burner culture
Burning Bookshelf: Books about
Burnign Man
Sep/30/08 | permalink
Reviews by moontroll
In less three weeks, the Man will burn. Over 45,000 revelers, seekers, artists and freaks will gather around an effigy on a remote, desolate, dry lake bed in a forgotten corner of Nevada to drum, dance with fire and lose their minds to the magic of the moment. The energy of Burning Man 2008 is growing in strength daily, and Burners the world over can feel the pull to the playa.
In 2007, I went to Burning Man with a large group of Bellinghamsters organized under the Boogie Collective umbrella. We built a 40-foot tall Boogie Pyramid, threw all-night dance parties and lived communally beneath a billowing green parachute for ten days. While it has long been obvious that I wouldn't be returning to participate in The Event in the Desert this year, I have to admit that with the arrival of August, Black Rock City's invisible, inevitable gravitational forces are agitating my soul. I have other projects I am dedicated to this year, but that doesn't negate my natural affinity for ritual and release, intentional gatherings, inward reorientation and creative pranksterism.
I might seek for a vicarious Burn instead, browsing the many different books about Burning Man published in recent years.
In less three weeks, the Man will burn. Over 45,000 revelers, seekers, artists and freaks will gather around an effigy on a remote, desolate, dry lake bed in a forgotten corner of Nevada to drum, dance with fire and lose their minds to the magic of the moment. The energy of Burning Man 2008 is growing in strength daily, and Burners the world over can feel the pull to the playa.
In 2007, I went to Burning Man with a large group of Bellinghamsters organized under the Boogie Collective umbrella. We built a 40-foot tall Boogie Pyramid, threw all-night dance parties and lived communally beneath a billowing green parachute for ten days. While it has long been obvious that I wouldn't be returning to participate in The Event in the Desert this year, I have to admit that with the arrival of August, Black Rock City's invisible, inevitable gravitational forces are agitating my soul. I have other projects I am dedicated to this year, but that doesn't negate my natural affinity for ritual and release, intentional gatherings, inward reorientation and creative pranksterism.
I might seek for a vicarious Burn instead, browsing the many different books about Burning Man published in recent years.
Jessica Bruder's "Burning Book: A
Visual History of Burning Man" (Simon Spotlight, 2007) is a
dizzying piece of artwork, a shuffle-play of favorite Burning Man
deliriums throughout the years, designed by the venerable collagist
Martin Vensezky. It features photo contributions from hundreds of
playa snapshooters and loads of playa ephemera, like reproductions
of tickets and maps from past Burns, stickers and buttons from
different theme camps and all the little trinkety stuff that are
gifted out and circulated throughout Black Rock City.
The trajectory of the book is shaped to represent the journey to and through Black Rock City, and thus early chapters include drives through Gerlach and the first burns in San Francisco before introducing you to playa legends like Thunderdome, Dr. Megavolt, Contessa and the Belgian Waffle. There are chapters on music, vehicles and costumes/identity before the reader is brought face to face with the Man and his many inflammations. The end of the ride lands softly with a retrospective of David Best's temples and closes with a look at the city's dissolution in the chapter "Leave No Trace."
Dale Pendell's "Inspired Madness: The Gifts of Burning Man" (Frog Ltd., 2006) is a loose interpretation of the tribal, post-pagan gathering told through short, abstract episodic vignettes and sketches, which could be hell to read if Pendell wasn't such a interesting storyteller wading up to his eyeballs in the spirit and joy of each moment.
"This is Burning Man" by Brian Dogherty (Benbella, 2004) is much less abstract and subjective, and less fun too. It seeks to tell the story of what BM is, where it came from and why it is what it is from a journalist's perspective, though Dogherty claims no impartiality: he has been burning for over a decade. Warning: knowing *too* much about the people pulling the levers behind the curtain can spoil the fun and dull the mystery. Mostly, Dogherty does a fine job of translating the untranslatable and he has a deeper grasp than most on what draws so many diverse people to the desert gathering year after year.
What happens when a bunch of academics go to the Burn, drop acid and start taking notes? You end up with the book "Afterburn: Reflections on a Burning Man" (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2005), offering essays like "Utopia, Social Sculpture and Burning Man" and "Fires of the Heart: Ritual, Pilgrimage and Transformation."
Finally, I love the exquisite collection of black & white photos presented in A. Leo Nash's "Burning Man: Art in the Desert" (Abrams, 2007.) Nash's is an unusual look at Burning Man – his colorless, arid photographs focus on the diversity of art that is brought to the party. His camera is trained on the sculptures, interactive installations, vehicles and structures that populate the empty playa on the outskirts of the city. Nash has a natural gift for composition and capturing detail, though it is unsettling to view these otherwordly, fantastical dreamworks frozen in time and outside of their original dusty context. Rich and mysterious.
If you are a Burner left behind this year, you might consider buying or borrowing something from this reading list to keep your soul in alignment in the dim days of the Default World.
The trajectory of the book is shaped to represent the journey to and through Black Rock City, and thus early chapters include drives through Gerlach and the first burns in San Francisco before introducing you to playa legends like Thunderdome, Dr. Megavolt, Contessa and the Belgian Waffle. There are chapters on music, vehicles and costumes/identity before the reader is brought face to face with the Man and his many inflammations. The end of the ride lands softly with a retrospective of David Best's temples and closes with a look at the city's dissolution in the chapter "Leave No Trace."
Dale Pendell's "Inspired Madness: The Gifts of Burning Man" (Frog Ltd., 2006) is a loose interpretation of the tribal, post-pagan gathering told through short, abstract episodic vignettes and sketches, which could be hell to read if Pendell wasn't such a interesting storyteller wading up to his eyeballs in the spirit and joy of each moment.
"This is Burning Man" by Brian Dogherty (Benbella, 2004) is much less abstract and subjective, and less fun too. It seeks to tell the story of what BM is, where it came from and why it is what it is from a journalist's perspective, though Dogherty claims no impartiality: he has been burning for over a decade. Warning: knowing *too* much about the people pulling the levers behind the curtain can spoil the fun and dull the mystery. Mostly, Dogherty does a fine job of translating the untranslatable and he has a deeper grasp than most on what draws so many diverse people to the desert gathering year after year.
What happens when a bunch of academics go to the Burn, drop acid and start taking notes? You end up with the book "Afterburn: Reflections on a Burning Man" (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2005), offering essays like "Utopia, Social Sculpture and Burning Man" and "Fires of the Heart: Ritual, Pilgrimage and Transformation."
Finally, I love the exquisite collection of black & white photos presented in A. Leo Nash's "Burning Man: Art in the Desert" (Abrams, 2007.) Nash's is an unusual look at Burning Man – his colorless, arid photographs focus on the diversity of art that is brought to the party. His camera is trained on the sculptures, interactive installations, vehicles and structures that populate the empty playa on the outskirts of the city. Nash has a natural gift for composition and capturing detail, though it is unsettling to view these otherwordly, fantastical dreamworks frozen in time and outside of their original dusty context. Rich and mysterious.
If you are a Burner left behind this year, you might consider buying or borrowing something from this reading list to keep your soul in alignment in the dim days of the Default World.
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How to enjoy the Burning Man
Experience from the Comfort of your Own Home
May/11/08 | permalink
Tear down your house. Put it in a
truck. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back
together. Invite everyone you meet to come over and party. When
they leave, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze,
and break things.
Pay an escort of your affectional
preference subset to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in
glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance close
naked, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the
night.
Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.
Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.
Lean back in a chair until that point where you're just about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.
Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 3 days. Hide all the toilet paper.
Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.
Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.
Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.
Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls". Blow it up.
Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire. Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.
Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year. Never look at it.
Have a 3 a.m. soul baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.
Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.
"Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes, a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.
Don't sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume.
Forget to pack it.
Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car is completely packed with stuff.
Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace"event.
Empty your car into a dumpster.
Read "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany. Read "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy. Cut off the bindings, throw all the pages up in the air and shuffle them back together.
Reread "The City After Dhalgren" by Samuel Murphy. Burn it. Read the ashes.
Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream. Realize you'll love the music for the rest of your life.
Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like it's the invasion of Normandy. Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp. Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it or can't find it.
Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner.
Bust your ass for a "community." See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.
Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house.
Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.
Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway. When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".
Search alleys untill you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't
want it.
Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.
Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.
Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali's more disturbing, but beautiful paintings.
Climb inside it.
Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.
Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.
Lean back in a chair until that point where you're just about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.
Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 3 days. Hide all the toilet paper.
Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.
Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.
Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.
Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls". Blow it up.
Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire. Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.
Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year. Never look at it.
Have a 3 a.m. soul baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.
Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don't go to a doctor.
"Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes, a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.
Don't sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.
Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume.
Forget to pack it.
Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car is completely packed with stuff.
Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace"event.
Empty your car into a dumpster.
Read "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany. Read "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy. Cut off the bindings, throw all the pages up in the air and shuffle them back together.
Reread "The City After Dhalgren" by Samuel Murphy. Burn it. Read the ashes.
Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream. Realize you'll love the music for the rest of your life.
Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like it's the invasion of Normandy. Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp. Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it or can't find it.
Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner.
Bust your ass for a "community." See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.
Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house.
Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.
Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway. When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".
Search alleys untill you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't
want it.
Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.
Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.
Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali's more disturbing, but beautiful paintings.
Climb inside it.
"Burning Book"
Aug/13/07 | permalink
Photo by
Fabian Mohr
Found this new book "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man"
browsing around Amazon and called up my local independent book
store to special order one -- excellent find! The book itself is a
piece of artwork, a shuffle-play of favorite Burning Man deliriums
and memories throughout the years, designed by the venerable
collagist and font master Martin Vensezky. It features photo
contributions from hundreds of playa snapshooters and loads of
playa ephemera, like reproductions of tickets and maps from past
Burns, stickers and buttons from different theme camps, postcards,
covers of past issues of Piss Clear and all the little trinkety
stuff that are gifted out to strangers and circulate throughout the
city.
Photo by
Stewart Harvey
The trajectory of the book is shaped to represent the journey to
and through Black Rock City, and thus early chapters include drives
through Reno and Gerlach and the first burns in San Francisco
before introducing you to Burning Man playa legends like
Thunderdome, Dr. Megavolt, the Contessa, Helco and the Belgian
Waffle. There are chapters on music, vehicles and costumes/identity
before the reader is brought face to face with the Man and his many
inflammations. The end of the ride lands softly with a
retrospective of David Best's temples (and temple burns) and winds
it all up with a look at the city's dissolution in the chapter
"Leave No Trace." It is all very well-choreographed by Jessican
Bruder, who has a day job as a reporter for The Oregonian in
Portland. The whole thing reads like a high school yearbook --
albeit this is a very, very weird high school.
Photo by
NK Guy
Very nice work
all the way around; a bejeweled treasure to behold. One can almost
taste the dust. After the Green Man, you might need to pick
yourself up a copy to keep your soul in alignment in the dark days
of the Default World.
Jessica's website is right here.
www.preparefortheplaya.com
May/28/07 | permalink
Hi Three Broke
Dudes:
I came upon your website through itunes... good luck on your journey to the man!
I came upon your website through itunes... good luck on your journey to the man!
I wanted to let
you know of an event that I am producing in SF next weekend and
over the summer called Prepare for the Playa. It is a series of
events connecting people to everything they need for the playa and
Burn -07! It is brought to you by all burner indie businesses! We
have come together in a co-op marketing vein to give people an
alternative to shopping their local Wal-Mart. Our motto - Buy Local
for BM... Buy Burner!
We are going to have performing artists, live music, the bar will be open and of course the most outrageous fashions, faux fur galore, domes, lights, playa furniture, and tons more! There is also going to be how to clinic covering such topics as grey water, nutrician on the playa and a first timers interactive guide. I would love to see you guys come out and hang with us or even participate in some way! Heck, if you could post something on your blog that would be awesome and very much appreciated!
More details on our website: http://www.preparefortheplaya.com
June 10th, July 22nd and August 12th
Thanks so much for your consideration!
See you on the playa or sooner!
Nikki
preparefortheplaya@gmail.com
We are going to have performing artists, live music, the bar will be open and of course the most outrageous fashions, faux fur galore, domes, lights, playa furniture, and tons more! There is also going to be how to clinic covering such topics as grey water, nutrician on the playa and a first timers interactive guide. I would love to see you guys come out and hang with us or even participate in some way! Heck, if you could post something on your blog that would be awesome and very much appreciated!
More details on our website: http://www.preparefortheplaya.com
June 10th, July 22nd and August 12th
Thanks so much for your consideration!
See you on the playa or sooner!
Nikki
preparefortheplaya@gmail.com
Burning Cartography
May/27/07 | permalink
Here's an amazing hand-drawn map of Black Rock City 2005 by Lisa Hoffman.
and here's a map of Black Rock City 2006: Hope and Fear done in "Acid Deco" style.
I found both via the website info gargoyle. The guy who wrote the posts is very serious about his cartography -- it is the gift that he brings to the community: "This year, I'm seeing more and more people come together with their interest in cartography than ever before. The sponsored mapping group, PlayaInfo is also expanding their geographic reach by supporting a GPSDrive friendsd server so that participants with art cars can broadcast their location to the main map. Seems like a perfect fit for cyborgs and technomads alike!"
He's got an interesting slideshow too right over here.
Green Man icon
May/18/07 | permalink
Found this
unofficial icon on Flickr in the Green Man 2007 pool
Found this
unofficial icon on Flickr in the Green Man 2007 pool