Burning Man - In Progress

Distrikt

DISTRIKT (@distrikt_org) is a San Francisco based 501c3 non-profit music and arts organization. Our mission is to support an inclusive and diverse community of performers and artists through events, partnerships, local community involvement and friendship. Originally founded at Burning Man in 2010 and based on Burning Man’s Ten Principles, DISTRIKT has evolved into globally recognized and respected organization and we are celebrating our 10th anniversary in 2019.

Inclusion

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception. Radical Inclusion - Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Sunrise Under The Man

Burning Man is an event held annually in the western United States at Black Rock City, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace. The event takes its name from its culmination, the symbolic ritual burning of a large wooden effigy ("The Man") that traditionally occurs on the Saturday evening of the event. For 2019, Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu fashioned The Man gorgeously cocooned by a winding, ascending walkway, lit at night from within, throwing patterned light across the playa.

12 O'Clock

The Temple is one of the most important places on the playa at Burning Man, and many find catharsis there. There is only one official ritual in the Temple, and that is to burn it. On Sunday night of the event, with thousands of participants as witnesses, the Temple is burned in silence. “The Temple of Direction” by Geordie Van Der Bosch is a linear space, capturing the elegance and austerity of the torii gates at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan, where the artist has previously lived. The linear lines form a passage that expands into a large hall, eliciting both a physical experience and a metaphorical journey. It’s a space that responds to the openness of the playa by creating a framework that encourages you to travel from end to end. This linear form reflects the passage of life with its beginning, middle, and end. Throughout the structure there are areas that reflect this journey: narrow & wide spaces, bright & dark spaces, and tunnels that create intimate physical settings. Meanwhile, a large central hall, an altar, and many shelves for offerings create the setting for a collective experience.

The Temple of Direction

The Temple is one of the most important places on the playa at Burning Man, and many find catharsis there. There is only one official ritual in the Temple, and that is to burn it. On Sunday night of the event, with thousands of participants as witnesses, the Temple is burned in silence. “The Temple of Direction” by Geordie Van Der Bosch is a linear space, capturing the elegance and austerity of the torii gates at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan, where the artist has previously lived. The linear lines form a passage that expands into a large hall, eliciting both a physical experience and a metaphorical journey. It’s a space that responds to the openness of the playa by creating a framework that encourages you to travel from end to end. This linear form reflects the passage of life with its beginning, middle, and end. Throughout the structure there are areas that reflect this journey: narrow & wide spaces, bright & dark spaces, and tunnels that create intimate physical settings. Meanwhile, a large central hall, an altar, and many shelves for offerings create the setting for a collective experience.

Taking Flight

Nicki Adani’s “Taking Flight” emboldens visitors to be who they truly are, inspiring them to leave behind what is holding them back. A 10-foot tall feminine bird-like figure, welded from raw steel rods and tubes, her wings spread wide, takes flight from her perch upon a 10-foot tall spoked wheel, representing the circle of life. Viewers interact by making colorful ropes and weaving them into the wheel as a metaphor of releasing one’s past. Experiences already lived through can’t be erased, but they can speak their truths, and be let go. In the process, individuals can connect to their inner strength allowing them to spread their wings to fly free.

Bee Dancers

Burning Man art installation Bee Dance (Andrea Greenlees, Andy Tibbetts, and Josh Haywood) is a whimsical and inviting art installation in the form of two gigantic Dancing Bees, their legs entwined and their heads touching in a bee kiss. It celebrates one of the most fascinating examples of communication in the natural world — when forager bees return from their exploratory flights and perform the Bee Dance for the other bees, carrying out specific routines in order to communicate the distance and direction of pollen, nectar and water from the hive. Bee Dance is a strong climbable structure that Burners can clamber over and cling to, just as pollen clings to a bee. The Bees are bronze in colour, but on their dancing feet they wear gleaming copper ballet shoes with copper ribbons. The Bees are transformed into dancers.

Still Alive

An art installation at Burning Man by Kontana Kas, “Still Alive” is a heptagonal wooden structure covered with acrylic mirror sheets that generate a highly sensory interactive atmosphere. This art piece projects and receives light through its entrances and skylights that are in synchrony with the sounds and the light that is emitted. It reflects the landscape of the desert from its exterior layers and an infinite universe in the interior. Thus, this static installation mixes images from the surroundings in its mirrors and the trajectory of the sun combined with the vibrating pulse of Burning Man giving a semblance of a living form, as a metaphor of the cycle of life.

Still Alive II

An art installation at Burning Man by Kontana Kas, “Still Alive” is a heptagonal wooden structure covered with acrylic mirror sheets that generate a highly sensory interactive atmosphere. This art piece projects and receives light through its entrances and skylights that are in synchrony with the sounds and the light that is emitted. It reflects the landscape of the desert from its exterior layers and an infinite universe in the interior. Thus, this static installation mixes images from the surroundings in its mirrors and the trajectory of the sun combined with the vibrating pulse of Burning Man giving a semblance of a living form, as a metaphor of the cycle of life.

Burning Man

Burning Man is an event held annually in the western United States at Black Rock City, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace.

Carriage Burn

Burning Man is an event held annually in the western United States at Black Rock City, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace.

El Pulpo Mecanico

"El Pulpo Mecanico was built in Arcata California, Humboldt County. Designed and built by Duane Flatmo along with his friend Jerry Kunkel who masterminded the electrical systems and flame effects. The "El Pulpo" is a combination of art and technology melded together. We built this knowing that it would be fun to watch as the giant cam spun up through the center moving the tentacles and eyes in and out while fire spewed from the tentacles and head. No hydraulics or computers were used in this contraption. We built the sculpture primarily out of recycled and used junk found at our local scrap yard... The crowds at Burning Man blessed us with many kind words and frightened faces as we fired her up each night. The sculpture uses 200 gallons of propane per night and lights up the playa as far as the eye can see..."

Fire Water

Hookahdome is a Burning Man camp and event bringing global music, electronic and live to the playa.

Mariposita

Looming at 21 feet tall, Chris Carnabuci’s new sculpture Mariposita (2019) portrays an alluring woman emerging from an eggshell. The piece is far from your average artwork, comprised of thousands of pieces of plywood, each designed and cut with 3D-modeling software and a CNC machine, then assembled by hand. The idea for Mariposita came from a much smaller piece Carnabuci made in 2014, titled Fertility. That sculpture—a bust of a woman emerging from an egg—was part of The Big Egg Hunt, a New York City–wide exhibition of artist-designed eggs in spring 2014. Afterwards, Carnabuci dreamt of making a piece in a similar vein—on a much larger scale—for Burning Man.

Immediacy

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception... Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

Talking Heads

Talking Heads (Oleg Lobykin) is an abstract sculpture, a spatial composition based on a balance between negative and positive space in conjunction with a line that can create an image or point of reference to spark imagination. This is a work of imagination, inviting the engagement of curiosity with creativity. The viewer can experience a multiplicity of meanings, depending on what goes on inside their own heads. Some may prefer looking at an object, while others like looking through the object. Maybe everyone lives in different realities. Talking Heads can show the power of imagination to lead us into a metaphysical and magical experience of metamorphosis.

The Monumental Mammoth

By Girl Scout Gold Award Recipient Tahoe Mack, Mentor and Protector of Tule Springs Representative Sherri Grotheer, and artists Luis Varela-Rico and Dana Albany. "The Monumental Mammoth project [depicts] a life-sized steel Colombian mammoth skeleton collaged with metal found objects to tell the story of Tule Spring National Monument’s past, present, and future. The sheer size and struggle of the mammoth’s stance is a representation of the universal call to protect what the earth has given humanity. As a community, we are called together to protect the fossils of our past and the education of our future. Dana Albany and Luis Varela-Rico are pulling together the sleek elements of the interior steel structure and the intricate weavings to represents the distinctive community that is Las Vegas.It also tells the story of a rising feminine power, and shows all women of any age that anything is possible!"

Head Maze II

Burning Man's art installation "Head Maze" (by: Matthew Schultz and The Pier) is a purposeful juxtapositions of two forms, a peaceful meditative reflection and our inevitable struggle with the nature of cognition; a monolithic mind caught in time between multiple selves. The head towers four stories over the playa floor, encased in mulberry paper and epoxy modeled after the work of Yoshio Ikezaki. The head rests in repose while its left hand claws at its mind fighting to reveal a crystalline stained glass structure akin to the “Space Whale” inside. A series of hidden doors in the mouth, wrists and head open into a four story, 18 room maze. Each modular room creates a unique space dedicated to the nature of our minds, our struggles with being and the weird and fanciful process of dreaming.

Burning Man II

Burning Man is an event held annually in the western United States at Black Rock City, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leave no trace.

Head Maze

Burning Man's art installation "Head Maze" (by: Matthew Schultz and The Pier) is a purposeful juxtapositions of two forms, a peaceful meditative reflection and our inevitable struggle with the nature of cognition; a monolithic mind caught in time between multiple selves. The head towers four stories over the playa floor, encased in mulberry paper and epoxy modeled after the work of Yoshio Ikezaki. The head rests in repose while its left hand claws at its mind fighting to reveal a crystalline stained glass structure akin to the “Space Whale” inside. A series of hidden doors in the mouth, wrists and head open into a four story, 18 room maze. Each modular room creates a unique space dedicated to the nature of our minds, our struggles with being and the weird and fanciful process of dreaming.

Burning Direction

The Temple is one of the most important places on the playa at Burning Man, and many find catharsis there. There is only one official ritual in the Temple, and that is to burn it. On Sunday night of the event, with thousands of participants as witnesses, the Temple is burned in silence. “The Temple of Direction” by Geordie Van Der Bosch is a linear space, capturing the elegance and austerity of the torii gates at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan, where the artist has previously lived. The linear lines form a passage that expands into a large hall, eliciting both a physical experience and a metaphorical journey. It’s a space that responds to the openness of the playa by creating a framework that encourages you to travel from end to end. This linear form reflects the passage of life with its beginning, middle, and end. Throughout the structure there are areas that reflect this journey: narrow & wide spaces, bright & dark spaces, and tunnels that create intimate physical settings. Meanwhile, a large central hall, an altar, and many shelves for offerings create the setting for a collective experience.

Burning Direction II

The Temple is one of the most important places on the playa at Burning Man, and many find catharsis there. There is only one official ritual in the Temple, and that is to burn it. On Sunday night of the event, with thousands of participants as witnesses, the Temple is burned in silence. “The Temple of Direction” by Geordie Van Der Bosch is a linear space, capturing the elegance and austerity of the torii gates at Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan, where the artist has previously lived. The linear lines form a passage that expands into a large hall, eliciting both a physical experience and a metaphorical journey. It’s a space that responds to the openness of the playa by creating a framework that encourages you to travel from end to end. This linear form reflects the passage of life with its beginning, middle, and end. Throughout the structure there are areas that reflect this journey: narrow & wide spaces, bright & dark spaces, and tunnels that create intimate physical settings. Meanwhile, a large central hall, an altar, and many shelves for offerings create the setting for a collective experience.

Night Burn

The Milky Way rises over the playa at Burning Man in Black Rock City, NV.

Efflux

Fire moves like liquid at the Hookahdome, a Burning Man camp and event bringing global music, electronic and live to the playa.