Standing at the geometric apex of Black Rock City is the collective icon of The Man. This figure represents nothing expressed or explicable, yet is a physical and ethical guidepost for fifty thousand people during at least one week of the year.
In the beginning, the Man stood and was burned directly on the playa. Nearing the millennium, we began to see increasingly greater assemblies at the “Burn” – marking the end of the event. Concerned that the ever-larger assembly was blocking full view of the “Man” for many, we employed a stopgap measure of mounting the figure on stacked hay bales. However, as the pyre was consumed in flame, bits of charred straw were lifted, showering the open playa. This made our “Leave No Trace” policy quite problematic, so that practice ended.
At about the same time, we were seeing increasingly large installations on the central playa. It was not difficult to project that the preeminent figure of The Man might become dwarfed by future installations. As there was no wish to increase the height of the figure itself, Larry Harvey and Rod Garrett began to consider other ways of elevating the Man. This initiated what became an ongoing series of theme-related base structures.
These structures have also served as viewing platforms, plus social and meditative spaces, while allowing proximity to the Man. Over the years, they have been additionally employed as theaters, interactive exhibitions, participatory puzzles, galleries, marriage chapels, and monumental installations in their own right.
2001 – The Temple of Wisdom (popularly referred to as “the big A”) was our first effort at a construction to elevate the Man. The four legs provided ladder access and egress to a room at the top with commanding views down the Promenades.
2002 – The Lighthouse was not just part of the centerpiece of our city, but also aligned with our radial streets and with our year’s theme… The Floating World. “Seen in plan, this lighthouse formed a perfect compass: triangular benches had been stationed around its perimeter like compass points. In proper nautical fashion, each of these was divided into bilaterally symmetric black and white fields whose juncture demarcated an exact vector. This pattern of contrasting color bands continued on the railings of the two-tiered structure: wherever facets met, black and white adjoined. Thus, with the aid of a map, one could employ the lighthouse as a compass that would locate artworks on the open playa.” (Larry Harvey – ‘The Early Years’).
2003 – With the lighthouse we had established a strong link between the practical aspects of the structure and the annual theme. With the theme – Beyond Belief, it became a more interactive experience as well. Being nearly 100 feet wide at the base, the Great Temple was quite grand. Along the base were niches occupied by participants posing as living icons. Thematic venues and art filled the interior, and within all were sanctums housing altars dedicated to gifts and remembrances destined for passage with the fire.
2004 – The Observatory was a planetarium for The Vault of Heaven. It incorporated a wooden geodesic dome as the Man’s perch. Indented in its outer circumference were ten small stages designed to function as dioramas: scenic representations of other habitable worlds, and within them groups of people gave theme-related performances.
2005 – The Fun House represented the joy and anguish, indeed the twist and turns of Psyche. As in a dream, the Man slowly spun on his all-seeing tower over the labyrinthine interior of a circus tent. His counterpart, Laughing Sal, was posted at the entry. In this instance, the Man was engineered to rotate on a circular steel track throughout the week. This was the first of his animations beyond the raising of his arms immediately prior to the burn.
2006 – The Pavilion of the Future for the theme Hope and Fear took a different direction. The Man’s arms, as well as the Man himself, simultaneously rose and fell in accordance with gauged swings in the hopes and fears of the community. The complexity of the engineering far exceeded what was anticipated, but it all worked. The subtext of this year, “The Road to U(dys)topia,” was a harbinger of the following year’s theme.
2007 – Mountains and Hills seemed the place for The Green Man. Emphasizing social consciousness, all the construction materials were to be recycled except the three massive king-posts holding up the structure and Man. These logs were salvaged from a mountain tract, which was to be bulldozed and burnt off. The main structure – the Mountain, was a huge meditative space centered around a sand garden. It was flanked by the Hills – two long, rolling structures, which housed information and displays on cutting edge advances in ecological technology.
2008 – This theme was about nationality, identity and the nature of patriotism. As counterpoint to The American Dream, Burning Man stands atop an obelisk emblazoned with flags representing the countries of the world. This was a sixty-six foot high box beam monument. Interior cabling anchored it against the potential 70 MPH winds, to deep foundation blocks. It contained three levels of viewing platform around a core of stairways.
2009 – The Tangled Bank was the name given to the structure for the theme of Evolution. “Nature never made a plan, nor does it seem to copy very well. No living thing is ever quite the same as others of its kind. Charles Darwin called this Natural Variation.” – Larry Harvey. In this spirit, we broke with all tradition and embraced the chaotic. The sculptural assembly represents a nebulous and branching path — both in form and in actual construction. Not finely drawn, but wittingly open to the creativity and expression of the carpenter/artists, it would evolve rather than be built.
2010 – The theme Metropolis set a dialogue between the Black Rock City citizenry and the experts on the future of urban life. This year’s design was referenced in Art Deco construction, and emphasized the structure and transparency.
2011- From first to last, Burning Man has always been a rite of passage. Yet a keener and more poignant meaning can attach to unique instants in the private life of every individual: moments of crisis and frisson, as when a cri de coeurinforms us that we’ve somehow crossed an inner threshold and are changed. Thus moving from one state of being into an unknown other can be frightening. Rites of Passage were performed by participants who ascended ladders in this monument found a sheer slice of nothing at its core, while high above them Burning Man engaged in a delicate high wire act. Four semi-pyramids with flaming braziers surrounded the structure. These open-sided alcoves acted as performance sites, venues for participant-created rites of passage. Whether such events were planned or improvised, their meaning was made available to passersby.
2012– The theme Fertility 2.0 reminds us that Black Rock City is a kind of Petri dish. Theme camps cling in fertile clusters to its latticework of streets, artworks tumble out of it, like pollen on the air. These nodes of interaction mutate, grow and reproduce their kind. The man stood astride a grand pavilion, similar in shape and style to the Pantheon of ancient Rome. Arching portals and two mezzanines wrapped around an atrium; circles encompassing circles, telescoping to an open skylight several stories overhead. An interactive sculpture, sprouted from the courtyard of the chamber, inviting participants to clamber upward through the center of the mesmerizing space, much as bees might swarm about the pistil of a flower.
2013– What if your electricity went dead and stayed that way — would you know how to make the current flow again? Can you fix your car if it breaks down, or build yourself a new one? Like the Melanesian islanders, most of us are many steps removed from the Cargo that entirely shapes our lives. We don’t know how it’s made, where it’s made, or how it works; all we can do is look beyond the sky and pray for magic that will keep consumption flowing. Cargo Cult courted the return of our benevolent Visitors from Elsewhere by constructing an enormous replica of their sky-craft, hewn from the primitive materials of our backwater planet. Burning Man stood atop this streamlined structure, majestically revolving like an interstellar beacon.
2014– This year we created a Caravansary that occupied the crossroads of a dreamland: a bazaar of the bizarre wherein treasures of every sort, from every land and age, flowed in and out to be flaunted, lost, exploited and discovered. This is not a tourist destination, but a home for travelers who come here bearing gifts. This year’s Man stood directly on the desert floor and towered many stories high. Its massive torso evoked a tiered pagoda; its ornate head was be a lamp that welcomed people home.
Illustrations by Rod Garrett and Andrew Johnstone.
2015– This year’s theme, Carnival of Mirrors was a kind of magic show that took the form of an old-fashioned carnival. Old-fashioned carnivals were dominated by an all-pervading hucksterism; midways featured barkers, shills, rigged games of chance and skill, and not infrequently defrauded customers — “short change” is a carny term. They also featured titillating freak shows, geek acts and museums of the outré and forbidden. Our midway, on the other hand, satirized deception while inviting all participants to summon up their inner geek, that secret freak who hides behind the mask of what is called normality. We turned grifting into gifting; otherness became creative self-expression.
Man base design by Larry Harvey and Andrew Johnstone. Illustration by Andrew Johnstone with Hugh D’Andrade.
2016– In realizing this year’s event theme, Da Vinci’s Workshop, the builders of Black Rock City planned what may have been their most ambitious project to date: mounting the Burning Man on a mechanism that would enable it to rotate on a vertical plane, and surrounding this human-powered contraption with a public square designed to evoke the terra-cotta and plastered-brick ambiance of a Renaissance piazza.
Man base design by Larry Harvey, Andrew Johnstone and Jack Haye. Illustration by Andrew Johnstone.
2017– This year, for Radical Ritual, we erected a temple to commemorate the Golden Spike. Circles surrounding circles converged immediately beneath the Man. We marked this space with an omphalos, a sculpture that represents the navel of our world, its central hub and gathering place. Passing through the spine of Burning Man, this axis continued upward, emerging high above the temple as a golden spire. Participants were invited to contribute to this shrine, and to the hundred niches that penetrated the temple’s walls.
Man Pavilion design by Larry Harvey, Andrew Johnstone, and Jack Haye. Illustration by Andrew Johnstone and Jim Pire.
2018– For the I, Robot theme, the 2018 Man was positioned atop an enormous gear, a nod to the passing machine age wherein were forged many of our hopes and fears about artificial life. Inside the structure, murals and bas-relief panels, ancient and modern in aspect, traced the progression of our enduring fascination with robots, from the primordial golem to the post-work future.
Man Pavilion design by Larry Harvey and many artists. Illustration by Andrew Johnstone.
2019– For the Metamorphoses theme, the 2019 Man needed to honor Larry Harvey, celebrate his creative legacy, express our own inspiring message of what lives on, and also speak to the theme of what is changing. This Man Pavilion opened the door for change, as the Man was gorgeously cocooned by a winding, ascending walkway, and lit at night from within, the cocoon revealed cracks from the transformation, throwing patterned light across the playa.
Man Pavilion design by Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu.
2020– For the Multiverse theme in 2020, our community experienced — for the first time ever — a virtual Burn across eight Universes. We also experienced a 24-hour LIVE Burn Around the World, capped off with a special Burn at Fly Ranch. We will always burn the Man.