Desert dust swirled around Ukrainian entrepreneur Denys Zhadanov as he and about 40 people cycled behind a pianist hammering out a tune on the back of a moving vehicle. They were listening to the player through wireless headphones.
It was art.
But practically everything is art at Burning Man, a week-long art and music festival held in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada in the United States. According to Zhadanov, 29, this bicycle ride was just one of the multiple ways through which Burning Man participants indulged themselves in one of the festival’s main principles, self-expression.
“Every person there is a work of art – one completely unknown soul to be discovered,” Zhadanov says.
The Art Cars, or mutant vehicles that some attendees use to move around the 2.5 kilometer diameter arc of Black Rock City are also mobile art installations. Art Cars are not primarily for transport, but a means of artistic expression, and must be approved by the festival organizers. The most common form of transport for festival attendees are bicycles, which they decorate individually with lights and other add-ons.
Some of the other principles of Burning Man, which this year was held from Aug. 26 to Sept. 3, are giving gifts, radical inclusion, communal effort, civic responsibility, and leaving no traces.
This year, around 200 Ukrainians took part in the festival, which attracted 70,000 participants from all over the world.
The declared mission of Burning Man, which took place for the first time in 1986, is to restore creative expression and community participation in times of standardized mass culture and societal indifference.
“Anyone can be a part of Burning Man,” the festival’s co-founder Larry Harvey wrote in 2004, when Burning Man grew into an international community. Since then, the number of the event’s participants has almost doubled from 35,664, and includes artist hippies, magic healers, sex workers, anarchists, but also billionaire tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.
Burning Man participants bicycle through a sand storm on the vast territory of the festival in the middle of the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the United States in late August 2018. (Sergiy Klimov)
Self-expression
Black Rock City, the temporary city where the festival takes place, emerges in the middle of the desert every year for a week, only to disappear for another year until the next Burning Man.
The festival’s name comes from the 30.5-meter-high effigy of a man that is installed each year in the middle of Black Rock City and which is burned in the last night of the festival.
Festival participants, who refer to themselves as burners, set up their own camps around the effigy in an arc around a central, communal area, known as the playa, where various art installations are set up.
Artists from all over the world are also encouraged to present their own art at their camps, as well as host parties, or other events.
The Ukrainian camp is called Kurenivka, from Ukrainian word kurin – a unit measure used by Ukraine’s Zaporizhian Cossacks to outline administrative districts of Zaporizhian Sich.
This year, the Ukrainians set up at their camp a 4.5-meter-high sculpture of robots holding a model of the Earth. The installation called “Ai.tlants” symbolizes the future of the planet where technology and humans are united. It perfectly fit this year’s “I, Robot” theme of the event, and was funded by the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Policy.
The Ukrainian “Ai.tlants” installation as seen in daytime at the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the United States in August 2018. It is 4.5 meters tall and weighs over 300 kilograms, according to the artists who built it. (Max Nefyodov)
The ministry paid Hr 739,000 ($26,250) to transport and build the art installation in the United States, according to Artem Bidenko, the state secretary at the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Policy.
“This project clearly falls into the concept of Ukraine Now – the brand of a country of opportunity, a country that wants to join the free world without borders, and to be at the same level as others,” says Bidenko.
The art installations are also an embodiment of the self-expression principle of Burning Man.
Everyone is encouraged to create art or perform. Masha Yefimenko, 25, a DJ from Kyiv and a first-year burner, stayed outside the Kurenivka camp, but played a DJ set there.
“I was impressed how through self-expression people could build a whole city from scratch,” says Yefimenko, “People from all over the world build camps, installations, some crazy things through sheer passion.”
According to Zhadanov, who was also a first-year burner, part of self-expression at Burning Man are also the bizarre and eclectic costumes that almost every participant wears.
He wore a number of catchy outfits, adorned with leather straps, spikes, fluorescent lights, and added goggles to protect his eyes from the desert dust.
The Ukrainian “Ai.tlants” installation as seen at nighttime at the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the United States in August 2018. Some 12,000 LED-lights flicker across the artwork to represent the firing of neurons in a brain. (Oleksii Tronchuk)
Gifting
Self-expression, however, should not be aimed at making money. It is offered as an unconditional gift to other participants – an example of the gifting principle.
Nothing can be bought or sold at Burning Man except ice and coffee. Receiving a gift from a total stranger motivates burners to give another gift to someone, also at random.
A stranger once offered Yefimenko a free steam bath in the middle of the desert. She later shared some fruit with other participants she didn’t know.
When technology millionaires and billionaires coming to the festival, they often hire workers to set up their air-conditioned camps and to take out their trash, as well as inviting world-class DJs to play at their parties.
But Burning Man doesn’t feel like a celebrity event, because anyone can go to the millionaires’ lounges and feel at home there, says Sergii Leshchenko, 38, a Ukrainian lawmaker, and another first-year burner.
This year, he attended a performance by Carl Cox, a British DJ whose shows start at $100, organized by the founder of Uber at Burning Man.
“There was free entry, and everyone who walked by could enter. And the bars were also free – so everyone had an equal opportunity to be there,” says Leshchenko.
Ukrainian lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko poses in front of The Man – a 40.5-meter wooden effigy in the center of the Burning Man camping area amidst the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the United States in August 2018. The Man is set on fire at the culmination of the festival. (Sergii Leshchenko)
Leaving no trace
Black Rock City hosts thousands of camps, RVs, dance floors and art installations in its half-circle around the main effigy. The participants are expected to clean up after themselves under the “leaving no trace” principle.
The idea is to leave the desert in a better state than it was found. Any leftover trash or debris from installations are considered matter out of place, or MOOP. To contribute to the community, first-time burners are expected to help clean the territory, or moop it.
That’s how Oleksiy Malytskyy, 29, the CEO of Ukrainian technology company Octogin, contributed.
“Once I tried to moop a tin can, but it was nailed to the ground,” Malytskyy says, “And it turned out that the old burners were testing me. So when I reached for it, they invited me to their camp, where I had some whiskey with ice.”
When every leftover is mooped, the settlements and installations are disassembled, and only dust remains at the festival’s location.
The magic, however, stays with the participants, says Sergiy Klimov, 29, a co-owner of Like a local’s bars in Kyiv.
“Your consciousness reloads, and when you come home, you see how values are shifted in this world. And you want to create more.”
Tickets to Burning Man usually go on sale in March, priced at $425. They are sold out in about half an hour, but can often be bought out from people who decide to cancel at almost the same price. Tickets for accompanied children who are 12 or under are free.
Plane tickets from Kyiv to San Francisco start at $550. The Burner Express Bus from San Francisco to Black Rock City is $125.
Find out more at burningman.org.
