The first Burning Man festival to take place in person since the COVID-19 outbreak is anticipated to draw up to 80,000 revellers to the Nevada desert.
Burning Man has been an annual ritual in the Nevada desert for the previous 36 years, but in 2020, organisers made the decision to end the celebration because to worries about COVID-19.
Although thousands of people choose to take things into their own hands and host a makeshift event in the desert themselves, the organisers decided to prepare a “Virtual Burn” for the next year.
But this year, the seven-day celebration is back on track, with the announcement made by the event’s organisers on their website that “we are coming Home” after many protracted years.
It’s time to continue living our Waking Dreams and to look toward the future as we rehabilitate and reconstruct ourselves as a group.
The event this year is themed “Waking Dreams” and is described as a “temporary city committed to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.”
It’s time to start visualising the future once again, said the event’s organisers, “after a long foggy mist of pandemic sleeplessness, adrift between sleeping and awake.”
The week-long celebrations finally started on Sunday morning at Black Rock City, a seven square mile temporary settlement where free-spirited people who paid $575 each to attend this year’s event can take part in a variety of parties, art installations, and even some orgies while exchanging goods for free food.
On September 4, an effigy known as the burning man will be burned, capping up the whole event.
There are a tonne of planned parties where alleged Burners may mingle, take in some music, and, of course, consume alcohol among the various activities anticipated this year.
Everyone will be able to find music they like, whether it be Latin music, jazz jam sessions, 80s pop performances, or discos.
According to the San Francisco Gate, other meditation activities, such as a hammock forest, a hypnotherapy session, and group peppermint bomb breathwork exercises, will be available for anyone seeking something a bit more tranquil.
While waiting for one of the numerous foam weapon fights or projectile throwing competitions to become violent, more athletic partygoers may stack and climb milk crates. A bikini armour making workshop is also advised for those who anticipate becoming physical.
Burning Man will also include a number of educational workshops on subjects like the relationship between artificial intelligence and astronomy and the usage of psychedelics in surgery for those who wish to broaden their minds.
Consensual Abduction is a new camp this year on The Playa, the area of the desert where the event is held, where visitors may ascend down a “wormhole” slide to reach a dance floor for all-night parties.
According to the Gate, consent is a significant element of this year’s festival, which is essential considering that many of the activities on the programme this year include sex, from after-hours orgies and flogging to black-light bondage.
Burning Man is known for its art installations, though, and this year’s exhibits include a variety of sculptures like a dragon and honey containers in the form of bears.
Additionally, it supports mutant cars and art cars, which are “unique motorised creations that either show little or no resemblance to their original form or to any standard street vehicle or is out of context for its normal setting (a pirate ship or space ship on the desert, for example),” according to the policy.
MIT Media Lab researchers will also distribute 600 tiny containers that resemble Altoids tins during the event in the hopes that participants would pass them around and use the pen and paper inside to record where and when they got the gift as well as where they are camping.
According to Axios, the researchers will “chart the economics of Burning Man,” where individuals use a giving system, using whichever many tins find their way back to the team following the week-long event.
On Sunday, there were lines of automobiles waiting to enter The Playa, and one art car crashed not far from the entrance to the annual event, which led to some delays.
But for the partygoers, traffic is a given; the hours-long delays were even reenacted at last year’s “Virtual Burn,” which was postponed in favour of a virtual event.
The Wall Street Journal reports that after virtual reality developers from six different companies spent a year trying to replicate the scene, it was designed to replicate as much of the yearly festival known for its music, art, nudity, and sex as possible, complete with the hours-long traffic jam to get in.
They sought to create a city out of thin air where people might live in a community that adheres to the ideals of “decommodification” (where products and services are obtained without the need of money) and “radical inclusion.”
However, some ardent Burners found the concept of a “Virtual Burn” to be unappealing, therefore organisations including Black Rock Plan B, Playa Poop Protocol, Unity 2021 Free Burn, RenegadeBurn, Renegade Man, and Rogue Burn began making their way into the desert nonetheless.
The ‘Renegade Man’ festival, which had no tickets and was referred to online as a ‘non-event, event that is occurring in lieu of that one event that is trademarked and we can’t say its name,’ attracted some 30,000 people.