All but Invisible: Black Life at Burning Man

Each year, approximately 70,000 people converge on Black Rock City, the temporary town on the sands of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, for Burning Man, the weeklong anti-establishment, anti-consumerist festival known for its performance art, music and outlandish costumes. Only about 1 percent of those people are black.

The city has no charter, but attendees are encouraged to read a 20-page survival guide, outlining how to prepare for unpredictable weather in a “hyperstimulating” environment. It does not, however, address how being black at Burning Man may present its own set of concerns.

In a short documentary, “In Pursuit of Happiness: Black at Burning Man,” the filmmaker Gina Levy interviews several black “Burners” about their experience at the festival.

“I have participated in Burning Man 11 times, beginning in 1999,” Levy said. “One of Burning Man’s 10 principles is ‘radical inclusion’ — meaning everyone is welcome. Yet hardly any people of color participate. I wanted to know why.”

Levy interviewed Nicholas Powers, a professor at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, New York, about his first year at Burning Man, in 2002. At the end of the festival, he said, “there was the ritual burning of the man.”

“This huge inferno rises up. As I was dancing around the fire, I had this one moment; I was scared, I thought that the almost all-white crowd that was nearly all drunk or high were going to throw me in as a joke into the fire.” Powers explained that his fear was informed by history, his experience as a black man and the feeling that when some “white people start getting happy or have fun and get drunk, they act out in racist ways.”

This Sunday marks the 33rd year of the festival.