Every year at the end of August (in 2007 - from August 27 to September 3) in the spacious sands of the Black Rock Desert (Nevada, USA), a city-festival of creators called "Burning Man" appears.
The tradition of holding the festival originated in 1986 in the bohemian atmosphere of the underground, when actors and spectators of a street show from San Francisco burned a wooden giant on the beach. Since then, the wooden giant has grown from year to year, and the participants in the action came up with new pranks and objects for burning, scenarios and traditions.
The world of 24-hour performances, installations and nomadic galleries attracts tens of thousands of representatives of various arts, from ordinary artists and musicians to avant-garde designers, sculptors and experimental architects. The festival is turning into Nevada's premier creative attraction, a place where you can independently experience art, freedom and individualism.
According to the participants, this festival attracts people who do not sit in one place and who are bored of being like everyone else. They need complete freedom and maximum self-expression, and in what form - everyone chooses for himself. The culmination of this event is the burning of a large wooden human sculpture on the sixth day.
In the land of the "Burning Man" there are no enslaving laws of society, except for the norms that protect the health of fellow citizens. Any commercial activity is prohibited on the territory of the festival, everyone who comes here must have everything necessary for survival and self-expression: food, drink, alcohol, drugs, etc. But hardly anyone uses the illicit substances they bring, because the main drug on Burning Man is the mind-expanding experience.
10 principles of "Burning Man"
1) Anyone can become a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect strangers. There are no prerequisites or prerequisites for joining the burning man community. The ticket price is the same for everyone - unknown creators, journalists or recognized artists in the world. Free admission for children under 12.
2) "Burning Man" is based on the exchange of peculiar gifts. The price of the gift does not matter. The main thing is the exchange itself. We exchange art, energy and experience, regardless of their apparent value. Giving someone a gift, we encourage reciprocity, but we do not demand it or insist on receiving something of equal value in return.
3) Relying on free exchange, we are opposed to the subordination of our relationship to commerce and advertising. We are ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We offer the replacement of consumerism with the free experience of complicity. Trade is prohibited on the territory of the "Burning Man".
4) "Burning Man" exists so that the individuality of each is revealed only in its own unique way, therefore we do not impose our technologies, methods, genres, ideas and content on anyone. A unique gift to the community is a unique art that comes from each individual, working alone or in a group.
5) Everyone is free to create the art they want, using their materials and means.
6) The creator must respect the rights and freedoms of the people around him.
7) The principles of "Burning Man" are based on creative participation and association in free alliances. We create, promote and defend social media, community spaces, art work, and communication technologies and methods by which this creative participation is achieved and free alliances are formed.
8) Our society is a civil society. Proponents of performances, appearances, performances and galleries must be responsible for ensuring that people feel good and safe at their events, and that they do not violate local, state or federal laws.
9) Leaving the desert, we must eliminate any physical traces of our stay here, take our creations and worlds with us. We must leave the desert even more clean than before we arrived here.
10) The existence of "Burning Man" is justified only if the people who came here get a unique experience of living in an experimental community of equal, free and creative individuals, overcome the internal barriers between a person and his true essence.
The movement's organizers, led by founder Larry Harvey, want to create the largest and most compelling model of social organization based on close interaction between people. A model that could become one of the possible options for the development of civilization. In this society, people are connected exclusively by creative energy. Art is becoming the primary language of communication for the inhabitants of Burning Man.
They constantly interact, participate. This is a natural world that lives outside of traditional society. There are no favorites and no hierarchy. The Burning Man culture manifests its own values: experience before theory; spiritual relations before politics; survival before service; roles before professions; incarnate ritual before symbolism; active complicity before sponsorship. The creators are obsessed with the desire to create an environment in which everyone feels like an integral part of a certain community.
This is already a whole movement, a social phenomenon. The action taking place transfers a person to another reality, which inevitably has a deep subconscious influence on him. Having visited the festival, people no longer want to return to the wretched everyday life.
Based on materials from the Landfill of Art.