Burning Man and the AEZ

Burning Man is about creativity.
For most of the year, Black Rock Desert is one of the most barren places on the planet. But when Burners arrive, we bring our costumes, our art, and our selves in our most fabulous form. The desert becomes the canvas, and our palette includes an unlimited range of tools, technologies and materials from the outside world that me can bend and mold into something that is our own. This is what we call Radical Free Expression.

Burning Man is about ingenuity.
Black Rock City is unencumbered by pre-existing infrastructure, power lines, running water, or permanent buildings. There are no convenience shops, no markets, no hardware stores to run to to pick up that one essential item that got left behind. Part of the challenge of Burning Man is to prepare well and then make due. The amount of innovation that occurs on and off the Playa to make Black Rock City come to life is breathtaking. Burners know how to solve problems and create solutions, and to do it with style.

Burning Man is about questioning assumptions.
The rules and restrictions of the dominant culture do not apply in Black Rock City. We are able to create our own reality and define our own terms, rather than regurgitate the same old brief messages brought to us by our corporate sponsors. The freedom and independence that this inspires stays with us long after we leave the desert, and is allowing us to change the world around us.

Burning Man is about Leaving No Trace.
Black Rock Desert, for all its harsh emptiness, is staggeringly beautiful. Burning Man is intimately connected with the desert, and we acknowledge our responsibility to care for and preserve it. We make sure to contain fires onto burn platforms to protect the playa floor from burn scars. Before leaving, each resident of the City spends time cleaning up, making sure that every spectacular sequin and fantastic feather is removed from the desert floor. And for months after Burning Man is over, volunteers stay on to fill in any holes, repair any damage and remove any trace of what was once a flourishing city of thirty-thousand people.

Burning Man is about SUN and WIND.
Any resident of Black Rock City can tell you about the significance of sun and wind. The sun warms us, burns us, dehydrates us, blinds us, and punctuates our days with its presence. The wind cools us, scours us, fills our sails, flattens our camps, and turns the City white with dust. Our costumes and our structures must take these forces into account or risk being promptly demolished. The sun and wind provide physical evidence of nature's abundant energy.

Burning Man is about ALTERNATIVE ENERGY.
Alternative energy means harnessing the abundance of the sun and wind to power lights, play music and fuel our fantasies. Traditional methods of providing power through diesel generators run contrary to the essence of what Burning Man is about. Fossil fuels destroy the global environment and pollute the Playa with toxins and particulates. And the money that gets spent on diesel helps perpetuate dependence on the dominant culture and the military industrial complex. Burning Man encourages us to question what we need to live and what we need to do to get it. Burners have the ability, the creativity and the ingenuity to meet the electrical needs of the city without compromising either our splendor or our ideals.
To see alternative energy in action at Burning Man, come visit the Alternative Energy Zone, where Burners like you are finding ways to use clean and free power that are simple, practical, and affordable. Check out our solar powered kitchen, our automated art and our funky tunes, and learn about our fabulous tools that can change the world.