Burning Man: An End of an Era

The First Impression

I went to my first two Burning Mans while still in art school at UCLA. I applied for their low-income ticket back in 2004 & 2005 and went for 5 days. Which, looking back now, was a really great way to do it since I didn't have a job and I was a 20 year old artist. In 2006, I volunteered and was in the desert for 21 days. What did I learn from my years as a 20-22 year old Asian (literal) girl? Stay away from the creepy men. The opportunistic men are everywhere, not just on the playa, "default world" included, but they are everywhere still twenty something years later. The "default world" is what burners use to describe the world and life they lead outside of the playa; they call the playa their "home". While I do believe that Black Rock Desert (location) is an energetic vortex of some kind, it certainly is no different in terms of bureaucracy to the default world, turns out. More on that later.

Now in my 40's, I am not a young and dumb Asian girl anymore. I have lived, seen things, experienced things; I have boundaries, and can/will enforce them. It's now so easy to see why men prey on the young. And also easy to see why people in general love the eye candy at events like Burning Man, people are able to express themselves differently than the normie lifestyle of societal rules, keeping up with the joneses, and not getting fired from their 9-5 tech job. Frequently, humans at Burning Man are dressed in very little clothing since the day to day there is oftentimes 90 degrees in dry desert heat. So mix repressed lifestyles with some kink fantasy and you get the orgy dome, like 7 different orgy domes. If you're in your 20s and you're "not a hoe", politely decline all the invitations you may get for threesomes, there are safer and cleaner ways to play if it's your first rodeo in being a hoe, no shame in that game.

There's a lot of white people at Burning Man. According to the census demographics at Burning Man, 77% do not identify as a person of color, and 60% are men. I've always aired on the side of caution because I was taught by my immigrant parents to be careful and wary to trust white men. If you are white and this offends you, you should ask yourself why. I will all day everyday try to dismantle white supremacy and telling the history and experience of immigrants is important. Be uncomfortable as people of color have been forced to do so, and listen. Growing up, I witnessed white cashiers try to steal money from my mom by giving the wrong change back. She has a math degree and because she doesn't speak fluent English, they thought they could pull one over on her. White men have prevented my ancestors from buying land in certain neighborhoods (in Sacramento in the 70s), white men with white collar jobs would sometimes not pay my civil engineering dad for his work as an independent contractor, and in my own experience, they were my bullies growing up in school. So, as wary as I was, I still ended up in one situation at Burning Man, similar to so many that resulted in the creation of an entire harm reduction department within the org. A whole ass white man in his 50-60s wearing a purple pimp suit, who helped fund the "Belgium Waffle" art project and had been harassing me for days, decided to jack off standing up while staring at me by the bonfire, with at least 60 people drunk, or "on one" partying. I was disgusted (still am) by the audacity and never reported it because in 2006 there was no harm reduction department. Since the release of the Epstein files, I am not surprised that when I was 20-22 old men followed me around at Burning man, I still looked like a teenager at that time. You'll get a lot of audacity from rich men. Yuck. And I am not surprised at all there is 10% more men. It's a metropolitan city when it reached 50,000 attendees, and it peaked at 90,000. As they say, what goes up must come down.

The main draw that brings people to the desert is the culture shock. Aside from bringing a weeks worth of clothing, shelter and food/water with you, people have to deal with the insane, unpredictable weather. People are on survival mode whether they like it or not; they are faced with adversity being around so many people who are likely overwhelmed, grumpy, and cannot hide it with their default 9-5 routine. It's like the inner child within comes forth. I liked seeing the authenticity of the self-expressing human for better or worse. And putting someone in the middle of harsh desert weather, with big art, loud music, and art cars can do just that. But some people don't just wing it, they bring their entire entourage of RV, luxury camping trailers and full scale AC powered production tents, and 500k worth of diesel generators.

Tech Bros, Billionaires, and Plug and Plays

As an adult now, I still cannot even fathom the amount of money that is spent on ridiculous things by the wealthy, but after tattooing about 5,000 people along the west coast, and having a sister who builds for billionaires for 20 years, I hear stories and have a better idea: 500k footstools, 7 million dollar glass doors, 25 million dollar weddings, and it goes on and on. They are actually human, but with obscene amounts of resources it alters their state of reality. I later learned that Burning Man, as a non-profit, is like a museum gallery and the uber wealthy most definitely can write off donations by making huge art installations, or contributions for playa art. So you can imagine, as the popularity of Burning Man grew, so did the art, and so did the charitable donations of the uber rich; they gain bragging rights and influence, then bringing on a new subculture within the community of artists and creators, like hiring more folks to create their personal plug and play camps for their wealthy friends. The most annoying part about this paradox, is that these people are building and ruining the event at the same time. After an exhausting workday building my art installation, I was invited to go to a trailer sauna shower and had a (likely trustafarian wannabe tech bro) man ask me where my wristband was. That is the most anti-burner thing to say at any camp. What an asshole loser. Pro tip: if you're going to police your camp that you paid $5000 in camp dues for catered food, sauna trailers, and showers, you're not an actual "burner", in fact you should not come to Burning Man at all. But, obviously, I'm no gatekeeper. I'm just an artist.

Building Big Art at Burning Man

I've always wanted to build art there, because to the core I've always been a builder of spaces. I made whole room wire sculpture installations for sculpture class at UCLA, and because it required so much space, I couldn't sustain it after college. In my New Genres class, I turned my Scion xB into an art car, re-upholstered the ceiling and seats, and made fishnet pillows that dangled from the seats. I took the students in my class (there were only 10-12 students in every art class at UCLA) and drove them around Westwood Blvd with an audio recording of people I interviewed asking them "what does art mean to you?" I like to understand art at Burning Man is art meant for the community. Art for the sake of art. After spending more years at Burning Man, I got to see a huge spectrum of the community, from volunteering at DPW (Department of Public Works) for 5 years, joining a camp for 3 years, doing free camping 2 years, and building art there for 1 year. I learned that the event is unique to other art and music festivals mostly because of the location and its proclamation of the 10 principles and its practice. There is no place like Black Rock Desert and its weather. And the weather alone is enough culture shock to make for core memories. The vastness of the Black Rock Desert makes for a magical place to make big art. The feeling you get riding in open desert alongside large pieces of art, is like no other place in the world, quite literally. If the entire event was full of people who can appreciate just that about Burning Man, it would be a better place. But now you get people giving wristbands to privatize their camps, intoxiated people destroying your art on the playa, and actual killers on the loose. Yeah, a Russian guy was murdered violently last year and the murderer is still on the loose. This is the reality of the world. There will be humans, there will be shitty humans, and there will be murderous humans that get away with murder.

The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back

I had to deal with the "borg" when I built my art project there. I applied for a grant, because I knew it would cost a lot of money (ended up being just over 40K and I gave 20K of my own money and also took an unpaid sabbatical from tattooing) but I knew it would be an awesome project worthy of the playa and for my dad. It was an art project for the sake of art inspired by my dead dad and the rainbow bridge; it would become my "art baby" for an entire year. As production lead and artist/architect, not only did I have to build the project, but I also had to build camp/food/water and bring a team and everything out to the desert. And it was an accomplishment considering the physical and mental tax it sustained. Shout out to Heavy Equipment, thank you.

I had an artistic vision and requested to have my poc drone pilot, who I paid to get FAA registered and he passed with flying colors, to be able to take pictures of the project from celestial view many times a day to create a timelapse of its construction and deconstruction. I was spending so much time building and planning the project that I missed the registration deadline by two days and emailed the drone department directly. One of the borg's job should be to help artists make their vision happen for their event, but I was met with a defensive mansplainer. I told them I only know of Burning Man's white men drone pilots and I had my own FAA registered drone pilot and wanted my project to be a POC led build.

What did he say? I was mansplained in bullet points, "you said this, I responded with this, you said this, I responded with"... oh brother, and more bullshit like, "we actually don't allow drones to fly above art projects." They definitely do. Social media is littered with video footage shot by drones flying above them, longer than 10 seconds mind you. Who hurt you?

To the org: Your literal job could be to support artists, but, nobody but myself advocated in support of my artistic vision, instead, the org allowed it to became a power play move. A tool named Domonique tried to get one over on an artist because they thought I was pretentious, someone who thought their art was worthy of drone video footage. Imagine that, an artist wanting to document their installation work, which would be built only once on the playa. Let me show you what my project looks like from celestial view, taken by their drone pilot because the borg decided to be nice and allow for photos from their drone pilot:

Glad I have two good photos of this, thanks to the borg, but I wanted more, and they denied it, deemed it unworthy because someone hurt that guy and he needed to win. After this ordeal, which was sometime in July, I stopped caring. It was literally one of the main points of building the project, it was to see it in the way my dad would see it from celestial view, and it was to highlight the ephemeral, which is the yin yang, a symbol that represents duality, creation and destruction. It would have been a creative documentation, and it never happened, because some guy said no and the org didn't do anything about it. I had a mental break when I realized everything I was creating for the desert was just for show, just another day in the office for a bunch of brats, trustafarians, predatory men, trying to beat on their chest (or their literal dick) to get their last say and power move. I tried talking to someone who works there for 20+ years about it and you know what they texted to me after our meet up? "Can we not talk about work next time?" I think that says a lot. It's not even about art or creation anymore to the borg management of Burning Man; their mismanagement, not listening, and shitty people, will be their downfall. The god is in the small things; denying an artist one (reasonable) creative vision for documentation "because of rules" shattered the facade of Burning Man as "a place of hope and creation" beyond repair. And time has told me (it's been almost 2 years of radio silence), no one will reach out to me because no one will take accountability for their mismanagement.

In Reflection

So why did I continue to go even after the nasty Belgium Waffle man incident? Well, I took a 10 year break after that incident and didn't return to the playa until 2016. And growing up with emotionally immature parents, I learned to express my inner self through art, and Burning Man seemed like the perfect place to admire big art outside, art that was not featured in pretentious uppity wine and cheese galleries. It was a place I could burn my wedding dress after my divorce. It was a place for cathartic release. It was a place I could meet new people and practice neuroplasticity and dance my ass off until sunrise. There is no place like staying up exhausted, coming down from dancing all night, waiting for the Black Rock Desert sunrise. I now have more effective and sustainable coping mechanisms with age, but sometimes in life you need a slap in the face. Would I still burn the dress? Absolutely yes, but now I wouldn't put myself in the situation where I would have to, just dump their ass first, and never marry again.

A Facade is Temporary, Like all Things

And like all things, people and events evolve and devolve. The facade is thinning, and it is an end of an era, for me. The Burning Man Org is actually just like the default world, hiding behind giant art cars, huge installations, and eccentric camps made by "artists and architects". But once the curtain falls, there's bureaucracy, there's bullshit. The magic crumbles so fast once you hear from friends witnessing the utter waste at the Walmart dumpsters in Reno. Full size, working cookers, tables, chairs, everything just dumped because camp fees next year will buy them newer ones and it would cost them more to clean and store them. The magic crumbles when the insensitivity is so blatant when the borg negotiates to bring a team out to strike your piece for you if you allow for the wood to be used as wood starter for the temple burn. That was not even a consideration on my end. I said "Fuck no. We can strike it ourselves and donate the wood elsewhere." Out of touch, out of mind. I decided against burning my bridge at burning man, but ironically many (unwanted) bridges were burned as a result of its manifestation.

The real magic is truly within the small groups you make, anywhere but specifically, at the vortex that is the Black Rock Desert (location). I met awesome people and life long friends (and enemies) at Burning Man, friends that will last long past the dissolution of the facade that is the burner vibe.

70% of people don't love their neighbors in the default world. No surprise there. And at Burning Man it's no different, but at least you get to pack up and leave in a week. I won't know this year because I am not going, I'm taking a long hiatus if I ever do decide to go again. Maybe when hover boards are a thing and if they catch the killer on the loose.

Me at 2006 Hope and Fear Burning man at age 22. I made that outfit on the whim.