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In Dust We Trust In Dust We Trust A Narrative Journey into the Communal Heart of Public Art at the Burning Man Festival Karen Ann Stewart Arizona State University PLEASE DO NOT REPRODUCE WITHOUT EXPRESSED PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR Dedication I dedicate this project to those whose endless love, patience, encouragement, and Eric Margolis – for grounding me in the realm of visual studies, and for constantly support made this narrative come alive. My heartfelt thanks to each of you: introducing me to creative and exciting people who share a love for images and art. You have a knack for being there just when I need you most. Thank you for being a part of Dissertation Kitty – for sitting with me at the computer, for months, helping me write my committee and for being you. my story. H.L. (Bud) Goodall, Jr. – for being my mentor and my friend, and for your faith in this Aaron Hess – my grad school buddy! – for teaching me what it means to be a student work. You do the very best thing a mentor could ever do – inspire me with your own of human communication and for keeping me sane throughout the process. voice to seek out a voice of my own. Thank you for your always open door. I have learned so much from you… Tamara Christensen – for being an explorer with me in the land of visual narratives. Russell Atkinson and Stephanie SaintCyr – my Burning Man family. Thank you for Chad Wolfe and Will Smythe – for your enthusiasm for the project and your making our time together in the desert so incredibly special. And Russ, thank you for willingness to carry out some of the more tedious parts of research work. I couldn’t have your open heart and willingness to share your beautiful photographs with me for this asked for better research assistants. project. I love that you are a part of this story! Linda Park-Fuller and Denise White – for being my readers and giving me creative And last, but in no way least… support when I absolutely needed it the most! You lift me! Todd Stewart – for making all of this possible – your sacrifi ces gave me a room of my Sarah Tracy – you might not always be aware of how your presence infl uences my own and space to write. You are my hero! Without you there would be no road trips or work, so know you elevate my thinking, inspire me to delve into my projects more adventures in the desert. This story exists because of you. You are my Superman and my deeply and richly, and keep me reaching for bigger and better things. Thank you for Sweetie! Te amo!! being part of my committee. Abstract Table of Contents The Burning Man Festival, a free-spirited yet highly sophisticated social experiment Introduction celebrating “radical self expression and radical self reliance” is well-known for its large- A brief orientation to this project ..............................................................7 scale and highly interactive public art installations. For twenty-fi ve years, Burners (as festival participants are called) have been creating and displaying amazing works of art for the annual event, which currently takes place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. In Part 1 the desert, Burners build a temporary city, appropriate the open space to serve as their A visual narrative about Burning Man “tabula rasa” or “blank canvas,” and unleash their creative potential in the name of “active participation” and social civility. In the process, they produce public art on a scale Prologue .................................................................................17 unprecedented in United States history. Chapter 1: Preparation ............................................................37 Chapter 2: Manifestation .........................................................75 This dissertation, a visual and narrative ethnography, explores the layers of aesthetic Chapter 3: Celebration ...........................................................113 and social meanings Burners associate with public art. Told in narrative form, this Chapter 4: Transformation and Continuation .........................157 project utilizes “in situ” fi eld notes, photographic fi eld notes, rhetorical analyses of art Epilogue ................................................................................203 installations, thematic analysis of Burner storytelling, and writing as a method of inquiry Plate Captions ...................................................................... 245 as means for investigating and understanding more fully the ways Burners create, display, and consume public art. Part 2 Findings for this project indicate Burners value public art beyond its material An academic discussion about the visual narrative presentation. Preparing for, building, celebrating, and experiencing aesthetic transformation through the engagement of public art all are viewed as valuable “art” Theoretical and Methodological Considerations ....................259 experiences at Burning Man. Working in tandem, these experiences also produce Implementation of the Methodological Bricolage, profound feelings of connection and collaboration in the community, suggesting Analysis of the Data, and Implications ..................................283 Burning Man’s methods for producing public art could serve as model to follow, or points References .............................................................................303 for refl ection, for other groups wishing to use public art and other forms of material expression to bring their members closer together. Introduction: A Brief Orientation to this Project This is a story about Burning Man. There are two main reasons why I want to tell this story. The fi rst reason is self-serving and I am not ashamed to admit it. I fi nd it ridiculously fun to talk about Burning Man. Burning Man is the preeminent counter-culture art event happening in the United States today. It is an on-the-bus, off -the-charts, and out-of-this-universe kind of experience, and since I have popped down the rabbit-hole and tasted the “radical self expression and radical self reliance” the event promotes, I fi nd it impossible not to talk about it. I want to share the beautiful absurdity of Burning Man. When I do, I get to relive its magic. I also tell this story to help me explore the political, social, creative, and cultural elements making up the “Burning Man experience.” Burning Man cannot be neatly summarized as a party, a vision-quest, an experimental community, or a creative outlet. It is all of these things, plus more, whipped together in a community-sized mixing bowl with the hope the end result will somehow taste good. It is communal cooking at its fi nest. After a week at Burning Man, however, I am never sure what exactly I just consumed. So I turn to narrative-based research practices as way of making sense of and fi nding meaning within the complex aesthetic, social, and political fl avors of this event. *** Narrative-based research, the process of writing stories and analyzing stories to explore the meaning of human actions as a form of qualitative research1, goes by many names. These names include autoethnography, personal ethnography, narrative ethnography, performative writing, lyrical sociology, autobiography, narrative heuristics, qualitative inquiry, and narrative inquiry. Each of these methods varies slightly, refl ecting a variety PLATE 1 8 | From Ritual to Spectacle Introduction | 9 of ways story-based research can be used to meet research objectives in a wide range of My goal with this project, however, is to simultaneously engage in crafting research-based academic disciplines. Scholars using story-based research methods, however, do share a personal narratives and cultural refl ection through story analysis, not separate the two, foundational epistemological belief that stories, narrative confi gurations of characters, so I apply the term Narrative Inquiry to my work. Starting with Clandinin and Connelly’s settings, and themes temporally integrated and organized into plots (Polkinghorne, (2000) defi nition of “narrative” as phenomena under study and as a method for study, and 1995) are natural linguistic forms people use every day to connect, feel, understand, and Williams’ (2006) concept of relationally active cultural analysis3, I defi ne Narrative Inquiry explore the world. The study of narrative confi gurations, therefore, is a particularly well- as the practice and the analysis of social storytelling as a methodological framework for suited research practice for revealing insights into culturally situated actions in human critical cultural inquiry. experiences (Polkinghorne, 1995; Bruner, 1990; Ricoeur, 1991). *** The study of narratives consists of two main research practices: analyzing stories told by research subjects and creating stories based on personal research experiences. When I turn to Narrative Inquiry to help me understand Burning Man for three important reasons. methodologically defi ning story-based inquiry, narrative theorists regularly split the analysis of stories told by research subjects and the creation of stories by the researcher First, as a festival participant, I fi nd it impossible to separate the physical experience into two separate approaches. For example, Bruner (1986) separates narrative research of Burning Man from the stories I create about this event. These stories order and into “paradigmatic-type narrative inquiry” and “narrative-type narrative inquiry,” contextualize my experiences and increase my appreciation and understanding of and Polkinghorne, (1995) divides the practices between the “analysis
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