Burners who flock to Black Rock Desert every summer are quick to tell you what a spiritual experience Burning Man truly is.
It’s not merely a music festival, not solely an artistic exhibition. It’s not just a place to camp out, get naked, do drugs, and take selfies with strangely-dressed celebrities. It’s a place where consciousness is heightened, where friendships and futures are forged, and it’s this esoteric element that the annual event will center itself around in 2017.
Each year, Burning Man chooses a theme, and the creatives who collide upon the sandy arena run with that theme when planning their camps, installations, and activities. Last year was “Davinci’s Workssop,” the year previous was “Carnival of Mirrors,” and this upcoming edition is all about “Radical Ritual.”
“Beyond the dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical ideas of religion, there is immediate experience,” Burning Man states on its website. “It is from this primal world that living faith arises. In 2017, we will invite participants to create interactive rites, ritual processions, elaborate images, shrines, icons, temples, and visions. Our theme will occupy the ambiguous ground that lies between reverence and ridicule, faith and belief, the absurd and the stunningly sublime. The human urge to make events, objects, actions, and personalities sacred is protean. It can fix on and inhabit anyone or anything. This year our art theme will release this spirit in the Black Rock Desert.”
Burning Man returns to Black Rock City Aug. 27 to Sept 4, 2017. See Burning Man online for details.