Burning Man counterculture seeks social, political influence

DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer Monday, September 1, 2003


(09-01) 14:07 PDT BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. (AP) –

Burning Man, the wild counterculture festival held annually in one
of the nation's most remote areas, is coming to cities across
America.

It's time to try to influence the very culture against which this
year's record 30,500 Burning Man participants rebelled, the
phenomenon's founder and resident visionary said in an interview.

Ultimately, executive director Larry Harvey sees the festival's
values of libertarian freedom, radical artistic and
self-expression, and anti-consumerism becoming a social movement
that will influence American politics.

"We came out here to do an otherworldly thing. We came out here to
do a vision – to do the most impractical thing imaginable,"
Harvey, 55, said as a choking dust storm whipped through the
elaborate desert city that participants built and destroyed in a
week.

"But now, in this newest phase of the development, we're going back
to the world," he said. "I don't want to be a subculture – I want
to enter the mainstream culture, but on our terms."

The effort to spread Burning Man already has begun.

About 100 regional representatives met last week at what
participants call Black Rock City, or the Republic of Burning Man.

Two full-time employees of Black Rock City LLC are helping develop
regional spinoffs beyond those already growing in places like New
York, Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Austin, Tex., – and making
sure they adhere to the philosophy of the original.

Internet sites and organizational tools help regional offshoots
communicate and avoid some of the mistakes the original Burning Man
made growing up.

Black Rock Arts Foundation, meanwhile, has been set up to raise
money and to bring radical art to communities nationwide.
Organizers also just distributed what they call a "Burning Man film
festival in a box," a do-it-yourself kit that they expect will
promote avant-garde cinematography.

"Many people will have the Burning Man experience and feel a part
of Burning Man without ever coming here," said Harvey, serially
smoking cigarettes and sipping iced coffee as his aviator
sunglasses turned opaque in the swirling dust. "We are growing at
an exponential rate – just not here."

What evolved into Burning Man started when eight people torched an
eight-foot wooden figure on a San Francisco beach in 1986. The
crowd for what became an annual event soon grew to 800.

Eighty people showed up when the event moved to the remote desert
120 miles north of Reno in 1990. It grew to 8,000 by 1996, and has
nearly quadrupled since. Harvey calls those phases one and two.

Phase Three is creating regional festivals and bringing
cutting-edge art into communities nationwide.

Phase Four is turning those people into an Internet-connected
network for social and ultimately political change, in Harvey's
vision.

"I think increasingly the political parties don't matter," he said
Saturday as participants prepared the climactic torching of what
has now become a 40-foot neon-lit Burning Man affixed atop an
elaborate 40-foot Aztec-style wood and canvas pyramid.

"I think leaders will rise up in these (Burning Man) groups and a
new kind of value-based politics – drawing renewal from rituals –
will emerge. Then you have a rebirth of democracy, but a different
kind of democracy."

Burning Man participants got their most overtly politicized event
this year, when Bill Talen of New York City assumed his persona as
the Rev. Billy and led his Church of Stop Shopping in nightly shows
of satirical songs and sermons denouncing consumerism, the nation's
energy policy, and Bush administration priorities generally.

Burning Man is a marketer's dream, attracting a preponderance of
highly educated, relatively affluent participants in their 30s and
40s, followed in order by those in their 20s and then their 60s,
Harvey said.

"If we let them, there'd be Burning Man vodka and Burning Man
everything," Harvey said.

Burning Man is rabidly anti-commercial, however. Though organizers
have taken lessons from how corporations operate, corporate logos
are banned at Burning Man. Participants are encouraged even to mask
the logos on rental trucks or RVs, and Black Rock City LLC's legal
arm aggressively targets any attempt to commercialize or capitalize
on the event.

"We're the other choice in a consumer world," Harvey said, as
extravagantly or barely costumed Burning Man participants donned
goggles and pulled up bandanas and face masks against the
talcom-fine dust that at times cut visibility to a matter of a few
yards. The wind shook the two-story wooden deck on which Harvey
sat, and threatened to sail his trademark felt Stetson off into the
surrounding desert.

"They're marketing fake authenticity," he said. "We're the real
thing. Why else would people come out to this godforsaken place?
People think the ultimate thing people want is comfort and
convenience. We've proved that's not the case."

Though Harvey inspires near reverential devotion from a cadre of
aides and hangers-on, most Burning Man participants have never met
him. But many said they also see a grass roots backlash against
rampant commercialism.

"This is the influence that needs to go into those Third World
cities, not Coca-Cola and Pepsi," said Angela Layton of Beaver
Creek, Ore.

"For sure it's going to evolve, and it's going to evolve in
society. Burning Man is a reflection of society," said Labro
Zabelis, a psychology graduate student from Union, N.J.

Harvey readily acknowledges his vision sounds grandiose.

"But I know what we can accomplish," he said, overlooking the
fleeting, illusionary city that sprang up from five square miles of
desert. "In the fullness of time, maybe this will disappear –
because it will have served its purpose. The children will have
left the nursery."

www.burningman.com