My Burning Man Experience 2014
Photo by Julz
So, Burning Man.
I had been a member of the Burner community for about 10 years before ever actually making it to the festival. I've been an event organizer for taBURNak!, the Montreal Burner Decomp for the last four years (it's coming up, get your tickets soon!), I'd attended Regionals, made meet-and greets, and helped run countless other Burner events for years.
Before I went, I really felt like I got the gist of the Burner spirit. And I did, to an extent.
I still think that you can be a Burner without ever attending this festival, because being a Burner is based on values, not attendance. Attending this festival is a HUGE monetary investment, and (unfortunately) isn't an option available to everyone. But the idea of Burning Man is based on Burner spirit, and that can belong to anyone, anytime.
The philosophy of Burning Man runs off of 10 Key Principles-
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
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.
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.
Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
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.
Communal Effort
Our community values 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.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
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 endeavour, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
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. 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.
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, 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.
So, what new things did I discover when I actually attended the festival?
Archimedes Design Domes, Photo by Toby Vann
My experience last year was a little skewed because I was there on a job assignment with Archimedes Design. It was a really different experience then if I would've been participating in bringing art, or a theme camp that I had helped build. I felt a little less invested in what I was creating because of that. I wasn't really involved in the brain child of what I helped create, I was doing a job for someone else, and even though I really liked the project, it wasn't quite my own.
On top of that, after weeks and weeks working 24 hours a day with my team, I was a little burnt out. Don't get me wrong, I loved everyone on my team, and there was rarely actual conflict. But I did find that the others style of work ethic was different than mine, and so I felt a little off-kilter the whole time, which in the end did lead to some burn out. It really impressed on me the importance of being on the same page as your team. This festival is a HUGE investment of time and energy, and your teammates are your support, company and entertainment. It's important and be on the same wave length.
But other than that, my 2014 Burning Man Experience was extremely interesting.
The first thing that really takes your breath away on your first Burn, is just the sheer SCALE of it. I know you think you can wrap your head around the idea of 70,000 people all radically self expressing, but the fact is, unless you've seen it, you just CAN'T.
I remember on Monday, the very first night of the Burn, I rode my bike out to the edge of the city and looked out over the playa. As far as my eye could see were pin-points of light, and everything was moving. As I stood there, I literally felt the struggle of my brain as it tried to take in what I was seeing. It was so surreal I almost couldn't comprehend it. And all at once it sunk in through my skin. Every single piece of light I was seeing for miles and miles and miles, was ART.
You can imagine as an artist what this felt like. I work in a career where I have to be over-educated, but am under appreciated and will be underpaid for my entire life. I often feel like being a professional artist is an eternally losing battle. So many people in our current cultural space would be willing to pay $100 at IKEA for a cheap piece of furniture, but would never think of spending that on an original piece of artwork.
To walk out to that playa the very first night made me believe in humanity again. I know that sounds cheesy, but that's actually how I felt. To look into the space and realize how many thousands of people were so dedicated to the cause of art and alternative society, that could make this mass of light possible, rocked my world. I cried. I really did.
That single moment was worth my entire trip.
I know I mentioned the art, but did I mention the art? Every year after Burning Man I geek on online photographs to see all the amazing stuff that was built. But what I just couldn't comprehend before I went, was that for every single photograph you see online, you aren't seeing hundreds of other pieces.
Everywhere you look there is something new and amazing. I'm an artist, it's my job to look at the world of art and see what's going on. And honestly for years gallery art has been leaving me wanting. But you can bike through the playa for 20 minutes and every single thing you see is one of the most inspiring things you've ever seen. Geniuses of engineering, cutting edge art, years worth of work on every single project.
And the interactivity. Gone are the cold gallery walls and art you can't touch. Here is art that envelops you, art you can climb, art that moves,
art that changes color when you touch it, or sings, or makes a pattern when you press a button,
art that terrifies you, art that is so beautiful it makes you want to cry, art that is inventive,
art in the forms the practical, the impractical, the aweinspiring, the sacred, and the crazy.
There is literally everything you can think of and everything that you can't. It blew my fricken' mind.
And with the art came a concept that I have held as a value before, but was the most apparent it has ever been to me on the playa. The concept of immediacy. There's a reason it's one of the 10 principles.
When you have so much art and so much space and everything moves, you either do something now, or it will never get done.
If you walk past a stage with good music, but see some cool art installation slightly in the distance, you may think that you're just going to run over there and see that and come right back to dance. But the fact is, you aren't. You are going to
a) go to that installation and come back and find your dance floor has driven off
b) get to that art installation and see another one in the distance that leads you on a trail of adventure that takes you hours
c) realize that the installation is WAY farther than you thought and you're not going back
or
d) start biking and realize you have to pee, or need more water, and need to go on an hour long journey to bike back to a civilized space so you don't die in the desert.
And if you try and go see that installation tomorrow, the chances are it will have been burned, it's been changed, something else has been built in its place, or you just can't find it again.
The rule is, do it now, or it won't get done, and I LOVED it. It was so refreshing to have everything be so ethereal. And because there was always something amazing happening, I never really felt like there was anything I was missing out on. It was just so impossible to see and do it all that you really had to be happy with the now.
Another thing I really loved about this festival was that you have to take care of yourself.
Don't kid yourself, this is a desert. And as much as every single picture you've ever seen of this event looks like one crazy party, getting too crazy is SERIOUSLY dangerous. If you drink too much alcohol you'll get dehydrated, and there's no where to get out of the heat. If your choice is to do other intoxicants, you better have really good buddies to make sure you're okay. Getting lost in desert, or not having proper supplies, clothing or protection from the sun and occasional sandstorm can have dire consequences.
And, as I learned from experience when I got a concussion roughhousing in the middle of the desert, you are MILES away from anything if you are careless and get yourself hurt.
Because of the fact that you have to survive, I feel like it changes the vibe from what could be the craziest gong show in the universe, to being an incredible party where most people are doing a pretty amazing job at self care.
Out of everything, the inspiration of the sheer amount of people who love art, and the practice of living life in an immediate way, were the two greatest things I got out of Burning Man.
Don't get me wrong, there are still struggles that I had while I was there, and there are still certain things that I really disagree with about this festival. But those are other discussions for other times. For now, lets just leave it with my good lessons, and bring those back into my daily life and practice as positive things.
*My apologies to everyone on the internet that I shamelessly ripped photos from. I just didn't have the gumption to credit them all.