Burning man, the famous Nevada festival and meeting place for the greatest creators and freaks, which has been held since 1986, will take place in 2020. It will not work like before, but the organizers will do their best to maintain and preserve the spirit of the action.
The Burning Man Project, a nonprofit that hosts the event, claims it is not a festival, but the annual construction of Black Rock City, a city of dreams and fantasies. In 2020, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the construction of a fantastic city will take place not in the desert, but on the Internet.
Incendiary action Burning Man and its holy principles
In 2019, 79,000 people participated in the construction of Black Rock City, and the number of Burning Man fans is growing year by year. Participants prepare for it all next year, because building Black Rock City requires the full commitment of each participant.
Every year at the end of summer, new houses and temples of unique architecture appear under the desert skies of Nevada. Creators are more interested in creative expression than in the durability of buildings that only last a week. Brilliant in their impossibility, and sometimes absurdity, sculptures adorn an unreal city.
Mobiles, created by the hands of temporary residents of the city, move between the buildings. These vehicles are not like those used by people in normal conditions, sometimes it is not even clear how and why they move. And people here are dressed in the most incredible way, who had enough imagination to create their own image.
Having paid a considerable amount of entrance fee (1,400 $), participants must bring with them the necessary attributes for life in the desert during the week and for the construction of their facility. But few things are as powerful as Burning Man to release creative energy. To create a fantastic object under a desert sky, show it to tens of thousands of spectators, and then completely destroy it - and create a new one next year, without limiting yourself by any rules.
At the end of each action, the symbol of the festival - a man-made Man - must burn with maximum effect, illuminating the space of the desert and the souls of the participants. That is why the event is called "The Burning Man".
10 main principles of Burning Man
- Full involvement
- Donation
- Lack of commercial start
- Comprehensive belief in yourself
- Comprehensive self-expression
- Collaboration
- Civil responsibility
- Leave no trace
- Participation
- Ease.
In fact, this is an expression of the main principles of creativity: full involvement in the process, disinterestedness, responsibility for the result and not causing harm to people and the environment. There are no monetary and commercial relations on the territory of Black Rock City. The missing details for the completion of the project, the necessary things the participants give each other, and advertising and the use of information for commercial purposes are outlawed. Leaving, the builders of the ghost town leave a clean piece of desert - the same as it was before the start of the action.
The Burning Man Project runs for a year, and profits from ticket sales, which are actually membership fees for participating in the construction of a fantastic city. In addition to preparing the event, the Burning Man Project spends its funds on grants for creative groups and individuals, to support individual art projects.
2020 became the year of a pandemic: coronavirus is changing the lives of the entire population of the Earth
Despite all the threats of a pandemic, humanity is trying its best not to slide into the Stone Age and keep the conquests of civilization with it. The presence of the worldwide Internet greatly facilitates the task. The Internet helps to continue education, receive treatment, develop culturally and fulfill professional responsibilities. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, the methods of remote work and study were not thought out in detail: they had to develop on the go, urgently find ways out. Now the Burning Man Project has faced this, which has decided that Burning Man will go virtual this year.
This decision was not easy, since specialists of a different profile would be needed, who had not been involved before. And this is in conditions when the Burning Man Project is urgently cutting staff, because the organizers offer to return the money even for those tickets that were sold before April 2020.
The only thing that the organizers managed to do in this situation was to appeal to the fans with a request to support them financially. The Burning Man Project understands that times are difficult for everyone, so they do not abandon their obligations, but ask for help only from those who are not constrained in funds and are interested in the continued existence of Burning Man.
The organizers are confident that this year the whole world will “rock” with the Burning Man, but they do not yet know how it will be. In April 2020, announcing their decision to go into the virtual dimension, the Burning Man Project invited participants and sympathizers to share new projects and proposals with them, and tell frankly personal COVID stories. The organizers of the creative event are confident that together members of the Burning Man community will overcome the obstacles that have arisen and create something new and unforgettable.
Despite the difficulties, the Burning Man Project are confident that the festival will grow in popularity thanks to its new form of existence, and also express the hope that in 2021 participants will return to Nevada and build a new Black Rock City.
