Burning Man in the Context of Refugees and Starvation- Deep Poverty

[kathryn007]

Hi all,

First time Burner, but long time Rainbow Family and humanitarian worker.

Hey, hope this is Ok, but I read the BM Journal Article about compliance, and I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of this piece - https://journal.burningman.org/2025/02/ ... compliant/

But, as I prep for the trip, and am looking forward to this experience shaping my work with LGBTQ+ refugees in Gorom camp in South Sudan, who are facing abuse (including murder of their peers) - I just wanted to step back and talk about global context - the fact that most BM attendees have some degree of financial comfort - and the piece.

1. “Burning Man has come to a point of unprecedented reach, scope, and diversity...”
Critique: This implies a global cultural movement, yet it is centered on a ticketed event in a desert that costs thousands to attend. Calling this “diverse” should be reconsidered in a global context where 99% of the global poor couldn’t afford the flight, ticket, or supplies. We should question the term inclusive when it's limited to people who can afford to stay in an extra-cost camp.

2. “We are moving from a ‘High Culture’ to a ‘Diaspora’ period…”
Critique: The use of “diaspora” to describe the voluntary diffusion of a festival lifestyle does not acknowledge real diasporas, which result from war, genocide, famine, or persecution — we could be considered a group of wealthy creatives who take their dance parties global.

3. “Making bureaucracy Burning Man compliant.”
Critique: Only in an environment of extreme privilege can bureaucracy be considered a philosophical playground. In a refugee camp, people are dying because they can’t get their paperwork processed for food rations or medical care. There, bureaucracy means life or death, not whether your “form has playful language.”

4. “Burners get inspired to collaborate… so we need bureaucracy.”
Critique: This ignores how much unpaid labor and cognitive bandwidth are required to even have the time to collaborate. Most of the world’s poorest are trying to survive the day. They don't “collaborate” on visionary projects; they stand in line for food distribution or try not to get cholera from the river. The mission of my humanitarian work at Dusoma is about making sure that all staff are not asked to volunteer.

Happy to hear your feedback.
Kathryn

[some seeing eye]

Hello, welcome to your first Black Rock City campout!

1. The 10 Principles evolved over about the first 10 years of campouts which also had a strong ingredient of the Capacophony Society which descended from the Suicide Club. They were not particularly socially conscious movements, world changing, helping or anything of the sort. They were conceptual performance art without any art theory or art history. So after 10 years one of the cofounders, Larry Harvey, a thinker, but man of few words wrote down the 10 Principles which he saw people developed. The Principles were how people got along together for a week campout and a shorthand to orienting the about 30% new burners each year. There is probably not another subculture with that much annual churn.

BTW the Census will tell you a bit about Black Rock City.

Ever since, just like the Rainbow Gathering, the Oregon Country Fair, the jam band subculture, and many other groups, the Burning Man group developed its own inclusionary/exclusionary rituals and language.

2. In the early 2010s? some people got the idea that Burning Man and the 10 Principles should be spread across the world as a way of living year around. Maybe that was Larry, who passed away, so we may never know. I think many think that idea was stupid and that idea is declining in popularity.

Many of the things you quote are ideas for getting along for a wilderness campout for a week.

I would never extend them beyond that.

3. It is estimated if you add up all the burners over all the years, in BRC and the regionals, who are still alive, the number is about 1 million in a world population of 8 billion.

Black Rock City is not designed to solve the problems of the world that you are working on the other 51 weeks of your life in the world. It is just too small.

I doubt the Rainbow Gathering, the Mutant Fest, the people who followed Bassnectar until he was exposed for abusing underage women, or Wasteland, etc. are designed to solve world problems.

4. I have done overseas work funded by USAID and for me BRC is a refresh and a reset that is so intense and amazing, that I don't think about solving world problems while I am in the moment at the event. Then I come back with a sense anything is possible.

5. There is a group Burners Without Burners - BWB who do projects all around the world, and in the US which might interest you.

Take a listen to https://burningman.org/podcast/tom-pric ... he-planet/
They are https://burnerswithoutborders.org/

6. The Podcast is the product of the internal philosophy department which is trying a constantly changing word stew to explain and sell the event to new and old burners. There is no guarantee that the word stew has value the other 51 weeks of the year, is a harmonious combination of ingredients, tastes good, or is nutritional. Your quotes are from the philosophy word stew department. They also make videos. In fact there is one nearing completion on the Department of Public Works.

There is a whole Philosophical Center part of ePlaya and all kinds of documentation https://burningman.org/programs/philosophical-center/. Most of it revolves around camps building expensive vacation hotels on the playa. Eplayan Mr Jackass first raised it on this very forum in 2014 and the sad lament of Sherpa Beth followed. All that discussion and resetting through years of meetings applies to 1 week of the year for a desert campout, and the weekend campouts of the Regionals.

7. So if after getting a feeling for BWB, if you like meet them in person on the playa.

[kathryn007]

Hi Some Seeing Eye,

Thank you for the thoughtful response. And yes, Burning Man is not a United Nations event, and for people like us who work on humanitarian stuff the rest of the year, we have to do self-care to avoid burnout, as the work is intense and often sad and frustrating. So it's great that you can recharge.

However, I still think, and what I'd like to do, is still have that discussion about "What if this was it - and there was no going home?" I'm convinced a serious crisis would cause a breakdown in community - for some.

The idea is that BM is not Coachella. For most people, they don't do humanitarian work all year, and they could use BM as a time to reflect on the world outside their window. As people in refugee camps in Africa are starting to starve due to cuts in foreign aid (and the panic that's taking place) - the second worse thing about starvation is that it rips communities apart - it's neighbor against neighbor. When people do receive a little money in a digital wallet, they have to hide it. And Americans get overwhelmed, so we stick to tropes like "You can't change the world but you can change yourself." But this is why the whole world is ignoring the suffering - for issues that are easy to fix. Hunger is actually VERY easy to fix - it just needs to be a priority, and not a side quest.

The work I'm doing is to essentially "rebrand African starvation for an American audience' - this is my essay about Band Aid/Live Aid and the CNN documentary that came out last week. It's called "Well Tonight Thank God It's Them Instead of You." https://dusoma.wordpress.com/2025/07/19 ... a-in-1985/

On the positive side, I do think there are lessons from BM and Rainbow gatherings that can be useful in refugee camps - like digging latrines and having designated areas for waste. In refugee camps, there are no community kitchens - everyone pays retail for small bags of millet.

So yes, thank you for the prompt about BwB, I've been looking into them, and AfrikaBurn.

Anyway, I'm looking to meet with people and talk to people about these issues at BM. My work is called Dusoma: AI for Humanity - it's an open source software project (I'm not selling anything) - dusoma.com.

Kathryn

[some seeing eye]

To be concrete, I would start with BWB. That are going to have a good network.

Every year, people submit events that are compiled into the What, Where, When list. You can search last year's at https://innovate.burningman.org/dataset ... 2015-2023/ which is then produced out at some examples shown on https://innovate.burningman.org/

You can also search the 2025 camp database to see if any of the about 1100 theme camps have campers matching your interest.

Based on all that research you could give a lecture and get it in the 2025 What, Where, When or maybe the sponsoring lecture camp puts it in the What, Where, When. Playa Alchemist is a wealthy camp that has lectures I have not visited.

I would prepare you for two things.

1. People may say "I don't care about starvation in Africa, Burning Man is for partying."

2. Burning Man has very strict rules against commodification. That can apply to even nonprofit business ventures, like the one you mentioned. Last year, someone was promoting their new crypto currency by gifting coin. They were immediately kicked out of the event and banned.

I have spent only 3 months in Africa, 11 countries. My observation is that starvation is either caused by drought, or disruption of the supply chain/migration caused by war. Afrikaburn is large, but will probably be slim on continent-wide NGO work.

[Popeye]

"No Expectations"
Granted that you have read, watched videos and probably talked to others but you do not know anything about Burning Man. You have just been playing telephone.
Instead of arriving with a plan on how to use Burning Man for your own ends arrive with an open heart and a willingness to learn. Burning Man is unlike anything you have experienced. Go and learn then decide how you can work with other Burners. I can promise you that you will leave a different person than the one you arrive as.

[kathryn007]

Hello again!

Again, thank you all so much for your thoughtful responses. For over 20 years, I have loved BM art culture. When I was the editor of Chicago Art Magazine, I was a juror for art cars and really appreciated the spirit of the evaluation. I used to write about kinetic art, street art and large public sculptures, so I appreciate the engineering, safety considerations and craftsman ship that goes into those vehicles. Giving away 1.5 million in annual art grants makes BM one of the largest funders for art.

So a lot has happened since I posted. I am now in a camp .... I'm not going to mention the name of the camp because I have some serious concerns. It's one of the accessible-but-fancy tech futurism camps that you can actually get into and it shows up in perplexity.ai search. Anyway, this camp is a fucking dumpster fire.

So my friends my friends - we need to chat. I'm going to do some writing and start a new post, but, I just want to say right here - as an artist, and someone who has been standing up for artists in a world that has continually de-valued us, having big tech AI speakers speak to topics like "The Optimistic Case for AGI" and "How dope could the future be? Why AI Might Cause That Soon."

Holy shit! Ummm.... ChatGPT and Dall-e stole the future for artists on such an unprecedented scale that it is unquestionably the largest art heist in the history of mankind. As I say in my class "ChatGPT and the Human Resistance" - people hate this fucking thing. And every artist and writer has lost in court. So to come to OUR turf, and be speaking this type of LinkedIN-style investor deck techbro optimism - that is NOT OK.

So I'm thinking about my options for art and activism, as an insider, as I've always been. I've been meditating on: take away their power by taking away their power.
And you can read into that however you want.

Follow me on instagram at kathryn071 and my site is Dusoma.com. If they don't let me change the program into one where they answer to burning man artists about the horrible effects of this technology, then I will set up a protest camp outside of the camp. And I'm going to bring my puppets.

I look forward to working with you all.
Kathryn Born, editor, Starve Magazine

[some seeing eye]

I am very familiar with the topic.

Good for your work! I would suggest you have a talk ASAP with the lecture camps on how to frame a call to action. And get on their schedules they submit to the What, Where, When.

Some presentation framing may repel potential allies, who could become part of your funding network. Discuss framing with the camps, they know their audience and have experienced hundreds of talks.

I would suggest stressing that detecting and treating zoonotic diseases in other countries reduces the spread of those diseases to, then in, the USA.

[kathryn007]

All is well that's ending well. I'm speaking on Friday, "ChatGPT and the Human Resistance"

I'm also doing a puppet show with a fake panel of tech oligarchs talking about what they want out of AI dominance.

[kathryn007]

ChatGPT and the Human Resistance