Burning Man: Burned Out. San Francisco Examiner story on Burning Man 1998
The Burning Man Festival: Hackneyed ‘happening’ and lots of bad art - all for $100 a ticket
FIRST THERE were modern primitives, then there was, duh duh ta duh, Burning Man. For those who haven't yet heard of the latest neo-primitivist, tribal experience, the Burning Man Festival is a happening, be-in - whatever you want to call it - celebrating self-expression that has been held over the Labor Day weekend every year for the past eight in the Black Rock Desert 100 miles north of Reno, Nevada.
This year, for the first time, a Burning Man preview is being held in The City where it all began in 1986, when Burning Man founder Larry Harvey erected and burned an 8-foot tall effigy on Baker Beach on the eve of the summer solstice.
Burning Man has now grown up - 40-foot tall, he stands, his sleek, linear structure outlined in neon, in an empty lot on Grove Street near the corner of Van Ness. (Burning Man will be taken down Friday and shipped to Nevada to meet his fate.) In addition, "The Art of Burning Man: An Incendiary Exhibition" continues through Aug. 29 at the Art Commission Gallery, 401 Van Ness Ave.
The exhibition, which includes photographs of the unfettered self-expression that occurs on the desert flats, plus works of art by self-proclaimed artists that are exhibited there, overbrims with youthful, innocent and frequently simple-minded energy. From the fervent testimony of participants, Burning Man is in their minds the greatest artistic achievement in world history since Michelangelo painted that there ceiling at the Vatican.
But - even if they paid me - it'd be a bad day at Black Rock before you'd find me in that desert.
Indulge me, if you will. I was a lousy hippie. (Literally, a couple of times, if I remember correctly.) I hated crowds of people milling about letting it all hang out, or whatever.
But I tried. I came to San Francisco in 1969 looking for the dream, but found that by then the Haight was living up to its name. Peace and love proved elusive then, as now. Hippie Hill was the biggest bore. White boys without rhythm beating on bongos. White girls without rhythm doing that swoony thing they thought was dance.
I was already a be-in veteran. My first was in the dunes outside Provincetown. The rhythmless boys and girls were doing their rhythmless thing, soon to be codified by Deadheads everywhere. A madman, a Manson wannabe who believed himself to be charismatic, harangued the crowd about revolution, but no one, thank god, was buying his rant. I separated myself from the groovers and walked over the dunes to the ocean and took a swim, free from the banalities. Technologically much more sophisticated, Burning Man doesn't look to me like much of an improvement - although a Burning Man vehemently denies any connection with hippiedom. (In addition to seeing the exhibition, I prepared myself for writing this article by watching the video "Flashback," made during the 1997 festival; by reading "Burning Man," a handsome picture book published by Hardwired; and by attending the opening party in Civic Center July 31.)
The endless parades of naked and festively costumed participants might prove diverting for an hour or two and the mud baths looked like fun, but a solid week of it - the festival runs this year from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7 - would drive anyone with half a brain in their head to contemplate profoundly anti-social acts. What passes for music and dance is abysmal by any standard, and the so-called art, well let me just say, "I don't think so."
With the exception of Burning Man himself, a light, elegant wood structure strongly Japanese in influence, there was only one work I caught sight of that could pass muster as real art: Shelley Hodes-Vaca's "Ocean Mural," a gently curving wall of 18 large panels carrying a black-and-white image of the ocean, which she erected on the flat, cracked desert floor. Contrasting the vast wetness of the ocean with the vast dryness of the desert, the piece successfully brings together opposite natural phenomena in a setting that is as environmentally extreme as you can find on Earth.
The rest of the "art" is pure self-indulgence, amateur hour at its most depressing. Someone makes Max Ernst-like sculptures out of wire mesh. Someone else makes Jean Tinguely-like whirring machines of great ineptitude. Assemblage of the most artless nature is popular. There is, I kid you not, much body painting. Everyone on the tape speaks reverently of the "art work," which they tend to put in aural italics.
Yet, hard as I try to understand, I have friends who go every year and find the experience life-affirming and enhancing.
Why?
I suspect it's because we're desperate for the kind of community experience Burning Man offers. Alienated from government and consumer culture, sometimes cut off from family and the hometowns they fled, the members of the tribe that gathers in the Nevada desert find a sense of belonging that is deeply satisfying.
There are admirable aspects to Burning Man. In some ways it exemplifies the idea of participatory democracy. "No Spectators" reads the large banner over a central gathering point in the desert encampment, and everyone is responsible for his or her own good time. But they're also responsible for providing their neighbors with a show as well.
In some ways, the participants get down to basics in a meaningful way, even if their drumming hasn't gotten much better since the '60s. The elements, earth, air, fire and water, are at play here - if not as complexly as in the work of the Italian arte povera artists. Those mud holes where participants cavort like seals offer elemental experiences largely unavailable to urban dwellers.
And the whole thing ends in conflagration, which brings out the pagan in all of us. The one time the 55-minute video tape came to life for me was at its very end, when the Burning Man effigy that has towered over the festivities for a week is set afire. In the firelight, the dancers take on a primeval beauty they lacked during the clarity of day.
It is an exorcism, a rite of bonding that must be truly moving for the participants.
But, on the other hand, all forms of modern tribalism are scary. What was Nazism, after all, if not the original modern primitive movement? Even if Burning Man professes to be all-inclusive, open and welcome to all who can afford its $100 ticket price, the tribe is defined by its exclusions. Those rallying around the tribal totem, here Burning Man himself, are different, superior, to those who are not.
Burning Man isn't, of course, the first modern phenomenon crippled by its own inner contradictions.
For more information, call 650-985-7471 or go to http: / / www.burningman.com.
Also, the Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St., will feature films about Burning Man Friday through Sunday. Call (415) 863-1087.