Burning Man Temple flooding – Photo via IG, follow @ml_docphotography.
Sustainability, Art, Architecture – A quite different Burning Man this year. Like every ending summer, the iconic festival rose from the sands of the Nevada Desert and gave life to Black Rock City, a temporary camp-like town of 80,000 partying souls who, for a week, dance and celebrate creativity, spirituality, and music. Until more than a torrential rain caused flooding and foot-deep mud, leaving tens of thousands of ‘burners’ stranded at the festival or in the desert for days.
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A stunning rainbow arched through the sky over Black Rock City – Photo via IG, follow @2023temple.
Sudden heavy summer rains and unexpected colder weather are extremely rare in North American deserts, but they were ubiquitous this year – A clear symptom of Climate Change. How leisure and creative events can be reimagined and improved while granting safety? In the past years, many criticised Burning Man for being an elitarian and frivolous festival – tickets only cost over 5,000 $. A dystopian Pinocchio-style Toyland imposing pop-up urbanisation on inhabitable wilderness at the expense of the environment?
CHALLENGING NATURE IN THE NAME OF CREATIVITY? Black Rock City is a supposedly well-functioning ephemeral city with no permanent urban infrastructure, also due to the extreme nature of the desert. Every year, it takes over the sands of Nevada to shine, inspire, thrive and disappear again in the name of freedom of expression and creativity. What if the money spent for the festival was spent on healing the planet? Wonder the harshest critics.
A rainbow springing from The Temple of the Heart at Burning Man Temple 2023 after the storm – Photo via IG, follow @jamenpercy.burn.
BREAKING A LANCE… In the past years, organisers have been improving a sustainable-driven approach, starting from the Leaving No Trace principle and policy. “Leaving No Trace is not just about The Playa,” the open space at the core of Black Rock City. “It’s our ethic about the whole planet. Festivalgoers – a.k.a. Burners – are environmentalists. It’s just our nature.” Explain organisers.
‘Burning Mud’ – Photo via IG, follow @redlandsusa.
To achieve such a principle, Burning Man brought forward regulations, sustainability-driven awareness campaigns and responsible waste management. The Playa Restoration program and crew overlook and take care of the festival’s environmental impact. But this year Nature proved to be tougher because climate change is a real issue.
The Man burns at Burning Man 2023 – Photo via IG, follow @djparted.
At Burning Man, many art and architectural installations pushed forward powerful environmental messages or were designed with sustainability in mind. This year, the actual Burning Man, a gigantic statue at the core of the festival, and its surrounding honeycomb-inspired shrine were traditionally burnt to ashes at the end of the festival. Given their fate, the structures were entirely built with repurposed and recycled materials. Other wooden installations were made from already dead trees, sometimes cut down to prevent the spreading of plant epidemics. Many other projects have been dismantled and repurposed elsewhere after the festival.
The Burden of the Beast installation by Walker Babington at Burning Man 2023 – Photo via IG, follow @ardisbow.
This year, Jared Ficklin & The Other Singularity created the Solar Library featuring solar panels providing energy to allow its surrounding installations to glow through the night. The Burden of the Beast installation by Walker Babington from New Orleans was probably one of the most symbolic projects. Made from reclaimed materials, it consisted of a buffalo carrying a house, “a reminder of climate change displacing people from their homes,” explained its maker.
Atabey installation by NiNo Alicea at Burning Man 2023 – Photo via IG by Nino Alcea.
Animalia, Burning Man 2023’s central art theme, celebrates the animal world and our place in it. Not only the mythological creatures imagined by humans like unicorns or psychedelic butterflies but also the thriving desert fauna – ravens, insects and even shrimps – as well as endangered species such as the giant Axolotl sculptures by Gio Mantis & Elana Novali. Axolotl is a Mexican salamander able to regenerate its heart and purify its environment that would already be extinct unless scientists kept it alive in laboratories.
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Brilliant projects indeed! Still, as soon as the mud dried and organisers allowed burners to leave Black Rock City, thousands of cars created a surreal mile-long queue that clearly captures our actual impact on the environment. It’s fair to have fun, but are we ready and committed to making a change for good?
Burning Man 2023 taught us that the balance between creativity and sustainability must be rebalanced.
