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Art on fire: seven days ablaze W
hat motivates a builder to spend six months designing and constructing an elaborate five story wooden temple in the middle of a barren desert … only to deliberately burn it down a week after it is completed? What drives a disparate collection of doctors, baristas, musicians, schoolteachers, and plumbers to spend sweltering summer nights building a giant tree stump in a run-down warehouse welding shop, and then use up their vacation to weld it from sundown to sunup? Burning Man. This is the world’s largest outdoor art show. A seven day adventure of self-expression and self-reliance, where creativity replaces money as the currency of significance. An impromptu tent city of 70,000 strangers who agree to foster inclusion, participation, and enthusiastic expression as one tribe. For one short week, a desolate prehistoric lakebed becomes one of the largest cities in Nevada and then vanishes. This phantasm, this folly, this force field, this vortex, becomes at once a glorious accident, a bacchanal, a biennale, a destination and a phenomenon. In Black Rock City, the practice of art unleashes individual creativity, gathers collective endeavor, and galvanizes a community. It temporarily dominates a landscape that offers equal measures of exquisite beauty and punishing brutality. It defies an economic art market that equates price with quality, and narrowly identifies the artist as an isolated individual. It repudiates the notion that art should be curated, protected, and observed at a distance. This art is valued according to the perception of each observer, not by a critic, gallerist, or collector. The creators come from all corners, all backgrounds and influences. They are unified by a set of values, by the harsh physical realities of the desert, and by the invitation to express.
Some have formal training; many do not. Some make a living creating ideas or objects, most spend their days as line cooks, therapists, welders, civil servants, nannies, paramedics. Some present their work as individuals, others as collectives. Some work on a monumental scale, others in miniature. Some construct their art to last years, others build and then deliberately set their pieces ablaze as a form of completion. The caliber of art at Burning Man is widely varied; quality often defers to expression. The imperative here is to mark a moment in this punishing, exquisite, evanescent gathering. It is not an easy place to exhibit. The location is remote and the resources are few. The resulting art can be beautiful, astonishing, brutal, or absurd. Much is naïve and derivative. All of it is there to manifest the artists’ vision. Regardless, art in Black Rock City shares certain characteristics. It is voluntary, unencumbered by the hurdle of critic or jury. It is participatory. It is above commerce, and cannot be bought or sold in this place. Much of the art is formed by collaboration. Art galvanizes a community to share resources and provoke ideas. The best of it dazzles with sheer audacity. Outdoors in the high desert, art must be able to withstand a week of baking sun, freezing cold, dust, wind, rain, even lightning, and intense interaction with participants who are invited to leap the velvet rope and experience it with all of their senses. The combination of engagement and punishing conditions demands a certain accessibility and heft, although the piece only needs to last a short time. This is the opposite of museum art, which can be fragile but should remain intact for years. Burning Man art uses its temporal urgency to invite participation. Explore it now, or it will be gone. Touch it. Photograph it. Appreciate it. Don’t miss it. Art cannot be bought or sold at Burning Man. This is powerful purity. The work does not succeed or fail by the opinion
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of curator or critic, but by the individual response of each participant, whose opinion is just as valid. Freed from constraints, offered unlimited scale and brief tenure, artists are challenged to do their most meaningful work, not their most marketable. They cannot gauge their ability by the hammer price, or which dealer has agreed to represent them, or economically driven forms of hierarchy and success. The vast desert playa offers an unlimited size canvas which encourages escalation of dimension. Across the playa, a tenstory building looks like it was made from Lego blocks. Marco Cochrane, who produces dramatic 60-foot-tall sculptures says, “You have no idea of the scale. It changes the way you think about everything.” The availability of enthusiastic volunteers also provides significant incentive to expand. Zoetrope artist Peter Hudson marvels, “You’ve got people falling all over you trying to give you their best effort and all kinds of time, just to be a part of something great. Most artists could only dream of this kind of resource, but here it’s normal.” Fire artist Charlie Gadeken says, “All you need is a good idea. They don’t care who you are, if you have a portfolio or an art degree.”
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A view of the Promenade to the Man in 2013.
Artists can also consider the role of fire in their design. Amsterdam artist Dadara says, “It’s so tempting to think of things to burn up! Even if you end up fabricating out of steel or deciding not to burn it, you have to make that a conscious choice. And that key decision changes how you think about the art.” Dave X, who handles fire safety for the Art Department, adds, “If you want to burn it as part of what you are trying to say, we’ll help you learn how to do that. But there has to be a clear artistic reason to burn, not just because you like bonfires.” The span of the event is also compelling. Kate Raudenbush says, “One of the most beautiful things about Burning Man is its ephemeral nature. Everyone lives with an acute awareness that the entire city must disappear in one week. And that is what makes so many of our interactions so precious and so fraught, so intense and so appreciated, and ultimately it is what makes it so freeing and so life-changing. We bring this existence into being, and we also destroy it at the end.”
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influenceR and influenced Burning Man art weaves threads from many traditions. Many of its inspirations are postmodern, or metamodern, altermodern, or even post-apocalyptic. Founder Larry Harvey is clear that art holds the shared ethos of Black Rock City together. “In a world where people gather at shopping malls while they ignore city hall, and the public square is disappearing, anything that can take values and interject them into the realm of civics is terribly needed; by putting art at the center of our city, we are doing that. We are saying that art influences and elevates our civic enterprise into meaning.” He believes that keeping this art outside the realm of commerce is crucial. “Look at how artists are rewarded these days. There used to be an artisanal culture more widely spread, where artful things were far more common in the lives of ordinary people. Now art is available to very few, in a star system held in place by galleries and art dealers who stand to profit from its sale. We have disintermediated the gatekeepers by taking the profit motive away. So our whole line of thinking is radical. It is not deliberately subversive in its intention, but it is subversive in how it affects these art institutions. We say everybody is an artist, and art is free. That’s a radical move.” He continues to believe that upending the established artistic economic structure is part of its significance. “Ironically, we have economic influence, in that we make careers possible for artists. We started featuring interactive art, and the other festivals came and discovered how much enthusiasm it generated, so they pay artists bring our art to their festivals. We don’t make money on that, but it does disseminate our culture, which is powerful. We want the artist to be as compensated as possible.” “There is always a place for a piece of art that is simply beautiful, made as an object for contemplation. But we tend to favor art that is more than that, and in some ways has a social
“ You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Plato
agenda.” Harvey believes the values of Burning Man directly influence its creation. “This art requires a shared culture for its production, exhibition, and indeed for its funding. We only provide grants for a portion of the piece, the artist has to find support for the rest. Look at crowdsourcing, the way our artists raise money to finish their pieces through the Internet and fundraisers. That’s galvanizing.” movement oR moment? Does that indicate a school or movement of Burning Man art? That notion provokes strong reactions. Charles Gadeken dismisses it as “Just art critic stuff. At its best, Burning Man art makes you go, ‘WOW.’ That’s true of ALL good art.” Elizabeth Scarborough, who directs Burning Man’s art program disagrees.“This meets the definition of an art movement: it exists at a particular point in time, and is a catalyst which helps redefine how art is made. It is the nexus point of art, philosophy and community.” She continues, “We see everybody as an artist without the need for credentials or even training. At the beginning, much of the art of Burning Man was not world class, but that wasn’t the focus. It was a place for artistic experimentation, without feeing classified or judged. That attracted more artists and turned more people into artists; the things they make have become more sophisticated. Burning Man has helped to start a lot of artists’ careers.” She believes the space plays an enormous role. “In museums, there is a defined separation between art and the viewer, physically, mentally, emotionally. Here there is no wall around it, we want you to get in there and experience it. Only through that interaction is the piece fully realized.” Ian Baker of the Syzygryd crew believes Burning Man art is distinguished by its collective formation. “It is possible for a work of art to be created by a group. In music, it’s like a band. ‘Hey, Jude’ is by The Beatles, not by Paul McCartney. That group is a valid and reasonable creative entity.” He adds, “When I see a single artist’s name of the piece, a lot of time that is fiction. It is very important that all of the people involved get credit and recognition, along with the privilege of getting to work on the thing. Few of us are trying to support ourselves by doing the work we are doing together, so having our name on it has less economic importance.” How does he know the thing they collectively make is art? “I have a very permissive definition: Is it expensive and time consuming? Yes, and yes.” Baker continues, “The whole point of Burning Man is radical self-expression. Your kid’s drawing on the refrigerator and the Mona Lisa in a museum are both art from the point of view of the artist. From the beholder… that’s up to you to decide. Do you want some stuffy critic to tell you what is real art?” What is art, what is craft, what is performance, what is decoration, what is derivative and what is original? Are photographs of art considered art? Are dances atop a
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sculpture considered art? Is a carefully considered costume or a beautifully painted body also art? Because there is no established arbiter, the criteria and boundaries are deliberately blurred. And that validates—and expands—each participant’s determination. Baker continues, “Bringing art here confers social capital and status. People think you are cool, and they learn to appreciate it with new eyes when they leave. If you set up art on Seventh and Market Streets in San Francisco, people would think it was weird, but they are getting more comfortable with it. Burning Man has done a lot to make people open to the idea of art popping up everywhere.” Larry Harvey asserts Burning Man is expanding into a worldwide movement conveyed by its art. “There is no reason the art from our event should have taken hold. Some of the artists produced mediocre work. But people learned from it, emerged out of it, and found careers in the great world. But they come back to Burning Man to work for very little. They have absorbed the whole pattern of values, the ethos, and it meant a lot to them, so they give back to us. And that attracts more participants and more artists who want to understand why this is such a powerful set of ideas.” New York-based artist Kate Raudenbush was inspired to take up sculpture after her first visit to Burning Man. Her work combines distinctively delicate metal laden with provocative symbolism and imagery, and is exhibited and collected worldwide. “I am not formally trained to be a large-scale artist at all. I started as a dare to myself, as a way of contributing to the community I loved so much, and learned from the act of doing, and from the skilled people on my creative team. No one figures this stuff out alone. But do not let the fear of the unknown stop you from the act of creating. Keep your mind set on maximum curiosity and minimum wasting of time. Creativity loves courage.” Raudenbush agrees the culture is the defining feature of Burning Man art. “Every artist has their own style, but the process and environment in which it is created is similar. It is an art movement based on the shared experience and ritual, both on and off the playa. I call it a beloved struggle, because if you don’t fall in love with doing this, you won’t last; this experience is pretty self-selecting. It weeds out the wimps, the closed-minded, the high-maintenance very quickly. It is a crucible of characterbuilding. Sometimes you’ll hear it called ‘Learning Man.’ ” “The artists out there are like a huge family. They are bound by mutual support and respect. It’s not competitive like in the default art world. You really don’t have the energy to waste on competition, you are busy surviving. There is plenty of space to share.” Jess Hobbs, who founded the Flux Foundation, agrees there is a school of Burning Man art. “We are developing a language and coalescing around it: engagement, participatory, process-oriented,
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a platform of permission. Sometimes I think it’s grown slowly because of the stigma around the crazier aspects of the event. But when I describe these projects, people who haven’t been say, “WOW!…Really? I had no idea that it was about the art.” tHeme and vaRiations The process artists undertake begins when the art theme is announced in the winter, and artists apply to the organization for grants, although art does not need a grant to be welcome in Black Rock City. When the awards are announced in the spring, the process of building begins. “In 2013 we funded 46 honoraria plus, 24 in the Circle of Regional Effigies. We had almost 400 pieces on playa, and another 30 paintings and sculptures around the kiosks in the Center Camp Cafe. Without vetting or judgment, we work with any artist who wants to share their piece.” Artists have to be mindful of lighting, stabilization, and weather. Harsh playa winds routinely transmit forces of 90 mph. They must stabilize their pieces to handle participants’ enthusiasm, too. Artists can receive placement on the open playa and access to resources for installation, but they can also just put up a piece of art near their camp. Discovering pieces scattered throughout the encampments is one of the surprising delights of the city. When an artist arrives on playa, the ARTery is ready to assist with a 60-member team of staff and volunteers. The Art Support Services team coordinates heavy equipment trenching and hoisting. A special squad called “Eyes on Art” notifies the artist of damage or hazards arise, such as an anchor uprooted by wind or an overzealous enthusiast. The ARTery also trains docents to lead dozens of art tours on mutant vehicles and bicycles. The challenges facing artists during Burning Man are many. After months of planning and constructing, many are exhausted just as fully energized participants are arriving for a week of celebration. The desert and alkaline dust wreaks unpredictable havoc on machine parts, electronics, and materials. Damage occurs in transit, or reinforcements don’t arrive in time, or something goes awry. The ARTery team stands ready with resources, adaptations, volunteers, or consolation. Sculptor Michael Christian admits, “There’s no worse feeling than knowing your playa art has somehow failed. But it’s freeing, too. My failures taught me how to anticipate what can go wrong and to let go of my ego out there, too.” Not everyone goes to Burning Man to see art. At any moment one can encounter roving tribes in gorilla and banana costumes, or a theme camp offering Mexican wrestling and Ashtanga yoga. There are tiki bars, hairwash salons, and secret hangout spaces for tight-knit cadres who devote themselves to recycling or lamplighting or reuniting lost items with grateful owners. There are Jedi training camps for children and afternoon tea dances for elders, with over one thousand separate activities listed in the events
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guide. Jess Hobbs acknowledges that Burning Man’s more prurient reputation as a free-for-all festival has muffled its identity as a venue for expressive art. “With all of the hype about the craziness and costumes, what gets missed is that there is this whole gallery, a whole museum happens out there,” she says. “The level of artwork will blow your mind. All the other stuff that goes on will just distract you from the art. And that’s a shame, because it’s the best example of the essence of art you are likely to see in one place. ” This book offers an introduction to the sculptural, physical art of Burning Man, and the process that brings these pieces to life. It shares the philosophy behind the creativity, and the values which inform this experiment. Through representative pieces, this book attempts to convey the shared passions and the disparate aesthetic sensibilities of the artists who create here. It is intended for readers who will never go to Black Rock City, and for those who wait expectantly to buy their ticket each year. Like each day spent on the playa, impossible choices were required to meet the parameters of this volume. This volume is by no means catalogue raissonne, or even a survey. It is not a juried selection of the “best” hundred pieces of Burning Man art, which would be truly antithetical. It does not purport to represent all
Black Rock City from the air.
of the major artists or collectives. It is a view of some of the memorable works of Burning Man art captured by two separate photographers over the course of many visits to the playa. These photographers captured particular moments of light, weather, location, and experience. There is much great playa art that they did not have the occasion to record. Exclusion from this book is not a judgement on the caliber of art, or the artist. This book merely offers the author’s and photographers’ perspective, albeit broad, as an introduction to the astounding art of Black Rock City, Nevada. a Radically abbReviated HistoRy Burning Man began on San Francisco’s ocean-facing Baker Beach, in 1986. Larry Harvey was a single father seeking to create a project to undertake with his young son, Tristan. A landscaper by trade, he hit upon the idea of fabricating something in a borrowed wood shop, and then burning it on the beach. He
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gathered friends to build a stylized figure of a man, transport it to nearby beach, douse it with gasoline, and lit it on fire. People gathered on the beach to watch, and began to connect and interact. The project was considered a modest success. The next year Harvey’s friends encouraged him do it again. By the third year, the endeavor was starting to become a ritual, and several hundred gathered to participate. The following year they were interrupted by police. Harvey negotiated a compromise to erect the man on the beach, but not burn him. The man was disassembled and put into a box for safekeeping. The nascent Cacophony Society of “disrupters, anarchists, and pranksters,” convinced Harvey to bring the man to a gathering in the Black Rock Desert. Harvey recalls his first time there with vivid clarity. “We took the man out of the box, assembled him flat on the ground and raised him up with ropes and wires. The minute people felt the vibration of that wire running from his solar plexus through our collective hands, we felt something powerful. Some togetherness, some sense of purpose, some THING that meant more than just a wooden man in the desert. And that THING is what we have fought so hard to preserve.” Bohemians, renegades, outliers, and visionaries from the nascent Silicon Valley technology industry were naturally attracted to the wide-open ethos. People living on the fringes of society, were attracted to the free-for-all aspect where limited resources were shared by necessity. Word spread about “that thing in the desert,” encouraging ever more outlandish activities and attracting more adherents. Selling and bartering were replaced with gifting, and most driving was banned. As the city grew, a city plan was established and certain rules were imposed, but the emphasis on expression and inclusion remained. By 2000, Harvey had established an annual art theme. The Man sculpture appeared in the same form every year, but the man base shape changed according to theme. Art grants helped
“Every artist was first an amateur.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
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offset costs. “The first art grant was just enough to help Michael Christian bring his art piece,” recalls Elizabeth Scarborough. “Now the art grant program is approaching a million dollars.” The five who emerged to help Harvey became known as Founders. Even though it was technically a for-profit event to protect their substantial liability, the six ran the rapidly growing enterprise by consensus with a dedication to “profit enough.” Each took responsibility for certain aspects of management: Larry Harvey for the strategic and artistic direction. Harley K. DuBois became City Manager. Marian Goodell handled the business side. Crimson Rose worked with fire and art. Will Roger Peterson worked with government entities including the Bureau of Land Management. Michael Mikel preserved the early history as a raconteur and “Director of Genetic Programming.” Over time they were joined by a year-round staff in their San Francisco headquarters, with more filling crucial functions leading up to the event, joined by 3000+ trained volunteers on playa. The event continued to evolve, spawning smaller regional events as participants brought the spirit back where they lived. The Nevada event became known as Black Rock City, and the term “Burning Man” came to mean a social movement, and a way of life that is replicable and sustainable. Burning Man has spawned events in 26 countries, from Burning Seed, Australia, to AfrikaBurn to Lakes of Fire in Michigan. To ensure the survival of Burning Man past their lifetimes, the Founders formed Burning Man Project, a nonprofit organization. Harvey says, “We’ve grown too large to fit everybody who wants to follow us to the Nevada desert. So we’re bringing Burning Man to the world.” The proliferation was a notable development. As worldwide gatherings grew, Larry Harvey was asked to identify the characteristics they shared with the original event. He codified the Ten Principles as descriptive, not prescriptive behaviors. Harvey is adamant that they be seen as part of a whole, insisting, “Nothing less than all of these Ten Principles taken together will really do.” Burning Man art is transforming itself. A decade ago, the nonprofit Black Rock Arts Foundation began to put playa art in the world, “the other fifty-one weeks a year.” Now the organization helps with funding, building, transportation and exhibition plans for playa and subsequent venues. According to Crimson Rose, “ We want to help artists navigate the complex financial, logistical, and operational challenges inherent in their work, to make Burning Man even more artist-centric.” “Participants often tell me, ‘Burning Man changed my life,’ ” says Goodell. “We know that transformation happens when people leave their comfort zone.” Immersed inside an unfamiliar environment, confronted with the forces of nature, participants often question their own assumptions and abilities. They have
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to summon ingenuity, adjust ingrained routines, form new affiliations and trust. And in the midst of this upheaval, they discover inclusion, whimsy, generosity, and their own creativity. Goodell says,“Burning Man doesn’t actually change their lives, they do. But it opens them up to the possibility.” a tRip to maRs, oR at least a tRip Describing the experience of Black Rock City can be difficult. Participants must bring everything they need to survive: water, food, shelter. Basic infrastructure of portable toilets and emergency medical services are provided. A phalanx of volunteers provides an array of organized services. Participants—because there is an explicit prohibition against “spectators”—share gifts of time and resources. Aside from the sale of cooler ice and coffee, commerce and barter are prohibited. There are no trash cans: a strict Leave No Trace ethos is peer enforced, so that every individual is responsible for removing every sequin and taking it home. Variously described as a “summer camp for adults,” an annual “restart button for a complicated life,” and “the cheapest trip to Mars you’ll ever take,” the experience is almost entirely selfdirected. Participants choose their diversions, pleasures, even their waking hours, although at Burning Man the greatest delights are often those which opportunistically choose you. Enormous sound camps with suspended DJ booths spin electronic music in a trance of dance. Bars offer every possible permutation of mojitos or absinthe or bacon bloody marys. Satiation can be found at the midnight popcorn stand, a roving grilled cheese diner, a ramen noodle pagoda, and pancake palaces galore. If you want your chakras tuned, your spine aligned, your dusty hair washed, you will find what you seek with some effort and a bit of luck. The “What, Where, When” guide lists lectures, classes, craft workshops and dance lessons, family-friendly and adult-only establishments offering everything you can imagine, and much that you have not. All of it is gifted without expectation of return. There is never time nor energy to see or do it all. There is too much dust, distance, distraction. Participants discover their favorite pieces of art, and return to them over the course of the week, visiting at different times of the day and night, in different light, in a different mood. Often a particular piece becomes an individual talisman, one that marks a state of mind or stage of life. Art in Black Rock City offers bittersweet delight, because it will never be in this place in the same way again. But the brevity compels the desire to memorize the contours of it, and freeze an image of what it looks like at the magic hour when the sun just dips beneath the mountains in the High Rock desert of Nevada on the last day of August. The effect is transformative. The unbridled physical and societal freedom is both unnerving and exhilarating. The elimination of money is unsettling and liberating. The lack of
Passport to new worlds.
water is disturbing and enlightening. The experience confronts the senses and the mind in hundreds of ways. It is impossible not to be deeply affected. Some participants come back from the desert with a new perspective that infiltrates their thoughts and actions, making changes in their life both subtle and dramatic. Others leave early, finding the conditions too harsh or the ethos too unsettling. Some return year after year; others never return. The art of Black Rock City is the messenger that announces to the world, “Come for the party, discover the art, stay for the meaning.” There is no doubt that Burning Man offers one of the most remarkable celebrations imaginable. There is festivity, and libation, and all manner of bacchanal. But Burning Man without art would not be Burning Man. It would be a party or a festival, but it would not resonate with the same deep human desire for expression. Burning Man art is like the cave paintings of Lascaux, reminding us that man has always had a need to elevate our surroundings into depiction, both abstract and literal, as a way of making sense of our world. In this prehistoric lakebed setting populated by meandering tribes of dusty, body-painted hominids, the glorious role of expression is made abundantly clear. Art is what sets hearts, minds, and seven short days ablaze. Jennifer raiser
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