Festival in the Nevada desert burning man. Everything you need to know about the Burning Man festival
People come up with all kinds of actions to express different aspects of their own personality. Cinema, literature, music and sculpture are just a small part of how a person expresses himself through art. One of the ways of self-expression is the Burning Man festival in the USA. This incredible and exciting event attracts more and more participants and spectators from year to year.
What do people do at this festival? The event program may include the following aspects:
- Self-expression through contemporary art. For a whole week, among the desert sands, you can see various statues, participants in costumes, performances by dancers and artists, as well as 24-hour dance floors with famous DJs;
- Free communication with like-minded people. Unbridled fun, absolute involvement in what is happening and acceptance of various forms of absurdity - these are just some of the bonuses that you can get by participating in the festival;
- Incredible impressions of what is happening. You can see burning human statues made from modern materials at the festival everywhere.
Such a festival erases all boundaries; it helps people feel more relaxed and free.
How is Burning Man going?
On the last Monday in August, the festival opens at night. The event program ends on Saturday, also after sunset.
People themselves unite into unique communities, providing themselves with food and water during the holiday. For eight whole days in the desert, money circulation is prohibited.
At Burning Man you can see painted and undressed people, as well as people dressed as any historical and fantasy characters. Cars for the trip to Black Rock are also specially decorated. They take on monstrous shark forms, or become huge insects. Among the sculptures you can look at bulky statues of people in different poses, giant tape recorders, chairs and large robots. This week in the desert there are people inside cupcakes, human heads made of stone half buried in the sand, ships and even sailboats on wheels.
This phantasmagoria takes place under a general atmosphere of fun, and is flavored with good music. Sculptures of people and some other exhibits are burned at the beginning of the holiday. They symbolize a person’s creative fire and self-expression that rushes out.
After the festival, all waste products must be removed by the participants themselves so that not a trace remains of them. Radical self-sufficiency permeates every point of the event program.
When the start of the festival is announced, it is prohibited to drive around the festival area. Many participants prefer to walk or ride bicycles.
This holiday, like any other, has its own traditions, which date back to 1986.
The history of Burning Man
The first such festival was held by a group of friends on one of the beaches in San Francisco.
Then the festival organizers made the fateful decision to move it to the Nevada desert.
The place for the celebration was not chosen by chance. After all, the sands of Black Rock are painted in dark tones, and the geysers, whose fountains soar under the clouds, add a mysterious ambiance to the event.
Since the 1990s, Burning Man has become a regular event. Every year at this festival it is possible to appreciate a variety of decommodifications and installations of contemporary art. Since 1995, all such holidays have been themed. And 2016 was a record year for festival attendance. Then 75 thousand people came to celebrate the holiday.
Burning Man is a community-driven event that communicates responsibility and self-expression to the world. For adherents of classical traditions, this festival may seem shocking and incomprehensible. But modern youth calls it “a breath of freedom” in an ocean of foundations and prohibitions.
How to take part in the festival?
Tickets for the festival are difficult to buy. But they are often a valuable and desirable prize in various sweepstakes and lotteries. They are held on the official website of the festival. If the idea of a camp seems particularly interesting to the organizers, then you can receive a grant for its implementation.
What is Burning Man?
Organizers describe Burning Man as an experiment in community and art.
Events-Burning Man-2014
Bizarre works of modern art are installed at the festival site, participants wear fantastic costumes and drive cars of the strangest design, dance to the music of the assembled DJs and listen to performances by artists.
Everyone who comes to the festival is fully responsible for their own food and accommodation and should not leave any traces of themselves in the desert. And even works of contemporary art - figures and installations - are burned at the climax of the Burning Man festival, along with a wooden figure of “Man”.
When and where does the festival take place?
The Burning Man festival takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. It begins at 00:01 on the last Monday of August and ends on Labor Day, which in America is celebrated on the first Monday of September.
The very first wooden “Man” was burned on one of the beaches in artistic San Francisco in California, but as participants grew and the concept became more complex, the Burning Man festival moved to the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada, 160 kilometers from its capital, Reno. .
How did the festival come about and why is it called Burning Man?
The festival was born on June 21, 1986, the solstice, when Larry Harvey, Jerry James and several of their friends met on the beach in San Francisco to burn a 2.7-meter figurine of a wooden man and a smaller figurine of a dog. This ritual gave its name to the name Burning Man - “Burning Man”. Harvey came up with it a couple of years later.
10 principles of the Burning Man festival
Larry Harvey has formulated ten principles of the desert festival (whatever they mean): radical inclusion, self-sufficiency, self-expression and community cooperation, civic responsibility, the art of giving, “decommodification” (freedom from “market consumption”), being in the present, leaving no traces.
Be that as it may, the Burning Man festival is about human community, art, absurdism, rejection of consumerism and, of course, a fun party. This is exactly what participants - “Burners” or “burners” - are called upon to do.
Costumes at Burning Man
Burning Man is more than just a cosplay festival. The participants' costumes are often described as "crazy." In fact, clothing here is as much an act of self-expression and a work of contemporary art as installations and sculptures.
Costumes with steampunk style, costumes with neon lamps, creepy masks, reinterpreted ethnic attire, body painting - all this is a celebration of true surrealism and postmodernism in clothing.
Only this holiday is organized by ordinary people, not couturiers, and not on the catwalk, but at a festival in the desert.
Art objects at Burning Man
Art objects at the festival are created by ordinary people and professional artists. Many of them are then sent to permanent exhibitions throughout America.
Art objects usually follow a single theme, new every year. An important requirement is that they must be interactive.
Because art objects in the form of figures or installations can be very large, they are created collaboratively by groups of artists, although some objects can be quite small.
The design can use electronics, light, fire, moving parts - anything.
Here are some of the art objects that participants and journalists remember in recent years:
an airy temple-tent with a Victorian organ;
15-meter sculpture of a woman with LED lighting R-Evolution;
an almost two-kilometer chain of balloons rising into the sky above the desert;
a multi-meter fiery installation of the Tetris game that you can play;
sculpture of a goose made from 120,000 pence coins;
Key Note (“Central Theme”) - a figure with a hole instead of a face, pulling behind him a huge key on a chain and made entirely of small keys and locks;
a gigantic typewriter that you can even type on with your feet;
a train of giant vintage-looking teapots with real boiling water inside;
numerous openwork temples made of wood and metal;
a life-size neon-lit model of half a Boeing 747;
"The Man" himself, who is burned on the climactic Saturday night of the Burning Man festival.
If you've ever been to Archstoyanie, you'll have a rough idea of what it's all about. Only in the case of the festival in the Nevada desert, perhaps, the impressions can be multiplied by 1000. And we hope that the domestic “Archstoyanie” still has everything to come.
Transportation to Burning Man
Many Burning Man participants ride mountain bikes, which are well-suited to the desert. The bikes are often decorated in the spirit of the festival, including with electroluminescent wires, and at night the spectacle is fantastic.
At the festival you can also see specially built or skillfully converted cars and trucks - “mutant cars”. Artists submit the design of such machines to the committee in advance, and not everyone receives approval. One of the important criteria is the recognition of the car that served as the basis: if the car is simply decorated with something and can still be recognized as the original model, then the application will most likely be rejected.
The number of approved applications numbers in the hundreds.
How to get to Burning Man?
Method 1: go to Burning Man with Mikhail Kozhukhov’s Travel Club.
Method 2: Get a US visa yourself, buy a ticket to the festival and get to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
Where to buy a ticket to Burning Man?
Tickets can be purchased on the official website of the festival. Pre-sale starts in January-February every year. Tickets are available for organized groups in March. Then the main sales begin.
You need to keep in mind that before each stage of ticket sales, registration opens, which lasts only a couple of days. So you should pay close attention to the schedule. In 2017, ticket prices ranged from $425 to $1,200. The $425 tickets sold out in 35 minutes.
How to get there?
To attend the festival, US visa holders must fly into the United States (the nearest airport is Reno, Nevada; it's a six-hour drive from San Francisco Airport) and travel to their destination by car (Highway 34) or on a special prepaid bus.
Many people like to hitchhike to the Black Rock Desert. In addition, a temporary runway for small private aircraft will be set up near the festival site. But this is already exotic.
What to take with you to Burning Man?
Because Burning Man is an exercise in radical self-sufficiency, you need to take everything you need to survive and then some. In any case, that’s what the organizers write. Some participants take only the bare necessities, while others take everything, including the kitchen sink.
First of all, you will need water, food and shelter. If the staff at the entrance thinks that you might be missing something, they simply won’t let you in. Everything else, the organizers write, is at your discretion. For example, earplugs (“be careful, the DJ is working”), a bicycle (necessarily with a flashlight), toys and costumes.
The Burning Man Survival Guide lists what you need in more detail. Here is the extended list:
Your ticket;
5.5 liters of water per day per person;
Water container;
"will clearly be one of the leaders. Tens of thousands of participants gathered in Nevada's Black Rock Desert for the 30th annual Burning Man 2016 festival.
For a whole week, people gathered in the desert from all over the world radically expressed themselves. In the middle of the sands, various unusual structures and installations, often of fantastic shapes, were erected. Here you can see hundreds of cars of the most incredible appearance; many participants wear costumes of animal characters and various objects.
1. Burning Man begins in the Nevada desert on the last Monday of August at exactly 00:01. Ends on Labor Day, a holiday celebrated in the United States on the first Monday of September. It is a day off for most organizations.
2. The three main ways of self-expression here are original costumes, original vehicles and unusual installations. Here is one of them - an incredible car. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
3. The organizers of the Burning Man 2016 festival define it as an experiment in creating a community of radical self-expression, relying only on itself. No more, no less. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
4. Light installation. Black Rock Desert in Nevada, August 29, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
5. The Burning Man 2016 festival takes place in the Black Rock Desert in the US state of Nevada. This desert is a salt marsh and an endorheic lake. It is part of the dry prehistoric Lake Laontan, which existed 18-7 thousand years BC. e. during the last ice age. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
6. Here you can sit on the sofa. The stand with the TV is on a chain, apparently so as not to be restrained. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
7. Wooden towers with bridges. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
8. Winged swing. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
9. Installation reminding you that you are still on Earth. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
10. In the background is a boom mobile with powerful speakers. Mobile disco. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
11. Art installation Space whale. This is understandable, there is little earthly here. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
12. Stilts are a popular form of local locomotion. Black Rock Desert in Nevada, August 29, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
13. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
14. Everything at the festival always ends the same way - with the burning of wooden structures... (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
15. ... and the Man himself. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters):
16. A few more photos from the most unusual festival in the world. This is 2011 and a mega-car that would be the envy of.
19. From time to time a sandstorm arises in the desert. Behind is a huge Man who stands in the distance and waits for the hour of burning, August 31, 2014. (Photo by Andy Barron):
20. Burning Man 2014.
Interested in attending Burning Man 2017 in Nevada? Remember 10 basic principles:
- Radical inclusion
- Donation
- Decommodification
- Radical self-sufficiency
- Radical self-expression
- Community Efforts
- Responsibility
- Leave No Trace
- Participation
- Here and now
22. And an alien costume will definitely not hurt you, although costumes of animals and objects will also work.
23. Burning of a wooden figure symbolizing a person at the Burning Man festival. The first burning of a small wooden man was in 1986, then on one of the beaches of San Francisco, by a small group of friends. Subsequently, the circle of participants expanded and moved to its current location in the desert in Nevada.
From August 28 to September 5, a large art festival takes place in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Burning Man, known for its most incredible art pieces and costumes.
The festival has been taking place since 1986, starting on the last Monday of August and lasting eight days. Since 1995, Burning Man has acquired a theme. This year's theme was “Da Vinci's Workshop.”
More than 70 thousand people gather annually in the hot and dusty Black Rock Desert to take part in this amazing celebration of creativity and freedom. Burning Man guests include a diverse crowd, including artists, world stars and the wealthy.
Some tech company founders also like to attend the event. At one time, even such people as Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Elon Musk visited Burning Man. Once, when asked by a journalist why the elite of the technology world loved Burning Man so much, festival founder Larry Harvey replied: “ Why might Silicon Valley not like the idea of a limitless space in which everything can be done that no one has ever done before? It doesn't seem like such a mystery“.
And Larry Page himself said: “ We don't want the world to change too quickly. But perhaps we could allocate a piece of the world for these purposes... For example, I love going to the Burning Man festival. This is an environment where you can try new things. I think it would be good for us engineers to have separate safe places where we can try new things and determine the effect they will have on society. This way they could see their impact on people without having to roll out the product to the whole world.”.
Burning Man is a truly impressive event. Among the lifeless desert, amazing art objects created by imagination and the hand of man appear for several days. The idea of the festival is this: man is a creator, capable of creating anything, anywhere. And if he can create, he can also destroy, which is why at the end of the festival it is customary to burn all installations. The organizers of the festival themselves define it as an experiment in creating a community of radical self-expression. This is what a city created with unbridled creativity and innovation would look like.
All objects and guests of Burning Man look as strange as possible every year. If this is a celebration of self-expression, then the participants choose the most unusual and even bizarre appearance for themselves. Driving in cars is strictly prohibited during the festival, so the most important attribute here is a bicycle, since the distances between art objects are enormous.
Burning Man also hosts various shows, workshops, and people take part in attractions and competitions. One of the main rules of the event is that everyone should be a participant and not an observer. This is a truly progressive event that reveals the most distant abilities in a person and hidden in the everyday bustle. You can express them, let them out here – at Burning Man.
If you want to attend this unique holiday next year, you need to buy tickets in February by first registering on the official Burning Man website. The approximate cost of one ticket is quite high - $400. But believe me, it's worth it!
Burning Man 2016 – the festival you need to know about was last modified: September 4th, 2016 by Olga Kulygina
For a whole week, people gathered in the desert from all over the world radically expressed themselves. In the middle of the sands, various unusual structures and installations, often of fantastic shapes, were erected. Here you can see hundreds of cars of the most incredible appearance; many participants wear costumes of animal characters and various objects.
Burning Man begins in the Nevada desert on the last Monday of August at exactly 12:01 a.m. Ends on Labor Day, a holiday celebrated in the United States on the first Monday of September. It is a day off for most organizations.
The three main ways of self-expression here are original costumes, original vehicles and unusual installations. Here is one of them - an incredible car. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
The organizers of the Burning Man 2016 festival define it as an experiment in creating a community of radical self-expression, relying only on itself. No more, no less. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Light installation. Black Rock Desert in Nevada, August 29, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
The Burning Man 2016 festival takes place in the Black Rock Desert in the US state of Nevada. This desert is a salt marsh and an endorheic lake. It is part of the dry prehistoric Lake Laontan, which existed 18-7 thousand years BC. e. during the last ice age. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Here you can sit on the sofa. The stand with the TV is on a chain, apparently so as not to be restrained. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Wooden heads with bridges. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Winged swing. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
An installation that reminds you that you are still on Earth. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
In the background is a boom mobile with powerful speakers. Mobile disco. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Art installation Space whale. This is understandable, there is little earthly here. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Stilts are a popular form of local locomotion. Black Rock Desert in Nevada, August 29, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
(Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Everything at the festival always ends the same way - with the burning of wooden structures... (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
... and the Man himself. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Another photo from the most unusual festival in the world. It's 2011 and a mega-car that would make Mad Max jealous.
Burning Temple of Grace, August 31, 2014. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
Black Rock Desert in Nevada, August 31, 2014. (Photo by Jim Urquhart | Reuters)
From time to time a sandstorm arises in the desert. Behind is a huge Man who stands in the distance and waits for the hour of burning, August 31, 2014. (Photo by Andy Barron)
Burning Man 2014.
Interested in attending Burning Man 2017 in Nevada? Remember 10 basic principles:
- Radical inclusion
Donation
Decommodification
Radical self-sufficiency
Radical self-expression
Community Efforts
Responsibility
Leave No Trace
Participation
Here and now
And an alien costume will definitely not hurt you, although costumes of animals and objects will also work.
The burning of a wooden figure symbolizing a person at the Burning Man festival. The first burning of a small wooden man was in 1986, then on one of the beaches of San Francisco, by a small group of friends. Subsequently, the circle of participants expanded and moved to its current location in the desert in Nevada.
