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Burning Man is a week-long festival with international draw, held annually on the week prior to and including Labor Day weekend in the United States. Its current location is on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, 120 miles north of Reno. The temporary city (housing 35,000 residents in 2004) is generally held out as an experiment in community, radical self-expression , and radical self-reliance. The culmination of the event is the burning of a large wooden sculpture of a man on Saturday night, the sixth night of the event.1 Primary foci of the festival
Participate! Burning man is held to be a "spectator-free" zone -- i.e., only participants are allowed. As such, all attendees are ostensibly expected to contribute to the community, but the nature of this participation is left up to each individual, and in reality a large number of spectators are present with cameras in hand. The concept of radical inclusion ("include yourself, include others") is the consensus-reality unwritten law that purportedly governs this Burning Man social principle.
Leave No Trace, an ecological concept. Burning man takes place in the middle of a normally uninhabited desert environment known as a or "the" playa, which is deep in the middle of a large, prehistoric dry lake bed. Participants are told to be very careful not to contaminate the playa with litter (commonly known as MOOP, or "matter out of place"). In addition, while fire is a primary component of many art exhibits and events, materials must be burned on burn platforms . At one time, burning was allowed to take place directly on the ground of the playa, but the formation of burn scar s was observed. The Bureau of Land Management, which maintains the desert, has very strict requirements for the festival. Weeks after the festival has ended, a team of volunteers remain in the desert, cleaning up after the temporary city and making sure that no evidence of the festival remains. A similar mantra heard at Burning Man is, "Don't Let It Hit The Ground."
Commerce-free event. No cash transactions are allowed at Burning Man. The participants instead rely on a gift economy. Since the earliest days of the event, an underground barter economy has also existed, in which Burners exchange material goods and/or favors with each other. The only commerce that has been allowed are sales of coffeeThis article discusses the coffee plant; for information on the beverage see coffee (drink). Coffea arabica Arabian Coffee Coffea benghalensis Bengal Coffee Coffea canephora Robusta Coffee Coffea congensis Congo Coffee Coffea liberica Liberian Coffee Coff and iceIce is the solid form of water. The phase transition occurs when liquid water is cooled below 0 °C (273. 15 K, 32 °F) at standard atmospheric pressure. Ice can be formed at higher temperatures in pressurized environments, and water will remain a liquid or at Center Camp, which benefit the local Gerlach-EmpireGerlach-Empire is a census-designated place located in Washoe County, Nevada. As of the 2000 census, the CDP had a total population of 499. Geography Gerlach-Empire is located at 40°37'22" North, 119°20'29" West (40. 622883, -119. According to the United school system. Additionally, the powers that be at Burning Man contract with Green TortoiseThe Green Tortoise is a company which hosts tours, mostly within the United States, using converted buses. The buses are customized so that all of the passengers are able to sleep on bunk beds while the bus is moving. This allows the tours to cover great to provide a fee-based shuttle service that provides round trip bus rides into the nearby town of Gerlach, Nevada.
Arts and craftsSkills Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's own hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" (doing things the old way) and the rest. Some arts a are featured, particularly outsider art and visionary artVisionary art is art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself. See also Outsider art External links art movements.. Creative expression through the arts is encouraged at Burning Man. Large-scale art installations, theme camps, music, performance, and guerilla street theatre are amongst the most common art forms shared at Burning Man. Sculptures and interactive installations are generally placed on the playa, in specific art-walk pathways that lead to and from the central Burning Man complex. The largest, and most active, public theme camps are generally clustered on the Esplanade, Black Rock City's inner circle "main street." The Burning Man Opera was a significant interactive community performance that ran for over four consecutive years. Most recently, the ritual burning of David Best's temple projects have rivalled the burning of the central Burning Man complex in community significance and popularity. The ornately designed, three story high temple buildings borrow from Southeast Asian Buddhist architecture concepts, and are used as repositories for the memories of deceased loved ones.
