WANT TO VISIT a city that doesn’t exist? To participate in a festival with 50,000 souls and no vendors? An event so cool it makes Oxegen look like Butlins? Welcome to Burning Man.
Billed as an annual experiment in temporary community living, and dedicated to radical self-expression and self-reliance, Burning Man takes place over eight days each summer at Black Rock desert, in northern Nevada.
Participants come, make art and depart, leaving no trace they were ever there. The centrepiece of the event is an effigy burning. Each year since its inception back in the 1980s, the community builds a wooden man and, on the Saturday night, watches him burn.
Visitors must bring with them enough provisions to last the eight days. They must also build their own lodgings, sturdy enough to protect from searing daytime heat, freezing nights and sometimes violent sandstorms.
They must also bring with them a willingness to join in. The event is wholly participatory, so you can’t just go to look – you either have an installation of your own to work on or have to help with someone else’s.
Burning Man takes place each year the week before, and including, Labour Day weekend. Free entry has given way to strict ticketing, with prices ranging from $210 (€155) to $300 (€220).
** August 31st to September 7th; www.burningman.com
