Why Art Thrives at Burning Man

One can always be a Unicorn.

In her TED talk, Nora Atkinson explains Why art thrives at Burning Man.

There has been 30 years of Burning Man, with it's  origins in early anarchist years. Atkinson describes it today as an experiment in collective dreaming.  Every year around August thousands of people for a single week power down their tech and pilgrimage out into the Black Rock, Nevada Desert.

Participants at Burning Man, i guess the theme is simply, expression.

Their purpose?

To build and anti-consumerist society outside the bounds of their everyday lives.

The entire encampment of Burning Man can be thought of as one giant interactive art installation driven by the participation of everyone in it.

What set it aside from commercial art work is that anyone who makes work can show it.

None are sold there. At the end of the week if the works aren't burned, artists have to cart them back out and store them. It's a labour of love.

Created by Alexander Milov 2015, signifying external conflict and internal need

Burning Man 2018

It's about redefining arts value by the emotional connection it creates between the artist and the audience, or the benefits it gives our society, or the fulfillment it gives the artist themselves.

These are also the questions that contemporary jewellery asks, The VGCJ explains contemporary jewellery as that," which can be described as contemporary not merely because of its recent date, but because of its engagement with a diverse range of contemporary social, environmental, technical or artistic trends."

Any piece of jewellery we create is contemporary because it is made today and it can fall within one or more of these terms, it's not something that is exact, like everything in the universe it can flow together.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

How do i feel about contemporary jewellery

I honestly don’t know, I knew what is was. My initial understanding of contemporary jewellery was jewellery that was addressing a current issue, but it is a broad spectrum of definitions that is constantly in a state of expansion and change. Expressing meaning and ideas whether worn or not, sparking intrigue and question.

Sol LeWitt says “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists they leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach” [1.]

I have found contemporary jewellery to be more a story, being written as you go along. As much as I can think about where I’m headed I never really know where I’m going, a vague idea “somewhere that way,” but I try to embracing the uncertainty, try to think optimistically. Creating contemporary work has become more about the journey rather than the destination, being able to find the treasures within the journey, in other words it’s not about the product but the process. It’s a lovely mixture of faith, science, questioning and understanding.

I am quiet the lazy kind, to put it in intelligible terms, I want to achieve maximum effect with minimal effort. I think a lot and read a lot more than I physically do, but eventually I always start somewhere at some point. Everything starts at a point, this is how the universe came into being: “There was no heaven, no earth, and no universe – just empty space. In this vastness, a single point manifested itself. From that point steam, smoke and mist spiraled in a luminous sphere and the sacred sound Su was born.”[2] I feel like that point in that emptiness but it is from this point that I hope to flourish.

1. Sol leWitt, "Sentences on conceptual art."(1969) Art language, Vol 1, no1

2. Morihei Ueshiba, "Art of peace"(2002)