Burning Man 2017, the desert festival that draws some 60,000 revelers every year, will take place from August 27 to September 4 in Black Rock Desert, Nevada.
The annual pilgrimage that resembles religious ritual requires a travel to a far-off place in the desert, 10 guiding social laws intended to catalyze self-actualization and the burning of an effigy.
Burning Man 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.
Announced via a journal entry on the gathering’s website, the organizers shared what they hope the theme of ‘Radical Ritual’ will bring: “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.”
Along with the theme announcement, Burning Man has shared an artist rendering of the center structure (pictured above), which will be engulfed in flames at the end of the gathering. 2017’s monument will be a temple that houses the Burning Man with a Golden Spike erected from the top, “a sculpture that will represent the navel of our world”.
