Green Year

What is Burning Man, when you get down to it? Alt world escapism?  Incubator for new social constructs? Just a fine place in the middle of nowhere to fuck some shit up with friends? Does it, to put a point on it, mean anything, and if so, what?

I’ll not even think of presuming to answer, but I invite you to read the following:

Burning Man is a uniquely evolving experiment - the only event in the world of its size/kind that is entirely created by its participants. The organizers and volunteers that help produce the event are an equal part of that creative process, and after long reflection, the Man Base team has decided to reach out to people that are presenting innovative, realworld solutions to the environmental crisis we’re all facing, and ask them to participate in creating the Green Man pavilion.This is one of the bigger chunks of the machinery that’ll make the Green Man either fly, or crater.

It is a dicey prospect, fraught with risk, inviting these folks and trying to figure out how to showcase the ideas without the branding. Are we selling out, inviting the Trojans into our citadel? Will this, as some have already suggested, be the crack in the wall of lawyers and money we’ve created around outselves that has thusfar kept the big bad marketing world out? Is burning man getting too serious for it’s own good?

Dunno. Hope not. I’m not even sure we know what it is we’re doing yet. We’re calling it a world’s fair or expo because that’s the language we have available. Before someone mashed up the words “theme” and “camp” we didn’t even have the concept of a theme camp. So world’s fair, expo-that may not be what this turns out to be.

We’re going to put a whole lot of smart people and good ideas in the middle of the playa and see what happens.

Could be nothing.

Could be something great.

We’ll see.  Your comments and thoughts invited.

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