Thirty years ago, Burning Man was a festival associated with “radical self-expression” that took place in the shadow of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and ended with the ritualistic symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy-as-man. In 2016, Burning Man is a destination on Instagram near Reno, Nevada where from August 28-September 5, the likes of Paris Hilton and 70,000 of her friends partied on-board a jet-plane as art installation, Jack U played Billboard pop hits, and yes, they still burned a wooden man. Somewhere in the middle of this insanity there’s a lesson about what happens when underground things become mainstream fads because everyone loves a good, cool party that it seems like nobody else is attending.
Burning Man has existed for 30 years, but it was ultimately the festival’s close alignment with mid-2000s leading indie-to-pop cultural staples of electronic music and festivals as communal experiences that arguably put it over-the-top. Over the past weekend, Burning Man’s attendance reached a 40% surge in the past five years. That’s roughly 70,000% growth in the festival’s 30-year history, so it’s probably as good of a time as any to sit down and consider how movements develop and when it’s time to start doing something new.
Getting angry about Burning Man “not being for the scene” anymore is arguably fruitless. From disco to old-school rap, scenes evolve over time, as people, places and economics “conspire” to open culture up to society-at-large. These evolutions welcome in people who bring their unique human backgrounds into what are ideally supposed to be “shared cultural spaces.” Whenever “sharing” occurs, there’s a balance that must be achieved. Of course, when that balance is between wealth and “free-thinking,” the idea that wealth allows for free-thinking to include so much of what we saw at Burning Man 2016, stories like that of a “fancy camp” founded by the son of a Russian billionaire being ransacked make sense.
There’s been recent discussion of moving the Burning Man Festival out of the Nevada desert because of festival taxes being levied by the state of Nevada. If Burning Man were still all about free-thinking hippies on a beach, that’d be a problem. However, confusing what Burning Man originally was with what it is right now is like comparing a McDonald’s Big Mac to a steak dinner at The Palm. In Burning Man 2016 being far more of the latter and less of the former, the idea of taxing the wealth-positive festival makes sense.
Here’s an intriguing solution. Maybe it’s time for the OG burners to head, as VICE suggested in 2015, to Utah. In June 2016, Burning Man’s organizers purchased the 3,800 square foot Fly Ranch in Washoe County, Nevada in order to build year-round Burning Man-style infrastructure. While for some this may seem like an ideal solution for those looking to get away from the growing crowd in Black Rock City, heading to Utah instead could be a winning plan.
In the 2015 Vice piece, Burning Man’s CEO Marian Goodell notes that the Nevada taxes has made the festival’s organizers “ look longingly towards Utah or any other state that might not have levied that.” However, when Goodell also notes, “[w]e have watched the change in the type of people that come to Burning Man, and we’re not gonna get in front of certain things and force issues. We are gonna nurture the process so we all get the best results. Burning Man is an experiment in temporary community, and we’re the stewards of that process,” is it also a nod to potentially taking things elsewhere? When she continues to note that at 2015’s festival may be the most important sign that times have changed and that the festival’s culture may need to evolve:
“I was one of the people who was awakened at 3 in the morning by the sound of thumping music. My trailer was vibrating! Several of us came out, shocked, and couldn’t understand, even though I’ve been doing this for 19 years. We got in the cart and went out and it was an tart car facing its speakers towards the camp. It was past the man and it woke me!”
Again, in 2016, Burning Man was a destination on Instagram near Reno, Nevada where from August 28-September 5, the likes of Paris Hilton and 70,000 of her friends partied on-board a jet-plane as art installation, and ultimately, given how change occurs and things evolve, that’s okay. In looking to discover how to preserve a Burning Man that’s more about good music, good vibes and hanging out on a beach as a wooden man burns, maybe it’s time to think about Utah, and that’s okay, too.
The post On Burning Man 2016 And The Evolution Of Festival Culture appeared first on DC Clubbing.
