About 20 years ago, biking at Burning Man I came across an impressive sculpture composed of books. The artist was present, fielding questions from passersby. One asked whether, in Burning Man tradition, the piece would ultimately be set on fire.
“We don’t burn books in America,” he replied flatly, noting that the art would be installed at a library after the festival.
This year at Burning Man there were at least two pieces composed of, or centering on, books. Both were designed to be burned.
The Moonlight Collective constructed The Moonlight Library with books removed from library circulation or salvaged from waste streams. The volumes were cut in half to create a false front, and to manage the weight of the two-story structure. Embedded in the work were recordings of people who shared personal stories anonymously at the 2024 festival.
The piece formed a kind of physical embodiment of memories and stories. To reach the upper level a visitor had to scramble up mismatched steps, making it challenging to access the contents, as well as the surrounding view. According to the lead artist, James Gwertzman, the work wasn’t intended as a political statement about burning books, but rather unrecoverable volumes were used to pose the question, “what does it mean to be human?”.
Alexander Rose – “Zander” – installed a small library at the base of the Burning Man structure as part of the Pavilion of the Future. The room was akin to an oversize replica of the small take-a-book-leave-a-book libraries-in-a-box that dot neighborhoods throughout the United States. It offered “banned” and other volumes, including Whole Earth catalogues signed by Stuart Brand. Visitors were encouraged to rescue the books to save them from being put to flames. “…this library is about NOT being burnt,” stated Zander. “It’s an ephemeral manual for civilization. We the participants will choose what books to save from burning.”
Art often uses physical objects as metaphors, to provoke and inspire. At Burning Man a giant stick figure is burned to the ground, only to rise again the following year, destined to be destroyed in a never-ending cycle. Or at least until the festival becomes too expensive or weather unstable to continue. Books, however, carry a particular weight, making artistic use of them is especially inflammatory, particular in today’s wrought times.
While the books in the art pieces weren’t religious in nature – or maybe some of them were – spiritual traditions tend to treat the written word as sacred. A damaged or worn-out Quran isn’t supposed to be discarded like garbage. Instead, the text should be washed away with water, the remaining cloth-wrapped book buried. In Judaism, worn-out scrolls and books containing the name of God are traditionally buried in a Jewish cemetery.
In its emphasis on fire, illumination, and creative destruction, Burning Man most mimics Hinduism, which allows for multiple methods to dispose of texts, including by water, combustion, and burial. Seen through that lens, the ceremonial burning of The Moonlight Library and books left behind at the Pavilion of the Future was quite fitting, respectful, and ritualistic.
In a secular context books have been considered essential to foster democracy, critical thought, and civic participation. In this light, book burning is antithetical to self-governing principles, symbolizing – and potentially effectuating – the suppression of ideas and rejection of intellectual freedom. Putting texts to flame – or banishing them from libraries and schools – has been a hallmark of authoritarian and fascist regimes, who fear the independent thought that books can inspire.
Burning Man is known for advocating none of those things. Yet one can be forgiven for being confused – or at least challenged, art’s oft intent – by the pieces.
We morph ever closer towards an interpretation of history and modern language that’s almost entirely written in the air, so to speak, easily modified, with rapidly disappearing words and meaning. The Moonlight Library and Pavilion of the Future succeeded in being provocative. At their best they might even be considered holy. But they cannot be entirely divorced from the meta-context in which the festival exists. Using books as props in the present political environment, in which the past is being rewritten and science modified by order of a President, is perilous.
Or maybe quite fitting. Standing on the Burning Man platform, not far from the Pavilion, a young man encouraged the people around him to investigate, and invest in, crypto currency.
“It’s the future!” he said, his eyes shiny. “It’s just like what’s happening here!”
Books that are cooked to dust. Money that’s never more than dust. Easily blown in the direction of whatever winds are most prevailing. It’s no coincidence that as currency has transmogrified from gold to code income inequity has exploded. Nor is the present shift towards autocracy and ignorance divorced from the decline of print publications. Holding something in one’s hand, as well as one’s mind, can remind us of its true weight. Perhaps, as Zander asserted, that’s the book arts’ ultimate message: see it, or save it, before it disappears.