Burning Man 2003
We decided to go to Burning Man again this year, after a six-year absence. Our friends had a nice camp set up in a great location, and we stayed with them.
Burning Man is an annual festival which takes place the week leading up to Labor Day. A temporary city of 30,000 is built on a large completely flat dry lake bed ("the playa") in the Black Rock desert north of Reno. Participants bring all the food, water, and camping gear they'll need for the entire week -- Burning Man provides portable toilets, and ice and coffee drinks are sold. Beyond that Burning Man is a commerce-free zone -- it promotes a "gift economy" in which all the participants contribute to the playa in some way, by creating art or providing some kind of service.
People arrive all week, the Man burns on Saturday night, camps are struck on Sunday, and people generally leave on Monday, restoring the playa to its original state ("leave no trace").
Hack.Playa
Our camp centered around bitnet.cx, an online community of our friends. It was located on the Esplanade, Black Rock City's "main drag", in Sanctuary Village. We had a Rubik's Cube up at the front, and we provided the Igloo Lounge, a "chill space" made out of a white tarp, with snowflakes, cool drinks (sake mojitos and cucumber coolers) and chill music. It was quite popular, filling up each evening with friends and Burners who wandered in to check it out. More pictures...
Black Rock City
Black Rock City, population 30,000, forms 240 degrees of a circle. The Man is at the center of the circle. The street forming the inner edge of the city was the Esplanade, where our camp was located. In keeping with this year's theme "Beyond Belief", other circumferential streets were philosophical concepts like Authority, Creed, Dogma, Faith and Vision. The radial streets were modifiers like Profane, Ridiculous, Certain, and Dubious, but were often referred to by their place on the circle ranging from 2:00 to 10:00. One might be staying at a corner like Absurd Faith...
Inside the circle, and north of the city, was open playa containing many art installations, large and small. People moved around the streets and the open playa 24 hours a day on foot, on bikes, and in art cars. One guy even had a Segway. More pictures...
Art on the Playa
In addition to countless pieces of art in people's camps, there were many art installations on the playa. The largest ones were the Temple of Honor, shown later; Johnny on the Spot, an homage to Marcel Duchamp's urinal art; the Chandelier; the House of Cards; and the Temple of Gravity. There were scores of smaller ones all over the place, added every day. More pictures...
Art Cars
Burning Man contains probably the largest collection of art cars in any one place. They range in size from bicycles to golf carts to cars to buses with trailers. More pictures...
The Man
More pictures...
The Temple of Honor
For the last few years, San Francisco artist David Best has constructed large installations at Burning Man. This year was a papier-mache temple. People wrote messages to loved ones or the departed all over it. It was burned on Sunday night. More pictures...
