ABSTRACT
British festival cultures are beginning to approximate an event that enjoys a special kind of status across the industry. Burning Man, an annual gathering of 65,000 staged on an empty lakebed in the Nevada desert, has often been described as a social experiment. It is foremost a celebration, incorporating hundreds of performances into five days of music, dancing and revelry. Frequently referred to as Black Rock City, or more simply, the Playa, its experimentalism is founded on a set of principles that are enshrined and protected in the way the event is organized and physically realized on site. In this respect, the early Burning Man events were rearticulating the challenges to spectatorship present in the related spheres of both contemporary art and theatre. The events emphasis on relational situations, like the art Bourriaud describes legitimized unconventional spaces as forums for art by collapsing the Nevada desert of how art should be exhibited.
