5.17: Outside Tues + Tim - On Burning Man!

Show Notes

  • Tim: Today we’re talking Burning Man. It’s an anti-establishment event that takes place each year in the United States that Tuesday has been going to for a while now. So, Tues, tell us - Burning Man - what is it? Where does it come from? Why are you passionate about it?

  • Tues: 80,000 people come to the desert… so you might get 80,000 different views of what it is. I will share my view. Basically what it is is a week long event in the desert in Nevada where artists and creatives come to share their art and participate in one of the largest experiments in gift economy (that’s how we would say it in our world). It’s a week of self-reliance and kind of a gift economy and so artists and people come to camp in the Black Rock desert. Beforehand, the Burning Man organization comes in to set up. There is no infrastructure - there’s no electricity, there's no sewage. For an entire week you bring everything in with you - everything you want to eat, some people bring RVs… Burning Man provides port-a-potties so that is available for the people with a tent. So, you have just what's in your tent and the idea is radical self-reliance; you bring in everything you need and you take everything out that you've used and so one of the things in Burning Man is “leave no trace.” So, 80,000 people come onto this portion of desert, take care of themselves - and each other - and no money is exchanged. The only thing you're allowed to buy at Burning Man is ice and I think that's for safety. It’s really hot there.

  • Tues: My Burning Man Camp is called Que Viva and they have been there for twelve or fifteen years. We've only been to the last three Burning Mans. They are a camp of queer, femme, artists of colour. Some of us are not that but we are there in support of that. Our camp is led by a really fierce group of femmes who do all of the organizing, the set up, and the planning. So for example, if our camp was going to go this year the planning would have started in December for a September event and so they're doing things like: what does it take to feed 40 people for ten days in the desert? How much water do we need and order that ahead of time. There are water trucks and sewer trucks that come through but you have to organize and order that all ahead of time. Each camp has a huge cistern of fresh water you can get replenished. Our camp has a couple of RVs and we, of course, would have the sewage removed and things like that. But everything is brought in except for the water that's delivered. Part of your job, as a camp, is to have someone, or someone’s, every day to go out and flag down the water trucks. What Burning Man tried to do last year was really crack down on the “pay to play” camps. The leaders of our camp send out a schedule for the week listing all the chores that need to be done. Some of them are flagging down the sewage truck, some of them are making sure that the water's refilled, some of them are making dinner, some of them are providing mediation at camp if people don't get along. You have to sign up for a number of work shifts during the week.

  • Tues: Artists are not being paid well to come and show their art. They might get grants to create their art but they're not getting paid just because this is their creativity on display. So, they're gifting in their art for all of us to enjoy. People are running workshops, they're having dance parties, they’re offering their skills for free for you to come and be part of and take part of.

  • Tues: Burning Man is called Burning Man because every year there is a ginormous man in the middle of the playa, hundreds of feet tall, that gets burned on Saturday night. On the night of the burning of the man, an artist stopped us and asked if we wanted to watch the man burn from his 12 foot tall, lit up unicorn. It was so beautiful. It's a rainbow neon lighted unicorn that he created just for Burning Man. If you pull the reins, the wings fly. It is other folks’ imagination on display that you're invited into and to create with them what the experience would be. It feels quite ancient. Of course it's modern, right? You know, we’re there in RVs and all these things but it does feel like an ancient practice of coming together to offer up and create what's next. I had a moment on the playa where I thought, “humans are going to be okay, if this is who we are.” You could feel the humanity and what we actually are capable of in this creativity and generosity in the story you're creating together. Burning Man is equal parts exhilaration, aspiration, seeing the future, as it is tearing down illusion, and breaking you physically.

  • Tues: Burning Man is not perfect. The first year that I went, our camp did the first political action where we did a Black Lives Matter kind of march from our tent up to the Burning Man Boards headquarters and it was beautiful. Some of the Burning Man board [members] were supposed to meet us there and we framed it as an invitation to them to understand what it's like to be Black or to be People of Color on the playa where it is overwhelmingly white… and the Board members didn't show up. They just didn't come. They sent a staff of color and it was so bad. That was before George Floyd. In Sept 2022, there was much more obvious an effort to be inclusive. More and more camps of color are attending. 

  • Tues: We have an artist, Favianna Rodriguez, who does a butterfly wing-making workshop and she's just so renowned and perfect. One of the [other] things our camp offers is a “Selena and Sangria Party” - a dance party of all latin music - hundreds of people come in and out. There is also a gathering of Black Burners where we meet for a picture of all Black folks. For hours, there was afro-techno beats playing. For me, it was peak life. So in the midst of all this goodness and whiteness, Burning Man is ALL of it.

  • Tues: The burning of the man is on Saturday night. It has an air of festival - people are wild afterwards… but on Sunday night they burn the temple. Throughout the week, people bring things to the temple, people get married at the temple, but a lot of what people bring in are pictures, art, letters to their lost loved ones. There are people who have been lost that year or people who they've just lost and they love and so it becomes a huge memorial. It’s also a place of celebration. We go several times during the week to walk; it’s amazing. On Sunday night, they burn it. The burning of the temple is almost completely silent. People just start to walk around the temple, it’s a ritual. It’s one of the most moving, spiritual experiences I get to have in my life. 

Resources:

The Outsideshared work, participatory leadership, systems change