As the inaugural Australian Burning Man Festival looms, LF2020 reflect on the innovative nature of the Burning Man project. Maybe we can learn something from another festival that has been co-creating the future for more than 20 years. But with, you know, less party drugs, obviously.
So we’ve all heard of Burning Man Festival. For me at least, it immediately rouses images of scantily clad hippies partying nude in the Black Rock Desert. But what is the meaning of all of this? Like our own festival, Burning Man is in essence an exercise in progressive co-creation. They say ‘damn the man’ (and burn him to the ground).
Despite what it may have become, or at least the reputation it has garnered, the annual Nevada festival is based on some seriously progressive festival principles. First and foremost, it is an exercise in self-reliance. There is no formal festival infrastructure, no set-in-stone line-up and no money. Instead, participants must bring to the site everything that they’ll need for the festival’s duration and goods and services, instead of notes and coins, are used as currency. It is a festival devoid of corporatisation and capitalism and it has been evolving for two decades.
Yes, the word ‘utopic’ (and consequently ‘dystopic’), springs to mind, but many who attend rave (in more ways than one) at the brilliance of such successful mass self-sustainability. “It’s what you make of it,” said Carl Cox after his first trip to Burning Man. “If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere. It’s about community and it’s about sharing.”
Of course, at the end of the festival, the sacrificial sculpture is set alight and the participants pack their caravans and leave. The co-creative process ceases.
At Live Futures 2020 we can only hope that our festival will be more practically long-lived than that of the great wicker man that must eventually burn to the ground.
Burning Man NSW is on the June long-weekend at a secret location. For more information visit www.burningmanaustralia.com.
