Burning Man is an annual gathering in the western United States at Black Rock City – a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is described as an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: "radical" inclusion, self-reliance, and self-expression, as well as community cooperation, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leaving no trace. The event takes its name from its culmination, the symbolic ritual burning of a large wooden effigy ("the Man") that traditionally occurs on the Saturday evening of the event.^[2][3][4][5]

First held 32 years ago in 1986 on Baker Beach in San Francisco as a small function organized by Larry Harvey and a group of friends, it has since been held annually, spanning from the last Sunday in August to the first Monday in September (Labor Day). Burning Man 2017 was held from August 27 to September 4.

At Burning Man, the community explores various forms of artistic self-expression, created in celebration for the pleasure of all participants. Participation is a key precept for the community – selfless giving of one's unique talents for the enjoyment of all is encouraged and actively reinforced. Some of these generous outpourings of creativity can include experimental and interactive sculpture, building, performance, and art cars among other media, often inspired by the yearly theme, chosen by organizers.

Burning Man is organized by the Burning Man Project, a non-profit organization that, in 2014, succeeded a for-profit limited liability company (Black Rock City, LLC) that was formed in 1997 to represent the event's organizers, and is now considered a subsidiary of the non-profit organization. In 2010, 51,515 people attended Burning Man.^[6] Attendance in 2011 was capped at 50,000 participants and the event sold out on July 24;^[7] the attendance rose to 70,000 in 2015.^[8] Smaller regional events inspired by the principles of Burning Man have been held internationally; some of these events are also officially endorsed by the Burning Man Project as regional branches of the event.

  

History[]

1986 to 1989

One of the roots of the annual event now known as Burning Man began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco^[9] and burned a 9-foot (2.7-meter) wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. Harvey has described his inspiration for burning these effigies as a spontaneous act of "radical self-expression".^[10] The event did have earlier roots, though. Sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey's girlfriend Janet Lohr, held solstice bonfire gatherings on Baker Beach for several years prior to 1986, some of which Harvey attended. When Grauberger stopped organizing it, Harvey "picked up the torch" so to speak, and ran with it.^[10] He and Jerry James built the first wooden effigy on the afternoon of June 21, 1986, cobbled together using scrap wood, to be torched later that evening. In 1987, the effigy grew to almost 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall, and by 1988, it had grown to around 40 feet (12 meters).^[11][12]

By 1988, Larry Harvey formally named the summer solstice ritual "Burning Man," by titling flyers for the happening as such; to ward off references such as "wicker man," referring to the practice of burning live sacrifices in wicker cages. Harvey has stated that he had not seen the 1973 cult film The Wicker Man until many years after and that it did not inspire the action.^[11][13]

1990 to 1996[]

In 1990, a separate event was planned by Kevin Evans and John Law on the remote and largely unknown dry lake known as Black Rock Desert, about 110 miles north of Reno, Nevada.^[14] Evans conceived it as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. He asked John Law, who also had experience on the dry lake and was a defining founder of Cacophony Society, to take on central organizing functions. In the Cacophony Society's newsletter, it was announced as Zone #4, A Bad Day at Black Rock (inspired by the 1955 film of the same name).

Meanwhile, the beach burn was interrupted by the park police for not having a permit. After striking a deal to raise the Man but not to burn it, event organizers disassembled the effigy and returned it to the vacant lot where it had been built. Shortly thereafter, the legs and torso of the Man were chain-sawed and the pieces removed when the lot was unexpectedly leased as a parking lot. The effigy was reconstructed, led by Dan Miller, Harvey's then-housemate of many years, just in time to take it to Zone Trip #4.^[15]

Michael Mikel, another active Cacophonist, realized that a group unfamiliar with the environment of the dry lake would be helped by knowledgeable persons to ensure they did not get lost in the deep dry lake and risk dehydration and death. He took the name Danger Ranger and created the Black Rock Rangers. Thus the seed of Black Rock City was germinated, as a fellowship, organized by Law and Mikel, based on Evans' idea, along with Harvey and James' symbolic man. Drawing on experience in the sign business and with light sculpture, John Law prepared custom neon tubes for the Man in 1991 so it could be seen as a beacon at night.

In its first years, the community grew by word of mouth alone, all were considered participants by virtue of surviving in the desolate surreal trackless plain of the Black Rock Desert. There were no paid or scheduled performers or artists, no separation between art-space and living-space, no rules other than "Don't interfere with anyone else's immediate experience" and "no guns in central camp."

1991 marked the first year that the event had a legal permit, through the BLM (the Bureau of Land Management).^[16] 1992 saw the birth of a smaller, intensive (about 20 participants the first year; about 100 in years two and three) near-by event named "Desert Siteworks," conceived and directed by William Binzen and co-produced (in 1993 and '94) with Judy West.^[17] The annual, several weeks-long event, was held over summer Solstice at various fertile hot springs surrounding the desert. Participants built art and participated in self-directed performances. Some key organizers of Burning Man were also part of Desert Siteworks (John Law, Michael Mikel) and William Binzen was a friend of Larry Harvey. Hence, the two events saw lots of cross-pollination of ideas and participants.^[18] The Desert Siteworks project ran for three years (1992–1994). 1996 was the first year a formal partnership was created to own the name "Burning Man" and was also the last year that the event was held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert with no fence around it.

Before the event opened to the public in 1996, a festival worker named Michael Fury was killed in a motorcycle crash while riding from Gerlach, Nevada, to the Burning Man camp in the Black Rock Desert. Harvey insisted that the death had not occurred at Burning Man, since the gates were not yet open. Another couple was run over in their tent by an art car driving to "rave camp," which was at that time distant from the main camp. After the 1996 event, co-founder and partner John Law broke with Burning Man and publicly said the event should not continue.

1997 to present[]

The neon-tubed Man
at the 1999 event

1997 marked another major pivotal year for the event. By 1996, the event had grown to 8,000 attendees and unrestricted driving on the open playa was becoming a major safety hazard. To implement a ban on driving and re-create the event as a pedestrian/bicycle/art-car-only event, it was decided to move to private gated property. Fly Ranch, with the adjoining Hualapai mini dry lake-bed, just west of the Black Rock desert, was chosen. This moved Burning Man from Pershing county/federal BLM land into the jurisdiction of Washoe County, which brought a protracted list of permit requirements.^[19]

To comply with the new requirements and to manage the increased liability load, the organizers formed Black Rock City, LLC. Will Roger Peterson and Flynn Mauthe created the Department of Public Works (DPW) to build the "city" grid layout (a requirement so that emergency vehicles could be directed to an "address") designed by Rod Garrett, an architect. Rod continued as the city designer until his death, in 2011, at the age of 76. He is also cr^[20] With the success of the driving ban, having no vehicular incidents, 1998 saw a return to the Black Rock desert, along with a temporary perimeter fence. The event has remained there since.

edited with the design of all of the man bases from 2001 through 2012, the center camp cafe and first camp.

As the population of Black Rock City grew, further rules were established in relation to its survival. Some critics of the event cite the addition of these rules as impinging on the original freedoms, altering the experience unacceptably, while others find the increased level of activity more than balances out the changes.

• A grid street structure.^[21]
• A speed limit of 5 mph (8 km/h).^[22]
• A ban on driving, except for approved "mutant vehicles" and service vehicles.^[23]
• Safety standards on mutant vehicles.^[22]
• Burning their own art must be done on an approved burn platform.^[24]
• A ban on fireworks.^[25]
• A ban on dogs.^[26]

Light matter, Burning Man 2004

Another notable restriction to attendees is the 7-mile-(11 km) long temporary plastic fence that surrounds the event and defines the pentagon of land used by the event on the southern edge of the Black Rock dry lake.^[27] This 4-foot (1.2 meter) high barrier is known as the "trash fence" because its initial use was to catch wind-blown debris that might escape from campsites during the event. Since 2002, the area beyond this fence has not been accessible to Burning Man participants during the week of the event.^[28]

One visitor who was accidentally burned at the 2005 event unsuccessfully sued Black Rock City, LLC in San Francisco County Superior Court. On June 30, 2009, the California Court of Appeal for the First District upheld the trial court's grant of summary judgment to Black Rock City, LLC on the basis that visitors who deliberately walk towards the Burning Man after it is lit assume the risk of getting burned by such an obviously hazardous object.^[29]

Transition to a non-profit organization[]

In April 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the LLC was beginning a three-year process to transfer ownership and control of the event over to a new non-profit organization called the "Burning Man Project." The move towards becoming a non-profit organization was the result of "bitter infighting" between members of the board. At one point it looked like all of the board members were going to hire lawyers. Corporate appraisers were brought in to determine how much the company was worth, which Larry Harvey found "abhorrent" and against all of the values that Burning Man stood for.^[30]

An earlier agreement stated that each member of the LLC would only receive "sole compensation for many years of service, a golden parachute of $20,000." But the members now agreed to an arrangement whereby each member of the LLC would receive an undisclosed sum prior to the transfer of their ownership rights to the Burning Man Project. Marian Goodell, board member and head of communication, addressed concerns about the lack of transparency with this statement: "When you’re in the middle of a storm, if you’re going to explain all of how you got there, and how you’re going to get out, it often sets more panic among the survivors than if you just sail the boat out of the darkness."^[31]

It was announced in March 2014 via the official Burning Man Blog that the non-profit transition was complete.^[32] Under the new non-profit structure Black Rock City LLC, the longtime for-profit responsible for the event, would be a subsidiary of the non-profit Burning Man Project. Although unmentioned in the initial announcement, the Terms and Conditions for ticket buyers were changed to reflect an alteration in the structure of the business. Under the new terms it was made known that a new LLC was created, Decommodification LLC, which in the new non-profit business structure, owns all of the intellectual property associated with the Burning Man brand, including ownership over logos and trademarks, and will be responsible for enforcement thereof.^[33] The non-profit Burning Man Project licenses usage of all intellectual property associated with Burning Man from Decommodification LLC. After questions were raised by the community about this new LLC within the comment section on the original non-profit announcement Larry Harvey confirmed that he and the other founders were the sole owners of this new LLC.

Timeline of the event[

The statistics below illustrate the growth in attendance of the Burning Man event, from a few handfuls of people to more than 70,000 in 2015, as well as other facts and figures.^[34]Burning Man 2006 was covered extensively for television for the first time by subscription television channel Current TV which handed out cameras to participants and broadcast daily updates via satellite from the dry lake. "TV Free Burning Man" also provided TV viewers an hour-long live feed of The Burn and was shown without commercial sponsorship. TV Free returned in 2007 and 2008; the 2007 coverage was nominated for a news Emmy Award.^[35]

The height of the Burning Man itself has remained close to 40 feet (12 meters) tall between 1989-2013. During those years changes in the height and structure of the base account for the differing heights of the overall structures.^{[citation needed]} In 2014 the configuration and height of the Man itself changed, and Burners were presented with a taller, more robust figure. For 2016 and 2017 the Man itself returned to its 40-foot configuration.