Burning Man: Archiving the Ephemeral

The Kitchen Sisters Present

On the night of Summer Solstice 1986, Larry Harvey and Jerry James built and burned an eight-foot wooden figure on San Francisco's Baker Beach surrounded by a handful of friends. Burning Man was born.

This summer, the 39th annual Burning Man gathering begins to assemble on a vast dry lake bed in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the nomadic ritual's home since 1990. An estimated 80,000 people will come.

During production of our Keepers series, chronicling activist archivists, rogue librarians and keepers of the culture and free flow of information, we received this message on the Keepers Hotline:

"Hello Kitchen Sisters, I am a rogue archivist, the archivist for Burning Man. Come to Burning Man headquarters and I’ll show you the collection. Cheers.” —LadyBee, Archivist & Art Collection Manager, Burning Man

How do you archive an event when one of it's driving principles is "leave no trace," where The Burning Man is in fact burned? What is being kept and who is keeping it? We journey into the archives of this legendary gathering to find out.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell, mixed by Jim McKee.