Larry Harvey, whose whimsical decision to erect a giant wooden figure and then burn it to the ground led to the popular, long-running counterculture celebration known as “Burning Man,” has died. He was 70.
Harvey died on Saturday morning at a hospital in San Francisco, surrounded by family, Burning Man Project chief executive officer Marian Goodell said.
The cause was not immediately known, but he had suffered a stroke earlier this month.
Long-time friend Stuart Mangrum wrote on the organization’s Web site that Harvey did not believe in any sort of existence after death.
“Now that he’s gone, let’s take the liberty of contradicting him, and keep his memory alive in our hearts, our thoughts and our actions,” Mangrum wrote.
“As he would have wished it, let us always Burn the Man,” he added.
The creator of the annual week-long summer festival in Northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert was hospitalized on April 4 after suffering a massive stroke.
The Burning Man organization did not disclose his prognosis, only saying that he was getting round-the-clock care.
Burning Man takes place annually the week before Labor Day, attracting about 70,000 people who pay anywhere from US$425 to US$1,200 a ticket to travel to a dry lake bed 161km east of Reno, where temperatures can routinely exceed 37°C during the summer.
There they must carry in their own food, build their own makeshift community and engage in whatever interests them.
On the gathering’s penultimate day, the giant effigy — or “Man” as it is known — is set ablaze during a raucous, joyful celebration.
“A city in the desert. A culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers,” is how the gathering is described on Burning Man’s Web site.
An “esoteric mix of pagan fire ritual and sci-fi Dada circus where some paint their bodies, bang drums, dance naked and wear costumes that would draw stares in a Mardi Gras parade,” is how The Associated Press once described the gathering.
While tickets now sell out immediately, Harvey described in a 2007 interview how he had much more modest intentions when he launched Burning Man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach one summer day in 1986.
“I called a friend and said: ‘Let’s go to the beach and burn a man,’” he told the Web site Green Living. “And he said: ‘Can you say that again?’ And I did and we did it.”
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to
RSS