the artist and do his thing, make
his own art, be a participant. This was meant to be, and is, a very
political thing. It was the beginning of this burgeoning toward not
passively allowing the government to go on with the war. [...] This
erasing of the difference between the performer and the performed
upon was the real nitty gritty of that, the politics of the whole thing.20
A few months after the ALF initiative and the first set of Fairs, a number of
Mime Troupe members broke away to found a free-wheeling anarchist
collective they called the Diggers. They took their name from the English
Diggers (1649-1650), who had promulgated a vision of society free from
private property and all forms of buying and selling.
20 On: www.diggers.org

The ‘new’ Diggers were still in essence an art collective, but they
represented a natural evolution in the course of the Troupe’s history, as
they took the action off the constructed platform in the parks and jumped
right into the most happening stage yet - the streets of the Haight-Ashbury,
where I already described the new hippie youth culture was starting to
manifest itself in those days. To blur lines between performers and
audience was also no longer satisfactory enough for the Diggers; they
strove for the even more ambitious amalgation of art and life. The Diggers
liked to see themselves as ‘life actors;’ a caste of free beings, and in this
capacity they propagated the idea of the ‘free city.’ As they believed that
exemplary actions were the key to realizing their ambitious goals, they
provided the area with daily free food, a free clinic and even a free store.
And with subversive street theatre events:
For the Diggers’ part all theater involved the willful suspension of
disbelief by those who participated in it. Their play on guerrilla
theater attempted to extend that suspension of disbelief, act out
alternatives to bourgeois ‘consensus reality’ in its liminal space,
demonstrate that these alternatives were possible, and thereby
convince others to join them in enacting the Free City into existence.
(Doyle 2002:80)
I believe this quote shows well how alive some of the Digger ideals are
within the Burning Man ethos. I do not think Burning Man as such is about
enacting very concrete ‘free cities’ into existence, but - apart from being a
(nearly) free city itself - the idea of becoming a catalyst for social change by
showing alternatives to and examples of being in the world, has definite
overlaps with the Burners community.
Even though the Diggers were relatively short-lived, they left a mark
on the city that would be felt for many more years. Not only did Guerilla
theatre, the ALF, Free Fairs and the Diggers become a big influence on
further – better known – events such as the Human Be-in in San Francisco
and Woodstock in New York, Burning Man is obviously strongly resonating
with the participatory ideas behind these artistic movements as well. On
Burning Man it is not just theatre that is intended to be participatory
though, the concept is extended to include art in all its manifestations and
productions. Instead of consuming art as happens in everyday life, on
Burning Man everyone can be an artist, and most artistic expressions are
-1- The Countercultural Package Deal
highly democratic and interactive, thus blurring the line between artist and
audience, life and art - as shown in this section.
To really put this participatory and artistic endeavor in a cultural
context, it is time for a little excursion out of San Francisco and into Europe,
where the ‘Situationists International’ were situated. I realize that the
detour might seem redundant in our itinerary, both geographically as
countercultural, but I do think it might shed some light on our subject.
Situationists’ ideas have continued to echo profoundly through many
aspects of culture and politics in Europe and the U.S.A., and most certainly
resonate in Burning Man. Even in their own time, with limited translations
of their dense theoretical texts,21 combined with their very successful self-
mythologization, the term ‘situationist’ was often used to refer to any rebel
or outsider (Bonnett 2006:25), rather than to a body of nearly
philosophical, surrealist-inspired Marxist critical theory. But in order to
more properly trace their influences within Burning Man, I nevertheless
want to have a closer look into some aspect of their controversial theory.
Situationist Movement
The Situationists are best described as being a small group of Dada-
influenced, left-anarchist intellectual and artistic extremists, who targeted
the culture of ‘spectacular consumption’ that was said to turn leisure into
boredom, art into commodity and life into representation. The movement
formed in the late fifties and mostly centered itself in Paris, where it greatly
influenced the French revolt of 1968. The first issue of the journal
Internationale Situationniste defined situationist as “having to do with the
theory or practical activity of constructing situations. One who engages in
the construction of situations. A member of the Situationist International.”
The same journal defined situationism as “a meaningless term improperly
derived from the above. There is no such thing as situationism, which
would mean a doctrine of interpretation of existing facts. The notion of
situationism is obviously devised by antisituationists.”22
21 Not just were there little translations, also in its original language the Situationists could
be hard to follow. Critics of the Situationists frequently assert that their ideas are not at all
complex and difficult to understand, but are at best simple ideas expressed in deliberately
difficult language, and at worst actually nonsensical. Anarchist Chaz Bufe even asserts that
“obscure situationist jargon” is a major problem in the anarchist scene (On:
http://www.seesharppress.com/listen.html, accessed December 15, 2006).
22 Internationale Situationniste #1 (June 1958) On:
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/definitions.html, accessed January 17, 2006.
18
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

In 1967, the most prominent member – and the only one to stay with the The construction of situations begins on the ruins of the modern
group throughout its existence – Guy Debord would have Situationist spectacle. It is easy to see the extent to which the very principle of the
critiques reach mass audiences through the publication of his anti-capitalist spectacle - non-intervention - is linked to the alienation of the old
rant The Society of the Spectacle.23 In it, he identified the primary control world. Conversely, the most pertinent revolutionary experiments in
system of capitalist society as, indeed, the society of the spectacle, in which culture have sought to break the spectator's psychological
mediation would result in an alienation with the average person from his identification with the hero so as to draw him into activity. […] The
own subjective experience. I think that Greil Marcus, in his book on punk situation is thus made to be lived by its constructors. The role played
and Situationism, explained Debord’s view most compact and clear: by a passive or merely bit-part playing public must constantly
diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but
A never-ending accumulation of spectacles made a modern world, a
rather, a new sense of the term, 'livers,' must constantly increase.
world in which all communication flowed in one direction, from the
(Dubord in Knabb:43)
powerful to the powerless. The spectacle naturally produced not
actors but spectators: modern men and women, the citizens of the For the Situationists, direct action through performance within everyday
most advanced society on earth, who were thrilled to watch life was put forth as a remedy to the usurpation of reality through its
whatever it was they were given to watch. […] Having satisfied the totalitarian representation. Performance thus became a vehicle of taking
needs of the body, capitalism as spectacle turned to the desires of the back one’s life from spectacular social control: “To the Situationist, you are
soul. It turned upon individual men and women, seized their – everyone is – a creator of situations, a performance artist, and the
subjective emotions and experiences, changed those once evanescent performance, of course, is your life, lived in your own way” (Lasn
phenomena into objective, replicable commodities, placed them on 1999:101). So like with Guerilla Theatre, the emphasis on praxis and
the market, set their prices, and sold them back to those who had, participation was a similar point of gravity for the Situationists. And like
once, brought emotions and experiences out of themselves – to people with Guerilla Theater, Situationist members saw themselves to deal with a
who, as prisoners of the spectacle, could now find such things only on new, revolutionary art - away from traditional modes of artistic expression,
the market. All desires had to be reduced to those that could be put and into the cityscape.
on the market. (Greil 1989:52) For the Situationists, the need for creating situations was intimately
associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space
Once, when capital had been primarily focused on providing basic
(Chtcheglov 1958). Therefore the phrase ‘unitary urbanism’ was coined to
necessities and when the world was not completely mediated and
describe experiments with creating ‘the next city’; designed specifically to
interpenetrated, human beings had private lives; their leisure time was not
open up new possibilities for social interaction. In line with this,
yet colonized. Whereas classical capitalism taught people that ‘wasted time’
Situationists members practiced their version of the ‘Dérive’: a practice of
would be synonymous for time nòt spent at work, modern capitalism
wandering aimlessly in groups through the cityscape, with the purpose of
reversed that view, declaring through advertising and other ‘spectacular’
“bringing an inverted perspective to bear on the entirety of the spectacular
means that it is the time spent at work that is wasted, and justifiable only
world” (Plant 1992:58-59). Next to this re-signification of urban space, the
because it provides the money to consume. It was this transition that made
Situationists would also set off what they dubbed ‘Détournement’, which
capital turn away from the selling of necessities, and into the new market
literally means ‘turning around’ and involved “[...] rerouting spectacular
built around the selling of fulfillment and experiences. In the spectacular
images, environments, ambiences and events to reverse or subvert their
society, everything that had once been directly lived had now transmuted
meaning, thus reclaiming them” (Lasn 1999: 103). For the Situationists, the
into a representation. As Larry Law sums it up: “Things that were once
‘detourning’ of signs and texts formed the opposite side of the coin to
directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the
‘recuperation’. This meant that instead of radical ideas and images
real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is
becoming safe and commodified, images produced by the spectacle were
developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for
subjected to alteration and subversion. Through irony and parody,
experience” (2001:3).
ownerships over public space could once again be claimed, and the cycle of
However, for the Situationists, it is not the spectacle as such that forms
the spectacle broken or at least temporary made questionable.
the domination of the world by images or any other form of mind-control;
the real domination lies in the social interaction that is mediated by all
these omnipresent images. Seeing that a spectacle requires general non-
participation and encourages lack of communication between people, it
causes alienation, numbness and meaninglessness. This situation is rather
hopeless, since when people consume the commodities or image-objects of
the spectacle, they become part of the spectacle, and as such rebellion
against it becomes hard or flat impossible. Even the most radical gesture
gets recuperated into the spectacle and turned into a commodity, negating
its subversive meaning. This process, by which the spectacle takes a radical
or revolutionary idea and repackages it as a saleable commodity, is what
the Situationists called ‘recuperation’.
To counteract the alienating spectacles, and to annihilate the possibility
of recuperation, the Situationists argued for the ‘construction of situations’
in everyday life:

23 Then still in the original French, under the title La société du spectacle. The first English

translation was published by Black & Red in 1970, and got strongly revised in 1977.
19
 -1- The Countercultural Package Deal

The Situationists as a movement dissolved in 1972, but its influence, direct action politics, new musical sounds and experiences” (McKay 1998:2;
and societal critique, is still felt. Urban guerilla and anti-consumption see also Purdue et al. 1997). Thus, within the punk movement, social
tactics such as the dérive and the détournement, for example, continue to criticism got combined with cultural creativity in what is “both a utopian
inspire creative resistance and offer inspiration for alternate horizons on a gesture and a practical display of resistance” (Ibid.27). It would come to
‘taking back the street’ level.24 Moreover, the Situationists’ sense of spawn a whole underground network that operated completely outside the
recouping politics and its creation of everyday experiences and situations system; mostly in squads and warehouses, where its autonomy was fiercely
exerted a strong influence on the anarchist and punk movement that protected.
started to gain force in the seventies. Some of these punk ideas and The DIY movement counted collectives likes
practices, in turn, would heavily influence the way Burning Man came to be. the Survival Research Laboratories, who
How and why this was so, is what I want to unravel next. advertised with posters on concrete pylons
under the freeway for the few who knew
where to look for them, and who had
The Punks
performance shows where dead rats were
Although there were definitely elements happening in the New York
thrown at their San Franciscan audience.
underground scene that can be labeled punk ‘avant la lettre’, the official
Their intentions were clear: the shows
punk movement began in the UK, roughly in the mid seventies. There, it was
were held for no one but themselves,
associated with a lot of class resentments; people in dead-end lives at the
and if you did not like it then you
bottom of the social pyramid revolting. When the punk movement crossed
could go and create your own
into the United States – according to which’ Declaration of Independence all
show. Or take Circus Redickuless,
men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
another infamous punk inspired
happiness - it began to turn into a movement that espoused two main basic
collective, where the whole
ideas, namely ‘never sell out’ and ‘do it yourself.’ With regards to the first
point was that it required no
idea: ‘never sell out,’ Burning Man organizer Larry Harvey talks about why
specific talent to join, which
this motto would be especially paramount to American youth in those days:
made one newspaper critic review that they exhibited ‘Olympian
You're talking about a generation that had seen everything it ever ineptitude.’25 Exemplary, the circus had acts like the ‘man-eating chicken’,
loved taken away from it. You're talking about a generation that, as which involved a close friend of Larry Harvey, Chicken John, sitting on stage
it sat around the great American table, wanted to spit up. eating… chicken.
Throughout their lives they'd endured the same recurring experience.
Something would be invented in the context of community, and
culture would be generated spontaneously out of the interactions of
individuals who felt that they belonged to a thing, and that it
belonged to them, and out of that ethos they would begin creating
things that embodied their identity in the world, and as soon as that
happened, someone would come along, a market scout, and it would
be appropriated, marketed as a lifestyle, and turned into an image. It
would be completely denatured of any meaning that it ever had for
anyone. (Harvey 2000)
So the punks, responding,
perhaps, a little crude at times,
made it their first tenet that they
would never compromise their
integrity, morality and principles:
they would never sell out.
Directly linked to this is the
punks’ second tenet: the idea to
make your own show, or the ‘do
it yourself’ (DIY) code. According
to McKay, DIY culture is “a kind
of 1980s counterculture: A
youth-centered and -directed
cluster of interests and practices
around anarchic radicalism,

24As exemplified, for instance, by the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) whose members have
been waging a “guerrilla war on the boredom and banality engendered by the corporate
annexation of public space” in San Francisco for over 22 years. BLF quote from its own site
http://www.billboardliberation.com/. For an excellent discussion on BLF and others, see
Vivoni 2006, on: http://www.soc.uiuc.edu/about/Transnational/francisco% 20vivoni.pdf.
Both sites accessed November 2nd 2006.
25Taken from the Austin Chronicle 30-03-1998, in a review of the documentary directed by
Phillip Glau about the tour Circus Ridickuless did in 1995 under the unofficial name ‘Cirque
du So-Lame: a real tour de farce’. On:
http://www.filmvault.com/filmvault/austin/c/circusredickuless1.html, accessed November
9th 2006.
20
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

In 1977, another in this abbreviated list of absurdist San Franciscan has placed on fun, humor, entertainment and excitement.”28 I cannot resist
theatre/performance/ DIY/never-sell-out collectives saw the light, and it the temptation to mention a couple of the more illustrative stunts they
was dubbed the Suicide Club, based on a Robert Stevenson story where pulled. Take the fully staged public protests against the Disney movie
several men agree to commit suicide after living one last day free of social Fantasia, where they represented an absurd conclave of interest groups
restraints. The name belied the gentle albeit zany nature of its members, such as the Sensitive Parents Against Scary Movies (SPASM), upset with
who had a predilection towards light-hearted practical jokes, and who how frightening the movie
Doherty described as “a gang of ‘twixt-hippie-and-punk intellectuals and was to small children; the
edge-seekers – not the cool kids but the weird ones” (Doherty 2004:35). Bay Area Drought Relief
Assistance Program (BAD
RAP), outraged at Mickey
Mouse’s water wastage
during his sorcerer’s
apprentice scene; and
‘Calorically Challenged’
activists, peeved with the
mocking of dancing hippos.
It earned them an article in
Time29 magazine, and then
later in the Wall Street
Journal about how they
fooled Time into taking
them serious. Another
infamous random
Cacophonic act consisted of
the members setting
Even though the Suicide Club chose to remain highly implicit about themselves up in clown
their philosophy or purpose, they do state what it had nòt been: “So far, uniforms with briefcases at
there has been no President, no voting, no meetings, no collectives, bus stops down an entire
committees or consensus, no rules agreed on by everyone, no dares, no route, hereby slowly filling
mandatory experiences.”26 The Suicide Club became a sort of secret club: a the bus with seemingly
clearinghouse for urban adventures idea, street theatre, and the drive to unrelated clowns. And in
experience life as if every day were the last. However, in 1982 this actual yet another collective
last day came after all, and the club just sort of sputtered out. It would not outing they traipsed
even have been of any particular interest to mention here, were it not for through Haight Street
fact that several of the remaining members launched the so called giving away pennies to
Cacophony Society, which took the basic punk ideas of ‘never sell out’ and bewildered passersby.
‘DIY’ to a whole new level. Unlike the highly secretive Suicide Club, the Cacophony Society
assumed that it was possible by cross-fertilizing with other groups,
tendencies and events in the area and even the nation, to all create their
Cacophony Society own interesting good times – together. One of the central organizers,
Daniel Pinchbeck described the Cacophony Society as “a Bay Area network Michael Michael (who is still with the Burning Man organization till this
of ‘culture jammers’ and pranksters, leftovers from the posthippie, prepunk day), even led the attempt to franchise Cacophony, creating mini gangs of
bohemia of the ‘70s, though with a touch of both” (Pinchbeck 2003). mischievous gremlins in any American city where he could find someone to
According to the boilerplate on its newsletters, the Cacophony Society is: lead them. When I asked him the same question I asked Larry Harvey –
A randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of “why it began in San Francisco” -, he answered that while the career-
experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society. We are that minded artists had always gravitated to New York or Los Angeles, San
fringe element which is always near the edge of reason. Our members Francisco remained a haven for the more quixotic creative types, among
include a wide variety of individuals marching to the beat of a which he classified himself, whose only place in the world was going to be
different din. We are the merry pranksters of a new decade. We are the one they and their friends created through their own will, joy and free
nonpolitical, nonprophet and often nonsensical. You may already be thinking. If any principle united Michael to these people and these people to
a member.27 one another, it was simply that they wanted to make their own fun and
experience things together. Michael: “We were not just sitting in a room
Each month, many of the Cacophony members would get together for with a bunch of people glued to a TV and not talking. Cacophony was about
various participatory experiences, “covering a wide range of activities and direct experience” (Michael, interview September 20th 2005).
events generally designed to push the limits which contemporary society

28On: http://www.cacophony.org/, accessed May 15 2005

29Ironically enough, Time Magazine cited the protest in an essay about America becoming a
26 www.suicideclub.com nation of whiners and complainers; calling the protesters a ‘fringe pressure group’. On:
27 On: http://www.zpub.com/caco/caco1.html, accessed May 15 2005 http://diswww.mit.edu/tla/humor/4, accessed October 12 2006.
21
 -1- The Countercultural Package Deal

In 1988, when Michael stumbled onto the seemingly pointless little

ritual of burning a wooden Man on a public beach, he was immediately
charmed by the directness of the experience. So much so, that he wanted
the Cacophony society to get involved. As Doherty phrases the attraction:
“Burning a giant statue on Baker Beach for no stated reason was just the
Cacophonists’ kind of absurd fun” (Doherty 2004:44). At that point in time,
Burning Man had already been going on for three years, and a small and ill-
defined community had started to grow around the making and the burning
of the Man. Michael, in his drift of cross-fertilizing, wrote about the Burning
Man experience in the Cacophony newsletter so that the next year, the
communities could get together and have fun together. Michael states how
important this ‘shared togetherness’ was for the Cacophonic Society: it gave
its collection of curiosities a sense of community, and it did so to people
who had generally been made to feel, or chose to feel, separated from most
of the people and culture around them.

I think that this last point - bringing a sense of community to people

who did not feel, or chose not to feel, part of the established culture - is very
significant. In a way I think it is what unites all things discussed in reference
to Burning Man’s social background, and maybe even in general all things
countercultural. As I hope to show in the next chapter, when Burning Man
continued to grow it continued to attract an ever more diverse bunch of
visitors, and became more of what Graham St. John (1999) would call an
‘alternative cultural gathering’: a heterogenic meeting point of
countercultural collectives, ‘disorganizations’ and subcultures. As such the
people visiting Burning Man were no longer united by a shared sense of
critique towards society, but more by a shared sense of making an
experimental and temporal community work, and to take this lesson in
community back home again. All this would not have been set in motion
though, were it not for the fact that the Cacophony Society indeed got
involved with Burning Man when it was needed most, and helped to take its
evolvement to the next level. And into the next chapter.

22
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Part II:

Escaping Society

23
 -2- Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob

Apocalypse Now during that feverish night of my first burn, only without the
-2- story board and without any glimpse of a director – or direction. Later, when I
start to delve into the phenomenon that is Burning Man deeper, I find out that

Every One of Them: apparently seventy percent of all people will literally get lost that night, and I
will be more surprised about the thirty percent that find their way than the
seventy percent that does not, but back then there is no such known
Baker Beach, a Man, consolation. For there and then, with the Man coming to an end, I cannot help
but wonder how it all started and transformed, and how the Man has become

and a Mob such a primary icon to the widespread community of so called ‘Burners’ - for
this one week and far beyond.

The year is 2005. At about ten ‘o clock on a Saturday night near the end of
summer, a throng of over thirty-five thousand revelers, including yours truly,
will enthusiastically shout “Burn it!” in a remote corner of a Nevadan desert.
“It” is a towering effigy made of intricately latticed wood and glowing neon.
For a week this giant Man has been a point of reference, common symbol and
beacon for the visitors of the Burning Man festival. It has represented a
myriad of dreams, future plans, artistic inspiration and communal ideals. An
ephemeral city has been build around it; hundreds of people have kissed and
held hands at its feet; it has led those lost home, while simultaneously making
the concept of home debatable. This year again, there will be people who
witness it and who will tattoo the abstract figure in their flesh upon returning
home, literally using it as a signature for a new found Burner identity. And
like all other years, even though the towering figure is laden with many
allusions inviting an incalculable number of associations, it will be devoid of
overt dogmatic significance for the group that will hail its existence – and,
tonight, its annihilation.
As the evening wears on, the scene all but resembles that of an ancient totem-
toting tribe, were it not for the fact that this particular totem is stuffed with
state of the art pyrotechnics, and membership to the tangible tribe around it
voluntary, optional and in this specific manifestation necessarily temporal.
The tension in the air can almost be physically felt, like waves of electricity; its
tactile effects alternating between goose bumps and heat flashes; clenched
damp fists raised mid air. Strangely enough, it is eerily still though, like the
earth itself is holding her breath. When the figure’s arms slowly start to move
upwards, setting its immanent doom in motion, the serenity is officially done
with. Now, there is a giddy bloodlust in the air that is in direct contradiction
to the gathering’s overall tone of joyous celebration. As both of its arms
complete their overhead journey, the Man forms a crisp X shape, set against
the darkening night in a gesture at once submissive and triumphant.
When the first sparks coming from the feet will finally light the evening sky,
what started as a careful and disorganized chanting minutes before now
becomes a definite, cathartic cheer. With elaborately orchestrated fireworks
shooting from the Man’s shoulders, elbows, heart and eventually head, people
that were solemnly standing side by side half an hour ago now hug each other In 1986, the Man is brought to life for the first time in a tiny basement by
with a certain, often teary eyed, franticness. The Man itself, unable to sustain two friends: Larry Harvey and Jerry James. On the night of the summer
its own weight in the engulfing conflagration, soon collapses into a pile of solstice - the 21st of June – they take the eight-foot wooden effigy to San
sparks and a pillar of smoke, transforming the desert and its inhabitants into Francisco’s Baker Beach and set it to flames. Even though nowadays there
a chthonic dreamscape and frenzied purgatory where most of the socially are many myth-like stories circulating as to the why of this initial event, the
ordained rules of so-called normalcy will be suspended until dawn. initiators themselves categorically state that it was for no apparent reason
As the first people rush forward to cross the field of glowing ambers that is or motive. As Harvey describes it, seeking the source of things solely in this
now the desert floor, a substantial part of the hundreds of art works scattered much discussed ‘First Time’ and affixing great significance to this earliest
around the festival area will also be incinerated, obscuring everything and act “is like looking for the tiniest trickle of a tributary that eventually flows
everyone from sight through billows of impenetrable choking smoke - while down into the Mississippi and confusing that for the mighty Mississippi. In
laser beams project otherworldly rays and figures overhead and ‘fire dancers’ fact, it’s the sum of a thousand tributary waters” (Harvey in Doherty
pirouette, torches in hand, beneath the stellar umbrella of the night sky. I will 2004:25).
never forget the sensation of feeling like a supernumerary on the set of
24
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
We have already traced some of the tributary waters eventually leading
to the ‘mighty Man,’ in the form of countercultural ethics, critiques and
collectives. They are important as they show that the seed of Burning Man
sprang forth from such fertile ground and timing - something that Harvey
never ceases to emphasize. What is not that important for Harvey is
whether there was some deep unconscious Freudian drive that caused him
and his friend to burn their wooden man on a public beach for the first time.
Instead, what turned out to be crucial is what happened when it dìd burn,
and especially what happened as it burned again, and again, and again. For
there was a didactic path to follow, and for the first years of its destruction,
the Man would have an important lesson to discover about the construction
of community. It is a lesson of participation, non-spectatorship, and of
people needing to have to do things together for community to appear. It is
a lesson that I want to explore in this chapter.
Burning a Man
When looking back at the first burn, what turned out to be most important
was that we happened to choose to do it in a public space. It was done
impetuously as a pure gesture. That was part of the San Franciscan culture I
had absorbed, the culture of the self-expressive gesture, this countercultural
notion that you could manifest your spirit by acting on creative impulse and
have the courage to do it in a public way. (Harvey, interview October 15th
2005)
When I started my research in San Francisco, I could not wait to go to Baker
Beach and see with my own eyes where it had all began. I probably had this
romanticized image in my head of me on a blanket in the sand, interviewing
Burners, whilst a setting sun would color the city’s proud symbol, the
Golden Gate Bridge, pink in the distance. Fact is, though, that Baker Beach is
just a narrow strip of not-so-golden sand, with little but a few brave nudists
conquering the immanent dampness of San Francisco. It was Mark Twain
who uttered the legendary quote that the coldest winter he had ever spent
was a summer in San Francisco, and after living in that city for six months I
can only agree with him. The biggest problem is the fog, or, more
specifically, a scorching hot inland which draws mists of icy cold seawater
over the city, thus creating fog. If anything, my first visit to Baker Beach
made me understand why people would want to make big fires there – you
need to if you want to keep warm and dry, especially at night.
25
Larry Harvey and Jesse James did not just want to stay warm through any
means though, they wanted to do so by burning the Man they had just spent
a day building. When they took this Man to the beach for the first time, it
looked nothing like the grand, authoritarian point of reference I saw going
up in flames, even though an ancestral relationship is conceivable. Looking
at old pictures, the biggest aesthetic difference is obviously sheer size; the
first Man was only about one head bigger than its creators and thus less
than four sizes smaller than it is today. The ribs looked kind of similar, if not
as plentiful and even, and the head was spiked with wild hair, instead of
shaved like today, although it already carried the familiar inverted
pyramid-style. The legs were the same orthopedic device-looking sheaths,
though much less sleek and slick, and they were standing firmly on the
beach and not on another two-storey house pedestal like it has for the past
few years. And whereas today the Man is a streamlined high-tech wooden
en neon skeleton stuffed with combustibles and fireworks, back in those
days it still had flesh and viscera made of burlap to make it burn better.30
Seeing that the first Man was drenched in gasoline (so volatile and fast-
burning that it was decided to switch to kerosene in later years), it burned
incredible fierce, and must have formed quite a sight on that narrow strip of
beach. “It was just a crude thing stuck in the sand,” Harvey says, “but poised
against the broad Pacific, flames licking, it was theatrical in a whole new
sense” (Harvey 1997 speech). Like moths to the flames, strangers suddenly
came rushing in from the beach.
According to Harvey, it was then that the magic happened: people
would begin to interact and contribute to the experience. As the wind blew
the flames to one side, a girl tried to touch the Man’s hand. A hippie with a
guitar sang a song about fire and some would sing along. Others started
dancing, passed their bottle of wine, or threw in more driftwood to be
burned. According to both Harvey and James, it was these acts of impulsive
merger, participatory performance and collective union that made the
initial burn so special. Furthermore, in hindsight, it was there and then that
Harvey realized that this ritualized experience might have universal
meaning and appeal, as it made people see that they are part of something
beyond themselves. “That first man was just 8ft tall, and it was enough. […]
Something bigger than they are, that’s all people need. It’s at least enough to
inspire a leap of faith” (Harvey in Stein 2000:3).
30 To prove my point of the Man being slightly more advanced these days, some numbers
concerning its needs in 2005: 450 board feet of wood, 15 pounds of screws, 500 feet of cable
for lightning at night, 30 yards of white silk for the face, and 170 pieces of neon tubing for
the intestines (information from co-construction manager Ben Stoelting).
 -2- Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob

A Man with a Vision

It is obvious from the beginning that Harvey is the philosopher, the scholar,
the analyzer, the ‘man with a message’ as it were. It is Harvey who speaks
about countercultural influence, who reads and quotes theories from Hyde,
Debord, and Putnam in public address, and who stirs ‘his’ festival in the
direction of global manifestation. When I talk with his initial partner James
about those first years, Harvey’s inclination is again confirmed:
Larry started to ponder what it meant and why we were doing it,
what the available metaphors or implications might be. He was
thinking about it and writing about it. Why did he do that? It seems
to be his nature, I suppose. To me it was just a big adventure, just an
exciting, curious thing to do. I wasn’t as puzzled or intrigued as Larry
as to why we were doing it. (James, interview September 13th, 2005)
Hardly surprising then, it was Harvey who was in favor of making the burn
of the Man not just a continuing ritual, but an ever-growing one, both in
terms of the size of the Man and the number of people involved. In
hindsight, Harvey recalls an argument with James and another friend over
why the Man had to be taller than his original eight feet: “I remember
feeling very much put-upon, feeling so disappointed and kind of lonely that
they couldn’t see that it had to be. It just had to be” (Harvey in Doherty
2004:44). Hence spoke a man with a vision, and a Man to burn.
So the second year, instead of the twenty people that joined the
previous burn, there were now over eighty people on the beach.
Afterwards, when Harvey looked at some grainy footage made of the burn,
he heard a voice shouting ‘Wicker
Man’31 over and over again. “I thought, if
you’re gonna call it something, call it
Lumber Man, for Christ’s sake, or Wood
Man,” says Harvey. “I figured we needed
a name if people were going to call it
that crap” (Ibid.:32).
For Harvey, son of a Freemason and
carpenter, the use of wood in building
the man had symbolic significance and
was a critical part of the ritual. Hence
wise, after considering the options, he
settled for Burning Man: “a great
multivalent name because it’s an action
and an object and a shared experience
all at once” (Ibid.:32). And thus, under
the name of Burning Man, by 1988 both
James and Harvey were committing to it
fully: making posters and flyers to
attract an audience beyond their immediate friends and building a Man
topping around thirty feet, or twelve meter.
The summer solstice that third year was a foggy, blistery night. As the
effigy was torched, the kerosene soaked burlap and newspaper that stuffed
its body blew away in ashes, but the Man, though charred, was still
standing. Still, the flames had been impressive enough to exceed the sight of
the usual bonfire, and the Man was to have his first encounter with the Law

31Wicker Man is a classic 1973 cult film starring Edward Woodward as an earnest Methodist
who is sent to investigate the mysterious death of a woman on an island. There, he gets
involved in an ancient Celtic cult that culminates in the burn of a giant human effigy made of
wicker and stuffed with chickens, goats and, of course, the hapless Methodist. Harvey
stresses that he had not seen the film when he first burned his Man, and on the Burning Man
website it states that “Any connection of Burning Man to ‘Wicker Man’ in fact or fiction -or,
for that matter, to Guy Fawkes, giant figures burned in India, or any other folk source- is
purely fortuitous.”
26
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
in the form of a local policeman on shift. After some negotiation, an
agreement was made to knock the statue down and finish burning it in less
over hovering shape. In hindsight, I think it was here that the relationship
between authority and Burning Man was defined for the very first time, and
a hint towards structure first felt. Later on, the resulting cooperation on the
side of Burning Man would be tried and tested to a much higher degree, and
with more at stake, but not just yet. For despite the inauspicious end of the
Man and the ominous signs that Harvey and James’ spontaneous expression
was bothering the authorities in San Francisco, 1988 was a pivotal year in
the life of Burning Man for yet another reason. It was the year that the
earlier mentioned anarchistic Cacophony Society discovered the Man, and
liked what it saw.
In fact, the Cacophony Society, impersonated that night in the figure of
Michael Michael, liked it enough to tell friends and associates about it and
cover it enthusiastically in the Cacophony newsletter - read and seen by
hundreds in and around San Francisco. In 1989, their networking and
promotional efforts would have the number of people attending the burn
soar to over three hundred.
The Cacophonists’ obvious enthusiasm inspired Harvey to make the
Man even bigger the next year, an effort for which he received help from the
Society of Carpenters. As friends told friends and they, in turn, told other
27
friends, a small army of volunteers was created. In the Cacophony mailing
list that year, interested people were invited to meet in a parking lot in
downtown San Francisco to help assemble the wooden sculpture. Michael
Michael showed me the June 1990 issue of the Cacophony newsletter, a
page of apple-green paper listing such events as a group read-in of
Finnegans Wake and a series of lounge acts in the subway. The Burning
Man entry reads: “The erection and destruction of a monumental human
figure at the Summer Solstice is meant to dramatize the passage of time. […]
The final event will be held on June 30th. Burning Man is a non-prophet
organization.” Harvey is nowhere mentioned.
When the Man got taken to the beach that year, an immense crowd of
people was there already, eagerly awaiting its arrival. In anticipation of yet
another police visit, Cacophonists with radios patrolled the paths down to
the beach as pieces of the Man were hauled down. It did not prevent the
Golden Gate Park Police (GGNRA) - represented by a lone officer on a
motorbike - from showing up. Park regulations in force at that time limited
beach burns to three by three-foot campfires. On Baker Beach, the Man,
now grown to his present-day stature, loomed four-stories high, and this
embarrassing discrepancy did not go unnoticed. Harvey again managed to
negotiate a compromise, this time to assemble and erect the Man and then
not burn it. Once more, it confirmed the valuable lesson that “it is often
easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission;” an adage, Michael
Michael states, that was already known by the Suicide Club and the
Cacophony Society.32 It would be the beginning of one of the event’s most
storied legends: the Burn that never burned.
The Burn that never Burned
It all started rather well that fateful year of 1990. The crowd had gotten so
huge that it hardly fitted on the beach anymore, instead spilling out in all
directions. As a line of about forty people slowly pulled the man upward, all
those present cheered its erection. When the Man’s arms were pulled
upright and over its head, the collective piercing shout was said to reach all
the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. And then a profound silence ensued. As
the organizers gaped at the surrounding crowd, and the crowd stared back,
a second, harder lesson was at hand. For the by then about eight hundred
boisterous revelers were not about to just turn around without seeing the
blazing spectacle for which they had come. A riot began, whereby even
Harvey himself was assaulted and nearly strangled by an aggressive
stranger. He told me how this horrified him not so much because of any
physical pain, but because he had previously thought a community existed
around the burn.
It became obvious that what had begun as a small spontaneous group
of ‘participants’ had now grown into an anonymous throng of onlookers.
The people dedicated to creating Burning Man numbered in the dozens, and
their well-wishers and friends amounted to several dozen more, but the
many hundreds who now surrounded the Man on that night of June 21,
1990, had invested absolutely nothing in the process. In the words of
Harvey:
[…] we weren't used to crowds. And so we got the Man up, and then
we turned around and we were surrounded by this big crowd, it was
the first big crowd that we'd ever encountered. And it dawned on us
that we didn't have a P.A. system. And we had no way of addressing
them, or communicating with them, and then we were appalled to
find out that a great part of the party that had come down had
nothing invested in what we'd done. They'd come for a spectacle.
32 At: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1986_1996/, accessed July 1st,
2005.

They'd just heard in town that there was this big man, they're gonna
burn it. They hadn't worked with us. We hadn't been conscious of
ourselves as a community, we were just doing it. And now it became a
mob. It became a mob of disassociated individuals. 33
What had started as a playful event in which people interacted with each
other and hence formed community, had turned into a tense mob; a
majority of individual spectators who were there solely to consume the
event, adding nothing to it and consequently ignoring the prevailing rule of
participation. Analytically, what I believe happened was that its liminality;
its communitas and collectiveness, was arrested by people who did not
follow the rules of the game. These onlookers did not participate or added
anything to the interactiveness of the ritual and thus broke the spell. As
Huizinga elucidates, rules are a very important factor in the concept of play,
and the person that trespasses against the rules or simply ignores them is a
‘spoil-sport:’ he robs the magical world of play of its illusion34 and must
therefore be cast out as he threatens the existence of the play-community.
After four years of burning the Man on Baker’s Beach, the circle of friends
had grown into a crowd, and indeed the very existence of the ritual and
thus the community was threatened.
33 Taken from a speech Larry Harvey did on August 30th1997, at Hualapai Playa, Nevada. On:
http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1997/97_speech_1.html, accessed July
1st 2005.
34 As Huizinga explains, illusion itself is a pregnant word which means literally ‘in-play’
(from inlusio, illudere or inludere) 1955:11.
-2- Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob
The Participatory Project
A core principle we know and love is Participation: our community is
committed to a radically participatory ethic. All of us here believe that
transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only
through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being
through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We
make the world real through actions that open the heart. (Harley Dubois:
Member of the Burning Man Board, interview July 26th 2005)
I have shown how after four years of obliviously burning the Man, rules
ended up being broken. But if rules were broken, does that mean that rules
were actually made? I think that during those first years on the beach, as
clearly indicated by the 1990 mob incident, the ‘rules of the game’ were
more implicitly present; in less conscious and more experiential form. I
furthermore believe that before the formulation of rules and guiding
principles –the Burning Man ethos-, what is overarching all ideology
attached to Burning Man is the fact that it really is an experiment in
community.
As we have seen, according to Larry Harvey the event would not even
have been repeated after that first time if he had not seen it to create
community. It was an immediate act, an immediate experience, and it
immediately brought seemingly strangers together. Now Burning Man has
come a long way since this first act, but it is still the core around which the
event revolves. And I think that this core is constituted by a form of social
critique that is nearly countercultural in nature, and that goes against
individualizing, alienating and disenchanting mechanisms as seen by
Harvey in the anonymous and passive culture that forms American society
today. In a lecture he held for the Cooper Union in New York City on April
25, 2002, he phrases the general unease as follows:
America is now wealthier than at any other time in its history, yet all
around us and within us a feeling of lurking anomie persists. Like
that scratchy sensation at the back of your throat, that shudder
down your spine when feel the flu coming on, and symptoms of this
deep unease pervade our society. The spread of materialistic values
has contributed to a moral coarsening and a growing cynicism in our
country. Within a manipulative world all motives seem venal, all
efforts illusory. But at a deeper level, it is the commodifying of
imagination itself, the moral passivity, the social isolation, the angst
that is generated by living in a solipsistic world of fraudulent
satisfactions that is producing the greatest evil. (Harvey 2002)
According to Harvey, Burning Man hereby poses some deep and drastic
therapy to break this spell; to reestablish contact with one’s self, to reinvent
a public world; to connect again to the natural world of vital need; and to
really feel part of a community. And it is no longer contained to the dusty
limits of the festival area but seeping out into everyday life and society at
large. Nowadays, there is talk about being Rome to the colonies, but we
have to remember that, like Rome, Burning Man’s ‘export model’ was not
built in one day. Before becoming a culture within the common structure, or
a structure within the common culture if you like, I think that Burning Man
was more oriented towards escaping society, or at least towards countering
perceived ills in this society. A society that is said to be culturally
exhausted, and for which Burning Man poses an antidote in the form of
immediate experience and radical self-expression – of participation instead
of passive consumption.
Through the mob incident, an essential and valuable lesson was learnt:
people need to have something to do together in order for them to form a
community. This kind of shared action, or participation, was exactly what
28
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

was lacking in contemporary American society, at least according to them for palpable things and real experience. Gnawed by an
Harvey. At another lecture Harvey delivered, in the year 2000 at the Walker incessant appetite, a boundless hunger for spectacle and its
Art Center in Minneapolis, he blamed this perceived deficiency in great part ambiguous promise of satisfaction, they endure this vicarious state
on the omnipresence of television in the American social landscape, and the from day to day, from year to year, now throughout entire lifetimes,
numbness, isolation and alienation it would bring. In turn, I extend this to in a state of isolation from the sunlit world and from one another.
include ideas about Guy Debord and the society of the spectacle. For me,
For Harvey, television offers spectacle but no participation, images but no
they both view today’s society to be deficient because of a similar axis of
real experience; a pseudo life that holds no true connection to actual life,
evil, namely the commodification of culture.
and which can never truly satisfy the craving it creates. And as the degree to
which people exchange television watching for real experiences in their
lives increases, so too does the level of alienation from this life. Seeing that
Harvey mostly sees television watching to be a solitary act, he additionally
concludes that people are alienating from each other.
Harvey’s argument rings with existing theoretical analyses on how
industrial society, with the separation of leisure from work, and
subsequently the passive spectacles and hollow entertainment in the first
sphere, would somehow be less real and experiential than pre-industrial
society. As I have already shown in the previous chapter when discussing
the Situationist Movement, the theorist that would truly fuel this discussion
was Guy Debord, mostly through his widely read anti-capitalist rant The
Society of the Spectacle (1967), which in turn was heavily based on ideas
from Henri Lefebvre on the alienation of work and commodity fetishism,36
and Jean Baudrillard on the concept of hyperreality.
In my opinion, what Debord – and Harvey - perceive to happen around
them can be described, in general terms, as a process of ‘cultural
exhaustion.’ With the risk of labeling things in un-nuanced black and white,
and in highly attested criteria, I think this view of contemporary life as
being culturally exhausted is an element that - to a certain extent -
characterizes so called ‘postmodern’ thought, and as such is viewed as an
outcome of modernism’s mass culture and individualism. It is a view based
on the dearth of access to cultural production in a social context, and it is
typified by a passive spectatorship instead of a constructive participation in
this culture.
The result of this can be seen as two folded. On the one hand it implies
that the commoditization of culture, with its constant flashy images and
sensory stimulation, exhausts the meaning and usefulness of cultural
production the moment it emerges, a kind of marketplace of symbols for
sale, and as such results in feelings of anomie, in-authenticity, and
meaninglessness.

The Society of the Spectacle

Larry Harvey, born in 1948, grew up in a time in which television would
begin to take an ever greater place in the life of Americans. Much has been
said about how this new up- and coming medium altered relations,
perception, and ultimately society itself,35 and Harvey (2000) has certainly
expressed his share:
Like those famous prisoner’s in Plato’s cave, these [television 36 Commodity Fetishism is a combination of terms first used by Marx. The best explanation
watching] internees are given only spectral shadows to experience. of it that I have found up to date, is made by Leah Hager Cohen: “This tendency to regard
They stare steadily at entertaining images and by degrees mistake objects as though their essence and their monetary worth were one and the same is
sometimes called commodity fetishism. A commodity is a thing with a price. A fetish is a
thing with a spirit. Commodity fetishism is the habit of perceiving an object’s price as
35The long, long list of such theorists would surely include McLuhan (1964), Debord (1967), something intrinsic to and fixed within that object, something emanating directly and vitally
Williams (1974), Mander (1978), Baudrillard (1984), Fiske (1987), Morley (1992), Smith from that object’s core, rather than as the end result of a history of people and their labor”
(1998), and Bourdieu (1998). (Cohen 1996:11).
29

On the other hand, it implies a certain degree of physical and emotional
exhaustion, an ailment of ‘pseudo’-cultural fatigue, that is, too much
simulation of culture. It basically says that when culture is merely
consumed rather than created, there is nothing there of sustenance, no
construction, no renewal, no replenishment, and no wonder at the world.
Much like the alienation of ‘labor’ from ‘product’ that Marx talked about,
cultural exhaustion implies an alienation of ‘life’ from ‘culture’, and leaves
man feeling alienated from himself, others and existence.
Because culture is all around us; because it feels so familiar and
pervasive, locating what Carol Ehrlich calls ‘the tormentor’ becomes
increasingly hard:
Within life as spectacle, the stage is set, the action unfolds; people
applaud when they think they are happy, yawn when they think they
are bored, but they cannot leave the show, because there is no world
outside the theater for them to go to. (Ehrlich 1979:275)
Burning Man does offer a place outside the theater for people to go; it
proposes an antidote in the form of, among others, non-spectatorship; a
spectacular ‘non-spectacle.’ I think that this is why the punk tenets of ‘make
your own show’ and ‘Do It Yourself’ became so important for Harvey and
his early initiators. It was Doyle who stated that the spectacle’s “hegemonic
forces keep consumer-spectators enthralled and politically inert” (Doyle
1997:149), but if one is making one’s own show, then, instead of passively
-2- Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob
consuming the spectacle, that person takes his or her own vision and
projects it onto the world with the notion that he or she can change it. On
Burning Man, people are actually creating ‘spectacles,’ together, instead of
merely consuming them. Connectivity is often the outcome
Culture and meaning should be something we create through our
interactions with one another as we take part in the shared life of a
community. But modern society discourages active participation and
encourages us to be passive consumers. Instead of a community,
we’ve become a mass. As a mass, we don't participate in culture, we
consume it. We live together in isolated stalls. The context of
community, the vital interplay of human beings, has been forgotten.
What we consume has no inherent meaning or transcendent value to
us. It is no surprise we thirst for thrills. Consumption doesn’t lead to
satisfaction, only more consumption. If we’re to break this cycle, we
must somehow reclaim community and create culture out of that
experience.37
Culture is created through the experience of community, and community in
turn is experienced through participation. Both as incentive and result, the
self-maintaining spell of the society of the spectacle is – temporarily at least
- broken or reversed.
To Participate or Not to Participate
To counter the society of the spectacle, or more in general the society of
spectating, the first key value on Burning Man started to take shape as the
injunction to participate in some way, with the corollary that there should
be no spectators. Simply put, this meant that everyone in attendance was -
and is - accountable for making some kind of positive contribution to the
collective experience. It is a form of participation that is blatantly
egalitarian: anyone can do it. As Burning Man’s official newspaper the
‘Black Rock Gazette’ advises first timers: “Do something. Do anything. Your
participation makes the event. Be spontaneous, silly, anarchic, igneous or
rehearsed. As long as you harm no others, nor the playa, your creative
actions enhance the happenings.” 38
In Burning Man’s early years; those beach years around which this
chapter evolves, it was rather easy and clear cut how to participate. Friends
told friends who told friends that there was a wooden Man that needed to
be made, transported, assembled, erected, and set aflame. There were flyers
that had to be printed and distributed, maybe some authorities that needed
to be appeased, and a beach that needed post-burn cleaning. Nowadays
though, as we shall find out in the next part of this thesis, Burning Man truly
became a city ‘that never sleeps.’ Even though ‘no-spectators’ was the first
tenet learned, and it was learned through the first years on Baker’s Beach, it
would only really come to serve its purpose when Burning Man moved out
of town, into a hash desert where it would become a several day event. At
the moment, for its one-week existence in that desert, there are so
overwhelmingly many things to see and do that if you wanted to experience
them all, a whole year would probably not even be long enough. And, for
the really mind-boggling part, everything is there because participants put
it there and make it happen.
Try to imagine what a festival would look like when there is no
organization to provide the show. Then imagine that this festival is also a
city, with a highly heterogeneous crowd and preferences. Then imagine that
this event is actually taking place in one of the world’s most inhospitable
settings, and that there will be nothing for sale, except coffee and ice. If you
37 In the 1993 newsletter of the Burning Man Project on:
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1995/21/wray.html, accessed June 14th 2005.
38 From the 2005’s Black Rock Gazette’s Gate Issue.
30
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

have imagined all this, then imagine how I felt when I received a thirty-
seven page booklet upon entering this strange place, stating all the
activities and services and sights throughout the week – alphabetically; day
by day; hour by hour, with a list that went on and on and on.

If you can imagine this, then you can imagine how extremely radical the
concept of participation is at Burning Man. It is an alienating concept when
compared to ‘normal,’ regular well-known Dutch festivals, such as
Lowlands, Oerol or Pinkpop. Such festivals would be unthinkable without
paid or professional or booked performers entertaining those who have
come to see them. Burning Man, on the other hand, features neither rock
stars nor any other kind of marketable celebrity. On the contrary, the stars
are the participants. They do not pay to watch a show; they pay to be the
show. Non-spectatorship is not only thinkable; it is actively taking place
year after year. As Burning Man participant Max phrased it:
I use to play sometimes you know, before an audience, but so often
people just stare at you. Here, the ‘no spectators’ rule works brilliant,
clearly borne of a generation who’ve finally realized that rock
concerts are only as fun as the audience. In Black Rock City, what
you’ve got is all the fixings of a weeklong rock festival - light shows,
music, intoxicants and crowds - with only the infrequent appearance
of an actual band. The audience has to entertain itself, and guess
what? It blows your average stadium gig out of the water. Pink Floyd Logically, from a few people gathering on a beach to an ephemeral
only wishes they could tour a show like this. (Max, interview municipality in a desert: as Black Rock City continued to grow, the rule of
September 22nd 2005) non-spectatorship became ever more urgent. I have already shown how
those watching the burn of the Man turned into a dissociated mob; the exact
Nowadays, the injunction to participate is stretched to include all facets of
opposite of community, but when Burning Man became a several day event
participation normal in any city. In concrete form, this includes, though is
characterized by a high level of ‘free expression’ and tantamount naked or
certainly not limited to, pizza deliverers, masseurs, rangers, hairdressers,
else what bizarre looking people, not to participate became even more of a
newspaper editors, seamstresses, bartenders, lamp lighters, musicians,
discrepancy towards the community. For although the specific means or
beauty pageant contestants, cooks, clowns, and even the occasional
manner of participation is theoretically limitless, entirely up to the
anthropologist-to-be. The city would literally not exist without its
individual and has changed through time, nòt to participate is very much
volunteerism and participation. For while a citizen of Black Rock City, you
frowned upon and actively discouraged by the rest of the community as it
are also the work in process. As T.S. Eliot would have it, you are “the music
disrupts that which makes the community whole. As the San Francisco
while the music lasts”39 or, in Rilke’s more emphatic formulation, “a
Chronicle puts it: “At Burning Man, the annual art carnival in the Black Rock
resonant glass that shatters while it is ringing.”40 You are what makes the
Desert of Nevada, strange behaviors are not just tolerated, they’re
bridge sway, but also what keeps it together.
encouraged. Voyeurism, however, is not one of them.”41
39In: The Dry Salvages (1945), the third part of Elliot’s poem Four Quartets.
40The full sentence would be: “Among the fleeting, in the realm of declination, be a resonant
glass that shatters while it is ringing”. From Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus by 41Slow Burn at Burning Man -- Too Many Gawkers by James Sullivan, Thursday, August 31,
Rainer Maria Rilke (1975). 2000.
31
 -2- Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob

Of course, everyone for the weekend of the burn has become impossible. Marian Goodell,
who has ever been to Burning Man’s ‘mistress of communication’ says that the decision to abolish
Burning Man has once walkup tickets for the last four days “was because we wanted to discourage
been a newbie, a ‘first- people making last-minute, on the whim, decision making. We implemented
timer’ and thus most the policy to try and reduce the ‘looky-loo’ factor” (conversation at the
likely to have office, July 8th 2005).
experienced feeling Additionally, Burners are forever encouraged to educate those not
entirely overwhelmed: following the rules or guide-lines laid out. It being Burning Man, the way
trying hard to process towards such education is often interpreted in funny ways. Like by the
everything happening ‘Yahoo Education Project,’ who make the self-proclaimed “number one ‘zine
around you makes in Black Rock City” called How to get laid at Burning Man.
participating in any It is our mission, in the tradition of great satirists like Jonathan Swift
constructive sense the who coined the name ‘Yahoo’, to use humor and satire to inform and
last thing on your mind. influence some of the more vapid and insensitive Yahoos who attend
According to Rico Gagliano, as you first enter Burning Man, you will Burning Man. They are usually first timers, fresh from the burbs and the
inevitable be a tourist: malls who have never encountered the concept of radical participation,
free expression or anything truly alternative.43
In any case, in the midst of that first stroll through Black Rock, is
when the typical novice hits the most difficult level of enculturation -
the shocking realization that he or she is a tourist. Indeed, the
festival’s slogan is ‘no spectators,’ but after about an hour of gawking
at the sights, there’s no denying that a spectator is exactly what you
are. Which places you almost at the bottom of the unofficial Burning
Man pecking order, ranking just slightly above journalists, who are
identified with numbered eyeball stickers and only barely tolerated.42
To Rico, the feeling of humility that thus arises is needed to adjust to a new
frame of mind, in which your ‘freaky’ nature alone will not let you stand out,
but where participation will. It will show you that if you really want to be
part of the community, you have to do so on the community’s terms: by
participating and actively contributing to the experience.
If you decide not to participate, or maybe not even decide but simply do
not see the need, according to the Burning Man argot you are engaged in
the passive act of voyeurism, lurking, gawking, spectating, or on-looking.
You yourself will irrevocably be someone who ‘doesn’t get it.’ My interview
notes are full with references to such characters, for instance by Justin, who
categorized them in yahoos and tourists:
Yahoos, you know, the frat boys, are those thick wankers who come
to the event thinking it will be a cross between a tailgate party and a
Girls Gone Wild video. They just want to drink beer, see some naked
chicks and make fun of all the weird people. They typically only
attend the final weekend of the event. Tourists, on the other hand,
are those lame asses who make little effort to interact with anything
going on at the event or contribute anything. You see them spending
most of their time in an RV, with occasional trips to the ‘big’ pieces of
art located between center camp and the man. They dress the same
as they would staying at a roadside campground anywhere else in
the country. They look at the weird stuff, take pictures, then go back
to the safe air-conditioned environment of their RV. They are
considered to be slightly less evil than the Yahoos, but are still not
exactly appreciated. (Justin, interview July 28th 2005)
Burners have often told me how important they thought it was to keep the
levels of those not-participating low, or else run the risk of ‘being run over’
and thus loose the event as it is now. To minimize the risk of people coming
on a whim and not putting any effort into their stay and level of
participation, the organization now sells tickets more and more expensive
as the event draws to a close. Also, gates close on Thursday, so entering just
43Digital version of the magazine on: http://www.yahoopamphlet.com/, accessed January
42 On: http://home.pacbell.net/one-11/BurningEssay98.html, accessed January 3rd 2006. 23rd 2006.
32
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
Obviously, in reality there is no possibility of checking one’s level of
spectating versus one’s level of participating, and there is always the
warning ‘not to be a participation snob:’ when someone does not run
around in a sexy self-made elf suit interpreting erotic tarot cards for you,
that does not mean that that person has not just helped building half the
city, for instance. From the 2005 ‘guidelines to the event’ print:
Ours is a society of activists. When we see a job that needs to be done,
we are inclined to roll up our sleeves and pitch in. Keep this in mind:
there is no ‘they’, only ‘us’. Burning Man is a 100% participant funded
and staffed event. Sadly, there are always a few people who just don't
get it. These folks believe that the mystical ‘they’ will appear to
provide for their needs and clean up their mess. Help us instruct
them. If you see someone acting irresponsibly, introduce yourself and
speak up. Also, don't be a ‘participation snob’. Just because someone
isn't costumed or visibly participating doesn't mean they aren't
contributing.
Participation provides the community with a necessary tool for in- and
exclusion, and helps to define its boundaries. Through participation,
members become the authorities of their own community, something that
Muniz and O’Guinn, writing on contemporary communities, describe as
‘legitimating:’ “the process whereby members of the community
differentiate between true members of the community and those who are
not, or who occupy a more marginal space” (Muniz and O’guinn 2001:9). It
is an important process as it conveys outsider status to those who are
deemed unworthy – spectators and the kind who have not created anything
for the community.
Additionally, in an event
where everyone is asked to
create, and recreate
themselves, and where social
divisions from the outside
world are suspended or
overthrown, participation
becomes the currency through
which recognition can be
earned, and which thus
creates some sort of hierarchy
in the intended egalitarian
community of Burners. Unlike
Durkheim saw in
effervescence, Turner in
communitas and Maffesoli in
the orgiastic, members of the Burning Man community are neither
homogeneous nor, in practice, completely egalitarian. From their comments
to me, people indicated that they were constantly judging others in terms of
the degree of their participation in the event, and I sometimes even found
myself guilty of just such behavior, probing others in conversation about
their levels of ‘participation.’ It might be a more constructive way to classify
community members than one based on bank account or class, but it does
show that classification and ranking are still in order, both within the
community as towards the ‘outsiders.’ As Falassi states on hierarchy
between the allegedly equal and undifferentiated festival crowd: “By
singling out its most outstanding members, the group implicitly affirms
some of its most important values” (Falassi 1987:5). As such, I think
participation became the first essential part of Burning Man’s sociality,
created precisely because it would generate, and delineate, the Burners
community, and literally make the event work.
33
The Spectacle of the Man
Of course, the clever irony is that the greatest communal act on Burning
Man; the actual burn of the Man, is a spectacle par excellence. It always has
been, already on the beach, but especially in the desert it became
sensational, with hundreds of fire dancers swirling and fireworks
exploding, and everyone watching in awe. If ever there was a spectacle that
deserves the adjective ‘spectacular’, this must be it. So why would this
particular spectacle not separate its viewers from one another and the
material world, as we have seen Debord predict?
In the old days, making and erecting the Man was all done by friends
and friends of friends and they had invested something in the spectacle that
was to ensue. Back then, the whole community cooperated in making their
common symbol. The mob incident shows that the ratio of those
participating was subordinated by those who had done nothing, and thus
invested nothing. When Burning Man moved into the hash desert
environment, participation in the small group of attendees was not only
encouraged; in some basic sense it became inescapable and purely a matter
of survival. And these days, with Burning Man grown into the fully
functional ephemeral city it is, there is a greater call for participation than
ever - but the concrete burn of the Man does not necessarily require that
same growing demand. These days, instead of being in the hands of the
whole community, the responsibilities have been transferred to a team of
experts and representatives, pretty much what Roszak (1969) saw
happening for all matters of the technocratic society.
Practically, it means that the by now 50-foot tall Man is not lifted into
place anymore by a long rope and lots of human effort, but by immense
cranes and trucks. Today, it stands atop a pedestal where no one can even
touch it, let alone torch it by either using a lighter or by being alight one’s
self and then touching it, as happened in the old days. Admittedly, there is
still a whole crew of carpenters busy for months with its creation,
supplemented on the playa by a small army of pyrotechnics for the
placement of fireworks inside, and the combustion is initiated by an
impressive assembly of carefully choreographed fire performances at its
base, but that still means there will be over 30.000 people just ‘watching
the show.’ There will be a crowd made up of gawkers, spectators, voyeurs,
on-lookers: all those curse words that are normally not considered
acceptable Burning Man behavior.
First, in defense of the Man, I think that it very much serves a purpose
in showing those assembled to watch it burn a common symbol and act,
which might even be more powerfully experienced because of its
spectacular nature. On the Sunday after the burn, I talk to Joy about how he
she experienced it. This is what she said:
 -2- Every One of Them: Baker Beach, a Man, and a Mob

I'm sure it's annoying to hear all this talk of community and shared Burning Man as a whole is a veritable tar-baby of interpretation.
experience, but last night everyone was rooting for the same thing. Representing nothing, the Man becomes tabula rasa:45 any meaning may be
‘Have a good burn,’ people would say. As simple as that: have a good projected onto him. It is a viewpoint that seems to be one of the few that
burn. Maybe it's not much different than saying ‘Happy New Year,’ nearly all Burning Man attendees can actually agree upon.
but the fact that you had made it through this hellish week, and the On an allegoric level, I think that the burn of the Man shows the
fact that you were miles and miles from the comforts of this world, community not to cling on to any symbol or art project or icon, but to let go.
and the fact that so many thousands of other people were willing to Through the annihilation of the material there is a chance for renewal, so
do the same crazy thing, well, it made you feel like you belonged. the final act of destruction also becomes catharsis: an act of transformation.
As Snohomish puts it in an interview:
So to Joy, precisely because the whole event has already implied
participation, nearly unavoidable because of the location, this final act only After all my years at Burning Man, still now, as the procession starts,
confirmed the feelings of belonging she had build up during the week. the circle forms, and the man ignites, I experience something
The night of the burn becomes the sum of everyone’s individual personal, something new to myself, something I’ve never felt before.
experience. In this sense, like Joy also expressed, it does not stand on its It’s an epiphany, it’s primal, it’s newborn. It’s completely individual
own: the context is made by the weeklong event that Burning Man and it gives me great faith in the future and what I can become. By
eventually became. In that setting, the participation I watched all around destroying the ego, I become a better man. I liken it to the making of
me was no longer contained to ‘just’ making the art of the common symbol; wine, where grapes have to be crushed in order to be fermented.
it got extended to include the making of the whole city, for, as I will argue (Snohomish, interview April 4th, 2004)
further on, the whole city became a form of art. On the final night, when the
When the Man is set alight on the Saturday night, all in all I think that it is a
Man meets its immanent doom, its burn might not be all that participatory,
spectacle that is more likely to remind those watching that they need to let
but everything around it certainly has. In this sense, the spectacle of the
go of the material world in order to gain reality, than to gain material by
burn has just been the proverbial icing on the communal cake of Burning
letting go of the real world.
Man; the final ritual of what has become a community through
participation. As Cosmo puts it:
It’s the climax of a thing that’s impressed you all week - OK, this has
been so incredibly awesome and now we’re going to burn it together.
But it’s a small part of the event. For people who have gone for a
while - this year will be my 7th - the burning of the man is a footnote
to the event. It’s really all the stuff that happens before and after that
makes the event worthwhile. (Cosmo, interview July 19th 2005)
In my personal view, another thing that would go against the Man-as-
spectacle imputation is the fact that this particular spectacle is kept without
any commentary or assigned meaning - except that which participants
bring to it. Even though Burning Man is obviously Harvey’s vision and life-
mission, much to his credit he has always rejected the mantle of cult leader,
or personality cultist; instead emphasizing at every turn the Do It Yourself/
collaborative nature of the Burning Man community. True, as I will show
later on, in the course of Burning Man’s existence rules did get formulated,
but within this structure there is still no common creed, no coercive
demands or unified projection. The sheer hybrid strangeness and polyglot
weirdness of the participants and performances contradict and challenge
one another, and for one week this particular stretch of desert becomes a
contest of meanings. Seen like this, the only definitive meaning of the Man is
that there is no definitive meaning to the Man.44 In fact, Harvey is quite
proud of the fact that the Man as a central symbol would be enigmatic:
We never say what the Man means. He's just there to provide a
unified focus for the community. It could become a wonderfully
coercive tool politically - like, ‘The Man doesn't like that, the Man
says...’ We could make the Man The Man, right? But he stands beyond
the social circle, something that unifies everyone. (in Doherty 2000)

44In an interview Larry Harvey stated that because ‘we’ (being him and Jerry James) would
not give the media an initial sound bite as to the why of the event, “the postmodern nihilist
sector of the community developed the notion that since we refused to explain ourselves, by
extension we refused meaning. The refusal of meaning, the postmodern attitude, is
something that I hate. We didn’t ever say that. What we still say is that you have to achieve it. 45‘Tabula rasa’ meaning a smoothed tablet; hence, figuratively, the mind in its earliest state,
You have to participate.” (on: http://www. catalystmagazine.net/issues/story.cfm?story= before receiving impressions from without; - a term used by Hobbes, Locke, and others, in
accessed October 21, 2006) I personally do not think that saying that there would not be one maintaining a theory opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas. From:
single meaning to the event means that there would be no meaning at all to the event… http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Tabula, accessed March 2nd 2007.
34
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

In the End
In this chapter, we have seen how a few friends built and burned a wooden
effigy on a public beach, and how a community formed around it through
interaction and participation. During Burning Man’s first toddler years, this
community was mostly based on the simple and above all practical acts of
building, transporting, assembling and raising the Man by ropes. These acts
required people to act together; to perform a cooperative action, and that
action defined their being-together. As the crowd continued to grow, not
everybody would, and could, participate in these communal acts anymore.
So even if the Man held any meaning to its constructors and destructors
because they had either worked with it or aided his imminent end - it
became mere hollow entertainment, a spectacle to consume, to the other
on-lookers. The group that now formed around the Man was neither linked
through its shared sociality nor its common sensibility. As Maffesoli would
have it, there was no group aesthetic, no common ethic, and no underlying
custom. There was no sociality, no loyalty, and thus no community
(Maffesoli 1996:18-20).
The year 1990 made it all too clear that Burning Man in its current form
had to change if it was to survive. As the Man was taken to storage, I do not
think anyone could have anticipated the fact that, sixteen years later, nearly
40.000 people would be eagerly anticipating its burn again. This time, in my
opinion at least, there would be a very strong-shared sensibility binding the
group, which in a process of feedback came out of the social body of the
Man and determined it in return. The no-spectator rule was the first, crucial
part of Burning Man’s sociality, and it would not be the last. For as Burning
Man continued to grow, tools to define the boundaries of the community
would become increasingly important, and additional rules would be
formulated to the same effect. With friends it is one thing to join hands in
one grand participatory project – it is a different thing altogether to do so
with a highly heterogeneous bunch of strangers who quite literally live in a
city.
All in all, the fact that people who did not necessarily knew each other
responded to that first burn by participating, and through that participation
connected, was essential to the repetition of the ritual. The fact that
hundreds of people who had not in the least bit participated in the
existence of the fourth Man turned into a disassociated mob was even more
significant, as it would signal another phase of Burning Man’s still rather
countercultural early beginnings. For in 1990, after the Man was taken
safely to storage, the Cacophony Society was there to make sure that it
would burn after all. This time, it would not burn in San Francisco though.
This time around, it would burn in The Zone.

35
 -3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.

“Did you get a head count?” John asked me.

-3- “Yes, I counted eighty-nine. More than I expected.”
“Good. I counted eighty-nine, too. We want to make sure that we leave with as

Everything Goes: many people as we came. You know what I mean.”

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“It’s the best idea we ever had!” John laughed maniacally and slapped the side
the Black Rock Desert as of the truck.
We all gossiped and dreamed, driving through the foothills of the Sierras after

T.A.Z. midnight. Around us, the black forest stood in silhouette against the dark gray
sky, surreal and enveloping. Sometimes we rode in silence, hearing only the
chunk-chunk of the road beneath our tires, and seeing, in our minds’ eyes, the
Black Rock ahead.
From Paul Segal’s memoirs:
The caravan of ill-assorted vehicles assembled at the baseball diamond in “This is the only place I’ve ever been,” I said, “Where there was absolutely
Golden Gate Park as a late-summer dusk promised a fine night for entering nothing.”
the unknown. Our ringleader, John Law, would drive the huge Ryder truck “Four hundred square miles of absolutely nothing. Not a pebble, or a drop of
always rented for our larger absurdist escapades. It would be hours before water, weed or a cactus. No wildlife. The biggest nothing in North America,”
we’d actually get into the vehicles and begin. As always, when a Cacophony my friend said gleefully. “And almost absolutely flat.”
Society Zone Trip called adventurers to leave San Francisco, the stragglers “And my favorite part, not a single bug.”
came late, and the last-minute preparations detained us further. The caravan wobbled over the edge of the road, following the tire tracks
heading to our destination. As we sailed along the desert floor, kicking up
This Zone Trip was different from most; usually, when a Cacophony member
gigantic flumes of dust behind us, Michael Michael, the slim, silver-haired
proposed an excursion of this kind, the participants had no idea where they
Texan who would become the playa’s Danger Ranger, pulled up beside us.
would be spending the weekend. This was the element we liked best, the
“Stop!” he yelled through his open window.
surprise of going somewhere completely unexpected. We might find ourselves
on a tour of the mid-California missions, or at a convention of spiritualists We stopped and got out of our vehicles. Michael took a stick out of his car and
who received their messages from other planets. Wherever we went, that walked along, marking a long, straight line on the playa floor. This was an old
place was the weekend’s Zone of the Unknown. This time, everyone needed to Cacophony tradition of entry into an unknown territory. When the line was
know in advance; our destination was wild terrain, where there would be no long enough to accommodate everyone, eighty-nine people joined hands, and
food or water, and the weather could be blisteringly hot or miserably cold as one, stepped across the line and into The Zone.46
within a single day. Unlike most Zone Trips, this one would take us beyond
easy grasp of a Motel Six, restaurants or corner stores, to Nevada’s Black Rock
Desert. What we didn’t know, on that balmy night in 1990, was what we
would make of this weekend.
Most of our Cacophony exploits did not take up an entire weekend, but just a
few hours. We would do midnight walking tours of the Oakland storm drains,
in full formal dress and hip waders, write a novel in the fashion of the
Exquisite Corpse, play midnight urban golf, read from our favorite works of
fiction by candlelight during a midnight stroll through the park, climb bridges
or have cocktails in some urban wasteland. Most of the events were purely for
amusement, but one of them, my own event, gathered a group of 40 people
together to read Proust.
This time, our joint adventure had a purpose. In the back of the 30-foot long
Ryder truck, the disassembled figure of a man, with a wooden exoskeleton and
a Japanese lantern head, awaited its demise at the desert. When the figure
was assembled, it towered to 40 feet above the ground. It would rise in the
sublime emptiness of the Black Rock, and stand for two days. On the third day,
at nightfall, it would be burned.
We warned everyone to bring at least four gallons of water, and enough food
for four days. We made lists of essentials, like sleeping bags, tents, head A Zone Trip is the Cacophony’s term for out-of-town group excursions, and
covering, garments for all weather, sunscreen, and beer. We knew in advance already for some time they had wanted to put this enormous flat plane in
that the difficulty of this trip would limit the number of people willing to go. Nevada to its use: the Black Rock Desert. Cacophonist John Law – who had
At the Black Rock Desert, a person could walk endlessly without seeing argued with Larry Harvey in favor of burning the Man that faithful last time
anything or anyone, but after a day without water, they would simply die. on Baker Beach – had been on the desert plane before to attend a rather
By 11 o’clock that night, at the baseball pitch in the park, the last trips to the unorthodox croquet game, involving a giant ball and huge hoops with
all-night Walgreen’s had been made. John and I conferred as the unexpectedly
large group climbed into their questionably road-worthy vehicles.
46On: http://laughingsquid.com/bad-day-at-black-rock-cacophony-society-zone-trip-4/,
accessed May 22nd, 2006.
36
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

trucks used as mallets. He thought it would be the perfect desolate location Over the next few years, this particular Cacophonic Zone would evolve
for a Zone Trip, and everyone immediately agreed. How could they not? By into an enclave of desert dwellers; cultural outlaws, rebels, adventurers,
its very nature the Black Rock Desert forms a place that seems dedicated anarchists, and artists. Those first years in the desert, it was as much about
solely to the participatory project, with no outside interference or even creating a mini kind of civilization isolated from the ‘default’ world as it was
context to distract. Practically, it was a place where the man could burn about the unbridled freedom to do whatever-the-hell you wanted in a
without presenting a fire hazard. magically unsupervised land. In this sense, many have likened the Zone to
On Baker’s Beach, the Man had traditionally burned during the summer what Hakim Bey calls a TAZ or temporary autonomous zone: a temporarily
solstice. But the adventures lying ahead in the desert were beckoning, and liberated area free from the forces of societal control and repression. In this
to wait for a whole year suddenly seemed incongruent with the Cacophonic chapter, I will outline Bey’s argument and see if indeed Burning Man might
spirit of doing. So instead, the excited bunch settled on the Labor Day fit his anarchic description. I will also discuss why, and how, Burning Man’s
weekend, that year from the first till the third of September. Thus it was specific kind of anarchy, or adolescence, eventually ended, and why Burning
that Rough Draft No. 48, the September 1990 edition of the ‘Official Organ Man had to grow up. But first, I want to have a look at the exact location,
of the SF Cacophony Society,’ contained the following listing: because Burning Man would definitely not be the Burning Man I stumbled
upon if it was not for this start expanse of nothingness.
Bad Day at Black Rock (Zone Trip #4)
An established Cacophony tradition, the Zone Trip is an extended
event that takes us outside of our local area of time and place. On this
particular expedition, we shall travel to a vast, desolate, white
expanse stretching onward to the horizon in all directions. A place
where you could gain nothing or lose everything and no one would
ever know. A place well-beyond that which you think you understand.
We will be accompanied by the Burning Man, a 40 ft tall wooden icon
which will travel with us into the Zone and there meet with destiny.
This excursion is an opportunity to leave your old self and be reborn
through the cleansing fires of the trackless, pure desert.

A new-found Location
Welcome to hell. It’s wedged into a forgotten corner of the Great Basin, not
far from oozing nuclear waste dumps and military target ranges. A stark and
unforgiving site, the Black Rock Desert affords a unique sensation of
unbounded space, not to mention punishing heat, harsh winds, occasional
blizzards of thick whitish dust, unnerving thunderstorms, and brief, torrential
rains. It's here that Black Rock City flits across a parched expanse of cracked
alkali. (Ferranto 2000)
The year 1990 equaled both a beginning and an end for Burning Man.
Obviously it was the end of its flaming existence on Baker Beach; the end of
‘easy for all entertainment,’ and certainly the end to it possibly being ‘just a
spectacle.’ When the event crossed into the desert, its surroundings became
so harsh that no one could merely just relax and watch the show, not even if
one wanted to. The move to Nevada ushered in a new era, and a necessarily
new outlook on everything this wooden Man would represent. In a way
maybe it was the move into the desert that manifested the blueprint of
Burning Man’s true countercultural foundation. For those willing to cross
into the Zone did so often because of the need to create alternative spaces;
alternative ways of being felt lacking in convenient mainstream American
society. If ever there was a space in which societal structure could be
escaped and a new kind of anarchic society enacted, the Black Rock Desert
was it.

37
 -3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.

take the Twelve-mile. Another short drive will take you further into the
nothingness that is everywhere around you. And there, congratulations, you
will have reached your destiny. You have made it to Burning Man’s earthly
void. You are now in the Black Rock Desert, a.k.a. the playa.

It’s so Empty it’s Full

It is interesting for me to think about the first group of Cacophonists who
made the journey from San Francisco to Burning Man, fifteen years before I
would travel that same way. From experience, I know it is a maddening,
long, never-ending, crazy-gorgeous drive out to the Black Rock Desert,
where, except for the heat waved asphalt and occasional road sign, from
Reno onwards the barren environment must have looked roughly the same
to the first settlers heading West centuries ago. Not so for Reno itself
though, this crazy run-down version of Las Vegas where no road will take
you around – only through, in anticipation of an instant attraction to one of
its many casino’s. From Reno, you can either take the 1-80 freeway or the
445 surface road, each of which will deposit you on the narrow 447 surface
road: at least seventy miles of two-lane highway stretching toward Gerlach
– the tiny town closest to Burning Man.
All along the way are hills and
mountains, in various colors but
mostly wearing a faded brown and a
dusty, dry, withered yellow, dotted
with small clumps of grey scrub. They
do not loom, these bumps of the earth,
do not overwhelm, give no dizzying
titanic perspective, they just cradle,
infinite and indefinite. Once the 447
reaches the Pyramid Lake Indian
Reservation road, it rolls ninety degrees to the right in a roller-coaster rise.
The valley that once held ancient Lake Lahontan then spreads out around
you, and at this point you would not in the slightest bit be surprised to hear
the lonesome croak of a Pterosaur gliding overhead. Absurdly and
arbitrarily, a sign from the state of Nevada tells you that the scenic route
ends just at the beginning of one of the most picturesque stretches: the pale
and mysterious valley of the Great Basin.
The drive is long and there are few clues as to how far you have gone or
if you will ever end up anywhere but gliding on through the endless valley.
Hardly anyone will pass you in the other direction, and those few that do I think the Black Rock Desert, as a new, unique location to the visiting
will wave at you, and you ought to wave back. After dozens of gentle up- urbanites, proved crucial to the way the event came to be.47 In this strange
and-down sweeps up the road, when you have reached the point where no man’s land, everything imaginable suddenly turned possible:
most radio signals will not work anymore, you will see Gerlach with its first
(and last) store for many dozens of miles. As you slow down while driving 47To prove this point: last year, for a course the anthropology of the senses, I decided to use
through Gerlach’s main road, you take a right turn after the town is over Burning Man scholarly for the first time as the subject for my final essay. In order to answer
and drive on until you reach one of the playa’s navigable entrances, named the question of whether sensual relations equaled social relations at Burning Man, one of my
methods was a questionnaire on the Internet. From the 100+ people that responded, nearly
after the approximate number of miles it is past Gerlach. I do not know for 40% rated the specific place - the playa – as the number one factor for making Burning Man
sure which one the Cacophonists took, but nowadays it is recommended to most unique – next to the raves (2%); art (7%), and community (52%).
38
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

The Black Rock Desert, the site of Burning Man, may be regarded as The Black Rock Desert is a
an earthly void – a place so perfectly annihilating in its emptiness, hostile place for human beings.
that, properly speaking, it is no place at all. The 400 square miles The biggest problem lies in its
that comprise this high desert playa forms a tabula rasa, a vacant soil, which is made of acidic
tract of perspectiveless space. (Pendell 2006:7) alkaline minerals. In the
summer, when all the water has
The sublime emptiness of the desert raises the possibility of not just staging
long been evaporated from the
a spectacle, but creating a visionary reality. If ever there was an
ground, as soon as people step
archetypical playground secluded in time and space, “a temporary world
or move on the playa it liberates
within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart”
the alkaline and sends it upward
(Huizinga 1955:19), this must be the school example. By its very nature the
in big white clouds. Within
playa provides an altered state of existence that contrasts starkly with
seconds on the playa the dust
ordinary life. Having the festival there is conducive to powerful experiences
makes you appear as a creature
because it is imagined as a blank canvas, a frontier of possibilities and
no longer simply human, but
unrealized potential - “the vacant heart of the Wild West” as Burning Man’s
more of a playa-human chimera;
first entrance sign reads. Larry Harvey instructs festival-goers to “Imagine
laced with a new skin of pale
the land and the looming lakebed of the playa as a vast blank screen, a
chalky white settling and
limitless ground of being.”48 And Piss Clear, Black Rock City’s other
attaching and growing over you,
newspaper, reminds festival-goers: “all that lays before us is the wide open
whilst eating away your skin. It
playa floor. It is our palette and canvas, to create the world we can’t enjoy at
does not just take over your
home.”49
surface; your every breath takes
The Black Rock Desert
in an endless refilled air-and-
comprises the second largest
playa dust cocktail that invades your lungs and nasal passages. The finely
flat plane in North America,50
powdered dust seeps into everything and everyone; creating so called ‘dust
and is also one of the highest at
devils’ and ‘wipe-outs’ where it becomes impossible to see or even breathe.
an altitude of 3.848 feet (about
But is not just the omnipresence of the finely powdered alkaline that makes
1100 meters). It stretches on
living on the playa hard. For as the playa bestows you with dust, it takes
for about 110 km, and its width
water away.
ranges from a mere 8 km to
On a typical day, the sun is like a thumb pressing down on your eyes
just over 30. It measures well
with an insistent reminder that the heat and dryness are wicking water out
in excess of a half million acres,
of you almost as fast as you can drink it. And when the evening comes and
roughly nine times the size of
dusk settles in, temperatures can – and will - plunge about forty degrees
the entire city of San Francisco.
Celsius in less than half an hour, to reach near-freezing point for the
The Black Rock Desert Recreation Area Web Site reads: “Spectacular scenic
continuation of the long, long night. Torrential rainfall and intense storms
opportunities abound in one of the largest and flattest alkaline playas in the
can ravage the playa within seconds, transforming it into a huge muddy
United States. The Playa is a now-dry remnant of ancient Lake Lahontan.
centrifuge where everything that is not staked down with long rebar will be
Opportunities for solitude are considerable.”51
swept up as self-proclaimed offerings to the almighty weather gods. This is
Other than the nearby desert town of Gerlach with its 250 inhabitants
not the Garden of Eden where everything is lush and welcoming, this is
(“five bars and no churches”) and the endlessly stretching two-way asphalt
survival taken to its limits, and no S.A.S guide will give you an apt
lane that passes through, there is nothing human for as far as the eye can
description on how to conquer it.
see. Here you will not find water, plumbing, shade, nothing that lives, just
packed down alkali dust cracking of to every horizon; framed by nothing
but the curvature of the earth.52 Perhaps more than any other place in the
world, it invokes an idea of an eternal and immutable timelessness, seeming
to simultaneously exist at the moment before time began as well as after
the point that it ended.

48 On: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1997/97n_letter_sum_2.html,

accessed March 27th 2006.

49 In: Utopia-on-a-stick. By: Stewart McKenzie. Piss Clear 1998.
50 Only outdone by the Bonneville Salt Flats.
51 On: www.recreation.gov, accessed March 16th, 2005
52 Geologists and biologists would disagree with me here, and say that there are tons of life

forms on or above the playa, such as insects, reptiles, and birds - all getting their salts. I,
however, have never seen anything alive except for that species called human. On E-playa
(one of the biggest and most active mailing lists related to Burning Man), one of the
messages was about ‘birdwatching at the playa’, and it was initiated by a participant who
had apparently spotted a bird on the playa: “It seemed perfectly happy yet had a staggering
type walk, it tripped a couple of times. Seemed not afraid of us at all.” He was now
wondering if anyone else saw this bird as well or whether he had simply just hallucinated
the whole thing. A girl upon reading this posted a reply saying: “I never saw any birds at BM,
but that sounds like a LOT of humans I saw!” (http://eplaya.burningman.com/)
39

Yet, for most participants I spoke with, the playa is no Valley of Death,
but a place where ‘welcome home’ signs line the entrance, and indeed
reflect common sentiment - at least for this one week a year. Today, this so
called home represents a fully functional city; a constantly raging party, a
marvelous fecund arts festival and a gift-giving community all in one.
Today, it is filled with nearly forty thousand friendly strangers and
hundreds of things to do and see and experience twenty-four seven. In its
early years though, such was not the case. One can argue that there were
definitely seeds present, but if this was so, they were still deeply buried
under the acidic alkaline, with little incentive to sprout. During the first
year, the limited circle of Cacophonists out there would mostly talk and
read, and, if the heat or cold allowed it, sleep. They built shade structures –
which would often get blown away -, enjoyed the silence and stars that
were hardly ever more intense than in the desert, soaked in the nearby hot
springs,53 hosted one rather surreal tuxedo party, pulled a few ropes to
raise the Man, watched it burn, and that was mostly it.
Rituals worth Repeating
When talking to some of the people who were there during Burning Man’s
first couple of years at the Black Rock Desert, when hearing their fond
memories and enthusiasm, I find that the strangest thing is how… how un-
compelling it all sounds to me. I mean, a camping trip to this otherworldly
site of beautiful nothingness – beautiful but also brutal and punishing - was
probably worth doing and remembering, but why on earth go back? Why
keep going back, and telling everyone about it and persuading them to
come as well? Why preparing for it months ahead and spending an
enormous amount of time, energy, resources, and money doing so? Really,
what is it that makes this specific ritual a continuing one? And more in
general: at what point does any happening stop being ‘simple’
entertainment and starts to transform, bind, and give meaning; becomes
ritual?
Ritual and community appear to be inherently interconnected. We can
trace the balance between the two concepts throughout Burning Man’s
existence: the shared experience of ritual bringing forth community, and a
strong sense of community creating shared meaningful rituals. It is a
balance that is not lost on Harvey, and that, in my opinion at least, he has
53The hot springs, which are an easy drive or long walk away from the Burning Man site, are
no longer accessible during the event due to the big ecological pressure this would put on
their fragile ecosystem.
-3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.
continuously and deliberately directed. This was not always so, for, as
shown in the previous chapter, Burning Man started as a spontaneous
expression, a rather personal act that happened to take place on a public
beach. After that, almost in a naïve way, for the next four years the act gets
successively repeated, but any kind of balance or connection between the
ritual and the bigger part of the people got lost. Subsequently, during these
years, many of those who had come to watch the Man burn saw nothing but
a spectacle in it. To those onlookers, the ritual did not hold much meaning;
it was not transformational; there was no transcendental reference, and, as
they were not so much bounded to each other and to the common symbol, it
did not do much in the sense of creating a community of equals. The Man
was mere entertainment and when it did not deliver the promised
spectacle, the crowd turned into a mob of disassociated individuals: the
exact opposite of community.
In that sense, I think that it was more of an individual, liminoid
experience to those spectating. As Turner phrases it, whereas “the solitary
artist creates the liminoid phenomena, the collectivity experiences collective
liminal symbols (Turner 1982:52). And this is exactly what happened when
Burning Man moved to the desert, where the Cacophonic sense of
‘experiencing’ became a necessity as well as an incentive. Within this Zone
of experience - the ‘realm of pure possibility’ (Turner 1967a:97), it became
possible to strip the familiar of its certitude, transcend conventional
economics and politics, and/or explore social alternatives. With it, the
people around it could achieve an ineffable affinity, and a community, or
even communitas, started to take shape and form itself around the Man,
both literally and metaphorically. Although the ritual of the burn, unlike
most collective liminal symbols, is intentionally kept meaningless, I think it
does show the community a common, if enigmatic, point of reference, and
has thus became a solid part of Burning Man’s evolvement.
Throughout its existence, through the burn and numerous other rituals
that together make Burning Man, individual differences are overcome and
the unity of the community both stressed and defined. According to
Maffesoli, rites and rituals are necessary in our current time of the tribes
because it would remind the community that it is a whole: “At the same
time as the aspiration, the future and the ideal no longer serve as a glue to
hold society together, the ritual, by reinforcing the feeling of belonging, can
play this role and thus allow groups to exist” (Maffesoli 1996:140). Much
like Durkheim, Maffesoli sees ritual to surpass the individual monad and
strengthen the collective feeling, and to serve as an anamnesis of solidarity.
40
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
In Doherty’s book This is Burning Man (2004), John Law answers the
for me mysterious question as to why the group felt dedicated to doing
Burning Man again and again. In his memory, it was because of that which
he fondly remembers as the group ‘wow’:
There was this group awe of what we’d done. The synergy of the
place, the statue, and our isolation taken as a whole made us realize
we were doing something new. There was no imposed ritual or
meaning. We had backed into a new version of an induction ritual. By
having this shared experience, in this amazing place, it created a
unity among us that nothing else possibly could. We had this
continuous group ‘wow’. The words we used to describe it were all
monosyllabic – wow; cool; yeh. (Law in Doherty 2004:43)
Theoretically, it is this wow that Durkheim (1915) might have called
‘effervescence’; Turner (1967) ‘communitas’; Mauss (1903) the ‘dynamic
totality’; and Maffesoli (1993) the ‘orgiastic’: the supreme moment of the
solidarity of collective consciousness, manifested through the tangible
proximity and exaltation of the group. As Mauss so aptly describes, it is
“that one moment when the whole social body vibrates to the same chord”
(in Duvignaud 1976:14). In this momentum of intense participation,
individuals melt away: “They become, so to speak, the spokes of a single
wheel whose magical gyrations, dancing and singing, would appear to
constitute a perfect image” (Ibid.15). The experience of such a community
of equals and its creative effervescence binds people together as it allows
an individual to transcend him or herself and motive him or her into
collective action. Turner sees the liminal as a threshold; a moment betwixt
and between two stages in life. A ritual hereby is more than a mere moment
in which participants get carried away emotionally, only to be returned to
their original condition afterward. When effective rituals are enacted, they
carry the participants from here to there in such a way that they are unable
to return to square one. To enact any kind of rite is to perform, but to enact
ritual liminality is also to transform.
Indeed, many people I spoke with confided in me that the burn of the
Man exalted and transformed them, and quite plainly took them beyond
themselves. Laura, for example, opposed her what she referred to as
41
Burning Man’s ‘rite of passage experience’ to something so clearly lacking in
her everyday life:
In ancient times, we used to celebrate the holy cycles of life: harvest
time, our initiation into womanhood, the communion of loved ones.
Now, people just party every weekend. And this makes it insignificant
and trite and hollow. But Burning Man sort of gives the celebratory
feeling back. To me at least, it always feels like a rite of passage, as
close to a sacred marking as I can get. […] There, in the desert, I shed
my old skin. (Laura, interview July 28th 2005)
As an analytical tool, the Turnerian comparison of liminal ritual with a rite
of passage, and, in turn, Burning Man with a rite of passage as, for example,
done in the above quote by Laura can offer us valuable insights into the
impact of the event. Let me explain by quoting from an online blog posting I
stumbled upon after the 2005 event, in which a certain Cybele Knowles
reminisced how Burning Man had changed her life that year. Like Laura, she
associated Burning Man with a rite of passage, but not before first
explaining her vision on what would constitute such rite of passage - in
probably way too simplified terms for me to use personally in this writing:
Here's how a rite of passage works. It's the same the world over,
Ndembu, Trobriand and Kwakiutl. They take you away from your
ordinary life - your online banking, your myspace.com, your
commute. They bring you to a place set apart. They give you a new
name and they don't let you bathe. As the dirt rubs into your skin, you
return to the earth in a symbolic death. And in the words of Mircea
Eliade, a scholar with a poet's name, then comes ‘a time of marvels’.
Masked figures and sculptures, dancers. Grotesque or beautiful
beings that teach you the things you need to know. When you leave,
you are ready to be the next version of you.54
However, what would constitute that ‘next version of you’ forms a crucial
difference between traditional rites of passage and Burning Man’s festival
time. In the first you learn how to be a proper man or woman, husband or
wife, healer or shaman; you are emptied so that you may receive a new set
of social rules. This is why liminality tends to be ultimately eufunctional
even when seemingly ‘inversive’ for the working of the social structure
(Turner 1982:54). But at Burning Man, the transformation one undergoes is
often linked with a sense of social critique: a rejection of mainstream values
and one’s position in it. It is therefore more personal, and its results and
rules less defined.
According to Robert Kozinets, an ethnographer at Northwestern
University, “You don’t need to go to a rite of passage every year. Once you
go through it, it’s over. And really that model says you shouldn’t be selling
tickets to the same person twice” (Kozinets 2002:23). Although I
understand his point, I do not agree entirely. For it seems to me that repeat
practice can also mean perfection. In a way this difference with liminal
ritual harkens back to the same individualistic nature that prevented the
presence of any overarching sense of meaning or doctrine on Burning Man.
It dictates that if you do not like what the event was that year, you yourself
can make it better the next. In fact, you have to make it better if you found
something wanting or stopping it from being perfect, because Burning Man
is only that what people make of it. Auspiciously, there are few stages as
vast or canvases as large on which to impress one’s vision as the Black Rock
Desert, and every year the slate is, quite literally, wiped clean. In this sense,
I think that the temporary nature of Burning Man, as a ritual and as
community, is an essential part of its success - that being temporary, being
54On: http://www.burningman.com/blackrockcity_yearround/tales/CybeleKnowles.html,
accessed March 27th 2006.

built from the playa each year and taken right back down to the playa,
freezes it in its formative moment. Burning Man is thus perpetually in the
act of creation.
The move to the hostile setting of the Black Rock Desert, along with Burning
Man becoming a several day event, heavily pushed along the
transformation into the ritualized community building event it still is today.
As Chris phrases it:
It’s a frontier situation – you get into the middle of a desert, and you
start to believe in bullshit that you normally wouldn’t believe in. It’s
very important that the event is held out in Black Rock. The isolation
is important. So people go out there and lose track, both willfully and
unconsciously, of other responsibilities, and they are willing to have a
great time of excessive play and excessive work, and this works
miraculously well. (Chris, interview August 6th 2005)
In a very real sense, in the desert everyone is forced to be a participant, for
survival camping in such hash surroundings will always stay a challenge.
On top of that, a pilgrimage-like journey is now required to reach the home
of Burning Man, helping along its appearance of a consecrated space, a
place apart and separate from the ordinary world.55 On the Burning Man
55For more background information on the idea of Burning Man as a pilgrimage site, see
Gilmore’s Fires of the heart: Ritual, Pilgrimage, and Transformation at Burning Man (2005).
-3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.
website: “The desert had enlarged the scope of human struggle and
intensified involvement. It had restored the spirit of Burning Man and the
community that had grown around it.”56
In this new, hash environment, figuring out how to exactly survive
without any of the amenities usually taken for granted by urbanites became
of extreme importance. One of the first priorities therefore revolved around
getting to know, trust and in some ways depend on your neighbor –
whether relatively far or relatively close on the playa. According to Brian
Doherty, conversations would begin spontaneously, based on this bare
need to connect and survive, and lacking the usual inhibitions of the outside
world. It would be the first sign of the community that forms around the
Man as I know it still does today:
Stranded by themselves beyond civilization, the citizens of what
would soon be known as Black Rock City began to re-create some of
civilization’s earliest gestures of comity: wandering around the
campsite, offering small gifts to one another, and granting decadent
hospitality to those that stopped by. (Doherty 2004:53)
Through want, need, and plenty of hard work a community rises. It is a
community already united in a felt social criticism towards society; a
miniature Cacophonist Society keen on escaping American society with its
omnipresence of mediation, and its entire passive and ultimately hollow
spectacles. Now, in this desert, they find each other, and together, they are
given the change to build a new kind of utopian civilization, in every which
way they want. Through this effort the community that already sprang forth
from the Cacophony Society was beginning to become its own desert
community; sharing this glorified ‘we are the only ones doing something as
crazy and unthinkable as this’ feeling. I guess in that sense it was also a
rather elite and selective community. As Harvey remembers:
[…] there was the Cacophony spirit, the Zone Trip spirit, which
delighted in doing what seemed inexplicable, what no one else would
do, venturing where no one else would go. This was literally true in
the case of erecting this giant Man out there. Who would do this? We
could let our imagination run wild – who had ever done this in the
history of mankind? It felt like glory. That sense of special election we
all shared.57
56 On: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1986_1996/index.html, accessed
July 1st 2005.
57 Taken from the dvd Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock (2004).
42
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

As time went on, a great fraction of participants started to attach more and
more meaning to their sense of special selection, and moreover would have
this depend on the exclusion of others. “The dark side of it became that as
more people showed up,” Harvey says, “there was more resentment of
those people” (in Doherty 2004:55). Inclusiveness became harder, but the
atmosphere also became harder; wilder as it were. As the numbers of those
attending doubled with every new edition, Burning Man as an isolated free
haven became more and more anarchic: more punk and less hippie. The
Zone of the Unknown became a Temporary Autonomous Zone.
freedom – and space – to drive, access to all the area hot springs all day and
night, and guns, guns, guns. Burning Man then truly was an anarchistic
event, even, in the words of US News, “the anarchist’s holiday of choice.”59 It
most certainly was an anything-goes party of pyrotechnics and drive-by
shooting ranges done off the grid, with no official approval sought and none
granted. When Michael reflects back on those days, he urges me to
remember that it very much captured the spirit of Nevada. Much in the
same way that the countercultural notion of free expression was very much
San Francisco in nature, the wild, wild west years of Burning Man were very
much part of Nevada.

Where the Wild Things are It might have a different set of connotations all together in Western
Europe, but in America, traditionally, fire arms do not necessarily have to
Whenever I could afford it, we would get a really good rental car, and make
be scary or violent, and certainly do not per definition stand between
sure it was fully insured. That was the most important part. […] I consider this
socially acceptable behaviors and having a good time. Quite on the contrary,
the ultimate metaphor for the nature of the early days of Burning Man: We’d
if we are to believe Michael, they are an extension of the American frontier
go to the middle of the playa after we knew no one was out there and just
spirit, and helped a long way towards getting Burning Man more or less
drive. As fast as we could. Flying on mushrooms. Drinking wine out of a bottle.
accepted by the locals:
With the lights out, only the moon and the Milky Way lightning the way.
Vanessa and I would be fucking and shooting guns out the window at the There's a very strong connection with firearms and survival, which
same time, Jane’s Addiction blasting from the stereo. I consider that my peak grew out of the American West. And when we first came out and built
American experience. (Law in Doherty 2004:86) this big wooden man and burnt it, the locals thought we were a
bunch of simps. And then they found out that we had guns and we
could use them. And then we were OK. It was a little silly to them but
we were unusual independent characters and that is respected out in
the West. (Michael, interview September 20th 2005)
I must say, all in all it does not sound too appealing to me, but, as said
before, within the Burning Man community I have heard quite a few people
lament the loss of these wild outlaw years in present days. I think I can
understand that emotion as well, for there are not that many places in the
West where you can still do outlaw stuff, whether this is prohibited out of
safety reasons, impracticability or sheer illegalness.

Here is a question for you. If you would be put on a desert plain with
nothing in sight, and no rules to follow whatsoever, and you would camp
there for five days, how would you bide your time? Oh, and yes, you would
be attracted to this whole idea of being in an unwelcoming desert
environment for five consecutive days, so you probably never felt very that
comfortable living in the comforts of Western suburban life to begin with.
Additionally, you would be American, so chances are you had a natural
distrust towards authority in your genes and development, and would
maybe even like the image of you facing a frontier situation.58 Then, just for
good measure, some guns would be thrown in, followed by a dose of
drunks, mixed with absurdly destructive machinery. It would be topped up
with fast cars and fire, a pinch of dust would be added, et voilá: your
cocktail recipe for limitless tomfoolery and mayhem would be complete.
For me, the end result is hard to imagine, but apparently it is exactly
how the first years in the desert looked like: no rules, no cops, unbridled

58Yes, I know generalizations like this are dangerous and probably out of order in an
anthropological thesis, but I just ask you to contemplate the possibility – not take it as a 59 Taken from: Burning Man Meets Capitalism. How a strange cultural event became a viable

given. commercial enterprise. By John Marks. Us News 20th of July 1997.

43
 -3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.

Not only does the Black Rock Desert offer the perfect backdrop because ‘old Consensus,’ Bey himself has been labeled a ‘postmodern anarchist’
of its seclusion from societal sight; at times it can seem to actively (Zerzan 1997:79) - or in Bookchin’s (1995) denunciation, a proponent of
encourage doing weird, wild stuff. You see, all things you do out there come ‘lifestyle anarchism.’62 However, even though many of Bey’s concepts share
across as spectacularly grand and even minor gestures become magnified an affinity with the doctrines of anarchism, he pointedly – and for most
and transfixing. In a place with nothing, anything seems like everything. It is anarchists controversially - departs from the usual rhetoric about
tempting to do strange, wacko things out there, and it is tempting to stretch overthrowing the government through revolution. Instead, he prefers the
the safety line further and further. Out there, away from societal control, temporal and festal nature of what he calls Temporary Autonomous Zones,
above all I can imagine how natural the anarchic thought of not needing or TAZ’s.63
structure or order might occur. In a society where it seems that the According to Bey, the only way you can subvert the system, the all
institutions of control are omnipresent, the Black Rock Desert poised the encroaching juggernaut created by a centralized system of mass
ideal site in which the State could be escaped. Burning Man hereby held a production, is to seize ground like guerrilla soldiers in a jungle. The TAZ
very concrete promise as to being what theoretician Hakim Bey calls a hereby implies that you can commandeer some part of the public
Temporary Autonomous Zone. environment and make your own show, create your own rules, and then,
before the authorities showed up, melt away back into the jungle:
Pockets of Freedom The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the
In order to get a better theoretical understanding of Burning Man during State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time,
these first years in the desert, I believe Hakim Bey’s ideas regarding of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form
immediate events, or what he calls temporary autonomous zones, can offer elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it. Because the State
some insights. Bey might be an unusual choice of theoretic; he is not is concerned primarily with Simulation rather than substance, the
directly related to the social sciences and has yet to be mentioned in any TAZ can ‘occupy’ these areas clandestinely and carry on its festal
reference from any anthropological publication I have read to date. purposes for quite a while in relative peace. (Bey 1991:99)
However, his work and ideas are often linked to punk-inspired anarchic
Accordingly, temporary autonomous zones are mobile or transient
underground collectives such as those discussed in the section on Burning
locations free of economic and social interference by the State; autonomous
Man’s social background, e.g. Survival Research Laboratories, Circus
within their own sense of space and time. They exist not only beyond
Ridickuless, the Suicide Club and the Cacophony Society. In an interview I
control “but also beyond definition, beyond gazing and naming as acts of
had with Michael Michael, he told me how the Cacophony Society for
enslaving, beyond the understanding of the State, beyond the State’s ability
instance took great pride in constructing Bey’s so called temporary ‘pockets
to see” (Ibid.132). Therefore, their greatest strength is their invisibility. The
of freedom’ within the city of San Francisco. And when several Cacophony
TAZ remains invulnerable so long as it remains invisible, in Bey’s view “a
members arrived in the Black Rock Desert to cross into their Zone, I think
perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful
that this Zone can very well be considered a Temporary Autonomous Zone,
and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies (Ibid.101).
and held specific promise as such. Let me explain.
Hakim Bey, pseudonym
for Peter Lamborn Wilson, is
an American libertarian-
anarchist philosopher,
subversive poet, and
proponent of ‘edge Islam.’
Described as ‘the goofy Sufi,’
or ‘the Marco Polo of the
marginals milieu’ (Black
1994:105), he is the author of
a number of provocative
essays and communiqués,
among which his most famous
publication to date, T.A.Z.: The
Temporary Autonomous Zone,
Ontological Anarchy and Poetic
Terrorism (1991),60 which in
turn has been reviewed as ‘the
countercultural Bible of the
90s’ and ‘inspiration for a
generation of troublemakers
and idealists.’61 In advocating
‘creative destruction’ of the 62 I use the verb ‘denunciation’ here because Bookchin considered such ‘episodic rebellions’
as the TAZ to be a ‘mere safety valve for discontent,’ from which the bourgeoisie would have
nothing to fear. He described the TAZ as ‘irrational, narcissistic, decadent and a bourgeois
60 The TAZ, - along with most of Bey’s other writings - is freely available on the web. For deception.’ A few years after his rant, Watson showed shortcomings and contradictions in
instance on www.hermetic.com/bey or www.gyw.com/hakimbey/ Bookchin’s polemic between classical anarchism and Bey’s anarchism.
61 In the Whole Earth Review (1994:61) and on http://www.amazon.com/T-Z-Temporary- 63 Although Bey puts the ‘T.A.Z.’ as an acronym in the title of his book, in the text itself he

Autonomous-Autonomedia/ accessed January 3rd 2007. looses the marks of abbreviation and writes it as ‘TAZ’. I will follow him in the latter.
44
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Because TAZ’s are necessarily ephemeral, Bey equals them with that it was kept that way. Spreading the word went from mouth to mouth,
‘uprisings,’ which he believes provide “moments of intensity [that] give unmediated and as such already implying a selection of those attending.
shape and meaning to the entirety of a life” (1991:100). These pockets of And this selection was quite often made up by those countercultural,
freedom enable the individual to elude the schematic grids of Big liberal, often rowdy and raucous characters, conscious or subconscious in
Government and ‘too-Late Capital,’ and to occasionally live within realms search of a TAZ; a place to escape societal structure. Like with most
where he or she can briefly experience total freedom. If such a temporal anarchic thought, it was believed that a natural sort of order would occur,
uprising instead were to be a revolution, this would only imply that for it to without authority; between equals. Indeed, as John Law explains to me, he
conquer structure, it in turn would have to become structure, making true very much hoped to
liberation through revolution an oxymoron, and good governance an
[…] make a fantasy place in the middle of nowhere, to make it so you
impossibility:64
could not orient it to anything, displaced, floating in a void. To me
Absolutely nothing but a futile martyrdom could possibly result now that was integral. It made it a different place. It’s why people didn’t
from a head-on collision with the terminal State, the megacorporate behave like dicks. It helps people realize that just themselves, just
information State, the empire of Spectacle and Simulation. Its guns their community, was all they really had, and should be treasured.
are all pointed at us, while our meager weaponry finds nothing to (Law in Doherty 2004:92)
aim at but a hysteresis, a rigid vacuity, […] a society of capitulation
The Black Rock Desert hereby facilitated the notion of Burning Man as a
ruled by the image of the Cop and the absorbent eye of the TV screen.
TAZ, literally hidden and secluded from the omnipresent State.
(Bey 1994)
For Bey, liberation can only be achieved via the realization of ‘the new
autonomy,’ which lies within the TAZ - nòt via the attainment of phantom
needs manufactured under capitalism. This new autonomy, in turn, can
only be achieved in the direct presence of the Other; an immediate
community; a free associations of individuals – non-mediated, non-
authoritarian, and non-hierarchical.
In ancient times there used to be certain, festive events that lay outside
the scope of ‘profane time,’ thus literally occupying gaps in the calendar. For
Bey, empirical science conspired to close these calendrical gaps where the
people’s freedom had accumulated, resulting in “a coup d’etat, a mapping of
the year, a seizure of time itself, turning the organic cosmos into a
clockwork universe” (Bey 1991:103). The scientific calendar reform would
mean the death of the festival, and no matter how “the media nowadays
invites us to ‘come celebrate the moments of your life’ with the spurious
unification of commodity and spectacle, the famous non-event of pure
representation” - it is certainly not the way to its insurrection.
In response to this obscenity we have, on the one hand, the spectrum
of refusal (chronicled for instance by the Situationists) and on the
other hand, the emergence of a festal culture removed and even Not only does the comparison of Burning Man with a TAZ helps explain the
hidden from the would-be managers of our leisure. ‘Fight for the anarchic and countercultural outline of its initial phase, it also helps explain
right to party’ is in fact not a parody of the radical struggle but a why Burning Man eventually moved on to the next phase. For the way I see
new manifestation of it, appropriate to an age which offers TVs and it, Bey’s ideas often seem to have a rather paranoia edge to them. It appears
telephones as ways to ‘reach out and touch’ other human beings, that they are permeated with the fundamental assumption that in the end it
ways to ‘Be There!’ (Bey 1991:103, original emphasis) is all rather hopeless; that all that you can do is fight these little guerrilla
battles because there is no way anyone could confront the big, bad
For Bey, festal culture flowers in the corporeal, non-regulated, non-
organized army that is the State. But as it turned out, Larry Harvey had
commoditized festival, in which there is no mediation, and in which all
bigger plans than to fight a little guerilla battle contained within the
spectators must also be performers. This is certainly the core of the TAZ,
spatiotemporally limits of the Black Rock Desert. After a few years of being
and, for me at least, it is undoubtedly the core of Burning Man - especially
a semi-secret and highly unstructured temporary autonomous zone beyond
the way Burning Man was during its first years in the desert. For in those
the state’s reach and out of the media’s way, he realized that if he wanted
first desert years, Burning Man was highly anarchic; a little island in which
his festival to keep on growing, things had to change. And then came 1996,
societal structure could be temporarily escaped and unstructuredness
and with it Burning Man’s adolescence and cup years would be forever
ruled.
gone.
The new-found no man’s land of the Black Rock Desert made sure that
the event took place literally beyond the gaze of the State and/or the media.
It was not so much that this was caused by intentional secrecy, more that Dust, Death & Doom
reporters and/or government officials had not gotten hold of it - yet, and Finding first hand information on Burning Man’s first desert years has
proven difficult. Fortunately, though, there is a collection of audiotape
diaries Steve Mobia made back then, in which he mentions every year the
64Hence the ‘ontological anarchism’ from his title, which states that chaos is life, and the amazement he and others felt for the intensity of it all. He seemed mostly
State (as order) death. Seen like this, no state can ‘exist’ in chaos, so for anarchy to replace
amazed that, despite all the heroically fearless recklessness and exploding
the state is ontological impossible.
45

mortars and destructive robotic devices and raging fires, no one ever got
seriously injured or killed.
After 1996, he stopped saying that. For the tempestuous turning-point
year of 1996 made it all too clear that the transgressions, even though they
were never intended to hurt anyone, were definitely getting out of control
and could not be let loose for much longer. Looking back on it, Harvey
described 1996 as the year that the playa was turned into the worst aspects
of Los Angeles: “We had brought the ills of civilization with us,” he noted
sadly.65 I do not know L.A. that well, and I am inclined to think that it might
have been more about pushing boundaries of derailed behavior normally
impossible to act out in any ‘civilized’ city, but sure thing is that 1996 saw
Burning Man’s first fatality. It was that year that San Francisco neon artist
Michael Furey, age 37, motorcycled into camp with his headlamp dark after
a night of drinking in nearby Gerlach and nearly had his head sliced off by
the mirror of John Law’s truck. It was a stupid, drunken and obnoxious
stunt pulled by Furey, in a pitch-black and extremely dusty environment,
and by all accounts Law was not to blame, but that did not do much to
change the outcome: Burning Man would never be the same again.
What really caused a breach between the new path Burning Man was
soon to follow and the old ways, was that when Larry Harvey arrived at the
death scene, just outside the perimeters of the festival, it is commonly
remembered that he announced “there is no blood on our hands” to the
grieving assembled – possibly three times in a row. According to Harvey
himself, it was just a statement to ventilate his relief over the fact that there
was nothing that they could have done to prevent this accident from
happening, but two of the other key organizers took it as an indication that
he was concerned more about insurance and legal consequences than about
the actual death of someone they all knew well. Discussion reined so high
that, after that year, both of these people left the organization. They no
longer shared Harvey’s vision of an ever growing, and therefore necessarily
ever more regulated Burning Man. As co-organizer John Law explained the
difference in vision:
I never wanted to encourage growth. By 1992, we were big enough.
Three hundred people could have a great time and stay underneath
the radar of authorities, no problem. I truly never understood why
65 On: http://www.spiralgirl.com/dsblack/index.html, accessed September 5th 2005.
-3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.
our numbers had to double every next year, it was a one way ticket to
trouble. (Law in Doherty 2004: 91)
Even though Furey’s death set a tone before the event had even
begun, there were more indicators that the old model of Burning Man
was reaching its breaking point. The numbers of those attending had
grown exponentially every year, and had now reached well above
8.000 people. Their increasing influx began to strain the
infrastructure, and even though the event was as loosely organized as
possible, the logistics and responsibilities that come with having that
much people attend were growing too, and were getting harder and
harder to sustain. Ultimately, too many people with too little
supervision resulted in disaster.
For some years, careful attempts at many of today’s amenities were
made, but it was still all done in a very slap-dash way. ‘Port-a-potties’
(public toilets) were provided for, but they were too little and often too
dirty. There was a matchbox ticket boot somewhere along the entrance
road, but the desert around it was vast and there was no fence. Most people
did stop by the boot to pay, but this did not prevent Burning Man from
being sent into debt through money management problems. The event had
a tripartite ownership, formed in a hot spring one night, but even between
these people there was no consensus as to where the event was heading, let
alone if anything could be ‘owned.’ There was an insurance policy, but it
was purchased through the neon company that two of the three owners had
previously started, so it was not even officially covering Burning Man itself.
The police had recently begun to be a presence, but they were still not many
and mostly wandered around bewildered without making any arrests.
There certainly was an abundance of art on the playa, and this element was
becoming more and more ambitious, but it was still mostly about
destruction and, well, randomness.
To try and make a more coherent whole of all the individual art pieces,
in 1996 Harvey initiated what still plays a part in Burning Man today: the
annual ‘art theme.’ For the first year, the theme was to be Inferno, or, more
popularly, Helco, and the organization would have been hard pressed to
find a more suitable theme for 1996. The pressures of the event’s growth,
the growing tension among the organizers, and the increasing rowdiness of
the citizens were such that “I knew we were in for hell,” Harvey says now.
“At some point we just decided, well, let’s do it! Let’s sublimate some and
not deny it” (in Doherty 2004:102).66
The story that was created around Inferno had Satan out to buy
Burning Man through his ravenous mega corporation Helco.
It does not take an expert to see the countercultural symbolism
apparent in this metaconcept. Most people involved in Burning Man then
consciously operated on an underground and countercultural impulse that
opposed ‘successful’ mainstream culture. They were passionately devoted
to lose coordination, no bureaucracy; no official outside interference, the
whole TAZ model. That all changed irreversible with the growing
population and growing attention from the media, the police, and the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Helco theme was sure to tap into
anxieties that were very real indeed for those who made Burning Man
happen – both in the organization and in the crowd. It apprehended the
corruption and selling out of their experience, their community, and their
66Funnily enough, that year a devout Christian journalist infiltrated Burning Man, and
reported on evangelist Pat Robertson’s 700 Club a few weeks later that the gathering was a
form of devil worship, and that no true Christian should ever be present. At exactly the same
time, Wired Magazine put Burning Man on its cover and dubbed it ‘the New American
Holiday’. It makes me wonder what the greater part of America’s ‘Christian Right’ thought
about that statement.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
reality to large, sinister forces, and it resonated with the lessons learned
from the appropriation, commoditization, co-optation, assimilation and
recuperation of many of the countercultural predecessors, so close at hand
in San Francisco.
Given the demographics – it still took a fair amount of nerve and insider
knowledge to actually visit Burning Man – mockery, derision and fear of
corporate forces were both obvious and effective on the playa. That year’s
pageant, a grand tour de destructive force on plaza Helco, showed it all:
[T]hat night, a marching band led a torch-carrying parade out into
the desert where an entire mini-mall had been erected, complete
with name-brand franchise outlets (Starfuck's Coffee, Caca Bell, and
a dozen others). Suddenly a flamethrower tank rolled into the plaza
and billowed out 50' long gouts of flame, while giant killer robots
rolled into the plaza and began demolishing every building in sight.
The plaza was soon reduced to a pile of flaming rubble. Meanwhile, a
man dressed as Jesus in a cowboy hat climbed up the side of a 60'
high office building with a glowing neon HELCO sign on top. Once at
the top, he lit a roadflare, tossed it into one of the windows, and then
jumped onto a cable and slid for his life as the tower exploded into a
ball of white hot flame and collapsed, roaring and bellowing, to the
ground. The audience cheered, coughed, wept, ran for their lives.67
In Doherty’s memoirs of that year, until dawn it was all mad release and
sudden love and destroying and reinventing human civilization from
scratch with nothing but scrap and fire. “Hell was burning all around. Satan
was told to fuck off with radical bravado” (Doherty 2004:104). But things
turned genuinely, not just playfully, horrific on early Monday morning that
year.
67 On: http://www.tcp.com/~prime8/New/index.html, accessed November 16th 2006.
47
Nowadays, next to everything Burning Man might represent to some,
when you arrive at night you can most certainly think you have just entered
a week-long rave fest. Nowadays, there is music pumping out of big sound
systems and dj’s are spinning 24/7, but back then that was not the case. In
1996, loud music in the form of specific rave camps was not allowed within
Burning Man for the possible nuisance this might pose to the rest of the
happy campers. To avoid the rule, though, a dance collective decided to set
up camp a short drive away from the main settlement. It was to be the first
rave camp. That fateful late Sunday night, a seemingly drugged-out man
recklessly cruised away from the rave camp and drove over a tent – with
two people sleeping in it. As if this was not bad enough, he then crashed the
car into another vehicle, spilling scalding radiator fluid all over a young
woman in another tent.
Apparently, needless to say, it truly was hell at that point. The wounded
were taken away by a chopper - all three of them lived, although one with
permanent damage - and the driver was arrested, but for the authorities it
was an ominous sign that things had reached their apocalyptic end:
“I think there's a general consensus … that the Burning Man Festival
has outgrown itself”, says Ron Skinner, the weary sheriff of Pershing
County, vowing to stop Burning Man 1997 from taking place without
radical changes. “My whole, entire staff is just totally burned out
from the last five days. We're a small department that serves 4,700 to
5,000 people, and we're just not equipped to handle 10,000 party-
goers. The rebellion and indulgence is really getting too much.”68
To me, it seems that in reality, 1996 means a clash between what in essence
is the Cacophonist, punk way, as opposed to Harvey’s essentially populist
way. It is a vision of an exclusive, secretive, under the radar, very wild party
as opposed to an open, expanding, more accommodating and inclusive
community. In this sense, Harvey calls 1996 ‘a Manichean year’, and adds:
I fought a great battle with the Punks. There was a T-shirt that said
WOODSTOCK OR ALTAMONT? YOU BE THE JUDGE69. The Punk
contingent believed - and hoped, really - that it would be the last
Burning Man. They said we don’t want uncool people coming. I asked
them to draw up a list of uncool people. When I added them all
together it seemed everybody hated everybody. My position was that
anybody could come. Period. (Harvey in Haden-Guest 2006)
The symbol to represent the split that year was, of all things, a smiley icon.
Opinions vary. Larry Harvey told me it
was done out of provocation. John Law
insisted he did it to diffuse some of the dark
energy of that year’s theme. Chicken John
called it “a defacing of the icon” and “a
challenge to the control that Harvey has
always exercised over an event he conceived”
(John, intoxicated monologue September 10th
2005). Whatever the incentive, a couple of
Cacophonist pranksters that year secretly
placed a smiley face on the Man, for which
they used a timer to make it flash
occasionally for just seconds at a time.
68 Where the Wild Things Are, by Mack Reed. L.A. Times, Wednesday, September 4, 1996.
69 Some say that whereas Woodstock came to denote the flowering of the hippie era, San
Francisco’s Altamont festival meant the end of it. According to the website echoes.com,
Altamont “was the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude, money manipulation, and,
at base, a fundamental lack of concern for humanity”. It resulted in ‘one of the most violent
days in rock history,’ with four people death and several injured.
 -3- Everything Goes: the Black Rock Desert as T.A.Z.

The action was understandably lost in all that year’s turmoil, but that
does not take away its symbolism. I think it was a pretty clear Cacophonists
statement: in their opinion Burning Man as an event had begun as Zone trip
# 4, and Larry Harvey had to lighten up with his seriousness about reaching
out, community, continuity, and the great untouchable symbol of the Man.
Harvey, in turn, had ended up among Cacophony but was never quite of it.
In Doherty’s words, he appreciated their identification with the Dadaist and
Surrealists, and made friends among their ranks, but after all, “they came to
his ritual, not he to them” (Doherty 2004:98). To Harvey, replacing
autonomy for rules “[…] is the price you pay for living in a civil setting
versus being a hunter-gatherer.”70
In the end, 1996 showed that the Burning Man could never be a true
TAZ. In a way, I think that the matter of Burning Man not being a TAZ was
already settled in 1988, when a deal was made with the police to knock the
Man down and burn it in less over hovering shape. It again got confirmed in
1990, when another deal was made with the authorities to not burn the
Man at all. When the event moved to the desert, even though it felt and
looked like an archetypal TAZ to most people, it was a TAZ that proved,
appropriately enough, to indeed have been temporary in nature. For a TAZ
can only contain so much people and still stay under the radar; and Burning
Man had yet been above such modest numbers for some time. Even Piss
Clear, ‘Black Rock City’s Favorite Alternative Newspaper,’ writes the year
after:
Granted, last year DID get a little out of hand, what with all the
Medevacs flying in and the YAHOOS screaming ‘show us yer tits!’
from the backs of pick-up trucks, and all the assholes driving their
cars around fucking EVERYWHERE. I mean, hell, two people DIED
last year, giving credence to CNN’s ridiculous description of Burning
Man as ‘the world’s most DANGEROUS art festival.’71
Burning Man had grown too big, and it was now up to Harvey and a few co-
conspirers to make sure it would grow up. A long road was still ahead, but
an important lesson was once again learned: if there were any aspirations
of ever having an influence in daily civic life, this would not be gained
through an anarchic escapism and the TAZ model. Instead, it had to be
changed by making an event with an ethos, an all-inclusive community and
eventually an exemplar municipality. Burning Man had to go civic, and
embrace civic ethics. By letting go of its overall countercultural social
critique and by embracing communal ideology, it was hereby ready for its
next phase. Black Rock City was officially born.

70 In: State of the art. By Steven T. Jones, San Francisco BayGuardian Online,
http://www.sfbg.com/39/10/news_burningman.html, accessed November 15th 2006.
71 In: Anti-anti-Burning Man. By: Adrian Roberts. Piss Clear 28th of August 1997, Issue 5.

48
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Part III:

Structural Sociality

49
 -4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man

o’clock through 10 o’clock on a clock face, with subdivisions at each half hour
-4- in-between. When we picture the circle complete, at the axis of it all stands
the Man itself; the heart of the city, surrounded at great distance by the

Everywhere You Go: bigger sculptures and art projects: tomorrow’s destination.
Prime real estate can be found on the first street facing the Man: the

the City that is Burning Man Esplanade, where the biggest and most elaborate theme camps are. In the
middle of this Esplanade, at six o’clock, are the lungs of Burning Man,
provided for by the organization, in the form of the Center Camp Café and a
number of other public services. After the Esplanade, the concentric avenues
For our first year on the playa, my friend and I posted a message on the
ranging backward reflect this year’s theme Psyche: they are ‘Amnesia’, ‘Bi-
digital Burning Man bulletin board: “Two girls from Amsterdam need a ride,
polar’, ‘Catharsis’, ‘Delirium’, ‘Ego’, ‘Fetish’, ‘Gestalt’, and ‘Hysteria.’ Luckily we
preferable from San Francisco or vicinity. Willing to share petrol costs.” We
are camping at 7.30 and Ego, and not Amnesia, because I want you to
got anywhere in between ten and fifteen responses – a day, for over two
remember our address carefully. Orientation can be a true nightmare on the
months. In the end, we decided on Lee: an amiable surfer normally conquering
playa, especially in the year when the Man rotates.
waves and a midlife crisis in Santa Cruz. He picked us up in San Francisco, in a
huge SUV with trailer, both rickety and stuffed to the brim. There were bikes a Saying that, it might help that you are from Amsterdam, and thus familiar
tent, 5 by 5 meter shade structure, 90 gallons a water, airbeds, a homemade with a similar lay-out of semi-concentric circles in the form of our canals.73
portable solar shower, folding chairs, eski’s filled with ice, sleeping bags, However, no matter how liberal of a city Amsterdam might be, you try getting
pillows, a couple of rugs - the works. He even brought bikes for us to ride, and a public ‘kittytrim’ done by the ‘bushwacker who is a PhD’ (Pelvic Hair
had two comfortable sofas strapped to the roof of his car. Bless him. This year, Designer) there, or attend an intermediate workshop on Japanese rope
though, with my task of conducting fieldwork ahead, I am arriving in my own bondage with a bunch of people who, like yourself, have not washed in over
style, with my own newly purchased, 31-years old, bright orange Volkswagen five days. And even though Amsterdam might be bike friendly, I have
camper. personally never witnessed the sight of more than 3.000 topless women
cycling through town in an endless succession, such as is happening on one of
Finding a place to camp is not as easy as it might appear at first. It has to be a
Burning Man’s yearly highlights: the ‘Critical Tits Parade.’ Maybe the only
tactical spot; the main quarters to my research. Some people of the
thing the two cities really have in common is that people who have never been
organization have extended their invitation for me to stay and participate in
seem to associate it mostly with drugs and sex, while every citizen knows
their San Franciscan office to the playa, but I want to be in a more neutral
there is so much more to the place.
place this week. I end up deciding on VW Camp, where I am hailed and
eventually surrounded by thirty or so other Volkswagen vans and their
owners, both in various forms, age and plumage. It is a very neutral camp,
without loud generators or sound systems or planned communal activity. It is
central enough, but not as frantic as other central camps, and it offers a
tranquil, undisturbed haven from which to explore and gather data.
And that is exactly what I want us to do while you are here: explore. I know
our time is limited, so you will have to tell me what you want to do first.
Obviously, there are endless things to see and do in this city, and three days
are not nearly enough to do so, but we have to start somewhere, don’t we? If I
can make a suggestion, I’d say that I show you around the populated part of
this city today, so that we can use tomorrow to visit some of the more remote
art works ‘out there,’ and spend our last day volunteering. Of course, we can
also do it the other way around, if you prefer, but I know when I got here for
the first time, conquering the so called urban environment, if you can call it
that, was all I wanted to do, and it was only later that I became awe-struck
over the works of art. It seemed that the more I submerged myself in the
hectic craziness of the city and its inhabitants, the more I appreciated the vast
quietness of the desert and otherworldly surrealism of the art. And the more I
appreciated both the civic structure and the art, the more I wanted to give
Some people think of Burning Man as some kind of theme park for grown-ups,
something back by volunteering.
but if such would be the case, than this specific one is a highly surreal and
You have probably never been in this strange city before, so let us first allow a very uncomfortable version of it, as exemplified by the risk and rules stated at
little peek from above, just so you might somewhat get your bearings. When the back of your entrance ticket:
you are far, far away in the sky you might mistake the sight of Black Rock City
You voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death by
for the schematic imprint of a crop circle, or perhaps a Tibetan sand mandala
attending this event. You must bring enough food, water, shelter, and
etched like a gargantuan tattoo on some vast extraterrestrial plain.72 When
first aid to survive one week in a harsh desert environment. […] A
you get a bit closer though, you can see the city’s typical ground plan, which
consists of nine well-marked curvilinear rings arcing from what would be 2
73In such comparison, Central Station would roughly equal the position of the Man and Dam
72And like an original Tibetan sand mandala, Black Rock City gets wiped clean and leaves no square that of the Center Camp café. Our camp would probably be located somewhere in the
trace. Jordaan.
50
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Survival Guide will be made available thirty days prior to the event,
which you must read before attending. You agree to abide by all rules
in the Survival Guide. This is not a consumer event. Leave nothing
behind when you leave the site. Participants only. No spectators.
In this theme park, when you sit in Santa’s lap, chances are he will be trying to
shove tubes of lube down your panties. And the rather exact replica of
Disneyland’s It’s A Small World After All - called the Small After All World to
avoid persecution - will hold speakers attached to it which blare the tune in
every version ever recorded, loudly, taped together, again and again until
Chairman Mouse releases everyone by blowing the whole thing up.
green and yellow feathers and chaps; underwent a sex change, and exchanged
my best friend for a temporary one at the Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet.
Things can get pretty strange out there…. At its most basic level though,
Burning Man truly is a city, and like most cities, the only way to get a feeling
for the place is just to wander. Wander and wonder. Endlessly and maybe
aimlessly, but always willing to be immersed into this strange cityscape. As
Tolkien already stated, “Not all those who wander are lost,”74 and at Burning
Man it certainly appears that those who wander often find more than they
thought they were looking for. Within the city, they find community, and
within this community, they might just find themselves. Now let us see what
we can find.

I don’t know about comparing Burning Man to anything really. It truly is a

world on its own - and a very crazy world for all that. From my notes, during
one random walk around the blocks of Black Rock City, I saw an angry
milkman in a white boiler suite trolling for milkmaids who could lactate at
will; a tether ball on fire, twirling round its pole and then kicking itself back
into action; a car dragging behind it a man on a flaming toilet reading the
paper; a flyer on a porta-pottie that warned me about an escaped gorilla, only
to open that porta-pottie and have a kid in a gorilla suit leap at me, squealing
with laughter; two bluely painted cowboys on a fifty meter see-saw constantly
alternating either rising high above everything or being dipped in
refreshingly muddy water; one huge white rabbit running in circles as a
persistent Black Rock City’s Animal Control officer chased him (her?) with a
carrot dangling from a stick; a Burning Man virgin being whipped at the
Temple of Atonement for not having attended the event earlier, and a bunch
of fluorescent zombies playing chess with their bodies on a block-wide board.
That outing, I hitched a ride on a flying carpet and a bus-sized white whale;
laughed at a man sitting in a cubicle dressed in a business suit working
frantically on a cardboard computer, with his water bottle - also wearing a
carefully crafted bottle-sized suit and tie - beside him; stopped for a quick
intellectual chat at the free bookmobile; had raw tuna sushi served to me on
silver platters at Camp Tuna; joined a group of strangers all flossing off with
one thread dangling from someone’s chicken suit; watched stunningly
complex laser shows at dusk while in the distance people were playing golf
with burning toilet paper rolls; marveled at the beautiful templar girls at
Venus; mutilated Barbie dolls while enjoying a twelve year old Merlot at the
Barbie Death Camp and Wine Bistro; talked to God in the thereto designated 74 At length: “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is
phone booth; stumbled upon a marriage ceremony held by a voodoo priest in strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be
woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the
crownless again shall be king.” (Tolkien 1997:305)
51
 -4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man

We have extensively covered Burning Man’s auspicious year of 1996, so
both for us now - and for Harvey then - it is obvious that going into 1997,
the anarchistic ‘just come out here and do what thou wilt’ model had to
change if the event were to survive. Unbridled liberty, chaos and the
Shooting Range were no longer going to be the main selling points. Whilst
in essence keeping true to the anarchistic basis of ‘no ruler’ and
cooperation over coercion, there was a growing insight that rules needed to
be formulated for the event to survive. Burning Man had to grow up; it had
to be prearranged, formalized, managed and accounted for. It needed to be
fenced, zoned, condensed and made car-free. It needed civic planning, an
infrastructure, guiding principles and a legal form. In the end, it had to
become a municipality; a city, which, like all cities, needed structure:
We should not conclude from this that Burning Man has at all lost its
sacred spark. As the vampiric tendrils of consumer media and the
surveillance society wrap themselves ever more tightly around the
heart of human experience, the festival continues to successfully ride
the paradox of regulating a temporary autonomous zone. (Davis
2003:38)
Even though I personally think that regulating a temporary autonomous
zone would be oxymoronic, I do agree with Davis when he talks about a
paradox of autonomy and regulation that Burning Man would successfully
ride.
threads and relegate them in separate chapters seems to go against the very
nature of that which makes Burning Man’s social fabric: the
interconnectedness that forms its novelty and its power and its story.
Burning Man is a crazed Dionysian event where the city is made of art
and art should be a gift; where the community makes the art and the city
enhances community; and where the whole event becomes a gift to the
community that creates it and thus flows from it. Such is the
interconnectedness of things at Burning Man. However, before discussing
all that, we first have to see Burning Man as the highly heterogeneous city it
truly became. Being a city is definitely different from being a TAZ. It means
that staying under the radar is no longer an option, which in turn means
letting the outside in. The outside in the form of a more diverse selection of
participants, but also of law and order, money and commercialism, interests
and liability. Of regulations, permits, officials, and planning. Of rules and
restrictions, an ethos and ethics. As Burning Man became Black Rock City, it
truly had to go civic, and find a way to balance utopia with heterotopia. In
this chapter, on this first day of our tour, I want you to follow me so that we
can explore this city in all its inexplicableness.

This chapter is all about that paradox. It deals with having structure
and going wild; regulating and letting loose; communal harmony and
conflicting interests. It explores the true city that Burning Man has become,
and the highly heterogeneous community that inhabits it. Likewise, it is an
introductory chapter to the section of my thesis that will explore Burning
Man’s current state; focusing on being rather than evolving, showing
glimpses of this festival that I stumbled upon. Even though Burning Man is
above all an experience – the embodiment of the “you just had to be there”
mantra, in the next three chapters I hope to convey just why it would be
such a powerful experience and experiment; city, arts festival, and gift-
economy all in one. A little caution is in order here, for to unravel these

52
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

subversion of what a city should be like. Much of this derives from the well-
thought out levels of civic planning and crystallized architectonics of the
event: the invariant city lay-out, the ‘going out’ areas, the street signs; the
Big Brotherly Man watching it all. If any collection of people can have the
inspiration, get the resources, keep authority at bay, and build a city in the
ultimate void that the Black Rock Desert is, then it seems that human
imagination can truly manifest utopia. For Burning Man is a city all right,
more extravagant than Las Vegas, New York, and San Francisco all
combined. And after a week, the whole city disappears.

A lesson in Civic Planning

We believed it was a community. We knew people were feeling it to be such.
But there wasn’t a social framework to fully shape Burning Man around that
idea. We decided to build a vessel to contain a community. We realized we
had to create a real city. If you look at our newsletter in ’97, it’s one big
propaganda sheet for community. That’s when the litany began – community,
community, community. People grabbed onto it. (Harvey in Doherty
2004:121)
Black Rock City is what D.S Black calls an ephemeropolis; an evanescent
city.75 During its one-week existence, it qualifies as Nevada’s fifth-largest
city. Nowadays, it is a densely connected grid of streets, plazas, and public
landmarks covering more than a square mile of desert terrain. Its
Leave no Trace
thoroughfares are thronged with a cosmopolitan population drawn from
Burning Man is committed to a Leave No Trace effort,77 meaning that after
around the world, and it is served by an array of public institutions. There is
the event is over, the blank slate of the desert is quite literally wiped clean
a fire department, a post office, two daily newspaper, about 15 separate
again. Not a sequin, boa feather, cigarette butt or pistachio nutshell will
broadcast radio stations, a temporary airport for small planes (92 landings
eventually disgrace its surface. This would be amazing enough, and it does
in 2005), a recycling center, 400 portapotties (cleaned and restocked twice
take a crew of about twenty people, most of which volunteers, a whole
a day), several bike repair shops, a bus service into town, an infirmary and
month to comb the playa inch by inch after the event is over, but it is even
emergency medical service, a ‘Department of Public Works,’ a volunteer
more amazing considering the fact that you cannot find one trashcan in the
safety and security organization known as the ‘Black Rock Rangers,’ and a
entire city. Seen like this, Burning Man’s disappearing act becomes nothing
pizza delivery. The London Observer described it as a “beautifully zoned
less than miraculous. People are actually told they have to pack in
tentopolis, designed with a precision of which the Renaissance city-state
everything they pack out; to take all their smelly, nasty garbage, put it in the
idealists or Haussmann would approve.”76
car and drive back home with it. And they do it, making Burning Man the
The disorder and chaos, emotional and perceptual as much as physical
largest Leave No Trace event in the world.78
and infrastructural, of Burning Man’s early desert years now seems to be
In a way, the leave no trace ethos is practical, because if the festival
kept at arm’s length. Sure, the city still has an ultimately chaotic feel to it,
were to have a significant negative impact on the site, the Bureau of Land
but I think that today’s chaos is often more contained, and possibly more
Management would not allow it to be continued. Every year after the event
semiotic than corporeal in nature; a perversion, inversion and eventually

75 In: Burning Man as Ephemeropolis and the Refusal of Meaning, Presented February 20, 77 The Leave No Trace (LNT) philosophy was first articulated in the 1970s as the human
1998 for the North American Interdisciplinary Conference on Environment & Community - impact on the planet was becoming too obvious to ignore. Since then, the concept of enjoying
University of Nevada, Reno. a landscape and leaving it unchanged has become official policy on many federal lands.
76 At: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1999/99n_letter_sum_0.html, 78 The Boy Scouts also practice Leave No Trace, and though they are a bigger organization,

accessed May 28th 2005. they have no single event as large as Burning Man
53
 -4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man

is over, the a team from the BLM scrutinizes every inch of the four-square-
mile playa, and if they still find any trash, no matter how small, it can mean
the end of Burning Man’s yearly permit. Next to pragmatics, though, there
are also ideological causes for the leave no trace effort. On the website:
If Burning Man is to validly function as an alternative to the
commodified mainstream of American culture, its participants must
be willing to consider the material consequence of the choices they
make as consumers. If what we bring to our desert experience is to
truly define what we are, we need to look carefully at what remains
as we depart.79
On top of that, leave no trace links back to Burning Man’s ethos of non-
spectatorship. Because Burning Man claims to be a participatory event
instead of an anonymous public spectacle, it is only logical that, as a
participant, everyone should become a member of the cleanup crew. It is as
much about immediate experience as it is about immediate responsibility;
civic freedom as about civic conscientiousness. But most of all, it is about
civic planning, and about its purpose of optimizing community. Because the
city does not just disappear – it also arises; planned, regulated and even
zoned. And as it does, it binds people together.
From the Zone to Zoning
As we have seen, Burning Man was not always the ‘beautifully designed
tentopolis’ the London Observer stumbled upon in 1999. Before 1996,
Burning Man was a disorderly scattering of camps, spread out to the degree
that virtually everything had to be done by car. After that, any form of civic
planning was not just needed for possible aesthetics reasons, but most of all
out of safety measurements. According to Harvey, it was high time: “In ’96
we had let the city expand like a cancer. It wasn’t safe, and we knew it”
(Harvey, interview October 15th 2005). Without a city grid, Washoe County
officials insisted, how can emergency vehicles reach people, or know where
to find them? Directions such as ‘look for the green tent near the shark car
twenty meters north of the giant Helco Tower’ were simply not good
enough. So, like that of developments in many cities, the urban planning of
Black Rock City came as a response to tragedy. In order to prevent such
tragedy from escalating again, an official city grid was implemented.
But how does a tribe of cultural outlaws and nonconformists sit down
and design a city? As one might imagine, the process drew from disparate
sources and methods - ancient and modern, idealistic and pragmatic. The
basis was clear: the Man had to be at the center, so that he could be visible
from anywhere; functioning both as navigation system and focal point of
the community. Instead of building the city in a full circle around the Man,
the decision is made to keep the circle open. As we can read on the Burning
Man website:
Instead of completely circling the Man, we invite the natural world to
intrude. Rather than looking across our claimed tract to see only
more settlement on the other side, our vision is spilled outward into
the vastness of the greater Black Rock Desert. With this reminder of
the infinite we hoped to evoke a connection between the small world
we created and the fathomless universe we live in.80
The semi-circular rings, or avenues, ranging backwards have blocks
spanning from 2 o’clock to 10 o’clock. Every fifteen degrees is equivalent to
half an hour, and finds itself as an intersection with the streets ranging
backward. As the sun passes, the Man’s arms quite literally act as a sundial:
giving participants a way to instantly determine their whereabouts. The

79 On: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/2000/00n_letter_sum_2.html, 80At: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/brc_growth.

accessed May 28th 2005. html, accessed April 3rd 2007.
54
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

resulting city-grid is relatively easily comprehended and negotiated

without disorientation, as well as being scalable for future expansion. For
instance, in the year of my research, 2005, the five circumferential streets
created in 1997 had already grown to nine, and the arc of the city, originally
less than half, now extended over two thirds of a circle around the Man. A
city designed to accommodate 9.000 participants in 1998 had developed a
capacity of well over 35.000 in seven years.
No matter how much
of a utopian project Black
Rock City might be, there
are still very pragmatic
concerns and demands at
its core. Because any city
needs infrastructure,
departments, city services,
subdivided blocks and,
yes, even that apogee of
municipal control: zoning.
On Burning Man, zoning
space was initiated Black Rock City is only a minor imprint on this vast terrain, and ironically
because of the need to enough things get pretty crowded within the city blocks. Brian Doherty
locate theme camps in once made the remark that during Burning Man so many people will be
some coherent way. It crammed into such a relative small space, that “the desolation beyond the
means, for instance, that encampment will seem a cruel tease as the inhabitants live for a week in an
families with children are impromptu tent city that screams ‘refugee camp’ more than it does
told they might be better ‘vacation’” (2004:2). I do not know about the comparison with a refugee
off camping in the area known as Kidsville, and that all camps that look as if camp, but I must admit that I had my frustrations when first looking at the
they might have sexually explicit themes are situates away from this family- immense space around Black Rock City in the distance, and then at my
friendly zone. It also means that there is a large sector in which collectives neighbors’ colossal speakers, which were practically touching my tent.
determined not to use generators or loud music can safely gather, and that Of course, such population density is no masochistic design on behalf of
the real big rave camps get placed more towards the edges of town. It is Burning Man’s urban planners, but rather another tool in the creation of
amusing to see how Black Rock City can sometimes be just like the real city social interactions and communal belonging. As Harvey explains it:
its inhabitants are so anxious to get away from, with the outer rings more We got people to live in approximately the same density as you’d find
ore less resembling suburbia: people take up a lot more space so that they at a kibbutz. Americans don’t typically do this. Everyone is supposed
can put down lawns, golf courses and swimming pools, and the inner city to be a king and, in these latter days, a queen, and so we’re all kings
equaling prime estate: so dense and popular that people are literally and queens and we all have our domain and our little estates that we
arguing over inches. control. Here, they’re living chockablock. That means they simply
Black Rock City’s civic planning offers a rare look at the lifeblood of all encounter one another more often. (Interview October 15th 2005)
urban civilizations. What is it that makes a city work? What is essential, and
what is it possible to do without? On the playa, you start to think: do I need Such forced proxemics seem to allude not just to social spacing, but also to a
a lot of comfort and convenience? Maybe not as much as you thought you spatial affiliation: location becomes connection becomes communion - both
did. But do you need street signs - oh, yes. And if you have signs and roads, as a consequence of, and a preconditioning for, community.
do you need cars to traverse them? Not really, but you had better live up to
your proclamation of being the ‘most bicycle friendly city in the States.’ Just
as well, if you want a city based on interaction, putting people is close living
space is certainly a good start. Also, open fires might be nice and
community generating, but if your city is jam packed with synthetic tents
and shade structures, all nearly touching each other: providing fire pits
might be the better option. All in all, as Harvey sums up the civic lessons
learned: “safety requires control; giant groups demand intelligent design;
and culture thrives in smaller tribes. Form must bend to function, but
function is elevated by beauty.”81
I cannot stress enough that Burning Man’s civic beauty is manifested at
the terrible inhospitable wasteland of the Black Rock Desert. As such, it is
frequently beset by unpredictable and brutal windstorms, where
everything that is not blown away will at least get covered in dust.

81At: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/06/15/
carollloyd.DTL&type=printable, accessed November 13, 2006.
55

Binding a heterogeneous Community
[…] the city is organized and structured to assist participants in acting as a
sharing, caring community. Consequently, 25.000 strangers unite and come to
see one another as a community. They live in close proximity; act with
affection toward one another; share food, drink and extraordinary
experiences; strive together against the elements, express themselves as
openly and as radically as they dare; and help one another. In a week, it is all
over. (Kozinets 2002:25)
As Kozinets already makes clear in his enumeration, there is more than
proxemics to the experience of community at Burning Man. I personally
have always been amazed at how harmonious a city Black Rock was, how
much trust and openness and empathy and, well, love, there was among
those that inhabited it. I say amazing because it is not that this is a group of
people so homogeneous and egalitarian that they would normally form
community. Quite on the contrary, throughout the years, Black Rock City
would be inhabited by an ever larger, but also increasingly heterogeneous,
collection of citizens, no longer united under any Cacophonists, pirate or
otherwise rebellious flag.
Through augmented attention from the media and the rapid
evolvement of the Internet in the mid nineties, Burning Man became known
to many people who had previously not known it existed. Consequently,
exactly as Harvey liked to see, it moved away from being a little secret to
the Cool Kids Club; a selective anarchic TAZ, to an all-inclusive city:
From the beginning I hated the hipster attitude of keeping out the
uncool people. My obsession was inclusion. That was, for me, a
redemption: to make a society that everyone could come into. It was
an antidote to the alienation I grew up with. (Harvey, interview
October 15th 2005)
As a child, Harvey was adopted into a strongly independent family of dust-
bowlers, who raised chickens on a farm in Oregon. When Harvey was young
he was sent to a suburban high school and embraced their values in a lot of
ways, but, according to him, he and his family always remained outsiders.
Maybe, therefore, this drive to make Burning Man all-inclusive answers to a
lot of frustrations retraceable to Harvey’s youth. Maybe, though, like with
Burning Man’s beginnings, it does not really matter what deep unconscious
drive motivates Harvey’s words, inclinations and actions, just its effects. For
Burning Man is not, and probably has never been, Harvey’s one man show.
-4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man
The fact that it has grown to its current size seems to be because of the
amazing pull it has on people. This pull is not from Harvey himself, but from
the idea and experience of Burning Man. As Doherty phrases it: “The
essence of Burning Man, that thing that makes it work, is a joint,
decentralized creation of thirty thousand people, not of Larry Harvey, John
Law, any single artist of gargantuan absurdities, the DPW who ‘built this
city!’ or any other single claimant” (Doherty 2004:262).
Who goes to this, and Why?
In 2005, Burning Man was the creation of nearly 36.000 people, of all ages,
ethnicities and economic backgrounds. They all had their share in the
community that I eventually considered the most essential part of my
Burning Man experience. There were old people and young, grandmothers
and children, hippies and punks, the cool kids and the freaks, the
enlightened and the geeks. Matt Wray’s list:
There are all sorts here, a living, breathing encyclopedia of
subcultures: Desert survivalists, urban primitives, artists, anarchists,,
Deadheads, queers, pyromaniacs, cybernauts, musicians, ranters, eco-
freaks, acidheads, breeders, punks, gun lovers, dancers, S/M and
bondage enthusiasts, nudists, refugees from the men’s movement,
hippies, ravers, transgenders, and New Age spiritualists. (Wray 1995)
With some exceptions, these diverse groups become happily cohabiting
groups. As Laura phrases it:
I spoke with many people out there about how it is easy to have a
‘perfect time’ with 20-30 of your closest friends. The amazing thing
about BM is that same togetherness can be felt among a diverse and
previously unacquainted crowd of 35.000 people and more. That is
real community! (Laura, interview July 28th 2005)
Sure, at times there is conflict, and the relationship between self and
community can be a charged one at Burning Man. Observers of the
relationship between self and community in the contemporary United
States have argued that Americans tend to emphasize the needs of the self
over those of the community. In Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah and his
colleagues point out that when Americans describe their spirituality they
talk most about personal empowerment and self-expression rather than the
requirements of community (Bellah 1985). In contrast, Burning Man
emphasizes both the needs and wants of the self, and the creation of
community. Self-expression is encouraged but must be constantly tempered
56
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
by consideration for one’s neighbors. Conflict therefore is often more over
decibels than ideology. However, such pragmatic contest is usually quickly
settled by an appeal to the rules and to the communal ethos of the event.
Seen like this, peer pressure remains one of the most effective ways for
people to abide to communal ethics.
In all their heterogeneity, the citizens of Black Rock City are amazingly
similar of color. I mean, sure a fair percentage of them will be painted gold,
purple, yellow, striped or dotted, but underneath all that color and design
the majority is Caucasian. Responding to the question “Who goes to this
thing?” Sarah Pike (2001) wrote in one of her essays: “There seems to be
twenty-something ravers, fifty-something hippies, and thirty-something
computer whizzes. Many, but by no means all, are white (and) middle class”
(Pike 2001:456). Indeed, even though no statistical studies have been done,
on the playa it seems that those with the means and desire to attend are
often white and relatively wealthy. Enough so to make Wired magazine
state that Burning Man “can take on the appearance of elitist indulgence”
(Axline 2005:12). The absence of ‘people of color’ in an event touted as
‘radically inclusive’ is a popular topic of discussion among Burners. The fact
that the organization never really advertises the event, and that the
subsequent word-of-mouth awareness contributes to cultural homogeneity
might begin to explain, but surely there is more.
57
In the same Wired article, the author interviews Daniel Steinbock, a
doctoral student at Stanford and three-time Burning Man veteran, and asks
him about the demographics of the event. Steinbock has a theory on the
overall whiteness of the participants:
What I’ve heard said about BM before is it’s the way that rich white
people find community, because people who have undergone any
cultural strife automatically develop community out of survival. But
here you have a group that’s never experienced marginalization, so
the only way they can develop community is to spend a bunch of
money on this crazy art out in the desert. (Ibid.12)
Harvey indeed acknowledges why Burning Man would be especially
attractive to white people who lack tight-knit cultural and familial
communities. In response to Burning Man’s ‘alternative newspaper’ Piss
Clear’s question about the seemingly under representation of America’s
minority groups on the playa, his straightforward reply is:
Burning Man caters to white folks for one primary reason, and that’s
because they’re the most privileged and richest members of this
society. They’re also the most disconnected from one another,
because of their consumer clout - because they can live without any
relation to anyone else. Now if you’re poor and a member of what we
call an ethnic minority, it also means that you network. It means that
you’re connected to family in a way that white folks aren’t,.
Piss Clear: Not to completely generalize, but do you think that white
people come out to Black Rock City to create a community that they
wouldn't otherwise normally have?
Harvey: You bet! To find roots, and to find a sense of relation to
other people. If you’re in the ‘hood’, and the uncles and aunts and
cousins are all around, you’re in this network, this community. But a
lot of white folks are sitting at home with their catalog furniture and
wondering what it’s all about. And so [Burning Man] has a more
immediate appeal. Spiritually speaking, the white folks are needier,
even though materially, they’re much advantaged.82
Seen like this, Harvey concedes that what he provides, for lack of a better
word, is maybe more of a service than a city: “We’re offering people
something they can’t get anywhere else, and that’s community […]There
isn’t a corporation in this land that could recreate it. You can’t buy it. You
can’t buy community. It’s like love” (Harvey, interview October 15th 2005).
82 In: The Man, The Myth, The Legend: Larry Harvey. By Adrian Roberts. Piss Clear 2000.
 -4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man

And this is where some people might disagree with Harvey, for
criticism will forever be that maybe one cannot buy community – but that
he is certainly selling it, and for a steep price as well. Such critics see that
with Burning Man’s ongoing structuredness and monetary gain, it no longer
differs that much from any which commercial entertainment place where
people gather and where one proprietor is receiving a huge amount of
money in entrance fees. Jensen, for instance, fiercely attacks the tantamount
‘theme park nature’ of Burning Man and heavily criticized what he calls the
‘hypocritical nature’ of its organization:
They’re taking a totally standard, normal, corporate line toward
their theme park, but that idea embarrasses them, since they don't
like to think of it as a theme park. So they cloak it in bullshit and
hope that everyone will buy the lie that it’s actually some
spontaneous group-hug, and not a theme park. (Jensen, interview
September 12h 2005)
Even though there are
not that many people as
fierce as Mike, he is not
alone in his criticism.
Specifically on those A different kind of Law and Order
cold playa nights, talk
Black Rock City is a municipality in all respects – it has a post office,
about ‘the good old
Department of Public Works, fire stations, medical services, police, and
days’ is never far
everything else, except a traditional government structure. Imagine a political
removed from those fire
anthropologist coming to study government at Burning Man. On Day 1, the
pits. While granting that
anthropologist says, “Wow, a city without government.” After careful scrutiny,
things have changed,
the last day’s report reads, “Oh there’s government here alright, they just do it
Harvey himself is weary
differently than in other cities. And, they do it quite well.”84
of talk of such glorious
Burning Man - that the The people I have spoken with, those who know Burning Man out of
event has now gotten experience, seem to fall into three categories. Well, they fall into a lot more
too big; that it is no fun categories, but regarding the issue of rules on the playa, I identify three: the
anymore because of all lamenters, the imposers, and the followers. One does not necessarily
the rules; that it was exclude the other, for it is possible to lament the fact that the old heydays of
better when it was anarchy and lawlessness are gone, and still follow the rules as they are laid
more exclusive and out these days, just as it is possible to be the Washoe County Sheriff,
everyone could do imposing rules whilst really lamenting the fact that they got formulated
anything they wanted. because it is that which got you in to this godforsaken position in the first
“The exercise of liberty place. All in all, the numerous rules that now pervade the event have not
in Black Rock is remarkable, but we don’t accept anti-social activity and we always been there, and some regret this change and some do not.
never have,” he says, and continues to explain: Obviously, rules are only symptomatic, not the disease itself. I think the
disease itself is freedom, or, to be more
I do agree with the basic anarchist idea that culture is self-regulating
precise, a misunderstood sense of freedom -
and spontaneously would provide society with useful customs to
both by those who overestimate it and those
regulate the relationship of the individual to the collective. But I
who underestimate it. Some old-timers, or
don't like nouveau anarchists who are basically selfish hooligans
people just seduced by the myth of the old
whose creed is, `I do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I don't
days, may still harbor old deep-playa-fueled
care, and I hang out with cool people who do anything they want to,
fantasies of an exploding TAZ where the blue
and there are only a few of us, and fuck you. How charming. 83
of authority never mars the desert’s profound
Burning Man took the other road, and went civic. They were probably the blankness. And some cranky old cynics might
first counterculture to have gone civic, at least to my knowledge, and this still think that just because there are cops
evolvement has been vital for where the event is heading now. However, around, any implied promise of liberatory
‘going civic’ goes beyond the city grid, infrastructure and zoning, and into experience at Burning Man is a vicious lie,
the realm of law, order and organization. Because no matter how much of a undoubtedly told to put one more gold bar in
utopian city Burning Man might be – it is still a city build and dismantled on Harvey’s hidden vault, somewhere far, far
public land, and thus has to deal with official, regulatory instances. away from his dingy apartment.

84From the 2005 afterburn report. At:

83 At: http://www.reason.com/news/show/27598.html, accessed September 27th 2005. http://afterburn.burningman.com/05/admin/government.html, accessed May 1st 2006.
58
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
I have come to think of Burning Man’s freedom as being more about
social freedom: freedom from the negative judgments of those around you,
from possible rejection, from non- belonging. You can be everything you
had ever wanted to be, whether that means a sexy alien, princess warrior,
nude, transgendered, performer or artist, and find such eccentricities
cheered and encouraged – not mocked and derided like they would quite
possibly be in everyday life. What makes Burning Man so special to me is
the freedom everyone has to fully express themselves, not so much an
alleged freedom from societal control.
Saying that, Burning Man’s freedom might be social, but it is definitely
not legal. In fact, nowadays the Burning Man organization has formed a
Limited Liability Company, and must deal with as many as a dozen
authorities at all levels before it can open its gates. Every year, a huge
amount of resources is devoted to placating government agencies. Permits
are only given in exchange for the presence of law enforcement inside, and
do not exactly come cheap. Still, with all the regulations and enforcement,
the Burning Man organization does a pretty good job at keeping the playa
the libratory place it is. How it does so is something I want to look at next.
Organizational Structure
One of the first things that needed to be structured was the Burning Man
organization itself. After 1996 it became apparent that Burning Man had to
create some kind of legal entity to do business with the world. As Black
Rock City continued to grow, no single organizer could be expected to
personally assume the legal and economic risks that were created by an
event on this scale. Responsibilities and relationships implicit in Burning
Man’s former mode of operation now needed to be formalized. So it was in
1997 that Harvey founded Burning Man’s Limited Liability Company (LLC)
and the first version of a senior staff. On the Burning Man website: “The
time had come, in other words, for Burning Man’s organizers to kick
themselves upstairs.”85 It was from this seed that the present organization,
with its several tiers of decision-making and its many levels of consensus
formation, has grown.
85 At: http://afterburn.burningman.com/05/org/index.html, accessed October 3rd, 2006.
59
The tale of how Burning Man the event became Burning Man the Limited
Liability Co. offers a fascinating glimpse into how even the wildest, least
commercial ideas can, almost against their will, become bankable and
regulatory. A press release by the Burning Man organization in 2004 states:
Based on corporate accounting and participant survey data, the
organization estimates that it contributes $10 million annually to
Washoe County, including property taxes, vehicle and equipment
rental, and the money that its participants spend on groceries,
supplies and lodging on the way in and out of the event. 86
Furthermore, revenue from recycled cans is donated to local schools, and
the Bureau of Land Management receives four dollar per person per day for
the use of the federally owned land, now roughly yielding another 700.000
dollar annually.
With ticket prices soaring to as much as 300 dollar at the gate, Burning
Man certainly takes home its share of the money. No matter how
ideologically driven, its organizational structure is still a LLC - not a non-
profit. However, as Harvey summarizes the finances: “If anything, we joke,
we are more aptly termed a ‘no-profit.’87 And this might be true, for Burning
86 At: http://www.burningman.com/pdf/press_releases/press_release_06062003.pdf,
accessed October 4th 2006. When I spook with a salesclerk working for a huge supermarket
in Reno, he confided that during the days before Burning Man, his store’s turnover had
grown to be higher than it ever had been during Thanksgiving and Christmas – traditionally
the most profitable days of the year for retail. And his store was not the only one – according
to him Reno’s entire combined revenue followed the same pattern.
87 At: http://afterburn.burningman.com/01/financial_intro.html, accessed June 28th 2005.

Man has never had investors; does not accept commercial sponsorships;
has turned down several promotional deals; endorses no products, and has
disallowed vending except for the sale of coffee and ice at the event. All of
these activities would be typical sources of income and funding for a
normal business that exists to create a profit.
On the Burning Man website, every year after the event the so-called
Afterburn Report is made public. In it, we can find extensive documentation
on all the wrongs and rights of that year’s event, as well as a highly
transparent financial summary, including a chart documenting cash
expenditures, asset acquisition and income. Apparently, in 2005, it cost
approximately 222 dollar per person to produce Burning Man. This pays for
the presence of a professional medical service and fire department, art
funding, the Man, porta-potties, county fees, insurance, and the office.88
With tickets starting at 165 dollar in January, and rising with about 20
dollar every few months, it means that every ticket sold over 222 dollars
subsidizes every ticket sold for less. This is why people are forever
encouraged to buy their ticket at the highest affordable price “so as to help
other community members to do the same.”
Like any other company, Burning Man’s LLC generates money, has an
office, people on the payroll, weekly meetings, structure and hierarchy.
However, what struck me most from my working days in the office, was
something that John (the HR manager and thus in control of, well, basically,
me) had said. At that time, John had not been working there that long
himself. Coming from a corporate background, he told me about the
difference between his new and old job, which he saw summarized in the
fact that when he came in for his first day at the Burning Man office, his
future colleagues there all gave him hugs instead of handshakes. It
reminded me of something I had once read, that the handshake’s original
purpose was to make sure that the person you were meeting would not
have a weapon in his hand. The hug, on the other hand, showed John that
they really cared about him. Instead of feeling a little bit uncomfortable like
I had before, I now started to like the fact that he had given me a hug when I
walked in there first.
88 For the full overview, see Appendix D
-4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man
Law Enforcement
Its management structure is not the only thing that makes Burning Man
different from ‘normal’ organizational structures; the enforcement of law -
or ‘community standards,’ as the organizers would have it - is at least as
different from what you are likely to find elsewhere in the country. Still,
even though Harvey always insists that Burning Man is ‘the place on earth
where the First Amendment is most fully exercised,’ that does not mean
that everything goes. For, as said, despite the party atmosphere and the
stated ethos of radical self-expression, Burning Man does not - or I should
so no longer – equals anarchy. There are now several official instances that
need to be placated before, during and after the event; placing Burning Man
squarely within the realm of politics:
Black Rock City has all the characteristics of other municipalities of
similar size, including a need to maintain diplomatic relations with
numerous government agencies. And government is sure to bring
politics. The paradoxical result is that the apolitical art event known
as Burning Man is highly engaged in politics from the local area all
the way to the national level.89
Managing such government relations successfully has meant letting in law
enforcement. But even though real cops, mostly from Washoe County,
patrol the playa, they do so alongside the Rangers and hardly ever act
without consulting this by Burners generated ‘peace corps.’
In full, ‘The Black Rock Rangers’ are basically ‘non-confrontational
community mediators’ who help to resolve disputes within the community,
and to bridge the gap between the ethos and the culture of Burning Man’s
citizens and the needs and responsibilities of law enforcement. Michael
Michael, who more or less initiated the Rangers and is still known by his
playa pseudonym of ‘Danger Ranger,’ explains their essence:
We are giving people an opportunity to play the role of hero, not the
role of policeman. […] I want them to think whether there’s a real
reason for telling a person to stop doing something, not just
something programmed from outside society. Like if you see someone
burning a car...is it their car? Well, you can’t burn someone else’s car
without their permission. But if it is [the person’s own car], you need
to remind them that they will be responsible for cleaning up the mess.
But sure, they can burn their car.90
During the required training for the all-volunteer force (160-strong in
2005), the trainees must yell en masse “We are not cops!” And mostly, they
do not act like them. They patrol, they help people who ask for help, they
talk to each other on radios, and only sometimes do they administer
frontier justice. For instance,
and I love this example, when
Michael found someone
driving illegally, he emptied
the car’s tires of air, leaving the
immobilized vehicle sitting in
the middle of nowhere.
Michael added a sign to strike
fear into others who might
think of violating community
mores: “Air pressure is a
privilege, not a right – signed,
Danger Ranger.”
89 From the 2004 Afterburn report. At:
http://afterburn.burningman.com/04/admin/government.html, accessed Sept. 21st 2005.
90 At: http://www.reason.com/news/show/27598.html, accessed September 27th 2005.
60
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
On the playa, it is not just the Rangers acting in ways often not expected
from those keeping order and control. For example, consider this one
incident I saw happening in 2004, where a young topless woman rushed
from her camp to challenge two Washoe County cops with a pump-action
water rifle. She fired, but failed to get a good shot off. I remember feeling a
little shocked and worried how they might take this obvious assault, but
was amazed to see how one of the cops gently showed the woman how to
pump the water gun properly so it might work the next time. Having their
authority mocked, with what pretty much looked like a real weapon aimed
at them, both cops then cruised on, leaving me, and the girl, behind in
laughter. In many towns actions such as this one, and many others that I
have witnessed on the playa, would surely get you arrested, but in Black
Rock City the cops appear to stay relatively tolerant and stoical under it all.
In all Burning Man’s history, I know of only two cases in which either a
bunch of people or one particular object was ejected from the playa. The
first one involved an entire group of revelers calling themselves Capitalist
Pig Camp, who were doing what they insisted was an art project, but which
basically only entailed the shouting of racial slurs willy-nilly, sexual come-
ons and in general very obnoxious remarks to anyone passing by. By
Wednesday morning, they were politely yet insistently told to go home.
Self-expression apparently has its limit, and it is still not to interfere with
communal feelings I guess.
The second incident
revolved around the Jiffy
Lube Camp – a camp
catering to gay men. It was
pretty hard to miss their
gigantic mechanical
billboard of two muscular
men, about 12 feet tall, cut
out of plywood. The
brightly painted art was
hinged with pins to allow
movement - more
specifically, to portray anal
intercourse. The work was
placed under a spotlight on
a platform that raised it high above the tents. The statement was too much
for the police, and they demanded for it to be taken down. Harvey agreed,
emphasizing especially the presence of children on the playa. However, I
can imagine that in reality it was mostly about keeping the peace and not
disturbing the tender relationship with authority.
After the 2005 event was over, I heard that there had only been seven
arrests on the playa that year. One was for trespassing (a truculent would-
be gate crasher), one for assault, one for weapons possession, and the rest
for drug sales. Especially the last might seem incongruent with Burning
Man’s emphasis on ‘radical self-expression’, but the Burning Man
organization was quick to point out that they still stood by these drug
arrests. As Harvey explicates, this is so because they would have violated
Burning Man’s ‘no vending’ rule. I guess that is one way of looking at things,
or at least one balance to keep. Still, a pretty good score, especially when
compared with other festivals, carnivals, celebrations and sometimes even
cities in similar size.
In general, to me, such little arrests show that a policy of looking the
other way - or, as Michael Michael puts it, of ‘respecting Black Rock’s
community mores’ – seems in effect regarding drugs, lewdness, and
indecent exposure. I guess that such policy will not sound too good to either
the media or concerned constituents in the counties, so it is pretty much left
unsaid. When I began asking a county sheriff about the possibility of an
61
official ‘see no evil’ policy, he cut me off before the heresy was even fully
out of my lips. All laws of the county are enforced to the fullest, he insisted.
Off the record, I insist that to inculcate such relaxed policing in a place
where such transgressive behaviors are taking place, is an accomplishment
on the organization’s negotiation skills, and, probably also not totally
unimportant, the financial gain the event offers.
From the number of arrests to the laid back attitude of police at the
playa, Black Rock City might appear to be a uniquely peaceful and crime-
free place. Still, whilst browsing on digital bulletin boards I found quite a
few messages dealing with issues of rape, sexual assault, theft and crime in
general on the playa. It leaves me to think that the fact that so little crime
gets reported would not necessarily be a good indication of the number of
crimes actually taking place. Most crimes committed at Burning Man will go
unpunished – at least by official law enforcement, but that does not
necessarily imply that no crimes would take place among its thirty five-
thousand-plus participants. However, to me it seems that the very fact that
most Burners believe in their city’s idyllic nature already makes it a fare
more pleasant place than it would be if they would chose to focus on really
figuring out exactly how crime-free or safe it is, and which of their
neighbors might be a potential thief or attacker and should thus be
approached as such.
In the end, I also think that crime is often linked to anonymity. The
playa literally has so many eyes on the street and in that sense social
control from the ‘bottom up’ that crimes are already less likely to happen.
There is simply much more chance that someone will step up and say ‘we
don’t do that’, or ‘stop doing that’ or whatever other line that would prevent
violent acts, sexual assault or theft from escalating or even taking place
altogether. This is also part of Burning Man’s ethics: of being a participant
and thus also responsible for the safety and well-being of your city and
community. Black Rock City is a city in which people in general have
invested themselves to such degree that committing a crime would be a
crime against their own efforts. More pragmatic, I can only imagine that
making the long drive to the Black Rock Desert, paying a rather large
amount of money to get in, and then being submitted to all nature’s whims
and fancies might be a few too many obstacles for the average villain.
Having said all that about Burning Man’s overall relaxed relation with
authorities, it is a truce that is far from stabile or infinite. In 2006, just after
I had left San Francisco, there was a lot of discussion going on at the
Burning Man office because of proposed ‘draconian stipulations’ that would
allow the Bureau of Land Management (the BLM) to charge Burning Man
more money for the use of its public land and especially its law
enforcement costs, and also to give this law enforcement the unfettered
discretion to evict participants based on a broadly generalized ‘good cause’
instead of the law. The Burning Man organization noted that between 1998
and 2004, the cost of law enforcement rose 616 percent, while the increase
in the Black Rock City population was only modest and the number of
crimes in some years actually decreased.

For the first time in seven years, it was decided to digitally ask the
community for help. The plea went like this:
If you support Burning Man, if you want ticket prices not to increase
because of the BLM's mismanagement, if you care about how your
public funds are being spent, if you care about the future of the Black
Rock Desert NCA [National Conservation Area], if you believe
government agencies should be held to the letter of the law, if you
value your First Amendment right to express yourself and assemble
on public land, if you value your civil rights, and if you want your
voice to be heard then here's what we would like you to do:91
The recommended course of action was to send an email or letter to the
BLM. Apparently, 2,221 emails and 298 letters were sent. Personally, I don’t
think this is all that much, but if you consider that people had less than five
days to do so, and I for instance only saw the mail after the date when the
public comment period turned overdue, it is not all bad as well.
All in all, after many conversations with Washoe County officials and
the BLM, Burning Man managed to avoid their growing grip on the festival,
but one wonders if this present
avoidance is not just a future
postponement. Whichever way,
it illustrates how hard it can be
to ‘successfully ride the paradox
of regulating a temporary
autonomous zone,’ as Davis
phrased it. There will always be
an inherent tension between
growth and regulation; chaos
and civilization; surprise and
routinization; forces from the in-
and from the outside. So far,
Burning Man, although a far cry
from the free, anarchic haven it
once was, has been relatively
free and autonomous within the
system it no longer could
pretend to escape. It went civic,
yes, but it is a civility that, even
though held on public land,
exists more or less on its own
utopic grounds.
91 On: http://www.burningman.com/news/blm_news_06.html, accessed May 1st 2007.
-4- Everywhere You Go: the City that is Burning Man
Utopia versus Heterotopia
Black Rock City is literally a manifestation of the human imagination, and
its barren location only serves to underscore the impressiveness of this
feature. It seems to exist in the magical space between eu-topia (good
place) and ou-topia (no-place). Sir Thomas More merged these two Greek
words to form the term Utopia, meaning “’a good place’ which was
‘nowhere,’ except in the imagination” (Hetherington 1997:ix). Utopian
theorist Rosabeth Kanter argues that
Utopia is the imaginary society in which humankind’s deepest
yearnings, noblest dreams, and highest aspirations come to
fulfillment, where all physical, social and spiritual forces work
together in harmony, to permit the attainment of everything people
find necessary and desirable. (Kanter 1972:1)
Essential to utopia is thus that it is an ideal world, which is by definition
impossible to achieve. Burning Man, however, is definitely achieved, if only
temporarily. It not only exists in the human imagination, but is that
imagination given flesh, or, more appropriately, canvas, rebar and street
signs. As I hope to have shown, the city that has thus arisen is as much part
of the human imagination as it is of the human society that surrounds it at
distance: rehearsing and staging an alternative model of how the world
‘should’ be within the limitations of how the world actually ‘is.’ For
authority, permits, regulation and law are as much part of Black Rock City’s
infrastructure as the rave camps, lampposts and ubiquitous neon lightning.
In Patterns of Order and Utopia (1979), Frank Manuel’s approach is to
study utopias as psychological documents that tell us about the sensibility
of the societies in which they are produced, and can be interpreted as
“decisive social bombs of revolutionary changes.” Morris (2006) adds to
this that utopias can be seen as ‘signs’ or ‘signals’ of evolutionary
developments in society, providing a liminal stage where new forms of
economic and political possibilities can be enacted and rehearsed.
According to Parrington, the United States have always been linked to
utopic thought. In American Dreams: A Study of American Utopias, he reveals
that “from the very beginning, Americans have dreamt of a different, and
usually of a better world. America is a Utopia […]. America was built on
promises. From the first voyage and the first ship there were promises”
(1964:xi). More specifically, Robert V. Hine (1983) has recognized that
since the fifteenth century when the term ‘California’ was coined, it has
called up visions of utopia; utopian colonies and settlements which attempt
to establish new social patterns that experiment with new cooperative
forms of living and being. Although having moved to Nevada, Burning Man
is still a quintessential part of this Californian utopian trend. As I will argue
later on, California and more specifically San Francisco is not just the site
where Burning Mans countercultural predecessors are most loudly heard, it
also the site where its utopian imagination can be most tangibly felt.
62
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Foucault argued that, by contrast to ‘utopias’, “sites with no real place”

which “present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned
upside down,” there exist ‘heterotopia:’ specifically unsettling, ambiguous
and non-ordinary social spaces. These ‘counter-sites’ are:
…a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the
other real sites that can be found within the culture, are
simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Places of this
kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to
indicate their location in reality. (Foucault 1986:24)
Such ‘spaces of otherness’ always possess an aura of mystery or danger, and
always contain multiple meanings for participants (Ibid.13). They can be
event-spaces of transgression, such as Burning Man, or spaces for the
perfection of social control and order, such as prisons and asylums.
Hetherington adds that, “Almost like laboratories, they can be taken as sites
in which new ways of experimenting with ordering society are tried out
(1997:12-13).
Black Rock City certainly has utopic and heterotrophic threads running
through. On one hand, it is a ‘no-place,’ a construction and performance of
new social ideals situated in a vast, open expanse of desert; the human
imagination given form. Yet at the same time it is a ‘someplace,’ a
juxtaposition of multiple spaces, life-styles, social groups, official instances
and patterns from the ‘real world’ taken into one place. Above all, it is an
experimentation with alternative ways of being; both with civic and
organizational structure as with community.
Erik Davis reminds us that William Blake identified Eden with the
realized human imagination, and that the poet saw this paradise not as a
peaceful garden, but as a fiery city (Davis 2005:38). Not a rainbow
gathering, in other words, but a Black Rock town, going wild. It is a man-
made city and a city made for men; life-affirming through its raw power,
Dionysiac excess, state of the art technology and celebratory art. It is to this
omnipresence of art that I want to turn next.

63

-5-
Everyone an Artist:
the Communal Art of Black
Rock City
I hope you enjoyed my little city tour yesterday. I know it can be a bit
overwhelming at first, so we are going to take it rather slow today. Well,
maybe slow is not the right word, but at least we will venture out of the tent
camps and into the uninhabited part of Black Rock City. For today, as
promised, the art tour is on offer. We will take the bicycle, because we want to
cover a big part of the playa and by foot such excursion would be next to
impossible. In my normal routine, I would cycle to center camp first, have a
coffee or two, read the daily newspaper, talk with people, make notes; start
the day. But today I have decided to skip that part and take you straight to
the furthest ‘left-end’ side of the city. And I know; many people are convinced
that nighttime would be the optimal viewing time for the Man, the city, and its
art. They say that the blinding daytime light would be too inhospitable for
such a physically demanding task. I do not agree. For me, I prefer the morning
hours, when the sun is not too hot and bright and there is a very gentle feel to
the playa.
As said, today we will be after art. Art, however, is hard to pinpoint on the
playa, both conceptual and geographical. It is marked by its own sense of
aesthetics, appreciation, and purpose. Remember, for instance, that bus-sized
white whale we just passed, with the fully articulate moving tail and the
bubbles shooting out of its blowhole, you know, before those people
meditating on top of that flying carpet overtook us? Here they are called Art
Cars, and in order to drive any of those fantastical conveyances you have to
apply for a permit by the Department of Mutant Vehicles.92 Art cars are the
only form of motorized transport allowed on the playa, and their form can
take on anything ranging from a golf cart wrapped in pink fur to the
elaborate and insanely detailed reproduction of a sixteenth-century Spanish
galleon built around a truck - which I think I mentioned before but which
never ceases to impress me. Not your average art gallery material, but art
nonetheless.
To further test your acceptance of what would constitute art, let us cycle way
out into the playa. What is it you say? Oh, no, no need to get discouraged by
that sight. I know seeing a house-size vagina complete with pubic hear and
people entering with little condom like reservoirs on their head might make
you afraid of venturing further, but bear with me. In Black Rock City, it is not
so much a matter of art being tasteful or ‘good’, but more of art… well… being.
Some of the art is downright stunning though, like the gigantic chandelier
right there. Does it not look like it has just crashed from some Olympian sky; a
banquet of the Gods; a cleavage in space? And if you look to your left, how
about those giant metal lotus flowers spewing flames? Or out there in the
distance, more towards your right, those mud swimmers that seem to briefly
surface from the desert floor to gasp for breath? Surely you are not
hallucinating, I see them as well.
92Having just bought my VW, I know that the Department of Mutant Vehicle is a parody on
the actual governmental Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), from which all matters
concerning vehicles are arranged.
-5- Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City
Now, can you make out that narrow, elegant ladder reaching out to touch the
clouds, all the way there in the distance? That is the general direction where
we are heading. I know, I know, we might have taken a bit of a detour, but
you’ll have to excuse me for that. Like most others here, I have only been a
citizen of this city for a mere five days, and my orientation is still far from
perfect, especially outside the actual city-grid and onto the vast expanse of the
playa. And no, do not worry, we will not accidentally leave Black Rock City
and never find our way back again. Before that happens, we would inevitable
be stopped by the trash fence, which is erected all along the perimeters to
prevent objects taken by the wind from leaving the site. And although one can
find art objects all the way to the fence, and sometimes even incorporating the
fence, a visit to the Man, and not the fence, is next on the agenda.
When we get to the Man, we can visit the Funhouse of the Mind, beneath its
base. I have never quite counted them, but have been told that it consists of
exactly thirty insidiously linked rooms, all filled with art. Together, they form
quite a maze, and as the playa’s official newspaper warns: “If you suffer from
claustrophobia, agoraphobia, or are taking any psychotropic prescription
drugs whose names end with the syllables -in, -ine, -an, -trin, -ac or -ex, you
should consider not entering this structure.”93 I sure hope this warning does
not apply to you. Once in the maze, if and when we can find one of the two
stairways that lead upward, apparently, with a little effort, we will even be
able to rotate the Man 180 degrees. So far I have not found either one of the
stairways, but I sure have been disoriented a few times by the Man’s altered
position.
The other advantage from being way up here in the maze is the fact that it
will give us a good vantage point from which we can oversee the playa. There,
now you can see with your own eyes how many art objects lie scattered out
there. Some big, like those five gigantic thirteen-thousand-pound chunks of
granite suspended by tensile steel cords, where we saw that pretty couple
tempting faith by using it as a merry go round; some small like the tiny plastic
ant colony we nearly drove over on the intersection Esplanade and 9.30. We
could stop by an infinite amount more, and in doing so I would probably
discover dozens and dozens of surprising art works I had not yet found, or
found out about, myself, but in our current tour, time is too limited for that.
The sun is already getting really hot, and there are still a few specific art
works I want to show you.
93 From the Black Rock Gazette, Volume 1, issue 1, 2005.
64
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
So let’s cycle on. On the promenade behind the Man you have to have a look at
the giant blue human head rising from the desert floor at cheek height. It is
called The Dreamer and it is executed by longtime Burning Man artist Pepe
Ozan. Arguably, this is a particular work of art that might be better viewed in
the dark. For at sunset each day, the Dreamer’s eyes will open and a fire will
be lit inside its cranium. Around it, fire performances, including dancing and
interactive sculptures, will begin to ignite, lasting way into the night. Now,
though, the head just slumbers. If we wanted to, we could participate in
dream workshops that are given inside, but if you do not mind, I would rather
move on to the far end of the Promenade and keep my dreams to myself. The
playa is enough of a dreamscape, and sometimes I have the sneaking
suspicion that even my most fantastical dream would be no match for life and
art in Black Rock City.
It is hard to see from here, but if you look beyond that string of driving
cupcakes, behind that cloud of dust even, then surely you will see it looming.
The magnificent wooden laced structure starting to take shape before our
eyes is what is called the Temple of Tears, or the Mausoleum, and I wanted
you to see it last. You have to understand, when the Man is this city’s heart,
and the Center Camp area its longs, this imposing edifice must surely be its
soul, or whichever other part of the body one uses for commemoration,
mourning, and remembrance. I have walked in here many times this week,
and whenever I did, I was moved by the small rituals taking place: people
scribbling personal messages on the pieces of filigreed plywood that comprise
its structure and reading those left by others, playing music, praying, crying
and hugging. The Temple is the private made public. Some messages are
made like a shrine, like the one over there with the teddy bear and the
65
message that states “5-6-88/11-5-94, I love you baby - Mommy”; some contain
photographs, like the one with that young, pensive man, and the message
“You left us by your own hand. We love you and forgive you”. I wanted you to
see and feel the contemplative solemnity of this space; because I think that it
forms a very real part of Burning Man as well. And on the final night, when
the Temple with all its offerings and messages is burned, the catharsis it holds
might even surpass that of the Man’s conflagration the night before.
From its early associations with the bohemian lifestyle of its San-Francisco
based founders, to its later association with the Cacophony Society’s
attention-inspiring performance art-based events, Burning Man has long
been constructed and described as an arts festival. However, art at Burning
Man crosses genres, defies classification, and does not fit comfortably in the
standard art academic and gallery worlds that dominate the art scene in
America. It is democratic, inclusive, experiential, site specific, temporary,
community based, interactive, and able to withstand extremes of weather.
The works of art done in the desert are furthermore not done to impress
any art critic, to get a dealer, show or exhibition, or to make a sale. More
often than not is done simply to realize a vision mostly unrealizable
anywhere else, and to give that vision to an appreciative audience who may
interact with it - and with each other through it. Again, the otherwise stark
environment of the Black Rock Desert is important, because it makes
everything stand out. “The context of no context makes anything leap to the
eye, as if its identity shines out of it. In a primal way, it also makes people
shine out of themselves” (Harvey 2003:1). It is the shared surrounding
emptiness that summons the community to decorate their world and
themselves.
 -5- Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City

In this chapter I will explore the processes used by organizers and
participants to relate art to a form of self-expression and non-spectating
that is more communal and genuine in nature than those practices that
occur within the ‘official’ art world. Additionally, I will look at the important
effects that this artistic association has on creating a shared sense of
community.
Like most defining characteristics of Burning Man, art as well is
intended to go against perceived ills in American society. For out in the less
dusty world, it is argued by the organization, art is often alienated from the
event’s sense of intimacy and interactivity, and instead subjected to the
laws of commerce and the marketplace, hereby loosing its vital function of
community building. On Burning Man, though, art and aesthetics are
brought back together, and mutually act against a state of numbness that
Susanne Buck-Morss sees critiqued in Benjamin’s influential Artwork essay.
Her argument connects aesthetics to the synaesthetic system, and opposes
this with Benjamin’s perceived numb, suppressed society: or in her words
the aneasthetized society. I will explain this theoretical stance in further
detail next, but not without first properly tracing the history of art and
aesthetics on the playa.

A City filled with Art

The construction and planning of the city - the originary gesture that
establishes the container for the gathering - is itself considered a work of art
by its organizers. Throughout the city and dotting the playa are sculptures
and installations, some easy to find, some several miles away in unmarked
territory, left for the intrepid to stumble upon. (Pinchbeck 2003)
On Burning Man, free expression, creativity and play form a vital trinity. Put
these three together, and the addition sum is shown in an abundance of art
on the playa. These works of art are not about commercial value, and most
of the time not even about being ‘good.’ In Black Rock City, ‘bad taste’ is not
denigrated - even apparent failures can be recycled into future winners.
From Hello Kitty to Aztec temples; from giant melting ice balls to swinging
monoliths on a string; from a 60 meters high vagina you have to exit for
rebirth to a pirate ship on wheels holding a gaudy bar inside: Burning Man
suggests a stance beyond qualitative and artistic judgment. In a community
where the art is not intended to be sold or reviewed, but to generate
community and interactivity, its aesthetic merit seems somewhat beside
the point. When viewed in such context, artworks become experiential
tools, not final statements or museum pieces. It is a new genre of art that
might not be new at all, but remind us of a time in which there was similarly
little separation between art and life. At Burning Man, the do-it-yourself
ethic is the community standard, and aesthetics are enthusiastically
explored by everyone, not just artists.
When the work has been experienced, the object that catalyzed the
experience can be liberated through its destruction. As long time attendee Art as Civic Structure
and artist Justin told me in an interview: “I totally love burning my art. Only One of the ways to describe Burning Man is to put it in a context of ‘arts
then can I know for a fact that no one will own it. It belongs to the festival,’ which at times has earned the event the title ‘the world largest
community.[…] It belongs to the field of experience, not material.” (Justin, outdoor art gallery.’ In the year of my research, 2005, there were over three
interview July 17th 2005). In the end, it does not matter how much time, hundred art installations scattered across the city: on the open playa, in the
energy, and skill has been lavished on the artistic object. The point of art on camping area, at center camp café, along the trash fence which marks the
Burning Man is not to cling to that shell, that structure, but to evolve from boundaries of the city, in the small participant-run airport, along the
it, and to be transformed by the experience. entrance road, and within the pavilion on which the Man stood. Art it is part
66
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

and parcel of everyday life for the citizens of Black Rock City, nearly all of
whom produce objects for use and display during the event, from costumes
and small items given out as gifts to large-scale art installations. It seemed
that the whole city I stumbled upon was made to facilitate art, so that it
could be populated by interactive theme camps, wildly costumed creatures,
surreal art cars, omnipresent and often spontaneous performances,
ambitious arty installations and prankster iconography. Today, art truly is
everywhere, and everything appears to be art.

The lampposts clearly show that it is literally, as well as metaphorically, art

around which the civic structure gets build. But art is more. Since 1996, so-
called Art Cars are the only permitted form of motorized transport during
the event. An Art Car isn’t just a car with stuff painted on, but a car that has
undergone some degree of structural transformation, as well as having
been accepted by and registered with Burning Man’s Department of Mutant
Vehicles (DMV). If the DMV approves, they issue you a license with the
disclaimer: “By entering this mutant vehicle you agree that under any
circumstances whatsoever the operators and company owner are not
responsible for any physical or mental damage done to you. This includes
death ... Enjoy the ride....” In 2005, 455 mobile artworks were registered,
including 297 daytime vehicles, 33 nighttime-only vehicles, and 125 that
roved the playa both day and night: bringing forth a hallucinatory amount
Art has always been important to the event, but when Burning Man went of power-driven couches, whales, boats, penises, rockets, living rooms, fish,
civic, Larry Harvey decided that art was going to be the official means insects, cats, lobsters, giant heads, flying saucers, octopuses, and anything
through which the event was to survive; the foundation and trademark of anyone might dare design and still get moving.
its up and coming civic structure; the element binding the increasingly
heterogeneous citizens of Black Rock City together. Burning Man would
start to not only host, but also fund art. The first, officially funded, art
project was to be the lampposts of the city to be: pragmatic through their
nature and demand:
I felt very strongly that what we needed was some kind of
architectural symbol that would demarcate public space. And if you
did it in a way that signaled transcendency people would respect it. I
decided on lampposts. And they instantly respected that space.
(Harvey in Haden-Guest 2006)
Such seemingly insignificant object as a lamppost had great impact. Not
only did it define the city grid, it also made respect this new ‘civilized’
space. As Haden-Guest sums up the effects: “what at first seems riotous
post-apocalyptic anarchy soon comes to seem as organically structured as a
nautilus shell” (Haden-Guest 2006). To this day, every evening just before
dusk, the lamps are lit, with some solemnity, by a small procession of
lamplighters with kerosene torches. Their ceremonial lightning honors a
different kind of flame than that of the Man’s primal abandon on burn night:
the steady, ongoing fire of civilization. Nowadays, with the city laid out
officially as it does, the lamplighters march out north, south, east and west
from Center Camp to the temple and to the Man; connecting a myriad of
artistic expressions that define the city and its grid much in the same
manner as the lampposts.

67

In addition to painted, decorated, and altered cars, the ranks of art
vehicles on the playa have grown to include fire trucks, buses, bicycles,
scooters, motorcycles, golf carts, and all manner of wheeled, mobile objects
which might serve as transport of some kind. The perfectly flat and empty
playa serves as a superb setting for the art cars, and to many the occasional
art car parade is one of the event’s highlights. Art cars also represent a
convenient way of getting around, as you can always hitch a ride, hop on
and hop off, and might just suddenly find yourself pole dancing and
shooting cocktails in a steel, fire breathing dragon’s belly whilst getting
smoothly, though slightly tipsy, from A to B.
Theme Camps
The amalgamation of art with community has furthermore contributed to
what is known as a Theme Camp. Theme camps are devoted to creating –
often with fanatical dedication – sustained and planned environments to
entertain, enchant and interact with the other citizens of Black Rock City.
The concept is simple: twenty people contributing to an organized plan
stand a greater chance of achieving something more expressive and
impressive in less time and often more functional ways than each could do
individually. Seen like this, theme camps are the middle tier of the self-
reliance needed to survive in a desert. Perhaps they can be viewed as the
“safety in numbers” family-sized version of radical self-reliance, where you
can survive with the help of others.
As an organizational structure, theme camps can range from chaotic
slacker towns to carefully planned environments; they create public areas,
chill spaces, fully stocked bars, workshop areas, valet parking restaurants,
rave floors, playful installations and in general an endless amount of ‘things
to do.’ Composed of ravers or Microsoft code writers or underground
artists or certified healers or voyeuristic perverts, each theme camp
presents a unique vision, reflecting a particular community’s musical and
aesthetic ideal and possible subcultural affiliations. In a large, collaborative
act of self-expression, these visions are projected outward to be shared by
all. Throughout the years, many camps have become elaborate enterprises
with several hundred members and equipment stored in warehouses in
nearby towns. In general, their level of artistry and attention to detail can
be prodigious, especially when projected on a blank and hash desert
environment.
Apparently, the first unofficial theme camp was born in 1992 when a
woman named Vivian Perry set up her camp with fresh flowers and
champagne buckets; eating oysters and caviars off china and silver. As the
days advanced, more and more people were puzzled as to how she
managed to stay as pristine and spotless as she did, whilst everyone else
was covered with dust and grungy after minutes of arrival. It turned out
that she had multiple pieces of the same outfit, and continuously cleaned
-5- Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City
herself with a damp rag, but she was still the talk of the day. As Steve put it:
“they hadn’t seen anybody do anything so conceptually obsessive out there
yet” (audiotape Steve). Hers was not so much a theme camp in the sense
that she would hold open house for anyone stopping by, but she still acted
out and presented a unified, created experience. And she would inspire
Peter Doty to stage his Christmas Camp the year after, which would go into
history as the first official theme camp.
In this camp, properly festooned with Christmas decorations -
including a freshly chopped pine tree in the middle, Peter would dress as
Santa, blast tapes of Christmas carols 24/7, and supply everyone with thick,
boozy eggnog in the desert heat – but not until they had eaten a slab of
fruitcake. As heard on Steve’s audiotape:
I even staged a dysfunctional family freak-out because, after all,
that’s what Christmas is really all about. I started screaming, “Why
can’t we for once just go out to the desert and have a perfect
Christmas? Is that really asking too much? I hate all of you; I wish
you were dead!”
He would then run sobbing into his tent, change into his Santa outfit, come
back out and pose for pictures with a loaded shotgun in one hand, a bottle
of bourbon in the other and a topless girl in his lap. “That became my
Christmas card that year.”
These days, theme camps in all shapes and sizes adorn – or sometimes
blemish – Black Rock City. It is estimated that over half of Black Rock City’s
citizens live in and are actively involved in a theme camp of their choice,
often even throughout the year; more and more intense as the event
approaches. In 2005, theme camp registration at Burning Man’s office
processed 508 applications, from which 485 theme camps eventually made
it to Black Rock City. These registered camps are placed in the two
innermost blocks of the city’s great circles. Beyond them, in the outer
circles, are hundreds of other ‘unregistered’ theme camps.
Theme camps are literally seen as a gift to the community, a point I will
elaborate on in the next chapter. They are often costly projects; a reason
why the bigger camps hold fundraisers (or ‘fun raisers’ in Burning Man
jargon) on forehand to be able to finance all their expenses. From roughly
May to August, San Francisco is buzzing with such parties and gatherings,
and most of my weekends there I could choose from at least three different
ones to attend. When Burning Man is over, some of the bigger theme camps
will hold reunion parties to again relive those wonderful playa moments,
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

and share them with all – and probably, less noble, to try and make it out of open nature of theme camps, they solve the distance normally experienced
debt. Such happenings really define San Francisco’s social agenda, and between communality and civility in a city. From the Burning Man website:
although in general each of them carries a distinct ‘Burning Man style:’
We feel like particles within a mass, and so are tempted to seek
participatory, crazy, and very open and welcoming, they all more or less
narcissistic refuge in small circles - to associate only with people who
had their own distinctive aesthetics and crowd.
immediately mirror our personal tastes or lifestyle. However, we
To me, in the city as in the desert, the extremely diverse range of theme
have learned that striving toward transcendent goals can inculcate a
camps reflects the heterogeneous nature of Burning Man. This is no longer
deeper sense of fellowship and pride within a group than is
a countercultural TAZ populated by countercultural rebels escaping society,
attainable through any clique or crowd. A public world expands our
but a true city in the sense that it contains a diverse range of people, all with
sense of who we are.96
their own interests, aesthetics and sense of meaning. Even though Burning
Man might resemble its own utopian microcosmos when viewed against the Transported at large, the open nature and circle of theme camps basically
macrocosmos of society, it in turn holds a plural of microcosms within, each take the same form as Black Rock City; with the Man at the geographic
reflecting their own unique vision. What springs to mind when thinking center and the streets in an open arch. When I asked Harvey if, with the
about these microcosms, is that they might more aptly be described as number of those attending constantly on the rise, he would ever close the
subcultures.94 That way, I could have the brilliant argument that Burning circle, he answered “Good God no. We’d all go psychotic. Do not ever close
Man went from the countercultural to the cultural via the subcultural, but, the circle. We have to keep feeling that the world outside has the same
alas, I do not think it is as clear cut as that. For most subcultures, it seems reality, the same sense of inner reality that we find in ourselves” (Harvey,
that the circle of their collectiveness is pretty much closed as it were, and interview October 15th 2005). It seems that with this remark, like theme
often used to separate the ‘self’ from the large group of ‘others.’ camps projecting a vision and reaching out to fellow participants, Burning
Sarah Thornton, after Pierre Bourdieu (1986), described subcultural Man itself is just as much a vision with full potential to reach out to society.
capital as the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of
a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from
members of other groups (Thornton 1995:11). Style hereby is a very
important distinction, described by Dick Hebdige as subculture’s “fashions,
mannerisms, activities, music, interests, and argot”95 (Hebdidge 1979:16).
On Burning Man, however, subcultural capital and style are not so much
used to define a tight little world and thereby exclude people; on the
contrary, in most cases it seems that they are used as a bridge to commune
some inner vision to the outer world, and to credit this world with the same
kind of reality seen in those inside the bonded circle. When reality is
projected outward as such, culture is no longer a given, but something that
can be created. Instead of isolation, social interaction is the result.

It is as if theme camps are not just defined as an amalgamation of

community with art, but also as the incorporation of communal life into
civic life. Like subcultures, communal interactions occur on an intimate
scale, and have a tendency, over time, to seek a kind of closure that repels
outsiders. Civility, on the other hand, is practiced with strangers and relates
to a greater realm beyond the boundaries of a particular group. With the
94 As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between a majority, “which passively
accepted commercially provided styles and meanings”, and a “‘subculture’ which actively
sought a minority style and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values” (in:
Middleton 2002:155).
95 Originally used as a code language for thieves and criminals, Bruce Sterling defines ‘argot’
Performance Art
Besides theme camps and art cars, so typical of Burning Man, there is an
abundance of performance art - in the broadest sense of the term - on the
playa. And like theme camps and art cars might stretch the definition of art,
so too does this particular manifestation. Richard Schechner (2002) defines
performance as behavior that is heightened, if ever so slightly, and publicly
displayed. He describes it as ‘twice-behaved behavior:’ performed actions
that people have rehearsed or prepared for, and performing as ‘showing
doing;’ as pointing to, underlining, and displaying doing. Performances, of
art, rituals, or everyday life, are omnipresent. Schechner quotes Erving

as “the deliberately hermetic language of a small knowledge clique [...]. a super-specialized

geek cult language that has no traction in the real world.” On: http://www.viridiandesign. 96 On: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1999/99n_letter_sum_0.html,

org/2006/03/viridian-note-00459-emerging.html, accessed May 15th 2006. accessed March 27th 2007.

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Goffman, from his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life: “A No judgments. No fear of rejection. Of course I realize that some
‘performance’ may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a people will pass judgment on me no matter what, and who might find
given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other my whole new sparkly me dumb or not cool enough, but they are
participants (Schechner 2002:15-16). outnumbered to such degree that I never feel drawn back because of
On Burning Man, such a broad definition of performance seems suitable them. At best, I feel sorry for them. I would not want to have missed
enough; as broad as the 35.000 random manifestations of ‘self-expression.’ out on this wonderful, liberating opportunity of recreating my
You can find performances that would fit a theatre, such as Pepe’s opera, identity. Where else could I embody such benign and playful God?
involving a trained choir of in the hundreds, or the El Circo camp, where (Laura, interview July 28th 2005)
beautiful aerial and trapeze artists carry out their carefully orchestrated
In a way, Burning Man’s emphasis on (performance) art, radical self-
shows. However, there is also a large category which might not immediately
expression and non-spectatorship all entail the same thing: the challenge to
ring ‘performance art,’ such as that drag queen with five day stubble who I
give the best of yourself and to create your own reality; individualism in
watched doing a dramatic rendering of the “I’m a Barbie Girl” song in deep
order to benefit community. Performance art, however, plays an interesting
baritone voice; or the protest march I witnessed where people from the
and sometimes awkward role at Black Rock City. Because a performance
Carrot Liberation Front, unsurprisingly in carrot garb, staged a fierce attack
implies an audience and an audience implies passive, rather than active
on the food patterns and ‘furry oppressors’ of nearby Bunny Camp, whose
participation in the event, Burning Man’s emphasis on performance art and
inhabitants in turn showed up in their pink bunny suits to verbally abuse,
its ethic of non-spectatorship might feel incongruent. However, I think that
and nibble on, the carrots. Whether bizarre or surreal; rehearsed or
the element binding the two is, indeed, self-expression, for at any
spontaneous; high-brow or camp – performances reign the playa.
alternating moment you can be either audience or performer - even both.
Again, it is vital to remember that this is a festival where all
The Burning Man organization actively encourages all visitors to
entertainment is done by its participants. If they do not do anything, then
become aware of their own unique potential for creativity, and to
there will be nothing to do. As Goethe suggested when commenting on the
contribute this part of themselves to the community. Self- expression
Rome carnival: “[It] is not really a festival given for the people but one the
hereby both binds participants together and resonates with the
people give themselves” (In: Duvignaud 1976:3). The Burning Man
community’s core values. The manifestation or performance (in the form of
organization will not book MTV’s hottest rock bands, or the best
art and costume) becomes the conversation piece at the proverbial dinner
performers, or today’s most enlightened gurus. All that it intends to do is to
table. The outrageous costumes worn by some (or complete lack thereof)
challenge you to become that hot rocker, performer, guru, dj, or dancer
become the open doors to conversation; they become individual welcome
yourself. This is what is called radical self-expression: “the feeling that your
mats to everyone’s person inside. Performances are, proverbially, taken off
inmost vital self is real and that you can project a vision of this sense of
stage, and distinctions between real life and performance become blurred.
being onto the surrounding world.”97
Once more, a form of art is taken out of its normal context in the ‘official’ art
world, and brought into Burning Man to enhance community.

Performance art on the playa is really the concept of radical self-expression

taken to its utmost extremes. It is about taking what is most private and
uniquely personal and then contributing it to a public environment. And
even though its effects might sometimes look rather silly or even plain
ridiculous, it brings about an environment that many participants have told
me feels extremely non-judgmental and therefore highly liberating:
On Burning Man, I can be the best me, just like everyone around me is
their best them. There is no history holding us back. No expectations.

97 On the website: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/lectures/ viva2.html

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Art against Society With this economic situation, finding funding puts artists in a binary
position. On one hand they are forced to theoretically advance the
Burning Man is a revival of art's culture-bearing and connective function. It is progression of art by steering from anything remotely derivative for art
art that is designed to be touched, handled, played with, and moved through critics, and on the other hand they have to blend their art into the
in a public arena. It solicits a collaborative response from its audience, even as juggernaut of ‘approved’ society for corporate sponsors. Some groups,
it encourages collaboration between artists. It deliberately blurs the however, refuse to go either route. The Cacophony Society was one of these
distinction between audience and art form, professional and amateur, groups, and it brought its sense and essence of experiential art to Burning
spectator and participant. Burning Man is art that's generated by a way of Man. Theirs was a rough form of art; with a fundamental ‘outsiders’ nature
life, and it seeks, in its broadest aims, to reclaim the realms of politics, nature, that is still felt today. It dictates that art is about immediate experience;
history, ritual and myth for the practice of art. This is art with a utopian about creating things and enjoying such creativity more than having it
agenda. (Rhey a.k.a. Harvey1999) abide to criteria such as beauty, timelessness, corporate interests, or
commercial value.
In 1992 - Burning Man’s second year in the Black Rock Desert -, it received
the official name ‘The Black Rock Arts Festival.’ Back then, it is not
inconceivable that Harvey intended art to optimize community, and,
basically, life as much as he does now, but I am not sure if his utopian
agenda was shared by everyone. Already in the more anarchic and
unstructured days before 1996, art was definitely and positively important,
and people were having a lot of fun creating and destroying it, but it was
not so much functional, at least, not in a structural sense. As Chicken John
adequately frames it, “it was more about making mind-blowing things and
blowing them up, then about creating community around such gestures”
(John, conversation September 10th, 2005).
From 1996 onwards, starting with the lampposts, the Burning Man
organization has used (partial) proceedings from the festival to finance art
projects that especially fit its idea of art as a community building tool. As
such, next to looking at more obvious and pragmatic factors such as
viability and originality, art fund proposals are mostly screened on their
interactive qualities; art as a means in which participants can interact and
thus solidify their community. It goes against what Larry Harvey sees as the
commoditization and ‘corperatization’ of art, or what he describes as “the
work of art in the age of the market economy” (Harvey, interview October
Harvey has taken the Cacophonic sense of underground, immediate art to
15th 2005). Under his pseudonym Daryl Van Rhey:
Burning Man, and with this insists on offering an escape route from the
Art in America now originates within a system that is wholly marketplace of commoditized and corporate art. Once again, art is to
institutionalized. The dead hand of bureaucracy is everywhere become a medium of social regeneration and connection; qualities that
apparent, represented by a system of production which links art would have been long lost in the conventional art world. Burning Man’s art
schools to an art industry that, in turn, controls the marketing curator ‘LadyBee,’99 when asked about the difference between her job and
apparatus that selects and distributes these privileged goods. Caught that of a curator working inside the art establishment, explains it as follows:
between the aridity of academia and the banality of this
Those people earn their bread and butter working for institutions
marketplace, it scarcely seems surprising that our art has lost
whose purpose is to validate art. […] People gather around
vitality. It does nothing to disturb the course of material interest,
institutions and accept the professional advice of people whose job it
much less lead to any form of spiritual awakening. (Rhey 1999)
is to institutionally validate the art product. Burning Man, on the
In a lecture Harvey delivered in 2002, he delves deep into the history of other hand, is devoted to immediacy. We view art outside the frame
underground art. The scene is set with an examination of the National that the contemporary art world puts around it. We tend to look at it
Endowment of the Arts’ (NEA) budget over the last fifty years. The NEA, as an instrument by which to create social relationships. It’s basically
founded in the late sixties, is the government’s support package for art. the connecting glue that holds this little experiment together and
Around 1978, it experienced a peak budget at just under 350 million dollar. that’s a much larger agenda. (LadyBee, interview August 10th 2005)
In 2006 this number is slashed to less than 130 million dollar; “making its
In Art Magazine Leonardo,100 the abstract of the article ‘The Outsider Art of
[NEA] programs seriously and fundamentally underfunded.”98 Additionally,
Burning Man’ reads that “the goal of the event [Burning Man] is to remove
in the late seventies, the Carter administration slowly began the great move
the artist from the world of commerce and competition, emphasizing
to privatize government functions, and following this Harvey (2002) recalls
instead collaboration, cooperation and shared experience” (Kristen
that at roughly that time “the first big corporate [art] show occurred in San
2003:343). Most of the time, though, artists are not so much removed from
Francisco. It was sponsored by Philip Morris.” Since then, more and more
the world of commerce and competition, but turned artists in the temporary
corporations have become art collectors and investors of museums and
biennials, making the private sector responsible for the substantially bigger 99 Who herself is a former sculptor educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
part of art funding in North-America (Borgonovi 2004:22). After ten years on the ‘art world treadmill’ in New York she found Burning Man, moved to
San Francisco and ‘never looked back’.
100 A renowned publication from MIT Press, founded in 1968 by kinetic artist & astronautical
98 Figure and quote from www.americanartsalliance.org pioneer Frank Malina, focusing on art that uses science and technology in innovative ways.
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world of Black Rock City where normal ‘artistic standards’ are contravened, personal. It is profoundly democratic. It is radically inclusive, it is a
inverted, subverted, and twisted ‘topsy-turvy’. different challenge, and it is beckoning.102
Whenever art falls outside the established system as it does on Burning
It is a view on art that seems to be diametrically opposed to the common
Man, it often gets labeled as ‘outsider art.’101 In practice, outsider art is an
view on, and position of, art in contemporary American society. And
extremely broad concept, including work produced within the
intentionally so, for the Burning Man organization is very conscious about
unselfconscious vernacular traditions of folk art, ‘naïve’ work created by
the (re)positioning of art on the playa and its effects.
amateur or untrained artists, and contemporary popular productions such
There is an insolence in Burning Man’s heart that goes against both the
as custom car decoration or graffiti art (Rexer 2005). On Burning Man, the
art world and the ‘normal’ world, and proposes to radically alter the
term is used rather loosely, as some of the artists do have degrees from art
outlook on both. By bringing art closer to the people in order to bring
schools, exhibition histories and art careers. However, having such
people closer to each other, the organization seems to grant art a role that
professional background is certainly no incentive: one does not even need
is nearly politicized, or at least used as a tool to benefit an agenda that, to a
any art-making experience at all to build an installation, to perform, or to
certain extent, is political in nature. Tortuous, the ethics of such agenda can
express one’s self artistically in any which way. LadyBee: “We don’t fund
be seen as a reaction on American society, where the position of art would
vanity art projects, where one artist makes it and puts it out there. Our real
be part and parcel of the current state of alienation, commoditization and
goal is to show people that really anyone can make art” (conversation
disenchantment. It is a society that Susanne Buck-Morss, after Walter
August 10th 2005).
Benjamin, views as anaesthetized and ‘un-aesthetic’; desensitized and
insensitive. To counter such numb society, art is to undo the current
alienation of our corporeal sensorium, and kick us back into collective life.
Let us see how such analyses might clarify our view on art at the playa.

On the playa, art and community are both an incentive for and a result
of social life. For whereas art is creating community; in turn the community
is creating art. Both practically and ideologically, most art pieces on the
playa are made so that they require an action on the part of participants to
achieve completion. They are often premised on fantasies and participatory
scenarios which seduce the erstwhile audience for art into assuming an
active and interpretive role that often places them in a relationship with
fellow participants. In Black Rock City, distinctions between audience and The Anaesthetized Society
art, professional and amateur, spectator and participant are blurred or Harvey has never made the inspiration he received by ideas as put forward
vanish altogether. The sharing of art results in a shared aesthetics, which in by critical thinkers such as Debord and Bey a secret. I have already talked
turn equals a shared sense of communal sociality. This communal sociality about the kind of society these scholars were theoretically opposing; what
is then exported outside the playa, into everyday life. Larnie Fox, who has solutions they offered and how this would eventually reflect back on
been bringing art pieces to the playa for some years, thinks that as an Burning Man, but there is one more scholar I would like to add to the list,
export model, Burning Man stands at the center of a wider art movement: namely Walter Benjamin. Even though Harvey has never made any direct
reference to him - at least not to my knowledge –, I believe that the way
There is a yet unnamed art movement that may prove to be of some
Benjamin thinks about art, and especially the urgent task he sees lying
significance, and Burning Man is close to its center. It often manifests
ahead of art, very much equals Harvey’s approach to art on the playa.
itself as circus, ritual and spectacle. It is a movement away from a
There are many things I wish I had done slightly different during my
dialogue between an individual artist and a sophisticated audience,
first period of anthropological fieldwork, and discussing Benjamin with
and towards collaboration amongst a big, wild, free and diverse
Harvey is certainly one of them. The chance to do so will not easily appear
community. It is a movement away from galleries, school, and other
again; something I regret because within Benjamin’s renowned statement
institutions and towards an art produced in and for casual groups
of art having lost its aura, there is a more hidden argument in which art is
of participants, more akin to clans and tribes, based on aesthetic
to undo the alienation of our modern anaesthetized society. This second,
affinities and bonds of friendship. It is a movement away from static
less obvious layer of Benjamin’s Artwork essay is what I find most
gallery art and formal theater towards site-specific, time-specific
interesting, and what I think might explain best what Harvey’s intentions
installation and performance. It is a rejection of spoon-fed corporate
are by assigning art such primary position on Burning Man. However,
culture and an affirmation of the homemade, the idiosyncratic, the
before unraveling those threads, let us first briefly consider what Benjamin

101 Nowadays, Burning Man’s ‘outsider art’ has actually received some serious coverage in

the art press, as shown by the article in Leonardo, and today’s general trend seems to be
about re-erecting the art in public spaces – not about burning it. However, it is still fair to say
that most art on the playa gets executed by people with no particular credentials from or
love for the gallery or academic scene, thus still adhering to the term ‘outsider art’.
102Larnie Fox, sculptor, on http://www.infoflow.com/larnie/statement.html. accessed
March 17, 2005, emphasis mine. Even though nothing on the website states that Larnie’s
would be familiar with Maffesoli’s work, his ‘casual groups of participants’ seem to hold
great similarity to Maffesoli’s neo-tribes.
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had in mind with the ‘aura of art’ and what exactly has changed with this they “maintain an uncivilized and uncivilizable trace, a core of resistance to
aura in our current age of mechanical reproduction. cultural domestication” (Buck-Morss 1990:6). Precisely because their
immediate purpose is to serve instinctual needs, they are indispensable for
the self-preservation of both the individual and the social group.
Modern man, living in the age of mechanical reproduction and
subsequently with the daily image-phantasmagoria of mass culture,
experiences a simultaneity of overstimulation and numbness, or what
Benjamin saw as shock, and what I have earlier summarized under the term
‘cultural exhaustion.’ Under the conditions of these ongoing modern shocks,
response to stimuli without thinking, without sense-consciousness,
becomes necessary for survival. This causes aesthetics to no longer refer to
a cognitive mode of being in touch with reality, but to a way of blocking out
reality. The synaesthetic system, wherein “external sense-perceptions come
together with bodily sensations and the internal images of memory and
anticipation,” (Buck-Morss 1992:16) becomes anaesthetic: a deadening of
the senses for the sake of self-preservation. It is this anaesthetic state of
humanity in modern times that makes it possible to view its own
destruction with enjoyment, as seen by Benjamin in Fascism. His proposed
answer in the form of a politicization of art can therefore be interpreted to
mean that art’s task is to restore the instinctual power of the human bodily
senses; to undo corporeal alienation and sensory impoverishment, and to
connect again with one’s own body and one’s own world - for the sake of
humanity’s self-preservation.
Walter Benjamin became well-known through his analyses of the
effects of capitalism on art, and mostly through his conclusion that
mechanical reproduction would destroy the uniqueness, authenticity and
sacredness – that which he labeled the ‘aura’ - of the work of art. By putting
copies of an original work in places where the original can or will not go,
mechanical reproduction might ‘depreciate’ the quality of the work, but, by
doing so it also liberates it: “For the first time in world history, mechanical
reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence
on ritual” (Benjamin 1969:224).103 If art is mechanical reproducible, the
criterion of authenticity is no longer traced back to its basis in ritual, either
magical or religious, and the total function of art is reversed. Instead of
being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - that of
cognition and thus politics.
In Benjamin’s time, the aestheticization of politics is ‘managed’
(betreibt) by a Fascist cult, and as a Marxist he proposes that communism
should counter this by politicizing art. So far, Harvey would probably not be
too much drawn to the argument, but when we trace Susanne Buck-Morss
analyses, what Benjamin is really demanding of art here is a much more
universal task, namely to undo the alienation of the corporeal sensorium,
through which humanity’s self-alienation has reached such a degree that it
is capable of viewing its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure.
And this is where Harvey and Benjamin are very much on the same
line, for they both seem to use the concept of aesthetics not so much within
the usual current philosophical trinity of ‘art, beauty and truth,’ but more in
its original etymological meaning. The ancient Greek used the word
‘aisthitikos’ for that which is ‘perceptive by feeling,’ and ‘aisthisis’ as the
sensory experience of perception. Seen like this, the original field of
aesthetics was above all corporeal in nature; referring to reality rather than
art, and sensory experience rather than cultural forms. Because the senses
encountered the world prior to logic or meaning, Buck-Morss argues that

103 I think that we should not forget here that Benjamin was greatly inspired by Marxism,
and that it is definitely this inclination that makes him appear so hostile against ritualistic
art, mystique and sacredness. After all, it was Marx himself who stated “Religion is the sigh
of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
It is the opium of the people.” (Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique.html)
73

For me, this interpretation of modernity and the crisis in cognition
summons up a great deal of the social critique that Burning Man poses. It
also explains the high regards counter themes such as ‘realness’,
‘experience’ and ‘immediacy’ receive on the festival. It is striking that it was
Benito Mussolini himself who stated “Fascism should more properly be
called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power” (in:
Goffman 2005:365104). Seen like this, fascism as feared by Walter Benjamin
in the context of an aestheticization of politics, and thus feeding an ongoing
anaesthetization of society, can be directly extended to what Larry Harvey
fears and opposes: corporatism.
As mentioned before, corporatism in relation to art can be said to have
started in the sixties and seventies, and from then on played an important
role in determining an artist’s perceived value, by both critical and
commercial measures. It hereby offered artists exposure and revenue, but
often killed true creativity or deviance in art. As art curator Baker describes
it: “Corporate mingling in the arts hammered shut the coffin of the avant-
garde” (Baker 2006:11). As a result, Harvey reminds us, contemporary art
often seems more of a ‘high society’ aesthetic than social glue or primal
connection (Rhey 1999).
Not so in Black Rock City though. For there, we find art “that is
designed to be touched, handled, played with, and moved through in a
public arena” (Rhey 1999). It is art that is made corporeal, that anyone can
make and interact with, that is part of daily life. On Burning Man, shared
aesthetics once again refer to a cognitive mode that is very much open and
in touch with reality; intended to shake the individual to life by offering an
escape route out of the marketplace of art, where both art and the
individual are said to have become cultural domesticated and where reality
is constantly blocked out; mediation offering a mere simulation of reality
and culture. It is a critique on society paired with a solution in the form of
art that seems to clearly unite Benjamin’s ideas with those of Harvey.
104 I have searched extensively to find the original source of this quote, which is generally
attributed to an article written by Mussolini in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana. However in
the English translation (The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore 1935) I could not
I find this specific statement. A Google search, which brought over 5.000 hits, did link me to
an article which doubted the validity of the quote in the first place. It rather explained it to
be a summarization of things Mussolini had said in general.
-5- Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City
Obviously, in a way one could argue that Burning Man mirrors the Ur-
example of modern shock as being stimuli or excessive energies from
outside, but I believe that on the playa this does not mean that the senses
are numbed or that sense-perception would entail an isolation of the
internal from the external world. On the contrary, precisely because the
synaesthetic system is open and free from normal restraints, its triptych of
physical sensation, motor reaction and psychical meaning is twisted so as to
create a direct sense of aliveness. It is an experience that is highly
individualized, but because it takes place in a shared sensorium so radically
different than normal, it becomes a communal experience.105 If we are to
believe both Harvey and Benjamin, such experience is needed, if not
ultimately for humanity’s self-preservation, then at least for its direct sense
of awakening and thriving.
But art and aesthetics go further than the artistic objects as such, for
emphasis is once again put on the sensual process that causes one to
admire collective things; making aesthetics refer to those groups of social
situations in which collective emotions are lived out; social life in its
entirety. As Chris Carlsson phrased it in an article:
Art is alienated from everyday life by being commodified and
separated, but Burning Man places art at the center of human
activity. BM slips an exciting notion into the back of its participants’
minds: our greatest collective art project is living together. Every
activity can be engaged artistically. One can find in anything a sense
of aesthetic pleasure, communicative depth, and resonance with
something true and passionate.106
On the playa, as aesthetics are linked back to life, reality, and vitality, they
once again function as ethics, for, as Maffesoli states “experiencing in
common gives rise to values and is conducive to creation” (1990:91).
Burning Man very much has its own unique interplay between art,
aesthetics and ethics, and it is a model that is made to be imported back
into society. For Burning Man’s art is indeed art with a utopian agenda; art
that is politicized.
105 To read more about how sensual relations, and thus a shared sensorium, would mean
social relations, I recommend Howes’ publication Sensual Relations. Engaging the Senses in
Culture and Social Theory (2004).
106 Burning Man. A Working-Class, Do-It-Yourself World’s Fair. Processed World 2.005.
Winter 2005. by Chris Carlsson. On: http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue2005/
burningman.html, accessed March 6th 2007.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Art in Reverse
Burning Man being Burning Man, art on the
playa might have a serious alleged cause and
hopeful effects, but its specific form and shape
are often far from serious. Instead, what really
struck me on my endless tours through Black
Rock City was the obvious ironic, appropriated
and juxtaposed nature of its art. As Turner
already stated, “in liminality people ‘play’ with
the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize
them” (Turner 1982a:27). On Burning Man, this
is definitely accurate, and, I think, a process
with ideological intentions.
It is not new to think of contemporary life
as being pseudo-lived in a ‘society of the
[fake/commoditized/empty] spectacle’. We
have already discussed Guy Debord and the
Situationists and how they feel about the lack of ‘real-ity’ in everyday life;
how it seemed that things that were once directly lived are now lived by It seems to be typical of festivals that many symbols and performances
proxy, and how, as a commodity, “the spectacular is developed to the possess what Barbara Babcock has called “an excess of floating signifiers”
detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience” (Law 2001:8). (Babcock 1978a:292). On Burning Man, the apparent eccentricity of its art
We heard Hakim Bey arguing for his Immediatist project because to him, ‘to the point of indeterminate nonsense’ suspends customary meanings.
“that which is seen through the mediation of the media becomes somehow Babcock follows Jacques Derrida in arguing that “a surplus of signifiers
unreal and loses its power” (Bey 1994:15). And just now, we analyzed how [vehicles] creates a self-transgressive discourse which mocks and subverts
Benjamin saw the omnipresence of the reproducible image to mean a the monological arrogance of ‘official’ systems of signification (Ibid.296). On
deadening of the senses; a way of blocking out reality instead of receiving it. the same page, she continues that
When we talked about the Punk movement in the beginning of this
…the bantering anti-signified of carnivalesque discourse is an insult
thesis, Larry Harvey explained that the punk generation “was a generation
both to the complimentary of ordinary speech and to the multi-
that had seen everything it ever loved taken away from it,” because as soon
signified of serious ritual communication. It is also a statement in
as they would create things that embodied their identity in the world, they
praise and a demonstration of the creative potential of human
would see market scouts who would turn their style into marketable
signification as opposed to its instrumental and representational use.
images through appropriation, and subsequently “denature it of any
meaning that it ever had for anyone” (Harvey 2000). So now, and I might On Burning Man images that are taken out of their original context do not
even dear say in response to this, on Burning Man a diversity of such only look ragingly surreal in the empty, barren landscape, they
marketed images, symbols if you will, are taken from popular culture and subsequently loose part of their meanings and signification. Instead, they
made familiar again through their defamiliarization. They are mocked, are mastered and made transparent as it were, breaking the cake of custom
satirized, lampooned, taken out of their context, given new twists and and liberating reflexive speculation. As Turner states, “when elements are
juxtaposed with other forms so as to signify new, personal meaning. In the withdrawn from their usual settings and recombined in totally unique,
worlds of playa artist ‘Crash’: “[we] appropriate the appropriators.”107 ironic configurations, those exposed to them are startled into thinking anew
Whereas popular culture would not be ‘real’ in the Baudrillian sense of the themselves and society” (1982b:205). Previous habits of thoughts, feeling,
word; would cause shock and numbness of the senses as Benjamin sees it; and action are disrupted.
would parasitize what was once directly lived culture and transform grass-
root art into commodities as Debord saw to happen – on the playa this
process is reversed. For there, a new kind of aesthetic pleasure is offered
and shared, and this shared sense of ironic and absurd aesthetics is made to
sustain community.
Although it is far beyond the scope of this thesis to explain why Burning
Man would take place in America and not somewhere else, this view of art
as a reaction against mass culture and its ‘fake’ imagery might be significant
nonetheless. For America is a nation with an omnipresence of marketed
symbols. From that fact, it is not hard to imagine how turning this daily
phantasmagoric display upside down, ‘topsy-turvy’ as Turner would say,
would be a process with a certain degree of escapism and empowerment.

107 An appropriate remark coming from the man partly responsible for the ‘Barbie Death
Camp & Wine Bistro: The Friendliest Concentration Camp On The Playa’ […] where not only
the Barbie is put into barbeque, but award-winning cabernet sauvignon is served up to any
citizen of Black Rock City.” For the past seven years the camp has offered hilarious sightings
of grown-ups (‘Barbiebarians’) cathartically massacring Barbie dolls… However, it is a
remark that can be extended to include many artists, camps and intentions on the playa.
75

What is first said to have caused disenchantment and dissatisfaction
with culture as solely being ‘on display,’ is now used to cause a new found
wonder, enchantment and feeling together in the world. I think that it is the
nature of its communal, topsy-turvey art that makes Burning Man stand
out, and makes it a true liminal realm. In the musings of Turner himself: “To
my mind it is the analysis of culture into factors and their free or ‘ludic’
recombination in any and every possible pattern, however weird, that is of
the essence of liminality, liminality par excellence” (Turner 1982:28 original
emphasis). And:
[…] artists tend to be liminal and marginal people, ‘edgemen,’ who
strive with a passionate sincerity to rid themselves of the clichés
associated with status incumbency and role-playing and to enter into
vital relations with other men in fact or imagination. In their
productions we may catch glimpses of that unused evolutionary
potential in mankind which has not yet been externalized and fixed
in structure. (Turner 1969:128)
In Black Rock City, people once again play with elements of the familiar and
defamiliarize them. The art that is thus created is often rid of the ‘ought’
and instead shows that which ‘could.’ Hereby, it manifests possible new
ways of being and signification that are made to last.
Community versus Art
In case you haven’t noticed, a picturesque brouhaha, very typical of San
Francisco, has recently erupted here in our hometown. It is a wooly tale,
complete with manifestos, petitions, speeches, rending jeremiads, as well as
some coverage in the local press. A lot of heat, so far, and naturally, a colorful
cast of characters. It’s the art-versus-community question that is at its core.108
108 On: www.tribe.net (unfortunately, tribe does not come wit URL’s)
-5- Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City
I have said this before, and I will probably say it again: the people visiting
Burning Man are an extremely heterogeneous group of people; not united
under any symbolic flag, creed or liking. A relatively big part of them -
though certainly not all - will have outspoken ideas about art, life,
individual rights, acceptable speaker volume, good taste, sexual inclination,
beer preference and in general anything anyone might have an opinion
about. This can give reason for strife - and often does. In the light of Burning
Man’s evolvement as shown so far in this thesis, one of the most interesting
battles to date is the mock created by a group of artists that eventually
united before the 2005 event under the name of Borg 2, and the fame of the
‘We Have a Dream Competition.’
We Have a Dream: just sign here
When I was there I did not exactly have a lot to compare it with, but
apparently my first year of attending Burning Man was the year when the
level of art, at least as far as grand and impressive goes, was at an all time
low. As the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online phrased things after the
2004 event:
The problems came to a head this year because so many people said
the art sucked. There wasn’t enough of it, and only a few pieces really
wowed people. At the very least, between artist no-shows and static
art-funding levels, it’s certainly true that the art isn’t keeping pace
with the population growth.109
Rebellious artists from Burning Man’s first hour Chicken John and Jim
Mason perceived the, in their eyes, long-time declining importance of art on
the playa and, instead of just ‘whining and moaning about it,’ they decided
to act upon it.
Together with John Law, the fellow friends had already been behind the
Smiley incident in 1996, which I mentioned before was especially symbolic
of the split between those serious about creating a new kind of community
open to all, such as Harvey, and those who were wary of such high-minded
109State of the art. As Burning Man approaches its 20th year, Bay Area artists are staging a
revolt that goes to the soul of the mega-event. By Steven T. Jones. On:
http://www.sfbg.com/39/10/news_burningman.html, accessed 9-7-2005.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

goals and just want to make art, the kind of mind-blowing, fire-spewing art informed decision, which is now the task of Burning Man’s art curators,
you can only display in the Black Rock Desert, such as Law, Chicken and Harvey expresses fear as to how a radically democratic voting system
Mason. Back then, in all the other turmoil, Smiley pretty much went would promote popularity contests and factionalism that would hurt the
unnoticed, but such would not be the case when Chicken and Mason paired Burning Man experiment: “I would much rather deal with consensus than
up to rekindle their mutinous flame after the 2004 event. the results of the ballot box.”113
In November that year, Mason and Chicken wrote an online petition Rather than boycotting the event, the upstarts decide to start an ‘art
outlining what they believed would be positive changes for the organizers duel’ with Burning Man’s organizers - a competition over who can bring
of the event. They called it the ‘We Have a Dream’, and – in much more and better art to Black Rock City. Ideas from the We Have a Dream
abbreviated form – it went a little like this: petition are used to conduct an experiment that is called Borg 2 – a play on
‘Borg,’ a slang term for the Burning Man Organization.114 The fat lady is not
We are the artists. We feel that this event which we made great has
quite done singing yet.
gotten away from us and we would like it back. We want the art to be
spectacular again and we are willing to step forward to do the work
to make it so. […]
The fix must address many issues, but the CORE ISSUE for the fix is
THE ART. Art, Art, Art: that is what this is all about. Fix the art and
make the process for doing it fair and fun again, and the rest will
likely fall into place. Our solution towards this end is simple: radically
democratize the curation and funding of the art.
So Borg, how about a deal? We, the mass of Burning Man creative
agents, agree to reapply ourselves with focus to the creation of mind-
blowing, I-can't-believe-someone-actually-made-that, KNOCK YOU
ON YOUR ASS ART, and you agree to LET US DO IT. Simple. You GET
OUT OF THE WAY. No more benevolent ART-ocracy of black box
funding, crushing bureaucracy and resistance to creativity in the
name of ‘theme compliance’ or ‘mandatory interactivity’. Release the
power back to the participants.110
The demands were spread in a letter, an online petition, and a full-page ad
in the Bay Guardian, and those who agreed with the sentiments could
register their support online. Eventually, the petition got signed by about a
thousand Bay Area artists, including some of the most storied figures in the
history of Burning Man. Their threat to basically leave Burning Man unless
Borg 2: more Woo Woo for Larry’s Hoo Ha
there was reform and rejuvenation in the process of selecting and funding
In order to bring about the ‘art renaissance’ at Burning Man 2005 that Borg
its art was then delivered at the Burning Man office. The organization
2 had in mind, Chicken asked for ‘some good real estate’ at the event, access
rejected the idea.
to the list of event attendees to ask them for donations towards a goal of
In hindsight, Harvey told me he was at first bemused by the petition,
raising 250.000 dollar, and the autonomy to implement Borg 2’s vision
then perplexed. “It was not only bad policy but unworkable,” he explained.
without unnecessary interference from the ‘official’ Borg. In order to
So he wrote a response that began:
intensify the art duel, he then fired off an e-mail by the title “more woo woo
I've read the We Have a Dream petition with interest. I think it will for Larry’s hoo ha,” and laid down a bet. The best explanation of the actual
spur discussion and provoke some new ideas. I think real good can bet as it stood is contained in the following excerpt from Larry’s letter of
come of this. In writing this response, however, I feel called on to acceptance below:
examine the very specific proposals that the petition advocates.111
To enter more fully into the sporting spirit of this contest, please let
Then, he went on to tear apart the idea of funneling ten percent of ticket me rehearse the terms of the wager. You pledge to create a
sales to fund the new approach, and the accusation that the decline in the ‘massively collaborative’ art installation achieved through ‘radically
quality and quantity of art this year would signal an institutional democratic means’ in an allotted district of Black Rock City, and you
shortcoming rather than just an off year. Especially, he radically eradicated will accomplish this feat entirely with your own funding. The art that
the petition’s concept and logistics of democratizing the art selection you produce will then be matched against our own poor efforts at
process: “I see no evidence that the authors of this manifesto have imagined supporting and creating art. Should your woo woo trump our hoo ha
any of these problems. This is because they’re accustomed to receiving on the playa, I pledge to reconsider my opposition to your radically
grants from Burning Man, not giving them.”112 democratic curatorial methods. Should our hoo ha make your woo
Among Burning Man’s Board of Directors and its staff, the consensus woo look ho hum, you commit to sit all day in a dunking booth at
process is much preferred, at least, to cruder, more corruptible instrument next year’s Decompression. Let Chaos Provide!
of democracy that would also involve the larger group. Instead of expecting
people to read through hundreds of lengthy art proposals and then make an
113 In: Larry Harvey is god – or maybe not. San Francisco Bay Guardian. By Steven T. Jones.
110 Petition at: tinyurl.com/6151h, accessed 9-7-2005. March 17, 2005.
111 At: http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/petition_response.html, 9-7-2005 114 The official Borg numbers six equal partners who own the Burning Man logo and various
112 Especially Mason received some of Burning Man’s biggest grants in the past. other key concepts. If any of the six chooses to walk away, their payout will be 20.000 dollar.
77
 -5- Everyone an Artist: the Communal Art of Black Rock City

Some heavy stakes indeed. And this coming from Borg 2: an experiment And I think that it is this precisely this evolvement that has been
that appeared to be filled with an abundance of conflicts and paradoxes: nagging Chicken, Mason and their followers, and that has ultimately
anarchist artists engaged in representative democracy; questions on how to motivated the Borg 2 rebellion: a longing for an idealized Burning Man past.
participate in an event whose framework was being rejected; art which It is a past in which the event was still much less structured and more
needed to simultaneously be selected by elected guest curators and a chaotic; where there were explosions and gunfire and utter madness in the
popular vote; serious organizational and fundraising issues facing people air, and where the whole experience made you a little scared, and maybe
who were only serious about art. I guess it was doomed to fall short on its even left you scarred, figuratively or literally. It is the emphasizing of art
own highly aimed ‘woo woo.’ over the competing foci of the party or community. It is the specters of pre-
I was at San Francisco’s 1996 Burning Man, and all its artistic transgressive anarchy, at odds with
Decompression party in the contemporary spirit of civic harmony, cooperation, and safety. In the
September 2005, and fetched end, I think a great deal of it is fear as well: the countercultural fear of
a beer for Chicken whilst he getting rolled up in the inertia of the collective.
was keeping to his end of the
bargain by sitting, indeed, in a
dunk tank.
In the end, although Borg
2 did get to elect an art
council and held fund-raisers
to pay for art projects, they
never met their estimated
funding goal of 250.000
dollar, instead getting stuck at 25.000 dollar. And while they effectively
started a democracy, the elected council was quick to realize how tough it is
to get people organized and to make decisions. “We had three meetings
before we could decide some of the simple fundamental stuff,” said Zachary
Coffin, an artist and council member. “There was a perception in the
community that we were being tight- lipped and elitist, but it was just
murderously slow working with a group.”115 In the end, Borg 2 ended up Those Burning Man participants no longer form a community made up
replicating a lot of the same decision-making processes that Burning Man entirely by countercultural rebels and underground artists such as Mason
does, pretty much as Harvey predicted. and Chicken themselves. As Harvey phrases it, “They thought they were the
Even though this outcome might not exactly be surprising enough to core community, but really, it’s been a long time since there was a core
justify the many words I devoted to the entire conflict, I entered it into community.”116 Mason admitted that since the conflict began, his eyes have
length because I think that the more hidden attitude behind it is very been opened up to a world of Burners who see the event as more than an
interesting to unravel. It is an attitude that seems to reflect back on Burning art festival. Some see it as simply a great party, others as a quasi-spiritual
Man’s entire evolvement and pretty much everything that has been said in endeavor, and others as an amalgam that is uniquely Burning Man. Above
this thesis so far. It is based on a fear of losing the event because it would be all, it seems that many people actually like the ‘c-word’, and do not feel like
‘taken over’ by people who would make it ‘inauthentic’, commercial and lost there is an art-versus-community conflict that has to be resolved. In
from those who started forever. Harvey’s words: “Jim and Chicken stumbled on this whole continent of
activity that I don’t think they knew was out there. Suddenly they
encountered people who thought it was about community. And the art?
The Core Conflict That’s OK too” (Harvey, interview October 15th 2005).
As I have discussed in this thesis, Burning Man and the Bay Area’s
underground art community essentially grew up together during the
eighties and nineties, feeding off one another. According to Harvey, and
after having lived in the place for six months, I must agree with him: “San
Francisco is unique in that it has all these little ‘subtribes’ that you can often
trace back to projects or camps of people at Burning Man” (Harvey in Jones:
2005). And these subtribes keep coming back to the playa because, as
Chicken adds in the same article, “That is the vehicle we’ve found that has
the highest-percentage chance of blowing people’s minds.” It is a symbiotic
relationship that, understandably, led many artists to feel that their
contributions created the event and that their departures could kill it, hence
the petition’s first line “We are the artists. We feel that this event which we
made great has gotten away from us and we would like it back.” But in the
end, the petition only showed that it might be a bit too late for that now.
The contributions – artistic, cultural, metaphysical, or just social and
entertaining – have simply become too diverse.

115 In: Burning Man at 20. Artistic sparks: Creative ‘revolt’ falls short, but group gets own

spot at festival. By Leslie Fulbright, SFGate Monday, July 18, 2005. 116 On: http://www.sfbg.com/39/10/news_burningman.html, accessed June 1st 2005.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

In the end, Borg 2 has not been a complete failure. The petition and art
duel has fueled discussion, both among the organization and the
participants, and got many artists enthusiastic again. Practically, in 2005,
the art grant program’s resource pool nearly doubled: 425.000 dollar
instead of 2004’s 250.000 dollar. The grant review team was expanded to
include an expert in the field of modern art, and grant proposals were
opened to art installations outside the annual art theme. And for the first
time ever, the call for proposals received emphasis on the Burning Man
website and in the Jack Rabbit Speaks newsletter. This resulted in the
largest amount of grant proposals ever (160), leading to awards of a record
52 honoraria to artists. Harvey and LadyBee, Burning Man’s art curator, do
not see these changes as forced upon by Borg 2, and note that they were
already in the works before the revolt began in November. However,
whatever the actual reason, they both agree that “it has been universally
agreed that the 2005 event featured the most, the best, and the most
groundbreaking art ever seen at Burning Man.”117
And Borg 2? Well, they got their spot on the playa, and, although
nowhere near as impressive as the “volume and quality of creative work
that Harvey [would] envy and wish he was responsible for himself”
promised by Chicken, it was a nice place to visit. In the end, though, it
appears that chaos provided more valuable discussion and insights into
Burning Man’s evolvement than fine art.
Today, on Burning Man, it is still officially recognized that the art is
there because the community creates it, and vice versa. In the words of
Harvey aka Van Rhey:
The art of Burning Man, produced by amateur and professional alike,
is created within and for a community, and, within this community, it
is intended to be given away. This is work that's generated by a way
of life. It is an art, above all other things, that is devoted to social
connection. (Van Rhey 1999)
How and why the ‘giving away’ of art, among other things, would
additionally be a powerful promoter of community, is something I want to
look at next.

117 In the 2005 Afterburn report. At: http://afterburn.burningman.com/05/art/index.html,

accessed June 1st 2005.

79

-6-
Every Bit a Gift:
Burning Man and its Gift-
Economy
Do you still have enough energy for today’s tour? I know the last days have
been chockfull with sights and impressions, and you might be starting to feel a
bit weary and overwhelmed by it all. I apologize, but this is Burning Man;
there is simply no other way to do it. For the same reason I fear that today
again will not be the most relaxing day, as it will be filled with a concept and
consequently labor that makes great demands on your ability to re-adjust
your mindset. Because today, we will focus on giving something back to the
city we have toured for the past two days. Today, we will contribute, volunteer
and gift.
Now, within your normal frame of reference, you might envision the act of
‘giving back’ or even ‘gifting’ in the smallest possible way, like maybe we will
polish Harvey’s shoes for five minutes, hand out a few trinkets and be done
with it. Such, however, is not how it is done at Burning Man. Here, the act of
contributing is stretched to include nearly all aspects of life and activity
normal of any city - and then arguable some more. And in Black Rock City, it is
all done for free. You see, nothing is for sale in this city, yet everything is there
for you to eat, drink, attend, experience; ask. It is an alienating concept to
most people who have not been there, and in order to come to terms with it,
images of a constant bartering usually spring to mind. Yet, again, this is not
how it is done at Burning Man, where gifting really means giving.
Let me illustrate what a gift economy might, quite literally, ‘re-present’ in
Black Rock City. The case in point starts with me sitting at the Quixote’s
Cabaret Club & Bar, a rather modest camp not far removed from my own.
Seeing that Quixote is put there by Europeans – English mostly –I am drinking
gin tonic with a slice of lemon and eating scones with freshly whipped cream.
Oh, and smoked salmon on toast, with some sort of herb I personally cannot
really identify – fresh dill perhaps. On the house. Someone wonders aloud if
there’s any cheese - why not? Why shouldn’t there be cheese? Of course, one of
the guys serving the gin dissembles a moment and disappears to see if he can’t
scare up some brie. In the meantime a show commences, costumed people
doing theatre, while a naked woman, painted in the colors of the English flag,
pedals past, simultaneously balancing on a unicycle and playing a tuba.
Quixote’s is a nice place to hang out with total strangers, but it is not the most
popular attraction by far, even not as far as the bars and lounges go. The
most popular, for years, has probably been Pinky’s; a full-scale nightclub all
done up in pink leather and boa feathers, which you can only enter if you are
either painted pink or wearing pink. At night it is basically a strip club, with
pole dancers, body shots, and lots of pink clothes coming off. Even though I
enjoyed spending time here, I would rather take you to a more obscure place,
not listed and way out near the trash fence. If we were to go there now, in the
day, the place will just be a giant pair of fuzzy dice, looking, at most, like yet
another of Burning Man’s surreal art projects. But at night, hidden doors open
to reveal the fully equipped, smoky and swanky jazz club inside; complete
with piano and carefully orchestrated mafia skits. Just hold up the cup you
brought, and ask the bartender for ‘the usual.’ I am sure he will be delighted
-6- Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy
to serve such regular customers his premium, single malt whiskey - on the
rocks, remember.
Obviously, where there are drinks, there is food. We are supposed to be self-
reliant, and I do think I have some dust-covered pouches of Tasty Bites still
buried in the van, but why not get something better? Like the splendid
strawberries ’n cream they serve at FoodLab, or the French fries at the 50’s
style Grill and Chill Black Rock Diner. Maybe we can stop by Tuna Camp and
have some of their fish, which they grill, sauté, cook, or make the best sushi
with. I think I mentioned their camp before but it never ceases to impress me,
out there in this hash, extremely hostile desert environment; with no cooling,
water, or electricity provided. The people behind Camp Tuna are all
professional fishermen, one of which told me they import and store over four
thousand pounds of tuna and salmon every year to feed to anyone who drops
by on the playa.
Even if you would not particularly want to go to any camp, chances are food
and/or drinks will cross your path naturally. Or, such as with that Belgium
guy who stopped by yesterday morning with his solar-powered waffle maker
and fruit shaker to make us breakfast - it will actively come to you. However,
the often-uttered sentence ‘the playa will provide’ entails more than just
consumables. For instance, and this is only a minor thing but it represents a
lot to me, when I arrived at Burning Man I found out that I had apparently
forgotten my gas cap at a petrol station somewhere along the way. I was
bummed because I knew that in the States, finding a replacement cap for a
33-year old German car would not be too easy. Then, on the second day, a
man got off his bicycle, screwed a sparkling new and fitting gas cap on the
van, made a ‘thumps up’ gesture at me, and drove on again. I never saw him
again, and probably would not even recognize him, but I think it was through
him and his random act of kindness that the extent of Burning Man’s gift
economy really sank in.
Because the gift economy is even more all-enhancing than all the
consumables or even material objects you might gift or get. Gift-giving at
Burning Man also brings forth a 24/7 abundance of things to do or see or
experience, and all those people making that happen do it for free as well.
There are workshops, lectures, live bands, classes, book readings, rave parties,
healing rituals, pottering, spiritual explorations, circus acts, parades,
costumed balls, beauty queen pageants, salon discussions, story telling,
massage sessions and anything else someone might come up with. Upon
entering Black Rock City, you have probably received your forty-page booklet
listing all the week’s special events. I do not know if you already had a look at
it, but I do know that just browsing through the little book already brought
me an entertaining and often hilarious couple of hours - let alone actually
experiencing the things listed.
We could go to 12-step meetings at Anonymous Camp. Attend workshops from
turban wrapping to foot care; fire dancing and pole dancing; yoga and tantric
sex; African drumming and Israeli chanting; massages and hypnosis, ‘used
eyeglass recycling’ and tooth flossing, joke telling and eye gazing. We could
visit ‘Pandora’s Matchbox Cocktail Lounge & Space Station’s Ass-Less Chaps
Social Hour & Fashion Show,’ as well as the ‘Pink Tantric Puja,’ the ‘Naked
Psychedelic Ritual Dance,’ and ‘Brainwave Scans’ at Automatic Unconscious.
The ‘Republic of China Town’ is here, straight from Taipei, offering, among
other things, ‘betelnut beauties and philanthropic gangsterism.’ There is the
‘French Maid Brigade Parade,’ hosted by Le Consulat General de France, and
the ‘Black Rock City Int’l Kite Festival’ hosted by the Department of Tethered
Aviation. We could even participate in a ‘Carpet-Munching Workshop’ (‘single
carpets will be accommodated’), or have our daily dose of Chrakra Breath
Meditation & Kundalini Yoga at the HeeBeeGeeBee Healers Camp.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
Except for the coffee, tea and ice on sale in Center Camp Cafe, everything that
makes Black Rock City the city it is, is there as a gift to the community and
thus enhances community. All the entertainment, all the services, all the
drinks and all the food; as soon as you enter through Black Rock City’s gates,
everything is on the house. The selling of things is about the only thing
expressly not allowed within the perimeters of the city, and it is taken very
seriously. If you need or want something, you can generally ask for it, and
often enough find what you need. This is not just some hippie group-grope
fantasy. It happens. The whole city works this way, for a week anyway, and I
still find it one of the most amazing aspects of Burning Man.
So far, we have discussed several elements of the Burning Man ethos; how
and why they evolved and to what effect. We have talked about the rule of
participation and non-spectatorship; the need for self-reliance and the
emphasis on self-expression. We have seen how Burning Man went from an
anarchic TAZ to the all-inclusive, heterogeneous city it is today. We have
discussed the growing need for civic planning, and how art and aesthetics
united all. However, there is one essential part yet to be revealed, and it is
exactly this part that I see to act as the strongest catalyst for the
conjoinment of individual and group at Burning Man. It deals with the
giving of gifts, and its profound effect as community builder.
While much of the world is seeking to build an American-style market
economy, Black Rock City provides a temporary refuge for those who have
already become weary of its many psychic and social intrusion. This
chapter will outline the incentive, appearance and effects of Burning Man’s
gift economy, and see how it might fit within theoretical analyses done on
gift exchange, mostly by looking at Mauss’ classic work Essai sur le Don, and
Lewis Hyde’s more contemporary work The Gift. It will focus on the so
called market place of culture which Burning Man seeks to escape, as well
as raising questions on the viability of such project. Before getting into all of
that though, I first want to start by exposing the foundations of Burning
Man’s gift economy, and see how community is build upon.
Why a Gift Economy?
So we founded a city, and one of the rules that we observe in Black Rock City is
absolutely stunning. You can’t buy or sell anything. Now that’s simple, but let
the consequences sink in for a moment. Have you ever been in a city of
thousands of people where you couldn’t buy or sell anything? I mean it seems
so strange that it’s hard for most people to imagine because our world is so
permeated with commodity transactions. (Harvey 2000)
Black Rock City is intentionally designed to foster a so-called ‘gift economy;’
an intentional culture of contribution, where no vending, no advertising, no
buying or selling of anything is allowed. The display of commercial logos or
banners, or distribution of commercial promotional items, is prohibited.
Sales of handmade items and food items ‘in order to cover costs of the trip’
are not allowed, and bartering is discouraged because even that would be a
81
commodity transaction. Instead, Burning Man has an ethos and economic
system that is devoted to the giving of gift – both material and non-material.
If we are to follow Harvey, it is an intentional and radical departure
from the marketplace of culture that is Western, and specifically American,
culture. In this marketplace, a consumerist revolution has taken place that
leaves consumption, as suggested by Colin Campbell, “especially important
if not actually central” to the lives of the majority of people, “the very
purpose of existence” (Campbell 1987:11). In Consuming Life (2007),
Zygmunt Bauman argues that our current consumerist society, in which
everything is judged according to its market value and discarded if found
wanting, applies, with terrible consequences, to our most intimate
relationships as well. Why commit to a relationship if you can always bin it
and try another one? Because of this principle, Bauman concludes that we
are losing our ability to “establish firm, solid, reliable and satisfaction-
bringing relationships with other people” (Bauman 2007:7). Burning Man’s
gift economy, however, is founded on principles that are diametrically
different from those that dominate such consumer’s market. By replacing
commerce with a gift society, Burning Man brings back the communal
aspects of gift exchange.
Community through the Gift
Following the literature, the idea of a gift-giving community grew more or
less organically out of the original settlement from which Black Rock City
grew. Back then, this communal gathering was mainly composed of people
who knew one another and who were simply sharing their recourses and
art. Within so intimate a circle it would seem inappropriate for anyone to
be selling goods for commercial gain. Throughout the years, as the city
population increased, the organization retained that ethic as a prohibition,
and made the conscious decision to suspend commerce. What was already
more or less happening organically, now became implemented as a rule and
an important part of Burning Man’s ethos. With the ongoing emphasis on
community, the gift economy became the perfect tool to build strong bonds
of loyalty within an otherwise heterogeneous assembly of strangers.
Today, the entire city is constructed and maintained through an
economic system of civic volunteerism; the giving of time, creativity, talent,
skills, and resources. It seems to me that the creation of this ‘environment
of abundance’ relies on two primary principles, both of which I have
touched upon before, namely radical self-reliance and radical self-
expression. The first downplays the need to ‘get’ something; the second
offers a meaningful opportunity to give. And whereas the gift economy
 -6- Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy

relies on these principles, they in turn are affected by it. Because being self-
reliant in a sometimes harsh and always unpredictable desert environment,
where nothing is for sale, entails a demand on inner resources and
existential communion that goes way beyond the normal convenience of
American consumer culture.
Implicitly, gift-giving thus acts as the proverbial bridge between art,
theme camps, participation, and civic life in its entirety. Combining self-
reliance and self-expression, it is all about the individual, but individuality
then becomes a gift to the community. In his 2002 speech Vive Las Xmas,
Harvey extensively states the differences between such individualism and
that within consumer culture. In the case of the latter, individuality would
always be stipulated by the purchase of some product or the other:
I mean all these ads say be all that you can be, buy this car and you’ll
be free, but they’re just substitutes. You are not going to be unless
you can project a spiritual reality out onto the world. But most
people just don’t have the confidence anymore because they’re too
isolated; they’re too passive. (Harvey 2002, emphasis in original)
Later, when I have my interview with Harvey, in my most anthropological
voice and with Marcel Mauss in the back of my head, I ask him if he
considers Burning Man to hark back on some ‘primitive,’ pre-capitalistic
mode with its gift economy, and how its emphasis on individualism might
seem rather incongruent with such previous age of human culture. Of
course you can never silence Harvey for more than a few minutes, and for
this remark he also seemed to have his reply ready. In essence, he brought
it back to a succession of feeling states that were different then and now.
What he said intrigued me to the extent that I will allow myself a little
detour into its details, supplemented with some of my own speculations.

Re-presenting the present

Harvey’s answer to my question seems to combine both spiritual and
pragmatic elements. He explained to me how the way he saw it, in ancient
times, the ‘state of being’ used to start with gods and myths of supernatural
origin, then progressed in long-sustained traditions among people who
struggled to survive in a challenging world, to eventually end somewhat
Likewise, whereas the desert provides the individual with the space to tenuously with the
express her or himself, not directly by consumer’s goods and brands but by experience of the
inner self, the individual’s journey of personal creative discovery in that individual. In short, he
space becomes his or her gift back to the city - and to the community that is called this the ‘It is,’
formed. Self-expression in Burning Man’s gift-economy thus becomes both ‘We are,’ ‘I am’
an ethic and an aesthetic. In that sense, everyone is expected to participate continuum, and
in creating the city by contributing some unique part of themselves to the explained how its order
shared experience. This might take the form of public service, as with the would be reversed at
Black Rock Rangers, Greeters, Lamplighters or many other forms of Burning Man. 118
volunteerism. It might mean hosting a theme camp, installing an artwork, This order can be
convening a game or performance, or distributing tokens and gifts to reversed because
neighbors. At a minimum, it means decorating the personal campsite or according to Harvey,
creating and wearing a costume. Burning Man is all
about showing people
that they can define the
world by the vision
they carry inside of
them - by their own
context instead of by
the context that
surrounds them. They
can then share that
vision with other
people and attach some

118I found out later that Harvey had also talked about this continuum in a speech he
delivered at the Cooper Union in New York City on April 25th 2002: http://www.
burningman.com/whatisburningman/lectures/viva.html. Accessed May 9th 2007.

82
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
transcendental principle to it. As Harvey already summarized things in the
above quote: “you are not going to be unless you can project a spiritual
reality out onto the world.” The order of being thus starts with ‘I am:’ the
feeling that one’s inmost vital self is real and that it is possible to project a
vision of this sense of being onto the surrounding world. Then it proceeds,
as in a theme camp, to a feeling that one is united with others; linked in a
bonded circle in which parallel experiences can be shared through an act of
giving: ‘We are.’ Finally, there is the feeling that some-where outside the
circle there exists some greater gift everyone is joined together by as they
give to it: the ‘It is.’ In Harvey’s concluding words:
And I have come to believe that whenever these feeling states can be
strung together like pearls on a string, as if they were part of one
spontaneous gesture, you will then generate an ethos, a culture, that
would be impossible to create through the commodity. (Harvey,
interview October 15th 2005)
I have thought about the continuum of ‘I am,’ ‘We are,’ and ‘It is’ a lot - like I
have thought about most things Harvey said long and hard - and I think I
figured something out that he himself did not mention. Because the
continuum as he sees in Burning Man would not necessarily be that much
different when projected upon American consumer society. There, it also
starts with ‘I am,’ whether this is a pseudo or real, conditioned or authentic
individualism. And as an individual, consumption patterns can link you to a
wider group; that what Muniz (2001) calls a brand community, and Cova
(1997), building on Maffesoli but extending more into consumption realms,
a neo-tribe.
However, in American society, it seems that things get corrupted with
the final stage of ‘It is.’ Because, as widely read books such as Naomi Klein’s
No Logo (2002) and Kalle Lasne’s Culture Jam (2000) painstakingly
demonstrate: there is no ‘It is.’ At the end of the corporate and consumptive
tunnel, its walls plastered with ubiquitous and intrusive ads, it turns out
that the proverbial light at the end has been blinding the eye all along.
There is no transcendence, no enchantment, and no gratification. Instead,
we find, in Harvey’s words, the ‘sin of simony’: “an unhallowed trafficking in
sacred things.”119 In the end, the result is not culture as Harvey sees
happening on Burning Man, but a marketplace of culture: empty; mere
spectacle; un-reality - the simulation of being through the commodity.
Interesting enough, Maffesoli would probably turn all this around.
Again, I am just thinking out loud here, but it seems that he puts the ‘We
119 www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/lectures/viva.html, accessed May 9th 2007.
83
are,’ “the being together of everyday life,” first. This is exactly how he
motivates his choice of the metaphor of the (neo-)tribe, because it would
allow us to account for the process of dis-individuation that he sees at work:
“Perhaps we ought to show […] that the individual is no longer as central as
the great philosophers since the age of the Enlightenment have maintained”
(Maffesoli 1996:9-10). Instead of the individual, his neo-tribes are based on
‘fellow-feeling:’ “Indeed, whereas the individualist logic is founded on a
separate and self-contained identity, the person (persona) can only find
fulfillment in his relations with others” (Ibid.10).
Even more interesting in this light is Maffesoli’s interpretation of the ‘It
is,’ which, by appropriating Durkheim’s social divine, he more or less seems
to place within the feeling state of ‘We are.’ Maffesoli defines this as
‘religiosity:’ a genuine holy dimension to social relationships, but he
gracefully allows the use of the word religion as well “if it is used to
describe that which unites us as a community; […] a foundation of the
‘being together’” (Ibid.38). In this light, Maffesoli points out - and abides to -
the etymological tie between religion (religare) and reliance (from the verb
relier: to connect, link or bind together).
Even though Maffesoli acknowledges that the essential characteristic of
religion remains its transcendence, within his neo-tribes he finds this to be
an ‘immanent transcendence;’ “not situated in a great beyond, but in the
group transcending individuals” (Ibid.40). Precisely because Maffesoli
locates his version of the ‘It is’ within the ‘We are,’ it by nature empowers
the individual – the ‘I am’ – through a growing autonomy with respect to
the overarching powers. In Maffesoli’s words: “Thus, even if one feels
alienated from the distant economic-political order, one can assert
sovereignty over one’s near existence. This is the goal of the social divine”
(Ibid.44, emphasis in original). So for Maffesoli, the image of contemporary
society’s empty ‘It is’ as I have painted would be an outdated model. Seeing
that his neo-tribes are already the ‘remainders of mass consumption
society,’ its members again have evolved in the feeling state continuum:
using lifestyle and taste not as mere ‘image,’ but as liberatory and
transcendental features of their shared sense of ‘We are.’
The Gift versus the Commodity
We have seen how certain elements of Burning Man came into being so as
to counter perceived ills in American society, and the gift economy is
probably one of the strongest tools in this antidotal package. Specifically,
the gift-economy is meant to counter America’s market economy, in which
boundaries between people would be solidified through the almost entirely
impersonal act of purchasing, with alienation and passivity as the outcome.
For in America, like in most if not all parts of the West, going beyond your
immediate circle of friends and family means entering a public world
primarily governed by the freedom, but also rootlessness of commodity
transactions. Within this world of modern convenience culture, it becomes
both possible and wanted to satisfy all appetites and desires without
reference to others. The result, as Harvey summarizes, is that “consumption
has replaced communion in our modern age” (Harvey 2002).

Let me illustrate. If I would want to buy, say, a newspaper, the great
convenience of it is that there does not have to be a connection between me
and the pimply adolescent selling it at the counter. Most of the time
purchasing does not even take direct communication anymore: a cash
register will simply display the conditions of the transaction on both sides,
and money can be exchanged without as much as a glance. After paying, I
simply walk out of the store and may never see the cashier again. In fact,
chances are that if he would have insisted on chatting to me about my
family or thesis progress, I would be so bothered by the unwanted intrusion
that I would definitely never visit that store again. After all, I just wanted
the newspaper, not a life story, nor any connection.
However, interactions that are based on gifting tend to operate quite
different, for a gift creates involvement with the life of the person gifting. If I
were to give you a gift, this represents a very personal gesture. There is an
element of bonding involved in the gesture, both on an emotional and a
moral level. In the giving of gifts, goods are transformed from mass
commodities to singular items. They move from the selfish, individual-
centered realm to that of aesthetics and community. This is why gifts are
very good conductors of solidarity and feelings of group belonging - a
quality certainly not missed within the social sciences. Without getting into
the whole theoretical discussion based on gift exchange, which is way
beyond the scope of this thesis, I do want to trace some of its more
interesting outlines, and see how Burning Man might fit within.
-6- Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy
Theoretically unwrapping the Gift
Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a
relationship between the parties involved. […] When gifts circulate within a
group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its
wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges. (Hyde 1983:xiv)
Like Hyde, nearly all anthropologists who have addressed themselves to
questions of gift exchange in the last half century have taken Mauss’ classic
work Essai sur le don, published in France in 1924 and later translated in
English under the title The Gift: Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
Societies, as their point of departure.120 Their theories unanimously
recognize and celebrate the centrality and importance of gift-exchange to
anthropology. As Karen Sykes phrases it: “Developments in the
anthropological analysis of gift-exchange provide a pedagogical pathway
through a history of the school’s research and orientation. We could say
that the logic of gift exchange lies at the centre of the discipline” (Sykes
2005:11). She furthermore concludes: “The clear message from
anthropology, regarding decades of study of the gift, can be put: Mauss’
insights help contemporary anthropologists to raise a warning against
assuming that economic reason, especially utilitarian value, dominates
human life” (Ibid.2). The beauty of the gift is exactly that it combines legal,
economic, religious, aesthetic, morphological, political and domestic
dimensions, and shows that we cannot neatly separate such categories.
Indeed, it is an insight gained in great part through Mauss, who viewed
gift exchange as a ‘total social phenomena;’ governed by particular norms
and obligations which would intersect almost every aspect of social and
cultural life. Through understanding the social and cultural significance
implicit in patterns of gift exchange and reciprocity, he argued, a unique
understanding of a community could be gained. In turn, I think that by
analyzing some of the patterns of Mauss’ argument, a unique understanding
of gift exchange can be gained that can clarify certain aspects of Burning
Man’s gift-economy, and I therefore briefly want to look at him next.
120The list is long, but would surely include Raymond Firth, Claude Levi-Strauss, Marshall
Sahlins, Peter Blau, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bordieu, Marc Osteen, Annette Weiner, Maurice
Godelier, and ‘our own’ Aafke Komter.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Mauss’ reciprocal Gift Exchange

In a nutshell, at the center of Mauss’ argument lies his observation that gifts
can never be ‘free.’ 121 Rather, he sees human history to be full of examples
that gifts give rise to obligatory reciprocal exchange. In his opinion, the
principle of do ut des (‘I give so that you may give’) is not restricted to non-
western culture, but also characterizes gift exchange in our own society.
The famous question that drove Mauss’ inquiry into the anthropology
of the gift was: “What power resides in the object given that causes its
recipient to pay it back?” (Mauss 1990:3). His answer follows two steps.
First and more pragmatic, he emphasized that the sanction for not
reciprocating would be hostility; ‘private or open warfare.’122 Second, and
most famous, he saw gifts to be labeled by the gift giver’s personality or
spirit and imbued with ‘spiritual mechanisms’ engaging both giver and
receiver. A gift exchanged or shared would transcend the divisions between
the spiritual and the material in a way that, according to Mauss, would be
almost ‘magical’. The giver does not merely give an object but also part of
himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: “to make a gift of
something to someone is to make a present of some part of oneself”
(Ibid.12).
In essence, Mauss’ essay is one of the first syntheses of true
ethnography, following the established tradition of seeking the roots of the
modern in the archaic (Hyde 1983:91). Henceforth, what Mauss has really
done is to write a prehistory of our modern kind of legal and economic
contract: a narrative of decline and fall from a world where prestation
dominates, to one where market and gift have become radically divorced.
He concludes that the vestiges of the archaic principles remain in modern
gift practices, but it is exactly such mirroring that has been most fiercely
debated. For some social scientists find both the West and archaic societies
lost in Mauss’ game of reflections, or what Carrier calls his ‘wonderland’ of
anthropological models (Carrier 1997:201). They find that Mauss’ model of
reciprocity, of going to (re) and fro (pro) between people, like a
reciprocating machine, leaves too little room for the voluntary, altruistic
and desired act of gift-giving in modern times.
In our modern day market society, property entails both the
commodity and the gift, and human interaction is very much influenced by
their sharp division, as well as by that between transaction versus
exchange, and thing versus person. In order to understand the gift in such
new light, Alain Caillé urges us to remove it from the shadow that haunts all
accounts of the gift: economism (in Godbout 1998:130). Additionally, Mark
Osteen advises us to “redirect our gaze from reciprocity toward other
principles and motives” (1986:7), and Lee Ann Fennel proposes:
What we need is a new vocabulary for understanding gift giving as it
is practiced in modern Western societies. Instead of attempting to
conflate gift giving and market exchange, such a vocabulary would
focus on the characteristics of gifts that set them apart from ordinary
commodities. (Fennell 1986:85)
A theorist who indeed offers us such new vocabulary on the gift in modern
day society, and who is especially insightful when analyzing Burning Man’s
gift economy, is Lewis Hyde in his book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic
Life of Property (1983).

121 Deducting from this, we can say, as both Testart and Derrida point out, that if we would
define the gift as something given without the need for reciprocation, Mauss never discussed
the gift at all. To him, if such a thing as a gift would have been given freely and altruistically,
it would not have been a gift, for it would not create a social bond.
122 A pupil of Durkheim, to Mauss it was equally most important to understand social order,

not the conflicts that may disturb it. War, therefore, did not receive that much attention
within his spectrum of social significance.
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 -6- Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy

Both Hyde and Mauss thus see the gift to create solidarity and build
social ties. However, the incentive is quite different; Hyde seems to view
gift-giving as a more altruistic and positive social phenomenon, which is
why he values the emotion of desire above Mauss’ explicating rationale of
fear and self-interest. In extension of this, I guess the perceptive reader has
already distilled another important point, namely that whereas Mauss
places the gift in a system of ‘exchange’, Hyde refers to ‘gift-giving’.
Linguistically, the difference might be subtle, but epistemologically it
changes everything.
Hyde argues, fairly against Mauss, that, regarding gift exchange in a
market economy, there is a very real difference between a ‘true’ gift given
out of gratitude and a ‘false’ gift given only out of obligation. In Hyde’s view,
the ‘true’ gift binds us in a way beyond any commodity transaction,
whereas “we cannot really become bound to those who give us false gifts”
(Hyde 1983:70). There is a condition here though; the ‘true’ gift has to
move on; to be passed along - or it will constrain us still. Accumulation,
then, provides another stark contrast between gift and commodity
economies. Whereas in a market economy, one can hoard one’s goods
without losing wealth, or even increase wealth through ‘saving’, in a gift
economy wealth is decreased by hoarding. This is because gifts cannot be
accumulated like profits; they must be plowed back into the cycle of gift
giving. As Cosmo phrases it:
Hyde’s erotic Life of Property Nothing I had ever experienced had brought home to me as forcibly
Hyde calls himself “a poet, translator, and sort of ‘scholar without as Burning Man that fundamental truth which is so easy to know, yet
institution’” (Hyde 1979:32). Without doubting the accuracy of his so hard to live by: giving is getting. […] No one ever became poor
description, The Gift is officially listed a ‘work of literary anthropology.’ And through giving. At Black Rock City, everyone becomes rich by giving.
justified so, for even though Hyde fashions meaning from an atypical (Cosmo, interview July 19th 2005)
combination of sources, he very much elaborates on the gift’s theme of
Sahlins, in his Stone Age Economics (1972), already argued that it is the
solidarity already extensively analyzed within anthropology. According to
distinction between saving and hoarding that ironically makes the gift
Hyde, it is precisely the gift’s quality of solidarity that makes it distinct from
economy based on affluence because of the giving away of possessions, and
commerce. Because of the gift’s bonding ‘bottom up’ qualities, Hyde sees
the market economy on scarcity because of the hoarding in order to
them best described as ‘anarchist property:’ “The connections, the
increase possessions.
‘contracts,’ established by their circulation differ in kind from the ties that
With the strict dichotomy of the gift versus the market economy, Sahlin,
bind in groups organized through centralized power and top-down
Hyde, and Harvey seem to share the same view, which associates
authority” (Hyde 1983:84). The same quality of establishing interconnected
commodities with freedom, rootlessness, alienation and scarcity, and gifts
relationship between those involved in gift exchange leads Hyde to speak of
with connection, community and abundance. Arjun Appadurai is wary of
it as an ‘erotic’ commerce, hereby opposing eros (the principle of attraction,
such “exaggeration and reification of the contrast between gift and
union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in
commodity,” and points out how “the tendency to see these two modalities
general, the principle of differentiation in particular). Needless to say, to
of exchange as fundamentally opposed remains a marked feature of
Hyde the market economy is an emanation of logos.
anthropological discourse”(Appadurai 1986:11). Osteen adds that “this
Jekyll-and-Hyde dichotomy subtends a number of other dualities in social
theory,” among which, for instance, he mentions the domestic vs. the public
spheres; ‘society’ vs. ‘economy’; and the oikos vs. the agora (the home vs.
the marketplace). I would like to add to this Tönnies famous distinction
between Gesellschaft (market) and Gemeinschaft (community).123 The
latter category has traditionally achieved far greater attention within
anthropology, and, as Hyde argues, certainly poses the greater modality in
which gift exchange might occur:
The primary work on gift exchange has been done in anthropology
not, it seems to me, because gifts are a primitive or aboriginal form
of property – they aren’t – but because gift exchange tends to be an
economy of small groups, of extended families, small villages, close
knit communities, brotherhoods and, of course, of tribes. (Hyde
1983:xvi)

123 As Tönnies defines it: “All intimate, private and exclusive living together is understood as
life in Gemeinschaft (community). Gesellschaft (society) is public life - it is the world itself.
(Tönnies 1955:37)
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Through his observation, Hyde directly states a limitation “that has been ‘part of the self’ he takes it beyond just material objects, and into the realm
implicit for some time”, that is, “that gift exchange is an economy of small of inner gifts; immaterial talent and inspiration:
groups” (Ibid.89). To him, when we speak of communities developed and
I have hoped […] to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the
maintained through an emotional commerce like that of gifts, we are
object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of
therefore speaking of something limited in size, which for Hyde roughly
culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those
equals an “upper limit of about one thousand people” (Ibid.89).
gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we
long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the
soul and irresistibly moves us. (Hyde 1983:xvii)
It is the assumption of Hyde’s book that a work of art is a gift,124 not a
commodity, and that it in turn appeals to a part of our being which revives
the soul and can wake our own creative spirit. As Joseph Conrad so
eloquently phrases the function of art:
[it] appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on
wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition - and,
therefore, more permanently enduring. […] It speaks to our capacity
for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives;
to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of
fellowship with all creation - and to the subtle but invincible
conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of
innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in
aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each
other, which binds together all humanity. (Conrad 1979:preface,
emphasis mine)
So how do we fit the by now over 35.000 people strong community that is
Burning Man within this limitation? Conveniently, Hyde offers us a footnote
in which he nuances the quoted size limit. He states that an exception to the
rule would be possible in the form of those communities or groups that do
not pretend to support the wider life of its members. Such communities can
be connected through gift exchange and still be quite large. Although he
never mentions it, Hyde’s later mitigation make it sound like gift exchange
can be taken out of the Gemeinschaft sphere, and into what Herman
Schmalenbach, in his 1992’s critique of Tönnies dual categories, added as a
third general modal category, namely the Bund (‘communion’).
Coincidentally, it are exactly these ‘Bunde’, or ‘elective affinity groups’, that
Rob Shields, in his foreword to Maffesoli (1996), finds similar to neo-tribes
– a connection which Maffesoli does not seem to make himself.
Without getting into too much detail, both Schmalenbach’s Bund and
Maffesoli’s neo-tribe seem to share the same certain voluntary and
transversal structure; a life affirming sociality and inherent force that I find
fascinating when thinking about Hyde’s concept of the gift as anarchist
property. Because it seems that there are many connections between
theories on the Bund or neo-tribe on one hand, and anarchist theory and
traditions of gift exchange as an economy on the other: all seem to
emphasize emotional expression, feeling and experience; to shun
centralized power; to be best fitted to rather loose associations; and to call
into question the institutions of power - what Maffesoli calls pouvoir - that Maybe this is precisely what Benjamin saw lost in art: that magical
traditionally state that passion will undo social life and that coercion will ‘aura’ or fetishistic quality once contained within art’s sacredness,
preserve it. Quite on the contrary, they seem to share the underlying uniqueness and irreproducibility. It could be argued that art as a gift, as
assumption that through passion, emotion, sharing and giving community viewed by Hyde and Conrad, would retain this aura because of the art’s
will appear – the erotic life of property. uniqueness, and because it is made to be a gift again. Larry Harvey seems to
Extending from this, Hyde makes another important point on gift be echoing this sentiment by saying:
exchange, which I think also links back to anarchist theory, namely that it is People need to understand what gifts really mean in our community.
not “when a part of the self is inhibited and restrained, but when part of the They need to shift their focus away from objects as commodities, and
self is given away,” that true connections can be made (Hyde 1983:92). towards art as a gift. […]
Mauss already saw the gift to be indissolubly tied to the giver because it
would always contain some of his spirit, making person and object more or 124I explicitly say work of art here, because the verb already implies that for art to be a gift it
less inseparable. Hyde, however, goes further, for when he views the gift as needs to be active; keep moving.
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 -6- Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy

A gift is a considered thing that is imbued with spirit. It should
somehow speak of intimate intention even as it conveys a respect for
the person you are giving it to.125
So for Harvey, a gift does not necessarily have to be a tangible object, it can
also be a simple act of kindness, or a contribution to life in the city. It can
take on the form of a performance, body paint, a massage, or public service.
It is as Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his nineteenth-century essay Gifts wrote,
“Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is
a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me” (Emerson 1876:161).
I have talked about rules defining the community before, but I think
that awards might be as important. When looking at Burning Man and the
extent of fanaticism people display towards it – preparing for months and
investing huge amounts of money, resources and time -, I doubt if these
Burners would go through such trouble if there was nothing to be gained;
when not even recognition could be expected in return. Call me
deterministic, functionalistic or even materialistic in a nonmaterial sense,
but I think that a sense of award in the form of social status, attention, and
prestige through gift-giving contributes to Burning Man’s social dynamic as
much as the gift itself.

Ironically enough, the giving of immaterial gifts, as well as taking

money and commodities out of the picture through a process of
decommoditization and replacing them with gifts might recognize, establish
and maintain community, but the result does not necessarily imply an
egalitarian community where everything exchanged – including the ‘Self’ –
would be of equal value. It seems that sooner or later, every group, tribe or
community will find some form of hierarchy, and the Burners community is
certainly no different. It is Hyde who states “In communities drawn
together by gift exchange, ‘status,’ ‘prestige,’ or ‘esteem’ take the place of
cash renumeration” (1983:78). Without getting into a philosophical debate
based on whether or not this would go against Hyde’s own argument on the
very existence of the free gift, I do think that he makes a valid point. Indeed,
in Burning Man’s one week of cultural inversion and subversion, normal
rules of hierarchy might no longer apply, but the gift-economy provides a
rather efficient means to fill such lack of social discern. Participation and
self-expression as a gift become adequate ways of earning social esteem,
and on the playa it seems that the social ladder is easier climbed with a
sequined utility belt than with the usual overflowing money belt.

Escaping the Market?

The people attending Burning Man are highly critical of the present state of
this society and they are expressing their dissatisfaction in a very radical way.
They are going out and showing the consumer society that they don't need the
consumer society. (Laura, interview July 28th 2005)
Burning Man poses to offer some kind of escape from consumer society. In
Black Rock City, the mediating and socially distancing forces of the markets
are constantly on display. In signs, rules, and discourse, consumptive
America is constantly and consistently parodied, resisted, and, at least
temporarily, shut out and suspended. There is a constant differentiation
between the inside-Burning Man-utopic-community based on gift-giving,
and the outside-real world-dystopic-capitalist society based on monetary
exchange. This is why Burning Man is not Disneyland, but ‘Disneyland in
reverse.’
From Burning Man’s ‘2002 summer newsletter’. At: http://www.burningman.com/
125

whatisburningman/2002/02_news_sum_2.html, accessed July 2nd 2005, emphasis mine.

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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

structures that Harvey so despises, such as Walmart, Target and Costco, and
from what I have heard from others I was not alone in my spending routine.
As Ramie states in a critical essay on Burning Man:
Only the imagination of late capitalism could create a culture that
deludes its participants into believing they are operating under a
‘gift economy’ while ignoring the intense consumerism and
commodity fetishism that accounts for its existence.126
Burning Man’s gift economy might be an economy of abundance, but it also
an economy that is a direct product of the surplus created by super-efficient
American capitalism. Indeed, despite its no vending rule, Burning Man
survives off the cornucopian excess of its participants’ daily lives. Only
because people earn money within the capitalist system can they choose to
reject it for this one week. It costs money to be able to temporarily go
without money.

Burning Man clearly manifests itself as ‘the other choice in a consumer

world’ in offering an escape from the omnipresence of markets. To
downplay the difference between Burning Man and consumer society,
products have to be purified, and for this reason acts of de-commodification
are rehearsed, such as customizing or burning products, masking or trans-
forming brand names, and, especially, turning commoditized products into
gifts.
However, it begs to differ if consumer society can ever really be ‘not-
needed,’ left out, or escaped. Most participants seem to acknowledge the
unfeasibility of such striving, for instance Michael, who I interviewed on the
playa:
I’m walking around with no cash. I love that! It’s great! It would
certainly be idealistic if everything worked on a gifting or even
barter system - that would be beautiful. Of course, the real world
doesn’t operate like that but then again this isn’t the real world. This
is like an experiment, creating some semblance of utopia. (Michael, The alluring shortness of being
interview September 20th 2005) I think it is precisely for this reason that Burning Man as an event can only
Creating the temporary illusion of a commerce free world is not a cheap work for a short period of time. Trying to answer the question if consumers
endeavor, considering the amount of cash that was undoubtedly spent could ever really escape the market, and if so, how such social spaces would
before Michael as an interviewee-with-no-cash crossed the threshold look like, Firat and Dholakia published a book called Consuming People
entering Black Rock’s utopian universe. As mentioned before, in the state of (1998). In it, they urge that, since consumption is inevitable, a solution may
Nevada massive expenditures spurred before the event have, in fact, even be found through the consumption of experiences that offer new social
helped Burning Man gain local political support, as power follows the possibilities and new social identities through acting, doing, and being,
money trail leading from Reno right through Gerlach. instead of passively consuming. Striving for a concrete example of a place
In my own experience, for my first year flying over from Europe, where this would happen, the authors describe such possible market-
preparations to enter ‘utopia’ cost me nearly two thousand dollar in emancipated spaces as lively, expressive, creative, and necessarily
airfares, entrance tickets, petrol, food, water, and camping gear. The year of temporary ‘theatres of consumption.’
my research it was considerably less, but even still then it was one of the
most expensive ‘one week holidays’ I have ever had. Aside from the high
From Ramie’s essay ‘Fear and Loathing in Black Rock City’. Posted on tribe.net, April 16th
126
costs, my money was mostly spent in exactly the huge alienating corporate 2006.
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 -6- Every Bit a Gift: Burning Man and its Gift-Economy

like a particular moment in time, it is incapable being reproduced.

(Kozinets 2002:20)
According to Kozinets, both speed and temporariness refer to singularity, a
hypercommunity is experienced as interesting and strong and better than
the real thing not despite the fact that it is short-lived, but precisely because
of it. Bounded by space and time, and differing from year-to-year and even
day-to-day, Burning Man’s hypercommunity is safe from reproduction, co-
optation, appropriation and assimilation into the market.

As a theatre of consumption, Burning Man offers a similarly social

alternative to the mainstream market culture, but in the end it is an enclave
that cannot be permanent or totalized. Harvey seems to acknowledge this
fact when he states that the event does not so much goes against commerce
as it goes against alienating markets. This is why Black Rock City is created
as an environment where commerce can be temporarily suspended, so that
people can explore what is of essential value:
In conducting the experiment in temporary community that is In the end, I think that Burning Man is not necessarily about escaping the
Burning Man, we have tried to create a special arena in which the market or being a non-commerce event. Instead, by being an ephemeral
realm of commerce ceases to intrude and interfere with vital forms of time out of time, it is a well-thought out attempt to ameliorate some of the
human contact: contact with one’s inner resources, contact with social deficiencies of the markets. To inject some much-needed emotional
one’s fellows, contact with the larger civic world, and, finally contact and social heat into social relations by causing people to question what they
with the world of nature that we cannot buy and control.127 thought they knew, to reexamine ossified ways of living, and to see the
flexibility that can exist within a social system that is ultimately propped up
The more communal act of gift-giving manifests community, but in the end,
only by our consent to live within it. In doing so, it releases tremendous
gift-giving as an economy is simply not sustainable. For the duration of two
amounts of creative energy, forms strong communal bonds and shows that
years, Kozinets analyzed Burning Man, asking himself mainly the question
there might be another way: As Max phrases it, weeks after we have left the
we have been asking ourselves here, only in fancier terms: ‘is communally
playa:
enacted consumer emancipation possible?’ He concluded that, if possible at
all, it has to take place in hypercommunity context, and must therefore be You just need to remember the sincerity, the understanding, the
conceived of as temporary and local. Kozinets defined hypercommunity as a acceptance. Remember the generosity of the artists, the makers of
“well-organized, short-lived but caring and sharing community whose food and trinkets, the mixers of music and drinks. Remember those
explicit attraction to participants is its promise of an intense but temporary things when you go into places where the commercialism is
community experience” (Kozinets 2002:25). Burning Man’s gift-economy, overwhelming, and you will
its negative market discourse and the positioning of production and be able to remember that
consumption as forms of self- expressive art, serve to temporarily distance there is another way for us
consumers from particular market logics and corporate interests, rather to be. (Max, interview
than lastingly and from markets per se. September 22nd, 2005)
What I find interesting in Kozinets argument is that he identifies speed This exemplary way of life is
and dynamism as major cultural-social determinants, when he important as Burning Man is
hypothesizes that seeping out of the playa more
temporariness and speed of change are key cultural factors and more. As it faces the world,
providing a community’s members with a sense that they possess an it might leave its
authenticity that can evade corporate appropriation. By dissolving hypercommunal context
shortly after it forms, the hypercommunity becomes locked into a behind, but it sure takes a way
historical moment, seen as singular and priceless because, exactly of life home.

On: http://www.burningman.com/preparation/newsletters/2006-
127

summer/06_news_sum1.html, accessed June 1 2005

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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Part IV:

Social Impact

91

-7-
Every Day Burning:
Keeping the Flames Alive
My head hurts. The alarm clock obviously doesn’t care about this
physiological defunct, and relentlessly keeps assaulting my ears and the
throbbing skull they are attached to. Once again, it is the thought of coffee
that eventually drives me out of bed. Exactly what I need right now: a gallon
of water followed by lovely, black, bitter sweet coffee. A friend of mine living in
the city has a caffeine molecule tattooed on his back. He has been to Burning
Man seven times now, and is deeply involved in the San Franciscan Burners
scene. I start to believe that the combination cannot be entirely coincidental…
If this is fieldwork, and I have to be a participatory observant, then I sure as
hell stumbled on one active research population.
Last night was mayhem again. Well, all day actually. It started with a small,
informal meeting with some DPW volunteers at the office, where I was
assigned to take notes, followed by drinks to celebrate the up- and coming
construction of Black Rock City. Then I had to go to Victor so that we could
‘playafie’ the old bike he had given me the week before. Up until that point the
bike had a few essential parts missing, such as front and rear breaks. Victor
being ‘Bike-Pirate-Victor,’ of course his mechanic – and social - skills needed
to be lubricated with several pints of beer. After having my bike fixed and
pimped, it was time to rush to a potluck dinner at the Sound of Mind crew’s
loft, where some of the camp’s members were discussing the logistics of the
next ‘fun-raising’ party. ‘Sound of Mind’ holds notorious parties in San
Francisco, and from experience I can now say that their private gatherings
are equally wild. I had to leave early though, as there was the last subway into
Oakland to catch, where the Crucible hosted its annual Fire Arts Festival. The
Crucible has been around since 1999, when several pyrotechnically inclined
Burning Man artists decided to initiate a non-profit educational facility where
arts, industry and community could meet. In a huge industrial warehouse
with an adjacent 2,5 acre outdoor arena, year round classes are given that
range from welding to kinetics to fire performance, as well as several big
events. The Fire Arts Festival is probably among the most notorious of the
program, and I think I have just discovered why.
Maybe it was my initiation into fire breathing that gave it away. Or Dr.
Megavolt, who theatrically fondled his twin-set of 1.000.000 volt Tesla coils
with me more or less standing next to the sizzling thunder bolts. I don’t know,
it could have been the metal Hand of God, spitting flames that seemed to
reach all the way to the stars and that had the hair on my arms burn, or that
last fiercely burning concoction its maker made me down. Most likely, it was a
combination of all things: a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring open-air exhibition
of fire performance, fire sculpture, and interactive fire art; an annual homage
to the flame. I had been here for the daytime opening ceremony two days ago,
where I joined some workshops and lectures, but the night is something else
altogether. Flames flickering on the antlers worn by stilt walking performers;
dancers spinning flaming balls and hoops of fire, metal sculptures blazing,
and fire itself being sculpted to form a blazing tornado that towered above
the more than 5.000 people present. Amazing! And certainly not for the weak
at heart - or those with alarm clocks going off in the morning.
Sigh…
-7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive
Recently, I stumbled upon a lovely biological coffee shop a few blocks up from
where I live. Apparently it is open 360 days a year, including Christmas, New
Year’s Day and Thanksgiving - just not during Burning Man. The pink haired
woman who runs it met her husband on the playa ten years ago, and the two
of them together haven’t missed a single burn since. Every time I walk into her
shop I have to eat more of her home baked goodies, for free and without
taking no for an answer, and listen to an endless stream of playa-related
stories. Recently, she has lifted our relationship to a whole new level by
actually giving me samples of her coffee beans so that I can enjoy my own
freshly brewed ‘cuppa’ whilst doing my transcription tasks at home. Bless her.
This morning, at a distance, the prospect of her coffee is enough to get me out
of bed and up and… well… maybe not so much running but at least moving.
I have to move, because I have a busy schedule lying ahead of me. First up is
an interview with Michael, who brought the first officially approved rave
night to the playa. I am meeting him at the Temple, just around the corner of
my house in Hayes Valley. The Temple is a temporary art project made by
David Best, who has been bringing similar stunning temple-like structures to
Burning Man for years. This one is sponsored by the City Hall in collaboration
with the Black Rock Arts Foundation, and it already has been here for a
couple of months. In three weeks time, it will not burn like it would at Burning
Man, but be dismantled and stored. I will be sad to see it go, because I have
spent so many great hours there, doing interviews, taking notes, reading or
just relaxing. It is a beautiful spot, and, like on the playa, people are always
interacting with it. Some are writing messages, some make little shrines, some
meditate, some make out. I heard that the police arrested the first couple who
scribbled their names and hearts on the plywood frame, but by now I think it
is clear that this piece of art is there to be used – not just looked at.
After our healthy breakfast and inspiring interview, Michael promised to take
me to Berkeley, where the monthly ‘really, really free market’ will again take
place today. He’s got a lot of stuff to give away, and I am hoping to score some
basic furniture in return. Reciprocity at its finest! My room is already
becoming very nice just by gifts people have given me, but I still need some
practical items so that I can make it a bit more organized. I have read about
Berkeley’s market on tribe.net – an online community generated website that
keeps me posted on the dozens of Burning Man related events taking place in
the Bay Area every week - and apparently it is a very nice gathering, with
people juggling, making music, art and what not. The prospect of an
afternoon in the park with some sun instead of the San Franciscan fog is
appealing, and I hope I can take a little nap because tonight is the Anon Salon
party which, according to my new-found friends, I could not possible miss in
my research scheme. I think the motive might be a bit less altruistic, and deals
more with them being in need of my sewing skills - the ladies want to wear
funky costumes tonight but cannot even get a thread through the needle. I
agreed to help, and join them to the party afterwards, as long as they would
feed me food and gossip.
Most of the bigger, notorious, popular and trendsetting parties in San
Francisco and vicinity such as the Anon Salon one, but also those organized by
the Space Cowboys, Get Freaky, Sound of Mind, El Circo, Opulent Temple of
Venus, Deep End, and House of Lotus carry a heavy burner vibe, as far as
music, decoration, fashion and attitude are concerned. They stand as an
ongoing testament to the growing year-round influence Burning Man and its
participants have on San Francisco nightlife. Likewise, in the city, a Burning
Man influence is felt in public art, street fairs, local businesses, educational
facilities, and community services. In many perspectives, San Francisco and
Burning Man have merged and morphed, symbiotically feeding off one
another so that occasionally it is impossible to say which is influencing what.
But it doesn’t end there. Even though I didn’t do my fieldwork in San
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
Francisco for nothing, I could have visited Burning Man related events pretty
much worldwide. It seems that Burning Man has grown way beyond the dusty
borders of Black Rock City, beyond the borders of San Francisco even, and is
now ready to take on the world at large.
Burning Man might just be coming to a town near YOU.
As I hope to have shown so far, as Burning Man evolved each year has been
rife with challenge and response, struggle and accomplishment. Each year
saw the steady growth of Black Rock City’s population, and the community
it represents. This chapter will be all about people taking that message
home, and starting to incorporate it in everyday life and culture. Looking
back on Burning Man’s forming years now, they have all offered a piece of
the assembling puzzle, a step in the development, and lessons learned.
In its evolvement, Burning Man has changed from a reactive endeavor,
rushing always to secure survival, to a proactive movement, relatively
stable and ready to spill into culture at large. This is what denotes my
analyses of Burning Man having gone from the counterculture to the
93
culture; from negation to affirmation; from rebellion to role model. More
than just an annual event, it has become a way of life that inspires people to
reconsider their relationship to the outside world. As people incorporate
and perpetuate its ethos on the playa, they bring home its message of civic
responsibility, self-expression, self-reliance, community and the gift. It is an
idea and concept that I want to put to the test in this final chapter of my
thesis and argument.
Leaving Traces
We believe our future lies outside the plastic fencing that encloses Black Rock
City. Our city, in this scheme of things, is like a heart. Steadily beating, it
annually pumps activists and energy back into what is called the default
world. Having changed ourselves and having helped to change the lives of
others, we now think that it's time to change the world that we must live in
every day.128
When I left to do my fieldwork in 2005, my research proposal still focused
mainly on Burning Man’s gift-economy and the communal ties that would
flow from it. However, once in San Francisco and busy with my actual
research, I got the strong feeling that Burning Man had already perpetuated
its message of gift-giving, and was now slowly yet surely moving on to the
next phase. As I was watching the signs, it felt like a significant and
archetypical move was taking place: from birth and learning, to adolescence
and rebellion, to maturity and stabilization, to offspring and cultural
infiltration. Even though the clearly demarcated and classically framed
theoretical framework on the gift and social cohesion would have probably
given me a far better structured perspective to work with, chasing a vague
concept of cultural growth and change suddenly seemed infinitely more
interesting and timely.
Fortunately, next to my intuitive ‘gut’ feeling, I was also presented with
concrete proof that Burning Man was maturing into more than an annual
counter- or subcultural escape from the alleged mind-numbing structures
and alienating markets of daily life. In San Francisco, there were public
Burning Man related art projects such as David Best’s Temple, but also
128 From the 2005 afterburn report. At: http://afterburn.burningman.com/05/future.html,
accessed March 16th 2007.

smaller and practical ones like the fire pits on Ocean Beach or the band
shell made from recycled material in the Panhandle Park. Next to art, there
were several very active Internet forums and widespread web communities
that were connecting people – one of them being me - on a scale that I had
not yet seen the year before. In real life, there were Burning Man related
community services, voluntary projects and donation centers. Huge
communal live-work projects and art complexes had been initiated in
several cities’ industrial estates. I had been to Burning Man related events
in London and Amsterdam, and knew about others taking place in countries
as far-fetched as China, Taiwan and Greenland. In San Francisco, Burners
had risen to positions of political power at City Hall, initiating, among other
things, a think tank for local artists. In Seattle, Burning Man devotees had
opened their own bar and music recording studio. In Arizona, Burning Man
followers had build a charter school, where Navajo fifth-graders were
learning to spin fire and helping to build an outdoor amphitheater for their
community. It felt like Burning Man was spilling out; tipping over; leaving
marks.
-7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive
Black Rock City Year Round
To me at least, the year of my research, 2005, felt like a turning point in
Burning Man’s existence. Maybe ‘tipping point’, would be a better way of
saying it - a concept put forward by Malcolm Gladwell as “that magic
moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips,
and spreads like wildfire (2001:7). In interviews and online, many Burners
mentioned his book appositely called the Tipping Point to me and said how
they saw parallels between Burning Man entering a new phase and such
social epidemics as described by Gladwell, in which ideas and products and
messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do. Maybe so, it is hard to
say, but I do know that in San Francisco, Burning Man has left a definite and
unavoidable mark on the city, and it seems that the rest of the country and
even world is next on the list.
You know there is at least something big going on when Jim Mason,
conspirator of the Smiley incident and initiator of Borg 2, posts an online
announcement in which he publicly ‘serves humble pie’ and announces
2006 to have been better than 1996, and declares his faith in the future
spreading of the event:
Did I drink too much coffee or did this last round out on the flat earth
not restore confidence in what a mass of humanity, well fortified with
a sense of creative entitlement and a gang of their pals with which to
scheme and implement the contents of their imagination, might in
fact be the most impressive force to reckon with on the planet? […]
So in general, I must admit (yes, even to Larry) that the entire thing
was simply stunning and amazing this year. A massive creative
potlatch and conflagration of human wondering far past what most
of us ever thought was possible. Yes, 2006 was better than 1996. Ok,
there I said it.
What I saw out there this year was the best demonstration to date
that unscripted enthusiasm for participatory creative work can be a
successful civic and cultural engine at a societal scale - not just at the
local dimensions where we usually enjoy its pleasures. That the
collective cultural upchuck and symbolic incantations of 40.000
creators can be better than one involving 25.000. And the one which
enables and enfolds 100k or 200k or 500k in years to come, can be
better and stronger still. Which begs the obvious question: can it
work at a civilizational scale? Some of us continue to wonder.129
Of course, I do not think that anyone would seriously think that Black Rock
City could be held year round, let alone work at a civilizational scale, but it
is definitely leaving marks and traces within culture at large.
The part where Burning Man is spilling out of the playa is also the part
where it moves away and beyond its countercultural predecessors. To
Harvey at least, the renaissance that I, and others with me, have been
sensing within Burning Man can be seen as a return to the avant-garde
approach to social progress, which got replaced by countercultural
movements in the fifties and sixties: the hippies, the punks, and others who
did not want to reform society, but simply wanted to be apart from it. Now,
as Burning Man evolved to its latest phase, it has become more a matter of
wanting to be a part of society - not apart. So maybe I have been given too
much attention to Burning Man’s social background; to all those
countercultural collectives stemming from after the fifties, but I still think
that Burning Man would not be where it is today without this background.
129On tribe.net: http://bm.tribe.net/thread/d9a92588-303f-47db-9873-78e86bfc2981,
accessed March 15, 2007.
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Apart from content, the condition. Above all, I think, it is most of all a way to reconsider one’s own
counterculture’s commoditization, position in this life.
appropriation and co-optation by mass Many people have a transformative experience at Burning Man that
culture has given the Burning Man makes it hard to go back to the old way of living. They have seen what
organization valuable insights on how not to happens when creativity, non-commerce and community reign, and they
do things. The terms ‘Burning Man,’ ‘Black have seen what the human imagination can accomplish. Now, instead of
Rock City,’ ‘Decompression,’ and ‘Flambé waiting another 51 weeks to have that empowering feeling again, Burners
Lounge’ have thus been trademarked, as actively seek to rekindle the flame. The stage is set for what some refer to
well as the Burning Man’s image and logo. as the ‘Burner Diaspora’, and it is all about staying connected, building
Commercial sponsorship is refused, there community, and bringing Burning Man’s message back home, year round.
are no trinkets and branded goods for sale,
MTV who wanted to do a special has been
halted in its tracks and the lawsuit over that
one pornographic film with Burning Man
footage has been won. This has all been part
of Burning Man’s preservation, and about
keeping its integrity intact. Now, with
Burning Man seeping out into the world at large, it becomes especially
important, as there is more to gain - and to lose. This is why, as of 2004, the
Burning Man organization has implemented an official ‘Black Rock City Year
Round’ program, with two full-time staff members and another two part-
timers, its own position on the Burning Man website, a digital forum, and a
weekly newsletter.
The Internet is of crucial importance for Burning Man’s year round
implementation, with digital communication tools fueling the continuous
flames. In interviews, many people have expressed to me how hard it was
to come home - ‘back on earth’ as it were - after having left Black Rock City,
and how they felt the need to stay connected. Throughout the years, several
ways of keeping in touch with the Burning Man spirit have been initiated
and maintained, and the most obvious tools towards this goal were, and
are, the many digital forums, list-servers, bulletin boards and community
generated websites that are either directly or indirectly linked to Burning
Man. They keep people informed and connected, but Harvey insists that
they are not, and will never be, a substitute for community. To him, the Going home to Decompress
Internet is first and foremost a tool to bring people together, not from This is exactly how I ended up in London for a Burning Man Decompression
behind their respective computer screens but in real life: “I’d advise all of party in December 2004. Back then, I was already interested in the
you to get on the Internet, not for the sake of having stupid, vicarious, possibility of using Burning Man as the topic for my master’s research, but
anonymous experiences in cyberspace, but for the sake of meeting one that was not even the main reason why I went. Back then, above all, I simply
another and getting together again” (Harvey 1998). had been infected by the same virus that had caused Decompression in
And indeed, small tribes of people are getting together and ‘living the London to happen in the first place. Like the organizers and other visitors, I
playa,’ if only for a short period of time, more or less in all continents now. was trying to bring a shard of the playa back into the default world, no
As the Burning Man website states: matter how temporarily, and to connect to the community again.
The term ‘decompression’ refers to a period of time spent by deep-sea
While Black Rock City during Burning Man is a physical and
divers at various depths on their way to the surface, so that they might
temporal manifestation of the community, it is by no means the
gradually adjust to surface pressure and avoid the bends. By analogy,
entire experience. It is a way of life, and a way of looking at the
decompression parties, ‘decom’ or ‘decomp’ are small local events for
human condition, and it is not limited to the yearly gathering in the
Burning Man participants to help ease themselves back into everyday
desert.130
society after the ‘big event.’ Its entry on Wikipedia reads: “It is not
Local events reminiscent of Burning Man are taking place in Canada, uncommon for Burning Man participants to experience ‘post-burn blues’,
Greenland, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, China, England, Spain, Germany, and decompression events can help alleviate the feelings of loneliness and
France, Australia, New Zealand and Paris. It would be easy to say that such separation that can occur.”131 As stated on the Burning Man website:
events are just another excuse for a wild party, but I personally think that
Before the playa dust has completely settled and our heads have
such presumption would be erroneous. Because just as Burning Man is
stopped spinning, many of us gather in the months after Burning
more than the sum of its obvious bacchanalian aspects, so there is more
Man to ‘decompress’ by taking one more communal plunge into the
than that prospect to bring people together outside the playa. As the above
depths of what we found so affirming and memorable at Burning
quote states, Burning Man is a way of life and a way of looking at the human
Man.

130 On: http://regionals.burningman.com/network_letter.html, accessed May 28th 2007. 131 On: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_party, accessed May 22nd, 2007.
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 -7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive

Decompression becomes an opportunity to dust off and share again [Burning Man] has obviously grown tremendously, but that hasn’t
feelings, art, performances, memories and stories from the playa; to re- changed what it’s about, which is a chance to embrace our diversity
connect with family and friends; and collaborate to create new art. It is, at and connect with other people that we normally wouldn’t get a
its simplest, a reunion. But it is also a showcase of what is most inspiring chance to meet. Hopefully, that attitude transfers into our daily lives,
about Burning Man, brought back into the city and the rest of the year. and will continue to spread in wildfire fashion. (Marian Goodell,
interview September 20th 2005)
When I interview Michael right after Decompression, he comments on the
social and community aspect of the event:
Isn’t it bizarre? I mean, really, don’t you think it is bizarre that people
have apparently drifted apart so much that the minute you give them
a fire pit and a bunch of people around it and let them smile at each
other and say hello and welcome, everyone is like Eureka and
Homecoming and Heart warmed and all that, and for the rest of the
year they will go through the greatest lengths just to be in such a
social environment again. What does that really say about our so-
called civilized society? (Michael, interview September 20th 2005)
Interesting enough, to me at least it seems that Decompression is about the
only time that people are ‘allowed’ to look back, to thrive on last year’s
accomplishments before having to spend time and energy planning the
next, or filling in the days in between. And these days in between can get
quite busy. In San Francisco, in the five months of my research, I attended a
Burning Man film festival, a mobile art festival parade called the p-ART-ici-
PARADE, the local ‘No Spectator Day,’ the three day Fire Arts Festival, a
beach clean-up followed by a Borealis barbeque, the Desert Art Preview, the
opening ceremony of David Best’s art project, Burning Man’s open house
office party, Black Light Bowling; Berkeley’s really, really free market,
several stitch ‘n bitch costume making sessions, Precompression and
Decompression. And of course dozens and dozens of Burning Man related
night parties and fun(d)raisers.
As said before, Burning Man and San Francisco are indissolubly linked
to each other, so it is of little surprise that Burning man would leave its
biggest mark, and busiest agenda, on that city. But to say that it is confined
solely to San Francisco would be underestimating the reach of its tentacles.
For Decompression reunions are now taking place in Los Angeles, Portland,
Flagstaff, San Diego, New York, London and Tokyo. And apart from
Decompression, there are numerous other events put forward by Burning
Man’s small army of so called ‘Regionals.’ The Regional Network is
dedicated to keeping Burning Man’s spirit alive all year, and yes, it might
have started in San Francisco, but it has now turned global.
In San Francisco, Decompression has been organized by the Burning
Man organization since 1999, under the name of the Heat the Streets
F(a)ire. Both years in which I attended Burning Man - 2004 and 2005 - I
went to Decompress afterwards. And I must say, whereas London’s 24
hours of Decompression was already quite a happening, with about four
hundred people in a huge squat at the edge of town, it was nothing like this
homecoming. In San Francisco, Decompression must be the ultimate block
party; a line of warehouses spanning four blocks in the Potrero Hill
neighborhood, where six thousand people dressed in their ‘playa best’
gather to experience a slice of the sights, sounds, and sartorial creativity of
Burning Man, transported to an urban environment.
Maybe this is what Chinatown is to the Chinese, or a climbing wall to
the alpinist: not quite the same, but with the same feel; at least good enough
to make you crave the real thing again. And of course, to be among kindred
souls, because if there is one thing that struck me about Decompression,
and pretty much about all Burning Man related events, it is the sense of
community. According to Marian Goodell, Burning Man’s Mistress of
Communication, this is exactly the intention:
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
The Regional Network
Already in 1997, the Burning Man organization appointed their first so
called Regional Representative in San Francisco, whose initial function was
to act as a sort of information provider on behalf of Burning Man. Soon,
Austin, the North Bay and Canada got represented as well, and what
became known as the Regional program was officially born. As Zac Bolan,
Canada’s first Regional contact, puts it:
When I returned from Burning Man first, I was feeling extremely
lonely and alienated from the people around me who had not been
and who did not understand what I had experienced. So in order to
convey some of the magic, I began showing slides [of Burning Man] to
friends. Soon word got out and I was doing slideshows for friends of
friends, even out of town. I contacted the organization to ask for
more material, and was then asked if I would be interested in
becoming the Regional contact for Canada. Hell yeh! Acting as a
Regional kept me sane during these early days. I was able to form my
own support network until a regional community came into being.132
It must have been different then, because back in those days Burning Man
was still much more under the radar than it is now, and very little people
knew about it. In the late nineties, as the number of people attending
Burning Man had been increasing, so did the sense of community between
people and the urge to stay connected. The role of the regional networks
and representatives consequently changed as well, from information
providers to community builders; bringing people together on a local level
through e-mail lists and by organizing local events.
As of 2004 the Burning Man organization undertook the formation of a
formal network between all its regional contacts. The network was kicked
into being with the launch of the Regional Letter of Agreement, a document
designed to establish a written understanding of the relationship between
each Regional contact and Burning Man, ending with the lines:
What I have tried to describe to you in this letter is a vision of how
our culture can sustain itself upon a larger scale. I believe the
Network we propose holds very close to the Burning Man ethos. It
does not dictate the content of ‘radical self-expression’ — that can
only come from you and other members of your community. It does
not exploit you economically or infringe upon your freedom or the
132 On: http://regionals.burningman.com/regionals_history.html, accessed May 28th 2007.
97
freedom of others to create and organize. But it does protect the way
of life that Burning Man has come to represent.133
The letter was then followed by a legal agreement that translated all of its
content into an actual contract. The idea of a signed legal document
immediately fueled debate among Burners. The linkage to ‘Kentucky Fried
Franchising,’ or ‘McDonaldization’ was made; complete with assumptions
based on hefty licensing fees and cookie cutter replicas of a pre-packaged
product. There was talk of cultural imperialism and the imposition of a top-
down system designed to rigidly control the content of local activities.
There was again fear of selling out, of going commercial, of imposing an
organized structure upon an otherwise spontaneous process of cultural
dissemination.
When I talk with Harvey about
why sentiments like these keep being
expressed throughout Burning Man’s
existence, he states that it is only
natural that people should think that
way, because that is how it has
usually gone for them: “They reason
from experience. Nearly everything
they ever felt authentic that
succeeded in the larger world became
commodified” (Harvey, interview
October 15th 2005). However, he
stresses, experience should show that
Burning Man has not been corrupted,
and neither will such a thing ever
happen with the Regionals. Quite on
the contrary, the legal form is only
there to protect Burning Man’s
integrity, or, as Harvey phrases it in the above quote, to ‘protect the way of
life that Burning Man has come to represent,’ and to stop it from being
exploited. Because this is where it could possible go to if local events were
to be given free reins. Already now, Harvey insists, he sees supposed
‘Burning Man’ parties that are held, the proceeds from which go
unaccounted for, in which vending is allowed and top DJ’s are booked for
large fees. Such events can sometimes become indistinguishable from any
which commercial entertainment. Says Harvey:
I don’t wish to sound paranoid. I am sure that many of these efforts
are inspired by naive enthusiasm and are well-intentioned. But as the
national cachet of Burning Man continues to increase, it takes very
little imagination to foresee how the core values of our community
could eventually be diluted and perverted into the larger world.
Indeed, if even one group organizing a ‘Burning Man’ event does so
unscrupulously or illegally, this could discredit and endanger the
activities of every other group.134
The representatives are there to keep their respective environments free of
such events, as well as checking for any other misuse of Burning Man’s
name, logo or image.
There are now over 90 regional contacts, and many of them put on
their own Burns, by their own name and often fame. Austin, for instance has
its Burning Flipside, Arizona Toast, Georgia Alchemy, Oregon the Phoenix
Festival, Washington Playa del Fuego, and Utah Synergy. In New Zealand the
event is called the KiwiBurn, in Hawaii Rebirth, in Mexico Fuente Eterno, in
Canada Nütopia, and in Quebec Ignition. Since 2004, the Euroburners have
133 On: http://regionals.burningman.com/network_coverletter.html.
134 Ibid. as footnote 132 above.; both accessed May 28th 2007.

their own festival in Europe, Spain, under the name Nowhere. In November
2007, South Africa will join the list with its own Regional burn known as
Afrika Burns. Marian Goodell says she is very happy with those regional
things: “We own the logo and the idea but we don’t feel there can only be
one Burning Man. We’d be quite happy to see events all over the world”
(Marian Goodell, interview September 20th 2005).
Because the Burning Man organization do indeed own the logo, name
and idea, and because the aforementioned fear of dilution and assimilation
into the market and marketing, steps have been taken to assure the
integrity of any Regional event. This is why the Regional contacts have to
sign a contract; acting as a guarantee that all activities that do take place, do
so by abiding to the core philosophies and modes of social organization that
are at the heart of Burning Man. In March 2004, all existing contacts
therefore received an invitation to an online conference, in which each
section of the agreement was reviewed, questions and concerns addressed,
and the goals of the network outlined.135 Eventually, ten core principles
were formulated to describe the goals shared by all members of the
Burning Man Network, and that need to be uphold when planning events
and organizing in the local areas. These core principles are:
1. Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe
that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur
only through the medium of deeply personal participation in experience. We
achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited
to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
2. Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of
value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and
a recognition of our inner selves, appreciation of the reality of those around
us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding
human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
3. Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or
her inner resources.
4. Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should
assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic
135The conference was held via web conferencing software donated by Webex — another
example of the gift economy at work, since Webex asked nothing – neither money nor
marketing - in return for their generous donation.
-7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive
responsibilities to participants. Organizers must also assume responsibility
for abiding by local, state and federal laws.
5. Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no
physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after
ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better
condition than when we found them.
6. Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger.
No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
7. Communal Effort
Our community promotes social interaction through collective acts of gifting.
We value creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce,
promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and
methods of communication that support such interaction.
8. Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one
other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content.
It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights
and liberties of the recipient.
9. Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is
unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for
something of equal value.
10. Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social
environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions,
or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation.
We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Even though it was not done purposely, when looking at these ten
principles, they practically convey a summary of the things I have been
talking about in the greater part of my thesis; the section on Burning Man’s
structural sociality. It is not that I have been checking boxing as I went, but
in the end, I guess that any omission would have made Burning Man’s
sociality feel deficient, thus burdening my argument with the same irksome
sense of incompleteness. It seems that everything that Burning Man has
become, all the lessons learned, has been for a reason, namely to find the
best way of solidifying community through a transportable model of
participation and involvement. Says Harvey:
People want to bring the sense of community they have on the playa
with them into their daily lives. So year-round, they’re connected to a
community, wherever they might be. It’s a time for people to come
together, bond, rehearse their experience of what they learned and
who they are. That’s just a good thing for people to do. And this isn’t
something we dictated. It’s the [Burning Man] culture that does this.
(Harvey, interview October 15th 2005)
The success of the Regionals shows that to have such community is much
looked after. The by now nearly ninety Regional contacts motivate
community members to converge in physical locations consistently and
almost globally. The plurality of these structures and events has motivated
the Regionals to even host each other for touring events. Numerous
relationships on the local, national and even continental level have resulted
from the evolution and expansion of Burning Man into daily life.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
If I take myself as an example, I have been on the Euroburners mailing list
for two years now, and have been both host and guest for several European
community members. I have posted events and been told about events. I
have posted a questionnaire and received countless insights. I have even
contributed to an art project and found artists a venue. And the same goes
for my fieldwork.
Even before arriving in San Francisco I had registered myself on
tribe.net, an online social network community similar to hyves, facebook,
myspace and friendster, though mostly oriented on Burners from the Bay
area.136 Through postings or even just by having my profile online, I got in
contact with several respondents, found a house, a car, a job, and was made
party to countless insights into San Francisco and Black Rock City. Literally,
from the day I arrived I had a whole network of people seeking contact and
conversation, introducing me to valuable key informants and inviting me to
a gamut of physical gatherings. By having myself as a clear cut example, I
believe that the Regional Network, the digital tools and the community that
flow from it comprise a year round increase in social capital. What such
social capital means, both in theory and practice, and how it works itself out
is something I want to look at next.
Social Capital
Though relatively marginal within anthropology, social capital is a core
concept in business, economics, organizational behavior, political science,
and sociology. Much to the exasperation of anyone trying to research it, the
definitions given to the concept differ as much as the fields in which it is
used. The conceptual confusion is only made bigger by the diverse
terminology used to refer to the term, such as social energy, community
136 As from September 2006, tribe.net counted 500.000 users. For a closer look, visit
www.tribe.net.
99
spirit, social bonds, civic virtue, community networks, social ozone,
extended friendships, community life, social resources, informal and formal
networks, good neighborliness and social glue. In general, though, we can
summarize that social capital refers to the advantage created by a person’s
location in a structure of relationships. The term ‘capital’ might be
misleading, because, unlike traditional forms of capital, social capital is not
depleted by use, but in fact depleted by non-use: ‘use it or lose it.’
Portes suggests that the concept behind social capital is nothing new in
sociological terms. He points to the early work of Durkheim and his
emphasis on being connected in a community as an “antidote to anomie and
self destruction” (Portes 1998:2). More recently the value of social capital
was identified by Bourdieu (1986) and given a clear theoretical framework
by Coleman (1988, 1990), who was the first to subject the concept to
empirical scrutiny and develop ways of operationalizing it for research
purposes (Baron et al. 2000:8). However, both for the purpose of this thesis
as in the broader discussion on social capital, the term is now most
commonly associated with the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam,
who successfully exported the concept out of academia and into ordinary
language.
Whereas Coleman and Bourdieu both saw social capital as a resource
possessed by individuals, Putnam additionally defined it as an attribute of
communities, focusing on norms and trust as producers of social capital:
The core idea of social capital theory is that social networks have
value. Just as a screw driver (physical capital) or a college education
(human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and
collective) so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals
and groups. (Putnam 2000:18-19)
Although Putnam had already published a series of articles on social capital,
what gained him and his use of the concept most prominence was his
landmark study Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (2000). In it, he made the painful argument that, during the last
forty years and particularly during the last twenty years, the social capital
of Americans had begun to disintegrate, and would now be at a historical
low.137 According to him, during the fifties and sixties, America was rich in
social capital; Americans were idealistic, trusting, altruistic, and politically
engaged. They bowled in leagues, participated in political campaigns, joined
neighborhood associations, entertained guests, and regularly attended
religious services. However, since then there has been a precipitous drop in
all types of social connections: political, civic, religious, workplace,
community service, and even informal social bonds. Americans have
become less connected and lost social capital both individually and societal.
Rejecting most of the established hypotheses accounting for this
decline, such as suburban sprawl, increased mobility, generational change,
and pressures on time, Putnam ultimately identifies television watching as
the ‘main culprit’ in the erosion of social capital; supported by statistical
evidence that the average American household spends four hours a day
watching television and possesses 2.4 television sets. At the end of the
century, Putnam concludes, not only were Americans watching more TV,
they also watched it more habitually, more pervasively, more as
entertainment instead of information, and more often alone. Such finger
pointing in the direction of television and its subsequent erosion of free
time resonates with ideas by Harvey, and indeed, in a speech for the Cooper
Union in New York, he quotes Putnam and contributes to the discussion:
137 Even though the data and statistics to support Putnam’s theses are all taken from before
1998, they are still valid, for, as a more recent study by McPherson, Smith-Lovin and
Brashears concludes, “given our analyses of the highest-quality nationally representative
data available, our best current estimate is that […] the types of bridging ties that connect us
to community and neighborhood have withered” (McPherson e.a. 2006:372).

If you could take the roof off the average suburban house and witness
what is going on there, you would see each separate family member
in a separate room watching a separate TV that has a separate set of
commercials on it hawking a separate lifestyle. And if you looked
more closely, you’d see that they’re surrounded, barricaded, by all
this stuff they’ve bought to support these lifestyles that are being sold
to them. This is hardly connective. (Harvey 2000)
So even though Harvey acknowledges the ills of television, he sees it as part
and parcel of a larger system, namely capitalism with its ubiquitous mass
marketing techniques and lifestyles ‘for sale’. It is the simulation of being
through commodities and empty images, resulting in spiritual damage that
is hard to document in statistics, but that, according to Harvey, has
produced the greatest evil in our world.
Both Harvey and Putnam agree that the outcome of disconnection and
isolation, so of a decline in social capital, creates dire consequences, on a
societal, individual, economic, bodily and emotional level. Putnam
furthermore points out that a decline in social capital is a problem because
social connections are important for the rules of conduct that they sustain.
Networks of community engagement foster mutual obligations, which in
turn create sturdy norms of reciprocity, which in turn reinforce
trustworthiness, which in turn lubricates social life. Research into the
cumulative effect of social capital would indicate that the well connected
are more likely to be “housed, healthy, hired and happy” (Woolcock,
2001:12), or, in Putnam’s words:
Hard evidence [exists] that our schools and neighborhoods don’t
work so well when community bonds slacken, that our economy, our
democracy, and even our health and happiness depend on adequate
stocks of social capital. (Putnam 2000:27-28)
Reciprocity in Putnam’s analysis of social capital takes on two forms, that of
generalized and specific reciprocity. Generalized reciprocity is defined as
the idea of: “I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back
from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something
for me down the road” (Ibid.21). This form of reciprocity is what Hyde’s,
and, in extension, Burning Man’s gift economy relies upon: a very open
social network between many persons strange to each other where the act
of gifting builds social bonds. What solidifies these bonds are the
expectations, or a perceived set of obligations, that everyone will
participate and do something for others somewhere down the road, leaving
-7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive
a wake of social connections. Specific reciprocity, in contrast, is the act of
doing something for others only if something of equivalent value is offered
in return. A barter economy, in which goods of equivalent value are
exchanged, is an example of this type of reciprocity.
Regarding the efficiency of the two models, Putnam makes an
important observation when he writes that “a society characterized by
generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society based on
barter. If we don’t have to balance every exchange instantly, we can get a lot
more accomplished” (Ibid.21).138 Generalized reciprocity is thus conducive
to greater efficiency and production. It is also less exclusive, and more open
to other distant circles still linked in the network. Putnam sees reciprocity
to be a variable by which two ideal types of social capital networks can be
distinguished, namely bridging (inclusive) and bonding (exclusive). He
describes their difference by noting that,
[…] the weak ties that link me [Putnam] to distant acquaintances
who move in different circles from mine are actually more valuable
than the ‘strong’ ties that link me to relatives and intimate friends
whose sociological niche is very like my own. (Putnam 2000:22-23)
This explanation describes ‘bridging’ networks as the weak, looser ties that
unite others to distant, broader social circles and are inclusive; while, in
contrast, ‘bonding’ social networks describe the intimate ties that form
around group identity and specific criteria for inclusion – i.e. the exclusion
of the stranger. Bonding social capital would be especially good for
undergirding specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity. Bridging
networks, by contrast, are better for linkage to external assets and for
information diffusion. As Xavier de Souza Brigss (1998) phrases the
difference, bonding social capital is good for ‘getting by,’ but bridging social
capital is crucial for ‘getting ahead.’ Moreover, bridging social capital can
generate broader identities, whereas bonding social capital bolsters our
narrow selves.
It is for this difference that on Burning Man, theme camps which are
typically characterized by strong in-group values and aesthetics need to
stay open, inclusive and have a public function that gets people to enter into
the camp’s bonded circle of people. These intimate networks thus become
bridged to the larger population. As participants trust in the network and
trust in other members to act as they do, greater social relationships
between more diverse people occur. Thus it is in truth, by definition, that
the Burning Man network sustains generalized reciprocity as a cornerstone
through the moral obligation members hold to each other and themselves
as a whole. Needless to say that in a way, the larger population can be seen
as a bonded network because the criteria for inclusion are relatively well
defined, and based on the exclusion of those who are not devoted to the
Burner ideal and do not follow ‘the rules of the game,’ but even still so the
system is not closed. Precisely because the community is not just based on
intimate ties, anyone who is genuinely interested can gain entry, and
anyone can extend the network even further by introducing new members.
Let us once again remember Burning Man’s core principle number six,
formulated by the Regionals, that deals with radical inclusion: “Anyone may
be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No
prerequisites exist for participation in our community.” Basically, the way I
see it, participation in the community is the prerequisite for belonging to
the community, thus making the bridged social network more active and
extended. We have to remember here that participation is also creation;
self-expression and art. As people utilize bridging networks to access
138Obviously, as opposed to barter, monetary exchange would have the same benefits, but,
as we saw before when discussing the difference between the gift and commodity, money is
not a very good conductor of reciprocity and thus a poor builder of social capital.
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

material, labor, and knowledge in the philosophy of generalized reciprocity, of increasing isolation but a shift in the form and type of
bonded networks are formed around the creation. These networks disperse connection. (McPherson e.a. 2006:373, emphasis mine)
if members move on to other endeavors of creation, which strengthens the
Such shift would move away from community as a solitary and rather
network and keeps the community fluid and open. The evident increase in
homogeneous group of densely knit neighbors, such as which Putnam
relationships, however, quantifies the community’s strength.
envisions and sees lacking, towards an internally more varied social
Considering that generalized reciprocity is at work in such networks, it
network of friends and workmates who do not necessarily live in the same
has the power to cut out, or at least undermine the capitalistic competition
neighborhoods. These different, formal and informal organizational
for resources, and to rival the capabilities of mass production. As discussed
networks of human connectedness have become less interwoven, and no
before in the chapter on gift-giving, the result is not an economy of scarcity,
longer form an organic whole from which solidarity would arise
such as with capitalism, but instead an economy of abundance, from which
automatically, in the Durkheimian sense. Instead, they have become
all individuals can reap the benefits. And, as this chapter hopefully shows,
independent, autonomously functioning tribes, characterized by what Afke
as Burning Man’s burgeoning community gains more and more strength on
Komter calls ‘segmented’ solidarity:
the local level, the implementation and benefits of its bridged network
become equally strong. Putnam (2000:20) reminds us that this is beneficial One might therefore describe the ongoing change as a
to the social network as a whole, but it also bears practical importance on transformation from organic to ‘segmented’ solidarity: separate,
an individual level, specifically in that autonomous segments, connecting (if at all) with other segments no
longer out of necessity and mutual dependence bust on the basis of
A well-connected individual in a poorly connected society is not as
voluntariness. (Komter 2005:211)
productive as a well-connected individual in a well-connected
society. And even a poorly connected individual may derive some of As opposed to Durkheim’s organic or mechanical solidarity, characterized
the spillover benefits from living in a well-connected community. by ‘homogeneous segments’ based on congruence, the segments on which
Komter sees contemporary solidarity to rest are characterized by diversity
In other words, a poorly connected individual, utilizing a well connected
and plurality, with mutual connections that are more loose and less
community, can more readily access the labor, knowledge and resources
‘organic’ (Ibid.212). Without her acknowledging so, such a view resonates
needed to create and produce a vision; the spillover benefits of reciprocity
strongly with Maffesoli’s argument based on us currently living in the ‘time
become clearer. As individuals begin to share in the spirit of general
of the tribes,’ or, better said, in a time in which the mass is tribalized again;
reciprocity, a certain kind of infrastructure to support this sharing emerges.
and in which “it is less a question of belonging to a gang, a family or a
Individuals from ‘outside’ of the community can have access to such
community than of switching from one group to another” (1996:76).
infrastructure and thus extend the network even further. In my case, both
Instead of talking about segmentation, such as Komter, Maffesoli argues
before and during my fieldwork, I as a poorly connected individual with
for a current development of ‘elective sociality;’ an increasing identification
little contacts in the Burning Man community was able to use a Burner
of individuals with various ‘neo-tribes’ which share a set of interests,
community list-serve on the Internet. The community, connected via the
beliefs, and an ethical consciousness that functions as a form of social
list-serve, responded as its members were chatting about event ideas, jokes,
identity. Maffesoli finds the interplay of such contemporary tribalism to be
and general community dynamics, and I could smoothly tap into their well-
organized into polycentric nebulae; ephemeral and organized as the
connected social network.
occasion arises. The glutinum mundi of solidarity hereby exists of a series of
A little side note is in order here. Because although Putnam does not
overlapping and multitude interconnections, a ‘networks of networks’ or
deny the existence of computer-mediated connections and the possibility of
‘urban mosaic’ (Ibid.145-147). The social organization created by the
virtual communities, he finds them to be significantly less important to the
paradigm of the network and nebula might be loose and diffracted, but it
maintenance of social capital than civic associations, which, as a political
still provides structure; ‘a solid organicity’ that can serve as the basis of
scientist, he identifies as the glue that binds the American community. To
new forms of solidarity and sociality.
Putnam, the computer, like television, would mostly isolate and privatize
American’s leisure time: “electronic technology allows us to consume this
hand-tailored entertainment in private, even utterly alone” (Ibid.217). His
view on community existing ‘before’ the (advent of) computers, not ‘in front
of’ it, has been debated, for instance by Wellman and Gulia, who write:
Pundits worry that virtual community may not truly be community.
These worriers are confusing the pastoralist myth of community for
the reality. Community ties are already geographically dispersed,
sparsely knit, connected heavily by telecommunications and
specialized in content. (Wellman and Gulia 1999:355)
So maybe, with this in the back of our mind, we could say that social capital
might not be all that low, but simply that networks and communities have
changed. This is also what McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Brashears conclude
in their analyses on social isolation in America:
Whatever the reasons, it appears that Americans are connected far
less tightly now than they were 19 years ago. Furthermore, ties with
local neighborhoods and groups have suffered at a higher rate than
others. Possibly, we will discover that it is not so much a matter

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 -7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive

A new Kind of Community Dionysus by Night’, where “each 24-hour period will cycle between
I have talked about Maffesoli before when discussing the Durkheimian reflective (conscious) content contrasting with a nighttime concern for
essential of collective effervescence and ritual in the formation of ecstatic (subconscious) expression.”139 If ever it was, Burning Man has long
community. Indeed, within Maffesoli’s framework of the Dionysiac stopped being just ‘madness,’ ruled over by the God of wine, intoxication
thematic; with his subsequent emphasis on affect and vitalism; the feral and and chaos. Nowadays, Apollo, that solitary God of ‘reason,’ claims his more
festal; the wild and imaginary; the ludic and orgiastic, his analyses proves harmonic and orderly co-presence through lectures, healing areas,
highly suitable when talking about Burning Man and the ephemeral tribes conferences and dreamlands. I believe that it is this two-party system that
that constitute its community on the playa. However, when transporting his gives Burning Man, no matter how ephemeral of a city, greatest potential
model to what we might call the Burning Man movement, or at least its year for a future expansion and year round implementation.
round community, we hit upon essential differences. These differences have
everything to do with the fact that I think that Maffesoli, no matter how
articulate, has eventually produced a one-sided and flattened out image of
our current time of the tribes that cannot account for the possibility of
social and political critique, and in which the neo-tribes that characterize it
are essentially non-political. Consider the following quotation:
There is no better way to sum up the efflorescence and effervescence
of neo-tribalism which, in various forms, refuses to identify with any
political project whatsoever, to subscribe to any sort of finality, and
whose sole raison d’être is a preoccupation with the collective
present. (Maffesoli 1996:75)
Maybe I could begin to agree with Maffesoli if the political project was
strictly defined as something imposed from above; ‘policing society’ as it
were, but today’s political activity, that taking place within contemporary
sociality, seems to be of a different nature. Often, it is more of an
emancipatory form for political construction; an experimentation with
innovative forms for ‘bottom up’ politics. And even though the proposed
new kind of political order can take on utopian forms – in the sense of non- Burning Man is more than a party, more than its Dionysiac excess, and
dystopian as well as idealized –, to me that does not mean that there would its year round realization equally revolves around more than simply
not be any political potential. Maffesoli, in contrast, completely disregards attending regional gatherings that exist apart from the world, as does Black
this, preferring instead to speak of the mass’ withdrawal or ‘aloofness’ from Rock City. Currently, it seems that the greatest challenge is to radically
politics. To him, neo-tribes possess a secretive, resilient cultural resistance reinsert the core values of Burning Man’s culture into what is called the
that is inherently passive - hence its strength. In the end, the time of the default world, and to ‘live the playa’ year round. Such is explicitly not a
tribes is a ‘transpolitical’ time: “one intends less to ‘act’ on the social, to lifestyle such as Maffesoli sees shared by the members of a neo-tribe, but a
affect society, than to take from it all the well-being one can and to best way of being in, and looking at the world that has less to do with form,
enjoy this well-being. Political disengagement, the derision of which politics appearance and consumption, and more with structural issues, ideology
is the object, is not a transitory epiphenomenon” (Ibid.48). and decommodification. Expanding on Maffesoli, Andy Bennett reminds us
As said, Maffesoli sees all this summarized by the metaphor of the that lifestyles are indissolubly linked to consumerism, in that they
Dionysiac, and I can certainly see how this emblematic figure would feel at
… describe the sensibilities employed by the individual in choosing
home on Burning Man. But there is another side to the festival, and
certain commodities and patterns of consumption and in articulating
especially to its insertion into culture, that is quite different, and that might
these cultural resources as modes of personal expression. (Bennett
just brings Apollo to the stage. In The Contemplation of the World: Figures of
1999:607)
Community Style (1996b), Maffesoli, in Nietzschian fashion, explains their
dual nature: According to both Bennett and Maffesoli, because a lifestyle would be such
‘freely chosen game’, it liberates individuals by offering them avenues for
Dionysus the god of a ‘hundred faces,’ the god of versatility, of play, of
individual expression through commodities. Again, it seems to create a gap
the tragic and the loss in the self casts his shadow over our societies.
between the Burners community and a neo-tribe. Let me illustrate by
It is no longer the presence of a celestial Apollo, luminous and
quoting from Harvey:
rational, who prevails, but rather that of the more earthly figure, in
whom obscurity and ambivalence have their place. […] It is Dionysus, A lifestyle, with its panoply of status coded goods, is a commodified
that treelike divinity, emblem of the pleasures lived in the here and version of what we used to call a way of life. Marketers have learned
now, hence of the sensorial, who stands opposed to Apollo, the to sort us into separate stalls like cattle in a feed lot. Using focus
Uranus God, torchbearer of the celestial light, that of pure reason. groups, it's endlessly possible to invent new and appealing lifestyles
(Maffesoli 1996b.61/72) which give us the illusion we are making lifestyle statements and are
members of imaginary peer groups. That these fashions require no
At Burning Man, Dionysus provides the important sense of vertigo,
participation in the life of a community is not the concern of the
transgression and quest for transcendence, but he does so by engaging
merchant. (Harvey 2000)
creatively with Apollo’s inclination for order, organization and the
achievement of goals. Thus, in the year of my research, on the corner of ten
o’clock and Bipolar, there was the popular theme camp ‘Apollo by Day, 139 On: http://www.abddbn.com/burningman/, accessed August 2nd, 2005.
102
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
I guess that the way Harvey sees it, a lifestyle would be the exact opposite of
his so deeply cherished ‘radical self-expression,’ where everyone is
challenged to look deep inside and find that true inner part that makes his
or her unique, and then contribute this to a public environment. Indeed, it is
vital that self-expression is seen as a communal gift, for it is then possible to
blend the often volatile and individualistic self-expressive urge with a
communal ethos.
When being at Burning Man and looking around me, I personally found
that Harvey’s inclination to completely disregard commodities might be a
bit utopic. In Black Rock City, like any other city, the ‘cool kids’ were rather
easily distinguished, and valued as such. Those with better outfits, gifts,
domes and transport often reap admiration and attention, and some minor
form of practical segregation based on these flourishing or lacking qualities
does exist. Likewise a sort of ‘Burners fashion style’ can be distinct and
easily recognized in San Francisco’s streets and nightlife, and even though a
lot of it is ‘handmade’ or altered, coolness does not always come cheap. The
fact that there would be no conspicuous consumption involved in any of
this is an obvious illusion and far from the truth. A critical eye can also
argue that not nearly all of Burning Man’s 40.000 participants stay
connected year round and live by the ten principles as formulated by the
Regionals (which, as quoted from Harvey before, do indeed “protect the
way of life that Burning Man
has come to represent”).
However, the fact remains
that Burning Man is no longer
just a Dionysiac fest,
subculture or neo-tribe, but
indeed a way of life for an
ever larger number of people,
and a way of life that is
starting to leave marks on the
culture at large for all that.
These marks go beyond
fashion statements, parties, or
‘being cool,’ and take it into
the realm of ideology, ecology,
charity and the future.
Ideology & Future Plans
The essential point of Burning Man is not what it is now but what it suggests
for the future, which is not just a new cultural form but the possibility of a
new way of being, a kind of radical openness toward experience that
maintains responsibility for community. […] Burning Man, in fact, is
increasingly taking on a double mission: In one way, it models what the world
could be, and in another it embodies dedication to changing what the world
is. This is, to say the very least, an intensely challenging vision. (Pinchbeck
2003:176)
One day at the playa, according to my notes it was already Thursday, I was
at my camp organizing some data and filling up my notebook. The radio
was on, tuned in to one of Black Rock City’s over fifteen radio stations – I
don’t even remember which one – and it’s hilarious announcements and
groovy tunes had me smiling from ear to ear. As my friend started slicing
limes and crushing ice to make us some cocktails, friends and neighbors
soon came over and within no time our small, improvised camp was full
with people chatting, laughing, singing and dancing. Someone cranked the
radio volume up even further: Tom Waits’ piano was still drinking, and so
103
were we. Suddenly, the song got interrupted for a special broadcast, in
which a guy was jabbering about some disaster somewhere in the country
and there being a need for canned food, water, and, especially, bottles of
alcohol for the rescue workers. He was asking everyone to hand in all
surpluses they might have at the Center Camp cafe. Yeh, right, I remember
thinking, aren’t we all rescue workers in need of a drink?…
So that was how the news of New Orleans reached me. Looking back on
it now, it is not that strange or insensitive that I would first assume it to be
a prank - if there is one thing that Burning Man thrives on it is the
omnipresence of irony and pranks. I guess that I just could not believe that
during that one moment, when the whole world seemed to be made of such
perfect bliss, a natural catastrophe far greater than anything the USA had
ever experienced before could strike somewhere else. It seemed too unreal;
another of those random rumors that swirl through Black Rock City.
“They’re serious,” one of my neighbors who had arrived on the playa only
that morning insisted, “New Orleans is gone, a hurricane by the name of
Katrina blew it out to sea.” In the next few hours and days, news trickled
through slowly on the playa. For the participants, the playa’s main portal to
the outside world is still and only its, rather limited, WiFi connection. Other
than that, there are no outside newspapers or radio reception, no
televisions to watch, no cell phone connection.
On the second day after Katrina had passed through, the Burning Man
organization made satellite images of New Orleans, as well as the latest
news, available at the playa’s Network Operations Center. I went there, and
it still seemed surreal. Surreal - and devastating. What had once been a
beautiful, historic city and region had been wiped away, leaving many
Burners without the option to return to their homes and quite literally
stuck in the desert with all worldly possessions left. In the Center Camp café
I found Disaster Relief buckets which had been put down to collect money.
Luckily, in a city based on gift-giving, people were now also freely gifting
money. Apparently, as I read later, within 48 hours, “with zero PR or
advertising or formal pleas from Angelina Jolie or the Red Cross and sans
any blank-eyed stares from our useless president,” 40.000 dollar was
gathered at Burning Man, along with seven tons of food and a huge supply
of bottled water. 140 But the efforts extended beyond material or monetary
help.
140 From: Burning Man defies Katrina. How can a huge, feral party in the desert possibly
matter? By Mark Morford. San Francisco Chronicle September 7, 2005,
 -7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive

Several participants One group, in particular, stood out, and it went by the name of ‘Burners
took Burning Man’s without Borders’ (BwB). It included members of Black Rock City’s
message of communal Department of Public Works, known as the DPW, and volunteers who had
effort, civic responsibility, helped build the Temple of Dreams. Arriving on the Gulf Coast, they
community building and encountered a Vietnamese community in Biloxi, Mississippi, whose
gift-giving off the playa members were mourning over the broken remnants of their Buddhist
and into the area’s where temple. Ironically, the finalization of this recently constructed temple had
Katrina had hit most hard. occurred a mere twelve hours in advance of the oncoming storm. Then
For me, their humanistic Katrina’s winds had swept it all away, leaving a large community without
efforts stood to testify that its spiritual and social core.
Burning Man has really Apparently, the ad hoc crew of Burners immediately set to work. Over
grown beyond the dusty the course of the next three months, they reconstructed the shattered
borders of Black Rock City. temple. In doing this, the group was guided by the culture they had
More than just an annual absorbed at Burning Man. Communal effort, radical self-reliance and civic
event, Burning Man has responsibility – three out of Burning Man’s ten golden ten principles - were
become a way of life that certainly in evidence. The Burners had arrived in the disaster zone already
inspires people to equipped with clothes, blankets, gear, a crane, a tractor, heavy machinery,
reconsider their water, fuel, generators and disparate skill sets. Having Burning Man
relationship to the outside experience, they knew what was required to survive and labor in a
world. It is ideology landscape stripped of usable resources, and they especially knew how to
through empathy, the build community in a vacuum.
combination of what
Maffesoli dubs the polis,
the political order that he
sees us currently moving
away from, and the thiase,
the realm of identification that would characterize a neo-tribe. I think that
the Burning Man community makes its thiase political; the sense of ‘we-
ness’ preconditions individual and communal action - on a political and
ideological level. Herewith, the ten principles are not just ideology or
dogma, but truly a lived ethos. This final section of my thesis will be about
the implementation of this ethos in everyday life, and the ‘Burners without
Borders’ will commence it by showing how.
After three months in Biloxi and that job done, they moved to another
needy Mississippi community, Pearlington: a rural and more devastated
Katrina and the Burners without Borders
region from which over seventy percent had been destroyed. There, they
Already during the event, theme
continued debris removal and rebuilding. Amid this ruin, another one of
camp Katrina was initiated, where
Burning Man’s basic principle emerged, namely radical self-expression and
participants started their own relief
artistic creativity. As newspaper clippings readily agree, this, more than
efforts. Within days, a groundswell
anything, distinguished Burners without Borders from other relief groups.
of aid and volunteers flowed from
At the end of each working day, the crew began to fashion art from the
there. According to Tom Price, a
appalling sprawl of storm debris. And every Saturday they would invite the
journalist and Burner who stayed
locals over in the evening for drinks to watch the structures go up in flames
in New Orleans for nearly half a
with them. In an interview done for the Reno Gazette, volunteer Carmen
year, it showed that Burners had
Mauk is quoted saying “It was a place to come together around a fire. I think
very well learned something in
it was cathartic to the entire community to see their rubbish turned into
their secluded desert that could be
art.”142
of value in the real world:
Over a total of more than eight months, 299 volunteers cycled through
When Burners started hitting the Gulf Coast, the question of whether the ranks of Burners without Borders. They provided one million dollars
Burning Man is more than just a big art party in the desert stopped worth of free demolition to homeowners,143 knocked down sixty homes,
being some boring art-house debate or pedantic argument yelled recycled tons of lumber into new homes, and fetched an untold number of
over drinks at the Make-Out Room. This is about as real as life gets. runaway boats and sheds, as well as supplied water, beds, fuel, food and
[…] For many victims here, the help they're getting isn't from the clothing to hundreds of people. They build shelters for rescue workers,
government they've paid and fought and bled for; it's from a bunch of canopies for those in line and solar powered WiFi connections so as to
artists widely derided for the self-absorbed pointlessness of their
behavior.141
In: Burners bring help to victims of Katrina. By Kristin Larsen. Reno Gazette 9/5/2006.
142

Demolition agencies were charging anywhere in between six and ten thousand dollars to
143

knock down a house. In keeping up with Burning Man’s currency-free mode of exchange,
141 On: http://www.sfbg.com/40/21/cover_why.html, accessed March 3rd 2007. BwB provided the service for free.
104
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
coordinate donations coming in over the Internet. In a very practical sense,
it seems that the very skills needed to survive at Burning Man would be the
skills needed to respond to disaster. In the words of Tom Price:
It turned out what we learned in the desert had very practical
implications. Sure, there're the topical things; Burners tend to be, in
general, pretty creative, self-reliant types who can handle being in a
chaotic, unstable environment. So when they started hitting the Gulf
Coast, they were prewired to know what to do: build shelter. Make
food. Keep cold things cold and dry things dry. But more than that, all
the talk about radical self-reliance, about operating in a gift
economy, about thinking and acting from a place of civic
responsibility – all that hot-air crap turned out to be exactly what
was needed when things fell apart. Partying in the desert, it seems,
was in some weird way like boot camp for a disaster.144
Beyond pure practicalities, by recreating what had been a sacred place, by
transforming the remnants of human trauma into art, and by allowing
people to redeem their sense of loss by making and burning art, I think that
the Burners without Borders fulfilled more than a material need. Like on
the playa, its motto of ‘building community through art, and action’ instilled
a vital spirit in the default world of Missisipi that was both challenging and
needed.
Since my research, the Burners without Borders have continued to
undertake humanistic projects. At Burning Man 2006, they collected 42
units of lumber; six full semi-trucks of recycled building material, which got
donated to Habitat For Humanity and used to build homes for low-income
families in Reno. In Chicago, BwB artists mentored students at a high
school, showing them how to create to create art from ‘found objects’ and
turning this into sculpture gardens on rooftops for the benefit of
commuters on the city’s elevated trains. Worldwide, there was the
International Clean Up Day, in which public parks and beaches all over the
world got a thorough clean. In Nevada, the Black Rock Solar project has just
been initiated, in which hundreds of kilowatts of solar power are build and
given away in poor rural communities, and in Asia there are even two
Tsunami Relief Efforts still going on. On the Burners without Borders
website it reads:
144 On: http://www.sfbg.com/40/21/cover_why.html, accessed March 3rd 2007.
105
Born from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, Burners Without
Borders is volunteers dedicated to building community through
social good works that reflect inclusion, self- reliance, civic
responsibility, gifting, and above all, the belief that doing good can be
fun, and done with style. Take action. Join us.145
As Burning Man’s culture expands outward, it is all about the reinsertion of
its values into the world at large. The Burners without Borders project is
certainly a good example of the shapes and forms this insertion can take,
but it is by no means the whole picture. Specifically the combination of
ideology with art has brought forth the Black Rock Arts Foundation, also
known as BRAF, a not-for-profit organization, which raises money and
distributes grants in support of community-based art and civic renewal.
The Black Rock Arts Foundation
Already in May 2001, the Burning Man organization founded the Black Rock
Arts Foundation to help artists create interactive art experiences in places
other than Black Rock City, particularly in civic contexts through an annual
grant cycle. While Burning Man provides ample opportunity for artists to
bring their work to a receptive audience, BRAF was born specifically out of
the desire to help artists create the same genre of experiential art in the
default world, and to reach and affect a much bigger public than that in the
desert. Like on the playa, art as sponsored by BRAF is not there to be put in
vaults or be removed in any other way from the realm of experience, but
should instead have a communal function, as stated in the mission
statement on its website:
The mission of the Black Rock Arts Foundation is to support and
promote community-based interactive art. For our purposes,
interactive art means art that generates social participation. The
process whereby this art is created, the means by which it is
displayed and the character of the work itself should inspire
immediate actions that connect people to one another in a larger
communal context.146
As Harley Dubois, vice president of the Black Rock Arts Foundation
emphasizes in an interview, BRAF is there for artists who are creating not
just for the playa, but in that spirit for other places. She immediately
145 On: http://www.burnerswithoutborders.org/
146 On: http://www.blackrockarts.org/
 -7- Every Day Burning: Keeping the Flames Alive

nuances this though, because like at Burning Man, everyone can be an In true Burning Man fashion, Best’s Temple was a temporary art project,
artist, and BRAF is especially keen on personal projects in which everyone only present from May to September 2005. Although in the end, it was
can participate, bring in ideas and work together. That way, art in a social dismantled rather than burned, it still had interactivity written all over it.
context generates participation that can eventually create social change: And I mean that literal. City officials first freaked out when people started
writing on the art they had commissioned, and a local resident even told me
The object of the Black Rock Arts Foundation is to take whatever that
how she had seen how the first couple scribbling on the by then still
is that you have when you go home [from Burning Man] as
pristine wooden structure got arrested by the police, but by the time I
meaningful for you and to bring it to fruition in your home the other
arrived in the city, at the end of June, the Temple had already been
weeks a year. So instead of waiting for Burning Man and waiting and
plastered with drawings, text, stickers, and objects left behind – just as Best
waiting you bring it home with you and you manifest it for yourself.
always likes to see happening with his art.
This way it will be different for everybody and it will be in your own
home and it will become part of your world which will then affect
other people and hopefully create change over time. (Dubois,
interview July 26th, 2005)

According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Temple has been both
a hit and a learning experience for the city. Jill Manton, the city’s Art
Commission’s director of public art and the main person who executed the
Mayor’s idea to bring the Temple to San Francisco, is quoted saying “It’s the
first time in my 22-year career in public art that a piece has pleased
everyone. Everyone was excited about bringing Burning Man to the
people.”148 The Temple and its success paved the way for more interactive
and Burning Man related art projects to be brought into the city’s public
areas, such as Michael Christian’s Flock, displayed in Civic Center Plaza for
three months; Passage, a giant scrap-metal sculpture of a mother and child
displayed on the Embarcadero; and Pepe Ozan’s Dreamer in the Golden
Gate Park. These projects have all adorned the playa at one time or another,
and indeed the newest trend seems to be not to burn the art at the end of
Burning Man, but to erect it someplace else or even ‘tour’ with. Exemplary
of this is the art made by the Flaming Lotus Girls, which has been part of
In Burning Man’s birthplace, the San Francisco Arts Commission has
our own Amsterdam
partnered up with BRAF to bring eight Burning Man art projects to the city
based Robodock
so far, with a ninth and tenth on the way. The trend began in the summer of
festival for the last
2005 when a key symbol of the Burning Man culture came home and was
three years. However,
put on display in the heart of the city’s newest showcase boulevard, Octavia
there are also art
in Hayes Green. In the press release, the decision to choose longtime
projects made
Burning Man artist David Best to build his temple is explained:
specifically with
The Mayor along with the Arts Commission engaged Best to create a BRAF grants, such as
new work to recognize the contribution of Burning Man to the Stan, the Submerging
cultural life of the Bay Area, and to emphasize the city’s dedication to Man, an 18-foot bell
community, environmental sustainability, and art made from diver covered with
recycled materials.147 45-r.p.m. records in a
park south of Market
147At: http://www.sfartscommission.org/pubart/about_us/press_releases/2005/6-9-
05.htm, accessed July 2nd, 2005. 148 In: Burning Man; epilogue as prologue. By Steven T. Jones. S. F. Bay Guardian 5/10/2005.
106
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
Street, and three temporary public sculptures from reclaimed and recycled
materials, displayed in different neighborhood parks under the name of
ScrapEden SF.
The list goes on and, and by now, in the year 2007, we can even slowly
add art projects from outside of San Francisco. BRAF is, for example,
(partly) funding a fire art festival in South Africa, and a new Temple project
in Detroit, where Best will be using reclaimed car parts instead of wood this
time. Like the art created by Burners without Borders, the ‘Temple of the
American Dream’ will arise from the detritus of America’s great Rust Belt.
In the words of the Dream Project’s web site:
A driving goal is to involve the community and local artists,
spreading the message that all of the people can participate and
create together. Through broad-based community participation, the
project will cross the great racial divide that has plagued Detroit's
art and city revitalization for years.149
As the Black Rock Arts Foundation has more grants to give away (250.000
dollars in 2006), more art will trickle out with the intention to bud more
local actions into global projects and bring more people into contact with
the Burning Man culture. It is a slow process, and it might sometimes seem
insignificant to simply have a few temporary projects on display in public
149 On: http://www.detroitdreamproject.org/
107
areas, but I do think that the thought behind BRAF and its aims to ‘inspire
art, community and civic participation’ hold potential for the future.
Venturing beyond San Francisco and into the world, the Black Rock
Arts Foundation often collaborates with the regional communities we
talked about before. Both strive to integrate the Burning Man ethos into the
world by nurturing interactive arts events, projects, and community
building. Practically, regional contacts automatically become members of
BRAF, and a representative group of contacts serves on its art grant
advisory committee. On a deeper level, as far as spreading Burning Man’s
ethos on a worldwide level is concerned, I guess that whereas the regional
contacts are there to protect its image and culture, BRAF is there to furnish
the movement with funding.
If we are to believe Harvey, the Regional Network, including Burners
without Borders and the Black Rock Arts Foundation, exist as social
instruments towards Burning Man’s so called ‘diaspora;’ intended to
disperse or spread its originally localized ethos. The network has the
Burning Man culture reaching outward in self-propagation; leaping across
the bright orange trash fence that encloses Black Rock City, into the world
at large. According to Harvey, now is the time to try to influence the very
culture against which Burning Man’s participants traditionally rebelled.
Maybe, as some of my respondents have claimed, this is the time that
signifies Burning Man’s tipping point, and in which it indeed will affect local
politics and eventually global change. Maybe, in a few years time, Burning
Man as a festival will have made itself redundant, swallowed by the regional
events it inspired. Maybe Harvey is right when, asked about the future of
Burning Man, he answered, while pointing at Black Rock City, “In the
fullness of time, maybe this will disappear - because it will have served its
purpose. The children will have left the nursery.”150
As one leaves the playa, there is the inevitable succession of exit signs,
saying things like ‘Welcome… to the Default World: … Whose fault… is that?’
and ‘Move The World… Change Yourself.’ When I drove out in 2005, the last
two sign read ‘What happens… in Las Vegas… stays in Las Vegas…What
happens in…Black Rock City…doesn’t stay in…Black Rock City.’ Personally, I
really believe that an event that is capable of manifesting such change on an
individual level - as most of my respondents testified it had done -, does
indeed hold potential to manifest such change on a global level. And maybe,
just maybe, in another decade or so I will be writing, not just a final chapter,
but a whole dissertation on Burning Man’s legacy to the world.
150From: Burning Man counterculture seeks social, political influence. By Don Thompson.
Las Vegas Sun September 1st, 2003.

Conclusion
Ancient religious ritual used to be full of vigorous, joyful celebrations where
people would lose themselves and do wild things. Burning Man is a lot like
that, but it's not simply a party. If people are schlepping their stuff to the
desert and living in a harsh environment -- there has to be something bigger
going on. (Kozinets 2005:3)
This thesis has demonstrated that, as the manifestation of the festival’s
classic time out of time, Burning Man is a typical playground secluded in
space and time. But it is more than just its obvious elements of excess, fun,
hedonism, transgression and celebration. Through narrative, ritual and
irony, Burning Man participants establish a dynamic contrast between the
festival world and everyday society, in which the former takes on a
heightened reality and represents an alternative world made over by
festival-goers’ views of law enforcement, art, economics, self and
community. It is a world in which the usual rules and standards are
ignored, inverted, subverted or simply danced around, in order to
reestablish contact with one’s self, the other and the world at large. Going
against what are perceived as alienating, individuating and numbing
structures of society, Black Rock City’s physical and social infrastructure is
consciously devised to bring a sense of community to its heterogeneous
citizens. It does so by presenting a lived-in, ritualized reality in which
participation is emphasized over the spectacle, creation over mediation,
experience over meaning, proxemics over comfort, self-policy over
regulation, art over anaesthetics, the gift over commodities, and a way of
life over a lifestyle.
In ritual liminality, people play with elements of the familiar and
defamiliarize them. Betwixt and between two stages or statuses in life,
participants are emotional and often physical removed from their everyday
life and identity. It is both a potent and dangerous stage, in which the
temporal distance can cause alienation and anomie, but also offers room for
reflection and regeneration. Nowadays, though, in our secular,
individualized and fragmented West, the sensory domains of the liminal
have been replaced with and reduced to the liminoid; a set of entertainment
genres and empty spectacles flourishing in the leisure time of society, no
longer in a central driving place. The age of science and technology has
driven us towards the manageable and the feasible, and with the following
decline of meaning and wonder, our disenchantment with the world, each
other and ourselves was complete. As Harvey Cox in the introduction to his
Feast of Fools phrases it:
Mankind has paid a frightful price for the present opulence of
Western industrial society. […] While gaining the world he has been
losing his own soul. He has purchased prosperity at the cost of a
staggering impoverishment of the vital elements of his life. These
elements are festivity –the capacity for genuine revelry and joyous
celebration, and fantasy –the faculty for envisioning radically
alternative life situations. (Cox 1969:7)
It is necessary to have a resurgence of hope, celebration, liberation, and
experimentation in the West; a return to our celebrative and imaginative
Conclusion
faculties; a homecoming to the realm of festivity and fantasy. In this thesis, I
have tried to show how Burning Man does exactly that: bringing the liminal,
festive, performative and transformative back in its weeklong ritual. As I
have argued, immediatism and social criticism wrapped in art and self-
expression, projected on the blank screen of the Black Rock Desert, cause a
re-enchantment that is made to last far after the festival is over.
Anthropologist Margaret Thompson Drewel, building on the earlier
work of Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz, writes that in Yoruba culture,
“rituals operate not merely as models of and for society that somehow
stand timelessly alongside ‘real’ life. Rather they construct what reality is
and how it is experienced and understood” (Drewel 1992:174). Burning
Man works hard to represent itself as a new reality. On the website it is
stated that the festival is a critical response to corporate America and an
antidote to consumerism, but also, rhetorically, added to this “Where else,
but in America, would people be invited to pack their belongings, journey
into a desert wilderness, and there create the portrait of a visionary
world?”151 There is an expectation and excitement in the festival
atmosphere that makes participants feel that they are contributing to a
powerful social force. Ritualized reality is brought back home and there
alters the very concept of what reality should look like.
In 2005, the year of my research, the Burning Man was built and set
ablaze for the twentieth time. I do not think that anyone could have
predicted, back on Baker Beach in 1986, that a spark was being put not just
to an effigy, but also to the start of a (r)evolution of such social force. During
those first years, Burning Man’s reality was certainly not that well
constructed or constructive. There were no rules, yet, and what had started
as a small participatory community soon turned into a dissociated mob.
When the event moved into the desert, by its very nature the new location
and duration made it the perfect temporary autonomous zone in which
people could momentarily play outside of mediated structures and control
systems; an escape from society that was rather anarchic in nature. Like
Bey argues for his Temporary Autonomous Zones, such spaces were always
temporal in nature though, and any form of empowerment lay within the
escape, not the re-entry, of structure. Burning Man, however, evolved from
this, and instead of opposing or escaping society it took the other route by
letting structure in, and by becoming structured itself. The new direction
was both needed for the festival’s immediate survival as characteristic of its
future agenda. Burning Man went civic.
Becoming a city did not only entail the presence of an infrastructure,
regulatory instances, an outer perimeter, prime real estate, and zoning, but
also more and more heterogeneous citizens. In order to unite these people,
an ethos slowly started to start shape, with the specific intention of creating
community; bringing forth a shared sense of sociality, ideology, aesthetics
and ethics. The idea of an impermanent community manifested in those
occasions, events, or rituals distinct from everyday life and structure is not
new. Turner saw an egalitarian state of communitas to take place within
liminality, Maffesoli showed how a neo-tribal sociality would arise out of
the orgiastic, Bey argues for the complementation and completion of Self
and Other in temporary autonomous zones, and Firat and Dholakia
conceptualize emancipatory communities in theatres of consumption.
However, the communal characteristics of these social forms are
epiphenomena of other experiences – of initiation, puissance, immediacy, or
emancipation - and not the basis of their attractiveness to participants.
Kozinets therefore suggests the term hypercommunity to describe a well-
organized, strong, caring and sharing community based on impermanence,
such as he saw manifested at Burning Man.
151On: http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/1998/98n_letter_win_1.html,
accessed July 19th 2007.
108
 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

In this thesis, Burning Man’s ongoing experiment in community has tribes. In the words of Abby Peterson, summarizing Maffesoli’s point of
indeed been traced and shown to work, but that has not been the end of the view in this matter: “Perhaps contemporary social theorists are more
story, nor, as I have argued, the end of the experiment in, and experience of alienated from social existence than social existence is itself alienated”
a Burner’s community. In its latest phase, Burning Man is about the (Peterson 1997:324). Through all my digressions and disorder, I sometimes
coordination of a dynamic, growing global community; a connective cherish the vain (in both sense of the term) hope that Maffesoli might have
regional network bringing events and cutting-edge art into communities approved of my attempts at coming to terms with Burning Man’s very
worldwide. It is about re-inserting the Burning Man culture and values in bubbly sociality. In hindsight, I have certainly lived up to his worthy advice
everyday life, and as much about fun as it is about social and political on how to follow most closely ‘the bumpy route taken by all social life:’
change. In the end, Burning Man is no longer contained within any counter-
Thus, rather than trying to fool ourselves into thinking we can seize,
or subcultural form, divided from society through self-imposed
explain and exhaust an object, we must be content to describe its
metaphorical fences of opposition, isolation, or escape. Instead, moving
shape, its movements, hesitations, accomplishments and its various
beyond its one week existence, it is “changing the world through art cars,
convulsions. (Maffesoli 1996:5)
bone towers, Danger Ranger, smut shacks, fire cannons, Glitter Camp,
fighting robots, exploding men, princess warriors, pulsing soundscapes, By describing Burning Man’s shape, movements, hesitations,
neon skies, metal dragons, and Dr. Megavolt” (Doherty 2004:subtitle). Apart accomplishments and various convulsions, the key element of
from changing the world, I think that Burning Man shows us a world transformation that has played such a vital role in the process has certainly
populated by a fluid, but strong community – an image that seems to go affected me as well. It has been an interesting process; self-expressive, self-
directly against the modernist assumption that social life would be falling reliant and most definitely participatory. And next week, when the Man
apart. At the same time, even though Burning Man acknowledges the burns and its world will start anew, even though I will not be there to
dynamics of sociality and society, it does not comfortable fit into what can witness it, little sparks of it will always stay within my own renewed world.
be seen as ‘postmodern’ theorizing on the alleged fragmentation, instability,
and more or less superficiality of contemporary tribes, formulated for
instance by Maffesoli.152
Rather than being squeezed into any existing theoretical mold of
community, ritual or festival; stripped of its many layers and its essence
laid bare and fixed under a social-scientific microscope, the world of
Burning Man is a kaleidoscopic and dynamic world; processual and
constant in the making. Though never dull, it has not been the easiest world
to grasp, describe or structure. I guess that possibly like with all social life,
the harder I tried to pin it down; the more I tried to concretize and inscribe
all those abstract and theoretical debates, the further my subject seemed to
get away from me - both on a conceptual as well as empirical level. After all,
Burning Man is still a highly experiential, unmediated, participatory
phenomenon – and takes great pride in that. Even being a participant
observer instead of square participant caused some internal strife at times.
My scientific endeavors made an emphasis on the latter feel like I was
‘going native;’ jeopardizing my academic objectivity, whilst my position as a
visitor of the festival made an emphasis on the first feel like I was a so
called ‘yahoo;’ a spoilsport of everything Burning Man stands for.
In abstract form, Maffesoli described such anthropological anguish as a
“complex ‘Situationism,’” where an observer is simultaneously, if only
partially, implicated in the situation he is describing: “Competence and
appetence go hand in hand; hermeneutics supposes that we are a part of
what we describe; requires a certain community of outlook” (Maffesoli
1996:5). According to him, such approach is necessarily if we are ever to
come to understanding of individuals and groups. Overcoming scientific
rigidity, a researcher has to look beyond his or her current concerns of
individualization and alienation, and see the affirmative puissance of
sociality that lies below the surface of social existence.
In Maffesoli’s view, socials sciences’ methodological and theoretical
tools of abstractism and statistics for producing trivial quasi-scientific
analyses of social life are simply worthless when researching the bubbling,
secretive, imperfect forms of sociality which he saw characterizing neo-

152 Strictly speaking, I think that Maffesoli would reject the postmodern/modern dichotomy
insofar as, like all simplistic dichotomies in social sciences, it does violence to the complexity
of society and the extensivity and intensivity of social networks. For Maffesoli, the term
postmodernity is only really to use insofar as it raises the issue of what is termed ‘tradition’
still remains at the heart of the modern era. For me, it is a discussion I no longer want to
enter at this point, hence my choice for putting ‘postmodern’ in between quote signs.
109
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Appendix A - Glossary
10 Principles: the 10 core guiding concepts of the Burning Man project.
Ancestors: spiraling, tornado-like dust plumes that traverse the playa,
either produced by wind or by heat from large fires, like the Man burning.
Art Bike: kissing cousin to the art car, the art bike is a decorated or
‘mutated’ bicycle, and is the preferred method of transporting oneself
around the playa.
Art Cars: see Mutant Vehicles.
Baker Beach: San Francisco beach where Burning Man originated.
Black Rock: A large dark rock formation at the north end of the playa.
Black Rock City: The annual, temporary city created by the community of
Burning Man participants.
Black Rock Gazette: Newspaper produced on-site in the desert during the
Burning Man event.
Black Rock Geyser: A water truck, frequently pursued by pedestrians and
bicyclists for it's brief but refreshing shower. Though the water can be quite
hot, the moisture helps to relieve the desert heat.
BLM: Bureau of Land Management, government agency which administers
public lands, including the Black Rock Desert.
BMOrg: Short for Burning Man Organization, this term is actually a
common misnomer. The actual name for the organizers of the Burning Man
event is the "Burning Man Project".
BRC: Black Rock City
Burn, the: Reference to the actual event, and activity, of burning the
Burning Man statue.
Burner: One who has attended Burning Man, and takes the spirit of the
event back with them to the default world.
Burning Man Shock: More or less the opposite of Culture Shock, a state of
happiness, euphoria and freedom which sets in while attending Burning
Man, after one has conformed to "normal" life for too long.
Cacophony Society: A randomly gathered network of pranksters and
eccentric individuals, united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the
mainstream of culture.
Camp Arctica: The camp on playa where participants can purchase ice to
keep their perishables fresh, and their bodies cooled. Proceeds from ice
sales are donated to local charities.
Camera Obscura: A darkened room or building fitted with a specially
designed lens which projects an outside image onto a screen or table inside.
Cattle Guard: A closely spaced group of horizontal pipes placed in a
roadbed at fence line to prevent cattle from escaping and yet allow vehicles
free access.
Center Camp: Large circular area and structures located in the center of
Black Rock City.
Chasing Shadows: Dashing across the playa in pursuit of brightly burning
objects, only to arrive after the crescendo, or when the object has already
burned to ashes, and then doing it again and again to the point of
exhaustion.
Concrete Stake: Heavy-duty steel stake with a series of small holes along
the length.
Coyote Man: Community legend about a local resident who runs with
coyotes at night.
Culture Shock: A state of melancholy, anger or frustration which sets in
trying to readjust to ‘normal’ life after one has attended Burning Man.
Danger Ranger: Founder and icon hero of the Black Rock Rangers.
Appendix A - Glossary
Decompression: A party held one month after Burning Man to give
participants a brief chance to return to Black Rock City. Offers relief from
the Reality Bends.
Default World: The rest of the world that is not the playa during the
Burning Man event.
Dehydration: Medical condition that results from not drinking enough
water.
DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles): The team of dedicated volunteers
who review and register Mutant Vehicles, giving them permission to drive
on the playa during the event.
Donner Award: Annual award given to the individual, or group, who
pushes the limits of personal survival through stupidity, inattention or just
bad luck during the event.
DPW: Department of Public Works.
Dust Devils: see Ancestors.
Earplugs: Small foam ear inserts used to reduce loud noise.
Earth Guardians: A subgroup of Burning Man participants who work with
the BLM to care for the Black Rock Desert. Earth Guardians are trained in
Leave No Trace techniques.
EL Wire: Electroluminscent Wire. Cool, glowing stuff used to make moving
objects and sculptures out of light. The must-have accessory for the event!
Exodus: the process and organization of the mass participant departure
from the playa at the end of the event.
Exploding Man: Legendary fireworks performance.
Fire Breathing: A technique whereby someone blows a flammable liquid
across a torch or match to produce a large burst of flame.
Fire Dancing: The most popular past-time on the playa. The art of dancing
with fire, usually in the form of poi, staff, hoops, fans, or other devices.
Fire Walking: A technique of walking barefooted on live embers, best
performed after moistening the feet.
Fire Jumping: A technique of jumping over a burning fire, sometimes with
negative results when two opposing jumpers collide in mid-air.
Gifting: A core tenet of the Burning Man ethos, gifting is the act of giving
something (material or otherwise) to another person without any
expectation of receiving something in return.
Heat Exhaustion: A more serious form of dehydration.
HELCO: Fictional corporation which attempted to buy Burning Man in
1996.
ICS: Incident Command System, an action plan to be used by the Rangers in
the event of serious emergency.
Jack Rabbit Speaks: Internet-based newsletter produced by Burning Man
organization.
Java Cow: Community legend which appears with hot coffee at sunrise on
the morning of the Burn and asks the question: “Do you want cream or
sugar with your coffee?”
Khakis: Durable, tan-colored clothing which has become the standard
uniform of the Rangers. Not to be confused with the ubiquitous tan-colored
GAP clothing worn by business-casual office drones the world over.
Lamp Posts: The series of vertical lighting fixtures which line walkways
and delineate areas of BRC.
Lamplighters: the volunteer group who lights kerosene lanterns each night
of the Burning Man event to illuminate the esplanade and promenades,
providing participants with valuable navigational aids.
Leave No Trace: A philosophy learned during a rigorous 3-day back-
country training expedition, during which participants are taught to clean
up after themselves completely. Also one of the central tenets of the
Burning Man festival. No, really, we're serious about this.
Lingam: The erect penis: companion to Yoni, and a symbolic of creative
power.
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Man, the: Term used for the Burning Man statue. Ranger Station: The general, public accessible, campsite/complex and base
Media Ho’s: Members of the Burning Man Media Team. Their mission is to of Ranger operations.
cajole the media into presenting fresh and interesting stories about the Reality Bends: Cramps felt in the mind and spirit after returning to the
event. They can be recognized by their silver cowboy hats. "real" world after spending a week in Black Rock City. Best remedied by
Miss Information: Legendary distributor of wisdom at Playa Info. Can be Decompression.
recognized by her bright green plumage. Rebar: Cheap steel rods often used for tent stakes.
MOOP: Matter Out Of Place. Litter, debris, rubbish. Recompression: parties and events put on by Burners before Burning Man
Mutant Vehicle: a motorized conveyance that is radically, stunningly, to get inspired for their upcoming playa experience.
(usually) permanently, and safely modified. Larry Harvey likens Mutant Regionals: the global representatives of Burning Man who help connect
Vehicles to “sublimely beautiful works of art floating across the playa like a Burners with fellow Burners off playa, while producing events and
Miro painting.” Licensed by the DMV, these vehicles are an important part upholding the 10 Principles.
of the Burning Man experience. Sensory Overload: Just attending Burning Man. This is generally a blissful
Newbie: Any person who is attending Burning Man for the first time. Can state, however, there is some sadness in the realization that a human can
often be recognized by the call they utter when coming out of the Porta- only witness a tiny fraction of the vast, non-stop, brilliant activities
Potties on Tuesday: “That wasn't so bad.” occurring during the week-long festival.
Nose Tators: Playa dust nostril plugs that form during the event; spelling Survivally-challenged: Politically correct term for any participant whose
derived from a contraction of ‘No Spectators.’ judgment is impaired by drugs or alcohol.
No Spectators: Another central tenet of the Burning Man philosophy. By TAZ: Temporary Autonomous Zone (term coined by writer Hakim Bey).
blurring the line between audience and performer, everybody is a superstar Theme Camp: A campsite which artistically presents an idea or concept
at Burning Man. and is designed to be interactive with participants.
Obtainium: Any useful and valued material which is found or obtained for Village: Affinity group of theme camps.
free. White-out: A dust storm which produces near-zero visibility.
Open Playa: the portion of the playa that is within the pentagonal event Yoni: ‘Vulva,’ the primary Tantric object of worship.
space, but is used exclusively for art installations rather than camping
space.
Participant: Uh, that would be you...
Piss Clear: The 2nd newspaper to appear in BRC. The name is derived from
the survival axiom “Drink so much water that you piss clear.”
Platina: The uniform sheen on the surface of any object which has been on
the Black Rock Desert for more than an hour.
Playa: Spanish word for beach.
Playa Chicken: Community legend of a rare species of vicious, carnivorous
chickens reputed to live in the Black Rock Desert. Any strange phenomenon
that is not readily attributable to any known cause may be blamed on Playa
Chickens.
Playa Foot: a common malady where one's feet become dry and cracked
due to prolonged exposure to the highly alkaline desert floor.
Playa Info: Information booth located in Center Camp.
Playa Madness: Mental condition that occurs after being out in the Black
Rock Desert for more than a week at a time.
Playa Name: originally spawned by the need for unique names on the
staff’s 2-way radios, playa names have become almost ubiquitous, and are
often used to provide an individual with an ‘alternate’ personality/persona.
Playa names are traditionally given to a person, rather than taken on.
Playa Platforms: What your footwear immediately becomes after it rains
on the playa, when 2-3 inches of mud rapidly accumulates on the bottoms
of your shoes.
Playafication (adj.: playafied): the process by which all participants'
shoes/feet, hair, tents, carpets, furniture, vehicles, etc. become the same
serene shade of playa-tan due to ubiquitous dust build-up.
Poi: traditional Maori dance prop popular with fire performers. Made with
a knot of wick at the end of a rope.
Potlatch: American Indian term for a gathering or festival in which gift
giving is featured.
Project, the: Term for the Burning Man Project, organization name.
Quinn River: Located at the northeast side of Black Rock Desert, this
springtime river empties onto the playa and then driess up during the
summer.
Ranger HQ: The actual building and base of operations for the Rangers.
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Appendix B - Respondents
Justin, interview July 17th 2005
Justin has been going to Burning Man on and off for the better part of the
last eight years. He also happened to be my housemate, and a gatherer of
Burning Man related data that even I have not been able to surpass. At
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and one formal interview in the beginning of
our acquintance, he told me all about Burning Man’s evolvement
throughout the years, and how it had began to influence the party he
himself organizes in San Francisco: Howard Street’s yearly How Weird
Street Fair.
Cosmo Heartbear, interview July 19th 2005
Cosmo has been attending Burning Man for six years now. In the ‘default
world’ he is a software engineer, but on the playa he holds spiritual
sessions in his ‘shamanic healing shack.’ This year Burning Man was
apparently so powerful for him, that he decided to give up his job and
pursue his much preferred path as a healer. I was especially interested to
hear about this spiritual side of Burning Man (he is part of the
HeeBeeGeeBee Healing Camp “Think of us as the calm in the middle of the
storm;” a camp where you can take classes or just participate in yoga,
massage, meditation reiki, channeling and all sorts of more or less ‘New
Age’ activities), and about the apparent ongoing transformation that
Burning Man brought him.
Harley Dubois, interview July 26th 2005)
In the eighties, Harley came to San Francisco to visit a friend, and never left.
She first learned of Burning Man in 1991, while living in a household
populated by Cacophony Society members. She decided to make the trek to
Black Rock City on a spur-of-the-moment decision, and has been working
with the organization ever since. Today, she is the Director of Community
Services, where it is her job to listen to what participants want, and make it
happen. Her long list of responsibilities include placing all services, camps
and villages, managing ingress and egress, managing the volunteer process,
and overseeing Playa Information Services, Greeters, Burning Man
Recycling, Earth Guardians, the Lamplighters, the Bus Depot, Town
Meetings, and many staff meetings and functions. As Director of the Playa
Safety Team Harley oversees the Rangers, the Gate and Perimeter, and the
Emergency Services Department. From her, I especially wanted to know all
about the civic structure and the people making and using it.
John Prochnov, interview July 26th 2005
John has been attending Burning Man for three years, but has just accepted
a full time position as ‘human resources manager’ at the Burning Man office.
In this position he brought me in and guided me, and especially spent many
an hour answering all my questions. We also did one official interview, in
which I asked him all about the switch he made from corporate life to a life
at an office still, but the Burning Man office nonetheless.
Laura, interview July 28th 2005
I met Laura in 2004 on the playa, and back in San Francisco I gladfully
stayed in her house for another three weeks where she took me to all the
Burning Man related events and friends and happenings. Yet another
example of the Burning Man gift-economy. When we met up again in 2005, I
officially wanted to know all about her five previous playa experiences, as
well as about the over 250 weeks in between.
Appendix B - Respondents
Julie Chaase, interview August 7th 2005
Julie went to Burning Man two times, and her story is a bit like mine. After
attending the festival for the first time, she knew she wanted to write her
MA thesis for her studies in Theater at the University of Colorado-Boulder
on the festival. And she did, in 2002. Her main question involved the
possible transfer of Burning Man’s week long community on the playa into
opportunities for collaboration in web-based text and art, hence forming a
real community online. As I definitely see certain links between the Burning
Man festival and the World Wide Web, I wanted to hear her position on this
and on community in general. Of course I was also very curious to hear
about her thesis project. Luckily, I managed to get hold of her while she was
working in San Francisco, writing theater reviews for the San Francisco
Weekly.
LadyBee, interview August 10th 2005
Ladybee a.k.a. Christine Kristen, was a burner and an artist who got the
unique opportunity to combine her passions almost 10 years ago when she
was hired to help bring art to Burning Man. “I’m just someone in the
community who came along at the right time and had the right
qualifications,” LadyBee told me, referring to her MFA in sculptures, visits
with artists around the world, and work as an artist in New York and San
Francisco. Today, she is in charge of the artist proposals. Me being there at
the right time, I wanted to know everything about art on the playa, the Borg
2 rebellion and her take on that.
Randy Bohlender, interview September 2nd 2005
This was the only person I actually did an ‘official’ interview with on the
playa itself. He was unusual enough for this, and even though I was still not
feeling well, the talk I had with him still strikes me as one of the most…
satisfying. Randy had been to the playa three times before, every time
distributing thousands small bottles of water to the community. This is all
not very exceptionally, but the fact that Randy is a born-again Christian, and
even stronger, a pastor, is. When I asked him why he and his church team
would choose to spend so much effort and resources to give water to a
group that, at least on the surface, seemed to be proudly at odds with much
of what the church has stood for down over the years, he simply replied: “to
show that God loves in a practical way!”. We talked about many things, but
mostly about the giving and altruism and art on the playa and in society. It
really was an amazing interview. And then of course, as the playa gives, the
playa takes, when I wanted to transcribe this particular tape, it turned out
to ruined probably because of the playa dust (yes, alkaline eats away
everything). Luckily I made some notes during the interview, but this
missing tape is still making me sad.
John "Chicken John" Rinaldi, intoxicated monologue September 10th 2005
Has been part of Burning Man since 1996, and a very big part as well.
Always the trickster and always the (sometimes very deviant) clown,
Chicken John has never shunned the limelight, both on and off-playa. After
giving up on the bar that he owned for several years in San Francisco – and
that has always been a meeting place of the more raucous burners – in 2004
he started his BORG 2 project out of dissatisfaction with the art on the playa
that year. Borg 2 was all about a democratic art selection process, intended
to eventually bring more (collaborative) art to the playa instead of what he
perceived to be a growing emphasis on parties. Unfortunately Chicken John
is still a very busy man, so I didn’t get as much time to ask him as much as I
wanted, but the little time I had for ‘interviewing’ was very interesting, and
showed me a very critical other side of the ever-changing coin that is
Burning Man. The latest news (July 2007) is that Chicken John is now
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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival
running for mayor in San Francisco. With a little help from the Burner’s
community, he hopes he can bring some much needed life and Burning
spirit into local politics.
Jensen, interview September 2005
12th
Attended Burning Man for the first time in 2005, where he absolutely did
NOT enjoy himself that much. I met him right after the event through
common friends, and was curious to hear about any possible criticism he
might have towards the festival and its ideologies. Why never to come
back? What was it that he disliked so much and what could I learn from
this?
Zac Bolan, interview September 2005
19th
Zac became the first Regional representative for Canada way back in 1998,
and still holds the Calgary Burners under his wings. ‘His’ Burners come
together a few times over the year, hosting an annual ‘Prairie Fire’ regional
Decompression event for two years now just outside of Calgary. There have
also been other events such as a Kanadian Broadcasting Korporation party,
SantaCon, summer & winter Solstice gatherings, attendance at local arts
events/openings, potlucks, socials, dancing, mayhem, and general brou ha
ha. In a newsletter, he shares ideas on camping, art, supplies, costumes,
how to navigate 5000 kilometers trekking from year-round home to playa
home, and how to survive plus 40 C for a week when coming from a land
generally associated with igloos. Needless to say, when I spotted him at the
Burning Man office for a meeting, I wanted to know everything about his
regional program and subsequent cultural insertion.
Scarecrow, interview September 19th 2005
Has been part of the DPW (Department of Public Works, responsible for the
massive task of building, maintaining, and cleaning up Black Rock City) for
about six years now, and is actually getting paid this time. Scarecrow is on
the playa for about three months a year, taking care of things before and
after the event. As Burning Man is such a massive part of his life, I wanted to
know about any perceptions he might have on the possible future of
Burning Man, and changes throughout the years.
Michael, interview September 20th 2005
Michael Michael a.k.a Danger Ranger discovered the Man in 1988,
presented it to the Cacophony Society, and is still with it to this date.
Nowadays, he is one of the most significant figures within the organization;
one of the six members of the LLC project staff. In 1992 he founded the
Black Rock Rangers, meaning that he literally oversees the security and
survival of the Burning Man community. He also created the first Burning
Man mailing list/data base, produced the first issue of the Black Rock
Gazette (the official Burning Man newspaper on the playa), established the
Burning Man Archive, and drove the first art car to the Black Rock Desert.
With him I was most interested in what he could tell me about the history
and growth of Burning Man, and the many roots it historically has in
Californian countercultures.
Marian Goodell, interview September 20th 2005
Maid Marian attended Burning Man for the first time in 1995, and has been
going ever since. In 1996 she joined the Burning Man staff as the so called
‘Mistress of Communication.’ In her own words, during those early days: “if
Burning Man were to be an embodied being, I would have been its voice.”
Just like John, Marian comes from corporate life, where she previously
worked as a project manager for a software cum web development firm. As
she now also manages all legal, business and accounting aspects of the
festival, I wanted her to specifically tell me more about the structure of the
117
organization (they are now a limited liability organization) and the changes
that she saw happening throughout the years.
Maximillian (Max), interview September 22nd 2005
Six-time burner, playa DJ and producer in everyday life. Heavily involved
with the ‘El Circo’ collective and the breakz scene, both on and off-playa. In
2004, Max was still living together with Laura, where I stayed with after
Burning Man. Also with him, for the greater part we talked about how San
Francisco and the playa influence and appropriate each other, and how
dynamic this system really is.
Fernando, interview September 22nd 2005
Four time burner, normally living in Los Angeles. Just like Max part of the El
Circo collective, where he performs ‘circus style’ on and off playa. For the
past two years, next to preparing for the playa nearly all year, he has been
investing a lot of his time in the L.A. Decompression parties. I wanted to see
if he could pin point some differences between the Burner scene in San
Francisco and the one in L.A., and hear about any thoughts he made have on
that matter.
Michael Gosney, interview September 24th 2005
Ten time burner, “and still hooked.” In everyday life he manages the Green
Century Institute “dedicated to the evolution of sustainable communities in
the 21st century;” continues to hold Digital Be-ins; and is in general a very
busy bee, making links between technology, sustainability and the rave
(psychedelic) scene. On top of this he is a dj, playing both full on
psychedelic trance and more down tempo sets. He has been responsible for
the first ‘Community Dance’ on the playa, as a result of ongoing frictions
between ravers and the Burning Man organization, and I wondered if he
could enlighten me on the what I perceived to be an ongoing matter of
friction between the ‘established’ Burning Man order and the rave scene
that is so omnipresent on the festival now.
Daniel Pinchbeck, conversation September 29th 2005
Four time burner and a special one for me as it was through his book
Breaking Open the Head (2003) that I first learned a little bit more about
Burning Man. Later I found out that he had also written several articles on
Burning Man, for sources such as Artforum and Wired. His emphasis is
mainly on the ritualistic, spiritually sacred and transformative aspects of
the playa – which he puts in words with great fervor and enthusiasm. The
conversation I had with him was especially helpful because he was able to
put Burning Man in a much larger context of utopian experiments and living
in the here and now.
Crash, interview October 1st 2005
Five-time burner, living in San Francisco on Haight Street, just around the
corner from my own house. Outside playa life a personal trainer, and motor
bike fanatic. On the playa part of the animal rescue patrol: “We will make
daily collections of pesky playa creatures who are running free causing
disturbances to the camps and/or streets of the City. Our trained staff will
use the latest in animal reform practices to allow these potentially
dangerous animals the chance to be reintroduced to life on the playa. They
will be tagged and have the opportunity to be adopted/auctioned to a
responsible Black Rock City citizen.” Because of his involvement in San
Francisco nightlife (being the official and democratically chosen director of
the “Nightwatch” project in the Haight Area, designed to make the nightlife
there more happening and free), I was most interested in how he saw
Burning Man to influence San Francisco, and the other way around.
 Appendix B - Respondents

Law, interview October 1st 2005

John Law’s self-ascribed task is to ‘prevent cultural arteriosclerosis.’ His
career as a prankster (a label he prefers to ‘artist’) began in 1977 when he
joined The Suicide Club shortly after arriving in San Francisco at the age of
eighteen. After that, he has been involved with The Suicide Club, Cacophony
Society, Survival Research Laboratories, Seemen, Circus Ridikulus and
Laughing Squid, among others. In 1990, he brought the Man to the desert.
In 1997, whilst sitting in a hot tub with Harvey and Michael, Paper Man LLC
was formed in order to own and control the name and service mark
“Burning Man.” One year later Law leaves the Man behind. In 2007, he
shocks the Burning Man community by filing suit against the Burning Man
organization because he feels that ‘everyone owns Burning Man.’ The
outcome of the trial is still unknown, but so far it seems that the community
is pretty torn between those supportive and those protective. Because I
already knew that Law had always been more in favor of the smaller,
wilder, less structured version of Burning Man, I wanted to know how the
change had been for him, and why he eventually left.

Michael Drunkennurse, interview October 3rd 2005

Second time Burner from London. I met Michael in 2004 on the
Decompression party in England. We continued to write emails every now
and then, and from that contact I know him to be deeply involved with the
Euroburners community and the newly initiated version of Burning Man in
Europe called ‘Nowhere.’ I wondered if he could tell me a bit more about
any possible differences between Europe and the States in this perspective,
and what his views on these would be. I also knew he had been
volunteering in New Orleans after the burn, not being called ‘drunkennurse’
for nothing, and I wanted to know how he saw this to be related to all his
obvious transgressive behavior on Burning Man. In extension of this, I also
wondered how he thought about the greater issue of the effects Burning
Man might have on everyday society.

Larry Harvey, interview October 15th 2005

Needs little further introduction. Started the event in 1986, apparently as
some sort of healing ritual for a rough break up with his girlfriend at the
time - which he btw denied in our interview, but which has turned out to be
a pretty popular myth in the media. These days, he is the executive director
of the Burning Man organization (Borg). He serves as chairman of Burning
Man’s senior staff and Black Rock City LLC, its executive committee. He also
co-chairs the organization’s Art Department, scripts and co-curates Burning
Man’s annual art theme, and collaborates with artists in creating aspects of
the art theme and the design of Black Rock City. He produces Burning Man’s
annual newsletter and writes articles and essays for the website,
sometimes under his pseudonym ‘Darryl van Rhey.’ As spokesperson for
Burning Man, he is frequently interviewed by reporters, and he has lectured
on subjects as diverse as art, religion, civic planning and the rise of cyber-
culture in the era of the Internet. Larry is also a political planner. He
supervises the organization’s lobbying efforts and frequently attends
meetings with state, county and federal agencies. What I wanted from him
was easy: as much information as I could get. Harvey has obviously thought
things through, so I got what I asked for.

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 Re-presenting the Present: the (R)evolution of the Burning Man Festival

Appendix C – Finance
reimbursements, conference calls)
The Man and platform (materials, pyrotechnics, 136,304
technicians, labor)
Toilets (and related costs) 447,180
FINANCIAL CHART153
Travel (airfare, mileage reimbursements, food 133,547
2005 Cash Expenditures Amount in $ accommodations for meetings, BLM, public relations,
training, etc.)
Cost of Goods for the Ice and Café sales (not including 135,270
buildings and staff) Utilities (San Francisco and Nevada) 67,243
Costumes / Uniforms 18,722 Vehicle (registration, repairs and maintenance) 42,992
Donations (from ice sales revenue) 44,635 Watering for dust abatement (equipment rental, contractor 218,669
services)
Education and Training 8,191
Interest 7,605
Fees, BLM 710,404
Sub Total 7,804,560
Fees, Credit card and Bank service charges 163,642
Fire Safety Services and Supplies 156,099
Fuel (heavy equipment, vehicles, generators) 113,671
Gifts, Promotions, Royalties 13,552
Asset Acquisition Amount in $
Honoraria / Grants, (theme art) 437,973
Insurance (property, liability, workman's comp, vehicle) 231,737 Computers and Electronics (including radio equipment) 64,677
Internet (hosting fees, POP accounts, Starband in Gerlach) 37,700 Furniture and Fixtures 826
Local Agencies (County law enforcement, Highway Patrol, 114,500 Land and Building Improvements 151,649
Piute Nation) Leasehold Improvements 12,020
Materials and Supplies (shade structures, signage, 214,927 Machinery and Equipment 46,978
firewood, lighting, décor and props, cleaning supplies, Trailers and Portable Buildings 17,180
photography, archiving)
Vehicles 47,044
Meals and Food (meetings, commissary, non travel) 183,837
Increase in Merchandise Inventory 18,244
Medical Services and Supplies 190,432
Increase in Year-end Current Assets (cash, pre-paid 234,000
expenses)
Office and Computer Supplies 56,176
Sub Total 592,618
Outside Services (legal, consultants, accounting) 69,458
TOTAL 8,397,178
Outside Services: Independent contractors (DPW crew, 511,049
information technology, ranger management, commissary
and administrative support)
Payroll (office: administration, board) 1,759,93
4
Postage (newsletters, tickets, survival guide, postcards, etc) 50,190
Printing (newsletter, what where when, survival guide, 99,983
gate materials, postcards, stickers, black rock gazette
Rent (San Francisco offices, and Nevada property) 259,223
Rental (heavy machinery, small equipment and tools, 506,195
portable buildings, staff radio equipment, cars and trucks,
office trailers)
Repairs, Maintenance, Cleaning 27,749
Shipping / Freight 14,780
Small Equipment and Tools 52,308
Tax and Licenses (state and federal income, payroll, misc.) 515,859
Telephone (San Francisco and Nevada offices, 52,824

On: http://afterburn.burningman.com/05/financial_chart.html, accessed August 5th

153

2007
119
 RE-PRESENTING THE PRESENT
Back in 1986, on a San Franciscan beach, two friends decide to burn a wooden man-like figure. Now, more than 20
years later, this ritual is the closing act of a weeklong art event held in the Black Rock Desert, where over 35.000
participants are greeted ‘welcome home’ at its dusty gates. The Black Rock Desert has become Black Rock City, and
the random burn of a man has become the Burning Man: a festival, community, and social movement.

Re-Presenting the Present

It is often said that trying to explain Burning Man to someone who has never been is like trying to explain color to
the blind from birth. This thesis takes up exactly that challenge, showing the remarkable story of Burning Man as
it went from the countercultural to the cultural; from reactive to proactive, from growing up to spreading out. It
tells the tale of how a spark to an effigy might just ignite a social revolution. Let the burn begin…
THE (R)EVOLUTION OF THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

THE (R)EVOLUTION OF THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

Larissa Quaak | Master Thesis Cultural Anthropology