Decentralize the Burn 2020: Reimagining the Great Cancellation
Once a year, nearly one hundred thousand people build a civilization in the middle of the desert called Burning Man. Affectionately known by those who’ve gone as the “Burn,” it is the ephemeral and unofficial worldwide Capitol of free spirits.
This year, like most large events and mass spiritual gatherings, the in-person experience of the Burn has been cancelled. Instead, the backbone of the Burning Man Project (also known as “BMORG”) is searching for a way to keep the faith alive until all is well and the borders of the world are reopened.
Interestingly, the theme of this year’s Burn was the Multiverse, the idea that there are multiple universes happening simultaneously on the same timeline. This lends itself well to the experimental creation of a digital analogue to the normally very visceral experience of Burning Man.
BMORG is leading the way by creating a digital space and encouraging the meat and bones of the Burn, the theme camps and their operators (TCOs), to replicate their offerings online, including porting in MMORPG camps that have already been created on the world wide web. That’s cool.
No one really knows what this is going to look like or if it’s going to work, but that has always been true of the Burn. It originally began as a party on a beach and then morphed into a social experiment in prefiguring a society without rules and commodification. Surprisingly, it worked.
This latest digital offering could also be the beginning of a whole new dimension of the experience. The best part of this new evolution is that it resolves one of the long-standing conundrums of Burning Man, which is the self-imposed filter of a hefty price-tag and at least a weeklong commitment.
In this new day and age, especially in the digital realm, everyone’s invited now.
So instead of this being the year that Burning Man didn’t happen, this could be the moment that we “Decentralize the Burn.” Let’s spread it beyond an exclusive club of techno-utopian dust bunnies who can afford it, and invite everyone into the wonderfully weird experience of reconnecting with themselves and each other in a free-for-all of loving liberation.
Here’s my humble suggestions for how we do that (in descending order of technological demands):
A. Virtual Reality BRC (high tech)— Instead of refunding everyone and going broke, BMORG should continue selling tickets and send willing participants a VR headset (lots of hardware is cheaper than tix, or you could send a commemorative cardboard headpiece). This is the Multiverse made real, an immersive experience of the Burn without leaving the comfort of your own home. Instead of buying LEDs and furry outfits, start building out your avatar now. Executed properly, this year’s Burn could mark the cultural moment when VR moves from an emergent technology into popular usage. Just imagine Star Trek’s Holodeck meets Ready Player One, but now with shirt-cocking and Tutu Tuesday (remember the orgy dome, for umm, technical reasons)! If Burning Man was the happening that made it happen, the cultural DNA of some of the most radical people on the planet could infect the formative technological ecology of the world’s pretty well known next big thing. And yes, it could be a big whopper of a flop… or the stuff of legends.
B. Tech Agnostic Theme Camps (low tech)— Some folks will use Zoom to host decentralized dance parties, some will simply livestream a 24/7 DJ set on YouTube or Facebook, some will swap knowledge on Spotify podcasts of trainings/seminars, some will build out entire camps where you can walk around in VR while others may post a simple Google doc to crowd-source a story together. Keep the door open to all technologies, so that the barrier to entry remains near zero, but make sure to compile an easily accessible list of where people can duck in online and join the fun at their favorite camps with whatever tech the TCOs select. In line with the Multiverse theme, maybe make an interactive map like a 3-dimensional chess board with a different level for every year of the Burn, inviting old camps to come back and recreate again. Most importantly, make sure there’s also some way to have a sidebar conversation with people you meet there, because that’s always been the best part of the Burn.
C. Decentralize the Burn (IRL) — The golden rules of decentralization are give people tools, connect them to each other, paint the target red, and then get out of the way. Post an open-source events list of beaches and forests and backyards with links to event dates and times, along with a report-back mechanism so people can post after-Burn stories, pictures, and video (here’s an example from my experience where it worked well). Beforehand, make instructional videos with a step-by-step infomercial on how to build your own effigy, how to setup a local camp, and how to draw a crowd through your networks, online and in real life. Build flyer and meme templates, create localized open forums using chatrooms or Google groups or Slack or whatever, support artists building badass installations all around the world, and then highlight all the crazy stuff that people come up with across the international network. On September 6, let a thousand effigies burn.
What if one million people gathered online to get a glimpse of what all the raving has been about all these years and then danced their asses off like no one is watching (because they’re in their living room and no one is watching)? What if a percentage of the world’s population watched the Man burn and then the entire planet become virtually consumed by a fire begun on the Playa? What would happen if all the people who’ve helped build Black Rock City instead built their own effigy close to home and invited their friends who cannot spend days in the desert to participate in their first burn? Perhaps it would create a rift in the space-time continuum or a portal opening into the Multiverse?
No one knows, so let’s apply some “safety third” to our egos and press play.
For Pi Day this year, we did this. Much like the lesser known regional burn circuit that traverses the world like a Cirque-Du-Soleil traveling troupe, we built our own mini-Burn on a tropical island and invited everyone to join us. Our statue was dedicated to the Goddess Evangelion, she was nearly three stories tall, and built out of bamboo with coconut leaves for maximum blaze. In front of a small gathering of about fifty people, she went up in flames when my partner shot a flaming arrow into her womb. It was awesome.
Surprisingly, there was a lot of work involved to get it all done and draw a crowd, even for such a diminutive group, but the night was well worth it. Probably the most important thing I got out of it was an enhanced sense of appreciation for the organizers of our favorite events and experiences, especially Burning Man. I realized for tens of thousands of us to enjoy the life-altering experience of living in a temporarily-constructed free world, it must take a gargantuan amount of work, organization, and dedication to make it all happen by the friendly folks at BMORG, the TCOs, and all the artists who participate.
It hit me like an adrenaline shot of gratitude to the heart for so many people who I’ve never even met or seen.
Maybe that’s what our collective community really needed this year, so we can remember to say “How can we help?” and thank you, instead of just “Where’s my refund?” and fuck yer burn. As prophesied in last year’s Weekly BRC, perhaps “Burning Man Needs a Year Off” from the dust, sweat, and tears to remind us all why we came home in the first place and to live the 11 Principles wherever we’re at in the world, not just once every year in the desert.
However we meet up to burn it down, I’ll be excited to meet the old and new, whether it’s as an avatar or in your meatsack, so I hope to see you wide-eyed beyond the flickering flames while the Man burns. Because even if I cannot get a flight back to the States, I can still meet you on the Playa this year — that one time we got permission from the fates to meet up in the Multiverse and Decentralize the Burn!
