Burning Man 2020 Goes Burn-From-Home, Courts Potential Global Audience

Yeah, we know. You can’t go to Burning Man this year, and it sucks. But maybe not entirely. Burning Man, the mac daddy, mac mama and mac baby of events/festivals/raves/cultural touchpoints, normally takes place in the Nevada desert at the end of August. But when the in-person event was canceled this year due to COVID-19, organizers got busy mounting a virtual festival recreating many of the highlights and adding a different kind of sizzle. It’s all meant to be experienced from the comfort of your own home, or at least from a safe social distance. And what it loses in the intimacy of Black Rock City (the temporary town of 79,000 that’s Burning Man’s desert home), it makes up in creativity and potential global reach. Anyone around the world with a device can be a virtual Burner. Each year’s Burn has a different theme, and “In a twist of synchronicity,” reads a statement from the Burning Man Project, 2020’s theme was already scheduled to be the Multiverse, the astronomical theory of an unknowable number of universes outside our own. “Little did we all know how truly multiversal things were going to become.” Kim Cook, Director of Creative Initiatives for the Burning Man Project, calls this year’s Burn a “grand experiment.” Just as Burning Man has become a “global cultural force” (Art of Burning Man exhibits have set attendance records at museums in Washington, D.C., Cincinnati and Oakland), the 2020 Burn may be an unexpected opportunity to push the envelope of creativity with virtual technology...MORE