Burning Man Live

“We think it’s actually really punk in an age where it’s cool to be cynical, to actually be like, no, we don’t want that. Hope. Hope versus despair, really is punk.” ~Xtina Chu

DIANE: When I came out here, I’m not used to the curiosity that the Black Rock City citizens have. Everyone wanted to know about the math. Everyone wanted to know, like, “What’s the meaning of this?” And I’m accustomed to in the real world saying, “Oh, it’s a math problem.” And people saying, “Oh, I don’t want to know about that.” But, in fact, they were like, “Oh, what’s the math problem?” And then I…

If this is a sandbox for the future, how on earth do you create celebratory, transformative, healing culture in the most adverse conditions possible? We show up for a week or a month on the playa every year and We practice infrastructure. We practice community support. We practice mutual aid. We practice food, clothing, and shelter. We practice worship. We practice celebration.

People are being asked to come on this blank canvas, and dream and imagine and create together in community, connected, this city that they would like to live in, and it just felt like a place where you’re just connecting with other humans. How wonderful to be able to be there and to shine a light on that, and then see how people are thinking about it, and what is the conflict around it? And that could shed light on the issues that we’re dealing with in our world today. And I think we did. I think that is what we found, this reflection, this interesting reflection.

Did we follow the rules??? Australians are afraid of authorities, so we’re always going to push the envelope here. Every time. As an American, I feel like I can say that!

The creative impact of making this art, building these permanent pieces of art that go out in the world, that talk about the values, it’s not all about just, you know, maximizing shareholder profit. There is so much more to life, like enjoying each other’s company, making things that are beautiful, and making the world a little bit more beautiful.

“I do it because I believe in humans. I believe that we can do culture differently. And regional Burns and Otherworld and Burning Man specifically are real life containers where we get to live out these philosophies in real life that we often just get to like, hypothesize about.” ~Jax Creatrix

Burning Man illuminates so much of the greatest aspects of human behavior. But also for me in particular Burning Man is not just like an answer, but more importantly, an open question, a question that asks “What is our human nature? How is human nature expressed under different conditions?” And once you understand that, what do we really want to preserve, and what do we want to enhance in the world? ~Isabel Behncke

It’s really trust-based. I would say that’s the one factor that separates Borderland from a lot of other Burns, organizations in general, the general level of trust between members is very high, and it’s designed that way. It’s very, in that sense, risk-taking, but I wouldn’t say it’s taking a risk because it works really well. It also creates resiliency because there’s so much also loyalty among the members, and the actual belief that their opinion matters. And then you get so much good will and so much buy-in from the community.