By Gina Park, CNN
(CNN) — Have you ever ever needed to burn a person?
In June 1986, the founders of the Burning Man mission and nonprofit, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, constructed a wood human effigy and set it on fireplace on San Francisco’s Baker Seashore as a symbolic act of letting go of their private crises. They name it the “First Burn.”
Yearly since, the 2 dedicated to doing it once more. Whereas it began as a one-day occasion in San Francisco, in 1990 it moved to Black Rock Metropolis, Nevada, about 120 miles from Reno, and now lasts every week.
It’s an fascinating occasion as a result of it’s a must to survive a few days with individuals you’ve by no means met, surrounded by artwork and mud, and “the challenge of being self-reliant in the desert,” stated Henry Wu, a photographer and content material creator on Instagram. He has been attending Burning Man yearly since 2010 and can be going once more this 12 months.
“Burning Man is all about you. You’re part of the whole thing and not just there as an observer. You’re there as a participant,” he added.
Though mainstream media focuses on Black Rock Metropolis, there are Burning Man occasions all around the world.
What’s Burning Man?
“Globally, Burning Man is a cultural movement that exists in every continent and all over the place. But what it means, as far as experientially, it is very idiosyncratic. It really does depend on who you are and what part of it you see,” stated Stuart Mangrum, director of Burning Man’s Philosophical Middle, a division throughout the nonprofit.
Though some individuals seek advice from Burning Man as a pageant, many say it’s nearer to a dwelling artwork piece. Yearly round this time, the cities of Burning Man get constructed in several elements of the world, attracting greater than 70,000 individuals to Black Rock Metropolis and one other 100,000 or so extra in affiliated occasions worldwide.
Collectively, over the course of 1 weekend or eight days, burners (individuals who attend Burning Man) domesticate a de-commodified society with numerous camps and neighborhoods that target artwork, efficiency, expression and group service, Mangrum stated.
“You know you can come to a city of 80,000 people, and you might not ever get out of one neighborhood. That’s what you’re going to see. It is a city and a very cosmopolitan city, and everybody comes away with a different reaction to it,” Mangrum stated.
On the finish — Sept 1, at the least within the Nevada desert — the town will get deconstructed and wiped from the face of the planet.
The ideas of Burning Man
As extra individuals skilled Burning Man since its founding, questions flooded the group’s inbox about convey the occasion to locations exterior of the West. To information them, Harvey wrote 10 ideas, which might be used to recreate the vibe of Burning Man occasions.
“The 10 principles were never meant to be taken apart one by one,” however to be considered in context with one another, stated Marian Goodell, CEO of the Burning Man non-profit, which organizes the mission.
A few of the ideas, like decommodification, are bodily. Throughout Burning Man occasions, burners usually are not allowed to have cash. Any artwork or meals they convey is exchanged in present kind, or introduced as a method of supporting the group.
“We take away transactions. We remove the transactions because we want the interaction, like that’s a deliberate piece to what creates connection and community,” Goodell stated.
The ideas had been created in a solution to encourage group involvement and constructing. However it’s not all collective.
Different ideas, like radical self-expression, encourage particular person authenticity as a solution to join.
What’s radical self-expression?
“We tend to want to conform to society and (the extent we conform) changes by environment as well. So, the way we act from place to place may change,” stated Dr. Maya Al-Khouja, motivational psychologist and analysis supervisor at Bristol Pupil’s Union. She isn’t linked to the Burning Man mission.
“We act a certain way at work, but we may act a different way with friends or with family. And we do this because it helps us fit in and keep our relationships positive.”
Whether or not we all know it or not, most individuals have a tough time appearing authentically due to our tendency to evolve. This will imply being restricted by the social guidelines that you’ve got in friendships or by exterior influences, like capitalism.
“So, something like radical self-expression, it’s not just being your authentic self, but it’s doing it in, like, a really bold, deliberate way. Sometimes it’s even in a performative way,” Al-Khouja stated.
Authenticity to this extent requires you to have some stage of psychological security, which is whenever you’re in an area the place authenticity and uniqueness are rewarded, based on Al-Khouja. This isn’t one thing that’s available in most conditions, for the reason that norm is to evolve.
Most individuals don’t have the flexibility to expertise radical self-expression due to social limitations, however Burning Man encourages that habits by creating an setting the place individuals can “express themselves in whatever media they like,” Mangrum stated.
“You know, the mainstream art world is a super commodified, very controlled market, right? It’s a market of scarcity, where fewer artists means that those who are working make more money. We’re at the opposite end of that spectrum, where the more the better.”
Though bodily items of artwork, like portraits and costumes, are frequent at Burning Man occasions there are additionally many individuals, like Wu, that select to specific themselves by serving their group and offering meals there.
Service-based expression could be finished both individually or together with your camp since burners can select to attend Burning Man in teams or with organizations targeted on particular service targets, like offering meals or transportation.
And these camps can get artistic with their self-expression.
One 12 months, there was a camp that planted a payphone deep within the desert. When you may discover the payphone, you would make a reservation at that group’s camp and they might cook dinner you an elaborate dinner, stated Wu, who regarded however didn’t discover the illusive payphone.
“We want people to feel creative. We want them to feel that self-expression is a very accessible way to get in touch with yourself and how you connect with other people,” stated Goodell.
Burning Man isn’t about shopping for and promoting artwork. It’s about creating “it together. So the self-expression is meant to happen in the context of the others,” she added.
Bringing radical self-expression in the true world
Though Harvey created a listing of ideas, they’re not a guidelines that must be adopted in a particular method.
“They’re not values, they’re not ideas, they’re not pie in the sky. They’re just ways of existing, ways of being,” Mangrum stated.
Outdoors of the occasion, radical self-expression could be finished by taking dangers, like talking your thoughts or sharing artwork. It’s generally seen throughout Satisfaction month, the place individuals put on outfits that “traditionally wouldn’t be something that you could wear normally,” Al-Khouja stated.
Burning Man, at its core, is an ongoing mission, Mangrum stated. It expands and modifications yearly relying on how burners select to take part.
“We never had a goal. It is its own thing, and we’ve just been, as Larry liked to say, it’s an experiment, a laboratory, a petri dish, right? We started an experiment back in 1986 and it continues, and it gets different, and it morphs, and we’re just watching to see how it grows,” Mangrum stated.
“You know, people think the 10 Principles are like the 10 Commandments. Like Larry wrote them on a stone tablet and handed them out,” he added. “It was based on observation of how he saw people getting together and working together and enjoying each other’s company and doing great things outside the mainstream. So that’s what I’d say to it. It is its own objective.”
You don’t really must attend a Burning Man occasion to be a part of the mission. So long as you usually observe the ideas, use them to dwell your genuine reality and construct a group (nevertheless massive it’s), then you definitely’ve contributed.
“It’s an educational system. The whole process teaches us about ourselves. It teaches us about leadership. It teaches us about, you know, how to get along with each other under really hard circumstances,” stated Goodell.
Initially Printed: August 29, 2025 at 4:17 PM PDT
