Amid coronavirus Burning Man festival cancels and plans to go virtual

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Burning Man is an annual, nine-day gathering in the desert that includes artistic performances, installations, and music where thousands of enthusiasts flocked to Nevada each year to attend the illustrative show.

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"Burning Man" name comes from the symbolic ritual burning of a large wooden sculpture ("the Man") that usually takes place on the Saturday evening of the event. The attendants of Burning Man, called "Burners," include celebrities and wealthy tech CEOs. Some of the previous attendants are Elon Musk CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos etc. First-time participants reportedly have to roll around in the dust upon arrival.

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Originally, the annual nine-day festival would've taken place August 30 to September 7 in the temporarily constructed city known as Black Rock City, in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. However, the mega event will not be held at its regular magnitude this year but will instead be conducted virtually in the midst of the global pandemic.

The festival is organized by a non-profit organization called the Burning Man Project. Organizers said that the 2020 Black Rock City event would not be happening in the way they originally thought. Instead, the ticketed festival will be conducted online and will be open for all to participate in. Though the price has not been announced.

The cancellation of the giant art and music event, which has been held for three decades, will require “substantial staff layoffs, pay reductions, and other belt-tightening measures”, the Burning Man organization announced on its website. It is also likely to have a serious economic impact on the state of Nevada, where Burning Man is held each year in the remote Black Rock Desert. According to Burning Man’s own economic analysis, the event brings Nevada $60m each year.

Burning Man, which started out as a gritty, counterculture experiment, has become an increasingly global and celebrity-studded event, drawing DJs, tech executives, hedge fund managers, and wealthy partygoers from Europe and around the world. In the time of coronavirus, a gathering of thousands in a temporary tent city, in an empty stretch of desert where there is no running water and virtually no soap, was an obvious public health concern.

For buyers who purchased tickets early, Burning Man will offer refunds of its $475 tickets and $140 vehicle passes to the weeklong event. But the organization is asking ticket buyers to donate the funds to the organization if they are able to afford to do so, to help the organization survive into the next year.