Burning Man Festival – Review

 

In 1986 the first Man burns on a San Francisco Beach.

Burning Man Festival

 

Larry Harvey and his friend Jerry James knock together an improvised wooden figure and drag it down to Baker beach on the Summer Solstice.  They light it up, and a curious crowd gathers to watch it burn.

And so it began.

 

More than 50,000 people from all over the world have gathered at the Burning Man 2011 “Rites of Passage” arts and music festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

 

Once a year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. In this crucible of creativity, all are welcome.

 

Burning Man Festival Sunset

 

Burning Man is not an usual festival. It’s a vibrant participatory metropolis generated by its citizens.

 

Burning Man Festival

The 10 Principles of Burning Man

 

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.

 

BLACK ROCK CITY, NV – SEPT 2: First-time Burner Sonja Lercer of Whistler, B.C., Canada, dances on the LOVE installation at last week’s 25th annual Burning Man festival. (Photo by Keith Carlsen For the Washington Post)

 

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.

 

Burning Man Festival

 

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.

 

Burning Man Festival

 

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 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.

 

..Best Of 2013…

 

Burning Man Festival – Be artist Be art