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FAR
FROM THE GLEAMING, architecturally-stunning edifice that
is the Nevada Museum of Art, and even further from the tree-lined
galleries and museums of Reno, Carson, Truckee and Tahoe, is an
art scene unlike any other in the world. It’s Burning Man,
a musical and artistic counter-culture statement that takes place
in the stark, hauntingly beautiful moonscape of the Black Rock Desert,
a vast dry lakebed some 100 miles north of Reno.
Most of the year, rock hounds, seekers of solitude,
and archaeologists in search of mammoth remnants have the Black
Rock Desert to themselves. But in late August, that solitude is
shattered as 30,000 people from all continents and every state in
the nation converge on this blank palette of blue skies and baked
playa. While headlines and news clips tout the bizarre, the freakish
and the infrequent episode of debauchery at this colorful event,
art remains at the core of Burning Man.
The heart of the festival is embedded in art, as it
has been since 1986 when founder Larry Harvey and a small contingency
of friends and curiosity-seekers assembled on a beach in northern
California, gathered scraps of wood, built a man, doused it with
gas and promptly torched it. As the first “Man” burned,
Harvey saw in the faces of those around him a deep desire to celebrate
self-expression, art and community. As Harvey explained, “We’ve
reclaimed the social function of art and that’s a very powerful
attractant.”
ARTISTIC FREEDOM and
individual interpretations pervade this “city” whose
existence is little more than a week or two every year. Within the
“city,” walking, biking, scooters and skates are the
main forms of transportation. What few forms of mechanized transit
allowed here exist solely because they confine to Burning Man’s
commitment to art. Buses are welded together and adorned with all
forms of art to create serpentine means of mass transit. Small VW
bugs are converted into insects, fish, spaceships, whatever befits
the theme for that year’s event. It’s moving art, figuratively
and literally.
Central to the whole event – surrounded by a
semi-circle mass of tents, yurts, stages, dance floors and humanity
– is an open playa which in itself is the gallery for forms
of art produced by artists ranging from amateur painters to internationally-acclaimed
sculptors, photographers, woodworkers and the like. In all endeavors,
the artists strive to create works that go beyond entertaining or
thought provoking. They seek to create works that are truly interactive.
Of the several dozen works of art on the playa, none
are more conspicuous than “the man” himself. Each year,
a group of artists and volunteers designs and constructs this monument
which will become center stage for the event. On the final Saturday
night of the event, the great majority of “burners”
migrate to the foot of “the man.” Fire dancers flit
about, minstrels of all definitions of music rove about and a powerful
energy sweeps the crowd. Then silence, followed by fireworks, followed
by a bonfire of monolithic proportion that eventually consumes “the
man.” It’s all designed as a cathartic release for those
who choose to experience an art show that exceeds one’s wildest
imaginations.
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