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Larry Harvey is the main co-founder of the Burning Man

Burning Man

Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...

 festival, along with his friend Jerry James. What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach, which then became an annual event that over 4 years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990, in collaboration with the SF Cacophony Society

Cacophony Society

The Cacophony Society is “a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.” It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now defunct Suicide Club of San Francisco....

, the event moved to Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert, where it has grown precipitously from a 3 day, 80 persons "zone trip," to an 8 day festival with over 50,000 "participants."

As the population grew by the mid '90's to top several thousands, the encampment started to be referred to as Black Rock City, it now has a year round staff headquartered in San Francisco, managing an over 12 million dollar annual budget.

In 1997, six of the main organizers formed Black Rock City LLC to manage the event with Larry Harvey as the executive director, which position he still holds. He is also the president of the Black Rock Arts Foundation

Black Rock Arts Foundation

The Black Rock Arts Foundation was established May 2001 in order to promote public, community-based art installations. It is a not-for-profit organization, founded by several people who also direct Burning Man...

, a non-profit art grant foundation for promoting interactive collaborative public art installations in communities outside of Black Rock City.

He scripts and co-chair/curates the arts departments annual event theme and is the main spokesperson and political strategist for the organization. He has been featured in such engagements as San Francisco's Grace Cathedral "Radical Ritual" with the Very Reverend Alan Jones, the Oxford Student Union, Cooper Union in NYC, Harvard's International Conference on Internet and Society as a panelist, the Walker Art Center in Minnesota and the San Francisco Commonwealth Club as well as many others.

External links

• Biography of Larry Harvey
• Speeches and Lectures by Larry Harvey
• Zpub - Larry Harvey quotes
• Larry Harvey addresses 2007 Burning Man controversy
• Larry Harvey talks about 2007 Burning Man aka Green Man
• BURNcast - Talk with Black Rock City LLC principles: Larry Harvey, Maid Marian and Danger Ranger
• The First Year in the Desert, by Louis Brill