Event Horizon

Held annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and replicated in over 80 events worldwide, Burning Man is widely recognised as a prototype transformational event, Burning Man has been an object (and subject) of my research passion over twenty years.
 
From 2016 to late 2019 – I coordinated a collaborative comparative ethnographic Burning Man research team at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. See Burning Progeny for information on that project and its output.
 
In April 2022, I commenced a two-year Marie Curie Fellowship in the Centre for Music, Culture and Identity at the University of Huddersfield. “Event Horizon: An Audiography of Transformation” is a multi-sited study focusing on Burning Man as a liminal culture and sonorous society, and is designed to explore the liminal architecture and transformational logics of this event-centred movement.

Ongoing research has stimulated numerous Burning Man related publications and collaborations. See Burnography. 

This research is part of broader ongoing studies investigating transformational event cultures as intentional participatory events that have become powerful vehicles for transnational cultures motivated to initiate the transit from the conditions of late modernity to mindful, humanistic, and ecologically sustainable futures.