Burning Man festival takes on greenish glow
The annual desert celebration strives to be more friendly to the world around it.
By Andrew Stelzer, Special to the Times
Published August 19, 2007
IF YOU GO
Burning Man
Intrigued by the annual event in Black Rock City, about 90 miles north of Reno in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada?
You're a little late to this year's party, slated for Aug. 27 to Sept. 3. Tickets have been on sale for months, and only $280 tickets remain. They are available online at www.burningman.com, which also features more information on getting there, as well as community forums and photo galleries.
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Although it's difficult to hear above the roar of flame throwers, 24-hour nightclubs, power generators and assorted portable discos rolling across the desert, the question inevitably comes up.
"Isn't that stuff they're burning toxic?"
This year, Burning Man, an art festival-party-happening that begins Aug. 27, is trying to silence, or at least address, that criticism.
Last August, as they have in increasing numbers every year since 1990, nearly 40,000 people traveled to Nevada's Black Rock Desert to celebrate creativity and the human spirit.
The event, 90 miles north of Reno, has drawn worldwide recognition but still manages to keep its counterculture credentials. Participants spend a week building a temporary city where money isn't allowed (except to buy ice and coffee) and the community strives to govern itself.
But when participants burn it all down (starting with the giant man at the city's center), many of the environmentally conscious in the crowd either seem to forget their values, or find their warnings drifting off into the desert night.
Environmental questions have become common conversation fodder for the "Burner" community on the Internet.
Despite a well-established record of cleaning up the desert (volunteers stay for months picking feathers, sequins and carpet fibers out of the sand), there have been problems with the use of unsustainable building materials and pollution from fuels for the giant art cars and fire-spewing machines that are festival mainstays.
In 2006, the Burning Man organization, which sets up the event, adopted an environmental mission statement, encouraging the use of renewable energy, nonfossil fuels, recycled materials and composted organic materials.
Less than a week after last year's event, the 2007 theme was announced: "The Green Man." The idea is to challenge festival participants to be more conscious and to work together to show that Burning Man can be a model society, one in which people act ethically by choice.
Some improvements this year include ramping up existing programs. There is an emphasis on carpooling, and a new partnership with supermarkets in Reno will keep recycling stations open on Sept. 3, Labor Day. On that day, thousands of Burners will drive home with a week's worth of trash that might otherwise end up on the side of the road.
Some of the artwork at this year's event also will have a green tint. Burning Man awards more than $400,000 in grants to artists around the world so they can bring their fantasy art creations to the Black Rock desert. Many of the projects that received funding this year feature the Green Man theme, including a dragon smelter that turns aluminum cans into art, a steam-powered tree house and carousel, and a collection of nine fire-spewing, 30-foot human figures in poses of prayer in front of an enormous oil rig.
But it couldn't be Burning Man without a philosophical controversy about whether the event has "sold out" to corporate America. In what could be seen as a violation of the ban on commercial enterprise, Burning Man organizers invited corporations to display new clean energy technologies at the center of Black Rock City. To stay true to the ethics code, companies cannot display logos or have any identifying labels or titles on their inventions. In fact, the inventions must be handed over to festival organizers at the gate, and they are then displayed in whatever fashion a group of artists determines.
After all, big names don't matter at Burning Man; big ideas do.
Freelance journalist Andrew Stelzer is currently in the Middle East. His work can be found at www.andrewstelzer.com.
. IF YOU GO
Burning Man
Intrigued by the annual event in Black Rock City, about 90 miles north of Reno in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada?
You're a little late to this year's party, slated for Aug. 27 to Sept. 3. Tickets have been on sale for months, and only $280 tickets remain. They are available online at www.burningman.com, which also features more information on getting there, as well as community forums and photo galleries.