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Utopian Dreams (Gallery 102)
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
– Pablo Picasso
In 1986, when co-founder Larry Harvey enlisted his friend Jerry James to help build and burn an effigy of a man on San Francisco's Baker Beach to mark the summer solstice, no one attending that first Burning Man could have predicted the journey that would follow. From the first, the act of burning the Man had a distinct anti-establishment flair, intensified by association with anarchist groups like the Cacophony Society that would eventually lure the event to the Nevada desert. Despite --- or perhaps because of --- these mischievous beginnings, utopian thinking has always permeated Burning Man.
Of course, counterculture tendencies seed all utopian dreams. In the nineteenth century, utopian communities sprang up as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement --- a response to the mechanistic forces of the Industrial Revolution. These groups chose to focus on hand-making -- asserting values predicated on humanism rather than capitalist efficiency; their ideals resonate today in Burning Man's Ten Principles, the guiding philosophies to which Burners adhere: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-reliance, Radical Self-expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation, and Immediacy. It's worth noting several of these are direct outgrowths from the ethos of the Cacophony Society, and also shared by the maker community, an obvious cousin to the Arts and Crafts communities of yesteryear.
In the new industrial revolution, Burning Man counteracts the anxiety caused by the fast-paced American consumer lifestyle and combats the loneliness of the digital age and passivity of "convenience culture." When the average person is alienated from production, the simple act of making becomes a symbol of empowerment and survival, and the act of letting go expresses a defiance of materialism.
The desert underscores this proposition by confronting participants with basic survival concerns -- the opposite of "first world problems" -- despite the inherent incongruity that most participants spend months planning and thousands of dollars to attend. In fact, it's the stark disparity between these worlds that gives Burning Man its transformative power. While the environment is rife with irreverence and contradiction, it radiates a heavy idealism and questioning of the status quo; it is a remedy for cynical times.
More than an escape from the "default world," then, Burning Man offers an invaluable lens through which to view it. Through the experience, participants gain an enlightening glimpse of the imperfect system in which they play a part, recognizing that every choice is a tradeoff: that not all value is monetary, that comfort often comes at the expense of freedom, and that they plan an active role in building the society they want to live in. |