Burning Man is a culture of co-creation
Sep 8, 2018 · 5 min read
At Burning Man last week, I attended a talk by a geographer who claimed that what makes the temporary city so special is the location: that the Black Rock desert, with its particular difficulties and affordances, is what shapes how we build Black Rock City, and thus, shapes Burning Man.
I disagree. Burning Man is not a place, it is an act of co-creation; it is the periodic coalescence of a living, shifting community. Sure, the petri dish in which we cultivated it was this particular desert. But by now we’ve achieved a self-perpetuating culture that can survive…

