If you’ve been to Burning Man, the mysterious annual gathering in a remote section of the Nevada desert, chances are, you don’t know much about it.
Burners, as the festival's attendees call themselves, often describe the event as an experiment in art, community, self-expression, and self-reliance. Every year, tens of thousands of burners make the trek to Black Rock Desert, where, over the course of a week, they build a city from scratch, filling the temporary structures with sculpture, music and dancing, and then destroy the whole thing, leaving no trace that they were ever there.
Burning Man started in the 1980s, and it’s gotten so popular that there are now what are known as regional burns — smaller-scale versions of the event that happen all over the country, including here in Arizona. Arizona’s burners call their event Saguaro Man, and it starts Wednesday.
I’ve never been to a burn, but I have always been fascinated by the group’s improvisational, wildly ambitious spirit. And as I was perusing the AZ Burners website, I discovered a page called “The Eleven Principles.” I’d always sort of assumed that burns were a sort of chaotic, free-wheeling environment, and I was intrigued by the idea that this group of happy-go-lucky idealists were governed by a specific code.
So, The Show reached out to a representative from AZ Burners named Armella Gaines, and had her walk us through the Eleven Principles, and why she finds them meaningful. We started with principle No. 1: Radical inclusion.
Full conversation
ARMELLA GAINES: When you are out and about in the default world — we call the default world the place that is not a burn, just your home life, your regular day-to-day. So in the default world, if you walk up to a group of people dancing, maybe outside, and somebody’s playing music real loud and you hear that song and you love that and you want to dance with them — in the default world, sometimes it’s not safe to just walk up and join in.
But at a burn, because of radical inclusion, you can be assured that the default is, “Please join in. We’re ready for you. We have extra food. We want to feed you.” So that’s radical inclusion.
SAM DINGMAN: OK, so it’s like everybody’s invited. Everybody’s welcome sort of thing.
GAINES: Everyone.
DINGMAN: Well let’s talk then about the next one, which is gifting.
GAINES: So gifting is we are a gifting economy, which means there’s no cash, no money, there’s no bartering, there’s no exchange. So, for instance, each camp will think of something they want to gift to the community. It might be pancakes. It might be like a pancake breakfast.
DINGMAN: Got it. Got it. And just to be clear, a camp is a group of people who come to a burn together.
GAINES: Yes, it is.
DINGMAN: So the next two — maybe we could take the next two together — are radical self-reliance and radical self-expression.
GAINES: It’s for you to kind of decide who you are without all the constraints of your job and your bills and all of that kind of stuff. Like, who are you? Are you an artist? Are you a builder?
And self-reliance — I always think that’s kind of a joke one, because no matter what you do, you will never have everything you need when you go to the burn. And the community is there to kind of back you up and help you.
My first day at Burning Man, I didn’t have shade over my tent. I just, I had my tent, and I had things to work with the dust. And I had it all set up, but I didn’t have shade. And a woman walked up to me, and she was like, “What are you putting over your tent?” And I didn’t have anything. And she says, “I’ll be right back.”
And she came back with a tarp and poles. And the guy on the other side of me, he is a construction guy. And I only know because he walked over with his super huge, Thor-sized hammer, and he hammered in the things for me, and they erected the shade over my tent, and they were just like, “All right, I’m leaving on Tuesday next week, so I’ll need it back before then. But you’re free to use it until then.”
DINGMAN: That also seems related to another one of the principles which is decommodification.
GAINES: Yes. Decommodification. So at a festival, you buy a ticket to go see a show. You’re going to watch other people do things. At a burn, you’re buying a ticket to get in and do a show. When you first go, you might not have an idea of something you want to do. But within hours you will see something you’re interested in, go check that out and just become a part of it.
DINGMAN: Where does the money for the tickets go?
GAINES: Oh, the money for the tickets goes to permitting, medical. We also pay for the sheriffs. Fire is paid for, and they do shifts and make sure we’re safe and not doing things dangerous.
DINGMAN: Yeah. OK. I know some of the other principles here are communal effort and civic responsibility. I feel like the answers you’ve given cover those pretty well. But let’s talk about this radical self-expression piece.
GAINES: Yes. So maybe you grew up in a town where nobody was allowed to wear short dresses, but you wanted to wear a short dress. Or there are people who do spinning fire and people who do acrobatics in the air, like aerial acrobatics. So that’s all self-expression, things that you can’t do in the default world.
DINGMAN: So if I’m hearing you right, it’s almost like if there’s something you’ve been curious about or something you’ve wanted to try, but for whatever reason felt like you couldn’t. The radical part of it is like you have permission to try anything.
GAINES: And then, because I know how people are, I always remind that radical self-expression — because sometimes it can be clothing, it can be no clothing, it could be whatever — but you also have to keep in mind consent, the 11th principle.
So then that shows, for instance: OK, so you want to have a nude camp. Completely nude, right? But I’m camping next to you, and I don’t consent to just being around the nudity.
So then in that case, the two camp managers would talk, and they would make an agreement. And maybe the agreement is, “OK, we’re going to move to another location just so both of us can be happier. Or maybe we park all of the RVs on this row between our camps, so that you don’t have a clear view of what we are doing over here.
DINGMAN: Yeah, it sort of forces you into having a potentially difficult conversation when there’s disagreement, which — to use Burning Man lingo — in the default world, people don’t always have those conversations. But it seems like these principles are sort of encouraging you to engage with stuff, even if it might be a difficult situation to navigate.
GAINES: Yeah, yeah. I think the thing is, at Burning Man, I can trust that nine times out of 10, the neighbor next to me also knows 10 ten principles and lives by them. And I know I can go to them and say, “Hey, I need some adjustments, or let’s see if we can work together.”
And then it becomes a conversation and not an argument. You’re not trying to win something. You’re just trying to get along right.
DINGMAN: So let’s talk about the last two of the core 10 principles. Because they also seem to be related: Participation and immediacy.
GAINES: Participation goes back to that thing, that word that we hate. We hate when people say it’s a festival. It’s not a festival. At a festival, you pay to go see a show. At a burn, it is a no-spectator event. There are no spectators. Everyone is to participate.
DINGMAN: And what about the immediacy piece?
GAINES: Immediacy is my number one most favorite one because I went through life not being immediate. Like I would see a friend would be having an event or something, and I wouldn’t go because I just, I don’t know, I would be something.
At the event, they would be dancing, and I wouldn’t want to dance because I’d be embarrassed. Somebody might look at me and think, “Oh, she can’t dance.” And even if they didn’t, I just would feel so self-conscious. But in the world of the Burning Man universe, I guess immediacy — you can feel safe to jump onto the dance floor and dance any way you like, and you’re going to be fine. No one is going to make fun of you.
In fact, you might see other people dancing the same way. But immediacy see causes you like, don’t hesitate. Don’t be afraid to do the thing that your heart wants you to try.
DINGMAN: Armella Gaines is a representative from the AZ Burners community. And Saguaro Man takes place April 23-27. Armella, thank you so much.
GAINES: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
