Posted Thursday, September 06, 2007, 12:03 AM by Lonely Planet
The Burning Man festival climaxes with the torching of the neon-covered Man-sculpture, which has been hastily rebuilt after an over-enthusiastic pyromaniac started the ceremony early. It's a fittingly primal end to eight days of crazily decorated, trance-blaring 'art cars' zipping around Black Rock Desert. In a tribal fashion, fire-twirlers and bongo drummers circle the Man, watched by a sea of head torches, glowsticks and light sabres.
The incineration takes me by surprise: a sudden explosion engulfs the sculpture and sends a wave of heat across the crowd. After the pyre has crashed to the ground, everyone surges towards the embers with the air of New Years Eve revellers. A guy in a red mask and black cape catches my eye: 'Happy burn, man.'
The festival has been an emotional experience. It's a classic case of 'only in America', not just because it's the heart and soul of the country's counterculture but also for its epic scale. Black Rock City, as the population on the playa is known, is Nevada's fifth largest city and, as a festival radio DJ opines, 'the best city in the goddamn world'.
Money is not used outside Center Camp Café. Burners contribute to the whole by running free bars and barbecues, building sculptures, decorating the port-a-loos, performing random acts of kindness, or just donning a costume and bringing smiles to the faces on the playa. The festival's mantra is 'participate'.
Leaving the smouldering Man, the crowd drifts to watch the next fiery display. It's rumoured that a gang of Texan 'death punks' will be using a mixture of liquid propane and jet fluid to shoot a flame 1000 feet upwards. As I wait for the spectacle, I experience the same mixture of excitement and trepidation I felt on the way to this intense gathering. Then the mushroom cloud fills the night sky, illuminating the sunburnt faces of 47,000 burners.
James Bainbridge was at Burning Man researching for a Lonely Planet book on worldwide festivals; this is the last in his series of blogs from the event. You can see more of Jonathan Clark's photographs at www.art-clark.com.
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Labels: Burning Man, Festivals and events, Nevada, The Americas
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Posted Tuesday, September 04, 2007, 3:48 PM by Lonely Planet
Last night, between visits to the festival's English, Irish and German pubs, I checked out some of the more interactive entertainment on offer. The best, apart from the roller disco of course, was a game called Dance Dance Immolation.
Contestants in heat-resistant suits had to dance to bad '80s music; if they stopped or stepped out of tune, they were strafed with a jet of fire.
It was just another night on the playa, the salt pan in Nevada's Black Rock Desert that, for eight days a year, is overrun with wild-eyed 'burners' from as far afield as Australia. Artist Larry Harvey and friends started the happening in 1986 and shifted it to the outback in 1990, when San Francisco police moved them on from Baker Beach. At a press conference this week, Harvey said that Burning Man, in its idealistic mission to influence the way people live in the world beyond the festival, is succeeding where the '60s failed.
Certainly, the event is much more than an annual holiday for devotees such as the 'Euroburners' running the English bar. For 51 weeks of the year, they keep the contents of their elaborate camp in a storage unit in nearby Reno.
Another example of the serious sense of purpose underlying the event is its various themes. This year, as part of the green theme, there are schemes in place such as bio-diesel generators and the world's largest per capita communal bikes project. The theme will live on after the event when Burning Man gives the largest ever solar power donation to two local towns. In return, the state government will rename nearby Rte 447 as the Green Highway.
Like the '60s, Burning Man may not change the world, but it certainly has a profound effect on everyone who experiences it... even if their moonwalking skills aren't up to Dance Dance Immolation.
James Bainbridge is at Burning Man researching for a Lonely Planet book on worldwide festivals; check out the last in his series of blogs from the festival here soon. You can see more of Jonathan Clark's photographs at www.art-clark.com.
Labels: Burning Man, Nevada, The Americas
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Posted Sunday, September 02, 2007, 4:37 PM by Lonely Planet
We're waiting to take an art tour of the Burning Man collective when the whiteout hits. The tour goes ahead anyway; the idea of not being able to see any of the art appeals to the sense of illogic that governs Black Rock City. As we strike out onto the playa, our dragon-bus' horns bob in the 50-mile-an-hour winds that fill the air with dust.
Tank Girls, touregs and Mad Max villains emerge from the haze, protected with bandannas, goggles and gas marks. We look down from the top deck of the flapping float at our samurai escorts who jog alongside the dragon.
The first stop is a sculpture made of two trucks. I walk away from the bus and, within 50 metres, I am alone in the playa dust. It's just me, a sea of colourful flags and a metal pole bristling with bike reflectors. The only sound I can hear, other than the whistling wind, is a soundsystem playing Johnny Cash's slow-motion cover of Nine Inch Nails' song about an 'empire of dirt'.
The festival seems far away... until a cyclist clad only in a Viking helmet wavers past. Nudism is one of the many forms of uninhibited self-expression at this tribal gathering for America's subculture.
Back on the dragon, the next strange shape that appears in the blizzard is the Man himself. He lacks a head as he's being rebuilt following an arson attack. Our last stop is the Seattle glassblowers collective, who will be producing art all night using a kiln adorned with glassy off-cuts.
Nearby, a gang of burners wearing pink jump suits and fuzzy rabbit ears parades by. Following in their paw prints is the syringe-toting 'inoculation squad', intent on eradicating those pesky bunnies. It'll take more than a windstorm to stop the surreality on the playa.
James Bainbridge is at Burning Man researching for a Lonely Planet book on worldwide festivals; check out the next in his series of blogs from the festival here soon. You can see more of Jonathan Clark's photographs at www.art-clark.com.
Labels: Burning Man, Nevada, The Americas
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Posted Thursday, August 30, 2007, 11:09 PM by Lonely Planet
We're only halfway through the festival and (even by Burning Man standards) two very unusual things have happened.
There's a full lunar eclipse - which pushes Black Rock City to even greater gimp-mask-and-Dayglo-wearing extremes and someone prematurely sets the Burning Man on fire!
I hear the news from a naked, glitter-painted lady drifting past my tent. A press release at Media Mecca, a hub for dusty journalists in need of a Hunter S Thompson cocktail, reveals that the arsonist is in custody and the Man will be rebuilt.
As the singed skeleton of the sculpture is removed, the festival neon artist speeds to Reno and the outside world to buy materials.
I checked out the Man a few hours before the premature burning. There was a quasi-religious atmosphere there, with burners quietly circling and touching the wooden trunks at its base.
This arson attack is obviously big news for the community - the Black Rock Beacon even manages a special 'the Man's bacon gets cooked' issue. However, life on the playa continues as abnormal, with plenty of other idols for the neon-lit floats to buzz between...
James is at Burning Man researching for a Lonely Planet book on worldwide festivals; this is the third post in a series. Check out the previous posts here.
You can see more of Jonathan Clark's photographs at www.art-clark.com.
Labels: Breaking travel news, Burning Man, Nevada, The Americas
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Hearing we were first-time burners, the guys at the gate made us do press-ups and roll through the dust, like military recruits. Then, we had to bang a gong and yell, 'I am no longer a virgin!'
When the initiation was over, I noticed two Nevada state troopers looking darkly on from their truck. One thing that phases outsiders about Burning Man is just how seriously the folks at this desert festival take their theatrical, carnivalistic freakery.
As well as remembering survivalist supplies like vinegar, (which stops your feet drying and cracking on the salt pan) burners arrive laden with material for performances and installations.
The first person we met was a character called Dead Letter Y, a guy from Oregon in a pink furry hat. He handed us some spray-painted envelopes and explained Pirate Mail. If you want to contact someone here, pop a note into an envelope, write a description of them - anything but their address - and hand it to another burner. If it doesn't reach them by the end of the festival, there's always next year.
In return, my friend took a Polaroid shot of Dead Letter and gave him the photo. Our first Burning Man transaction was complete.
One of my favourite performances on the playa, where the cracked terrain is dotted with towering sculptures and naked cyclists, was the Boardroom Take-over Posse. With completely straight faces, they sat in the 100-degree-farenheit heat talking into chunky phones and punching fat calculators in their suits and slick hair. The illusion of being on Wall Street was shattered only by a bottle of whisky sitting on the table and the laughter of people taking rides in a giant metal dragonfly nearby...
James Bainbridge is at Burning Man researching for a Lonely Planet book on worldwide festivals; check out the next in his series of blogs from the festival here soon. You can see more of Jonathan Clark's photographs at www.art-clark.com.
Labels: Burning Man, Nevada, The Americas
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Posted Monday, August 27, 2007, 5:00 PM by Lonely Planet
We've just left Reno for the final leg of our drive to the Burning Man Festival. Our 'last supper' was Boomerang Shrimp at the Outback Steakhouse. The cheap flicker of Terrible's Railway Casino and its neon neighbours is behind us, and the Great Black Rock desert, in front.
From now on, basic survival is the mission as for the next seven days, 45,000 hardy party animals will converge on the playa, a salt pan so broad it supposedly shows the curve of the earth's surface.
All day on Hwy 80 from San Francisco we scanned for fellow 'burners'. As well as the distinctive Burning Man symbol and a giant, fluffy purple dinosaur protruding from one trailer, bikes are a sure give-away. The festival is 5km across, arranged in a semi-circle with the iconic Man towering at its centre.
Two $50 cycles jostle for space in our PT Cruiser along with 30 gallons of water, plastic goggles, paper sanding masks, a space suit, assorted wigs, dayglo necklaces, water pistols and prism viewers. The plastic trinkets will be as vital as our gazebo in a temporary city where only coffee and ice are for sale and everything else must be exchanged.
As soon as we leave Hwy 80, we join a 100km queue for the festival. A Burning Man virgin, my excitement and nervousness are both mounting. After an hour, the playa appears in the distance, the green neon Man just discernible through a windstorm whipping up thick clouds of dust...
James is at Burning Man researching for a Lonely Planet book on worldwide festivals; check out the next in his series of blogs from the festival here soon. You can see more of Jonathan Clark's photographs at www.art-clark.com.
Labels: Burning Man, Festivals and events, Nevada, The Americas
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