At Home in the Big Empty: Burning Man and the Playa Sublime
Burning Man is an artistic community event that has been dis/assembled in Nevada's Black Rock Desert every summer since 1990. The location of this event in this desert has had a shaping impact on Burning Man as a gathering, a city, an organization, and a transnational cultural movement. A uniqu...
| Published in: | Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Equinox Publ.
2019
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| In: |
Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Nevada
/ Playas
/ Sublimation
/ Burning Man (Event)
/ Social culture
/ Cultural identity
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion AZ New religious movements KBQ North America NCG Environmental ethics; Creation ethics ZB Sociology |
| Further subjects: | B
Space
B Playas B Fire B Desert B Sublimity B Burning Man B Species B dust |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Burning Man is an artistic community event that has been dis/assembled in Nevada's Black Rock Desert every summer since 1990. The location of this event in this desert has had a shaping impact on Burning Man as a gathering, a city, an organization, and a transnational cultural movement. A unique facet of what is known as Black Rock City is not simply that it is dis/assembled in a desert region, but that it recurs on a playa, the ne plus ultra of deserts. The Black Rock playa has obtained a special significance for participants (i.e. burners), for whom this liminal space is recognized, paradoxically, as home'. This uniquely sublime no-place contextualizes a familial encounter experience shaping on-playa identity over three decades of event-going. Informed by Emily Brady's study of paradox in natural sublimity, the writings of poet-geographer of the Big Empty' William L. Fox, and the author's experience of Black Rock City in seven cycles from 2003, three qualities of playaspace (otherworldly, ephemeral, limitless) are addressed, each implicated in its unique potential for a transformational community that has fashioned a homeland on the frontiers of the sublime. |
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| ISSN: | 1749-4915 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.36778 |