Burning Man in Europe: Burns, Culture and Transformation
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
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Festival Cultures: Mapping New Fields in the Arts and Social Sciences. ed. / Maria Nita; Jeremy H. Kidwell. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. p. 87-114.
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
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TY - CHAP
T1 - Burning Man in Europe: Burns, Culture and Transformation
AU - Vitos, Botond
AU - St John, Graham
AU - Gauthier, François
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2022.
PY - 2022/3/1
Y1 - 2022/3/1
N2 - Burning Man is an annual participatory arts event and temporary city co-created in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Also known as Black Rock City, it has spawned a global movement with over 100 ``regional events'' (or ``burns'') worldwide. Conveying qualitative findings from surveys targeted at European Burning Man participants (or ``Burners'') and triangulating these findings with ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in Germany, the chapter explores the complexities of Burning Man's stature as a transformational event prototype. We recognise burns---Black Rock City and its worldwide progeny events---as experimental heterotopia, or ``counter spaces,'' that enable a proliferation of ritualesque and carnivalesque performance modes. By addressing Burner values and motivations, we discuss the appeal of burns, notably their multiplex potential for personal and cultural innovation. As this chapter illustrates, the performative/transformative logic of Black Rock City, the complexity of which is mirrored and mutated in progeny events, inheres in an ethos known as the Ten Principles. Part of a larger project addressing the transformative innovation of Burning Man, the multi-methodological investigation of this event culture focuses on the principles of Gifting and Leaving No Trace highlighted in German Burner initiatives.
AB - Burning Man is an annual participatory arts event and temporary city co-created in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Also known as Black Rock City, it has spawned a global movement with over 100 ``regional events'' (or ``burns'') worldwide. Conveying qualitative findings from surveys targeted at European Burning Man participants (or ``Burners'') and triangulating these findings with ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in Germany, the chapter explores the complexities of Burning Man's stature as a transformational event prototype. We recognise burns---Black Rock City and its worldwide progeny events---as experimental heterotopia, or ``counter spaces,'' that enable a proliferation of ritualesque and carnivalesque performance modes. By addressing Burner values and motivations, we discuss the appeal of burns, notably their multiplex potential for personal and cultural innovation. As this chapter illustrates, the performative/transformative logic of Black Rock City, the complexity of which is mirrored and mutated in progeny events, inheres in an ethos known as the Ten Principles. Part of a larger project addressing the transformative innovation of Burning Man, the multi-methodological investigation of this event culture focuses on the principles of Gifting and Leaving No Trace highlighted in German Burner initiatives.
KW - Didactics of art education
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/fcd102b0-57e9-35e1-af26-b13f25046564/
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85153814331&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-88392-8_5
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-88392-8_5
M3 - Chapter
SN - 978-3-030-88392-8
SN - 978-3-030-88391-1
SP - 87
EP - 114
BT - Festival Cultures
A2 - Nita, Maria
A2 - Kidwell, Jeremy H.
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
CY - Cham
ER -