Burning Man. Part 4. The burn.
A city where a lot is going on
The layout
Black Rock City is organised as a collection of concentrated circles as streets (e.g. from Esplanade street inside to Kelter street outside), along with radial streets (from 2:00 to 10:00). There are various camps along those streets (like ours, we were at 10:00 Hypnotic). In the middle there is an installation called the Man. As well there is a Temple (on the picture below at the top-right), which is the place for people to commemorate those who passed away. At different locations on playa there are fixed art installations, and moving art cars, usually playing music and carrying passengers, and sometimes even serving drinks. Along the perimeter of the territory there are fences blocking the trash from flying away from the territory of Black Rock city.
Observations
The first few days I tried to describe what Burning Man is. Is it a festival? Is it a party? In the end I describe it as a temporary highly concentrated city, where at every corner people offer something for the benefit of its residents. People at this city are not average citizens as well - I found people at Burning Man, way more open, outgoing, and chatty.
It is hard to impossible to visit everything. During the week I spent at Burning Man, I think I managed to visit less than 50 camps. I passed by may be 250. There are about 1500 camps at Burning Man.
While a lot of camps focus on music and serving drinks, I also have seen: a barbershop, a place offering to view planets via a telescope, BDSM dungeon, orgy dome, head massage place, an air-conditioned tent to sleep, standup comedy camp, acrobatics camp, a place called Trashistan serving pickled eggs (I really enjoyed), sky diving camp, and many more.
I observed less nudity, and expressions of intimacy than I expected (e.g. I expected something similar to a sex-positive club, and we got something more than Amsterdam during Pride week).
Some art installations were very beautiful, some were very big, some were emotionally deep. The one which left many people emotional was the installation “I am fine :)“ made from road signs from Ukraine with bullet wholes. In addition they had a siren synchronised with sirens in Kiev.
At Burning Man it is mostly a party everywhere. One place where the vibe is very different is the Temple. When I entered this magnificent temple, where people commemorate those who died, by putting photographs, writing notes, or sharing stories, it feels very contrasting to the celebratory and joyful feeling outside of the temple, which gave it an extra level of depth.
Highlights
Most of my highlights are experiences, and they are hard to explain without feeling them.
Rubic’s cube. There was an art car in a form of a Rubic’s cube, with every tile glowing with different colours. We talked to the couple who built it, and the lady showed us a small rubric’s cube key-chain, and by pressing a button on it - the corresponding side of the big cube car opened up. I loved it.
Paper propeller ninja. While we were standing next to a very big art car “the EYE” (not sure it is the official name), there was a guy dancing with pieces of paper which were rotating as propellers while he was moving his hands touching that paper just by the tip of his finger. We could not understand what was happening, but later he showed us how to fold a regular piece of paper (e.g. a cigaret paper), and how one needs to hold it so that while moving through air it will rotate. We all agreed that that 0.01$ paper was more mind-blowing than multi-million dollar art cars travelling around.
Trading wet napkins for water. While going through an all-nighter in a group of six we were running low on water and we were looking where to get more. We went to a random camp where people were sleeping, and there was a lady walking with a jar of water. We asked what this woman is doing there, she said she was looking for some toilet paper or wet napkins. We asked if we could exchange some wet napkins for some water. She agreed. That was the first time in my life to trade napkins for water.
The Aftertaste
Burning man happened to be very different from what I expected. Somewhere it underdelivered, somewhere it overdelivered. Though it was very very special. I can’t easily name anything that can fall to the same category as Burning Man. Next time I will go to Burning Man and focus on the areas where it overdelivers.