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| First year: | 2004 | |
| Location: | Mills River, North Carolina | |
| Month: | July | |
| Most Recent Event | ||
| Date of event: | July 16 to 20, 2009 | |
| Participants: | 1,223 | |
| Website: | www.transformus.com [1] | |
| List of regional Burning Man events | ||
Transformus is an annual arts festival hosted on private land within the boundaries of Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. Transformus celebrates the principles of radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation and immediacy. The community forms a temporary city called Mysteria during the third weekend in July which includes art installations, neighborhoods, lively nightlife and camps which offer services to the community. Transformus has distributed over $25,000 in art grants to the community over four years and remains one of the most art-centric Burner events in the U.S.
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The first Transformus was held in 2004 and remains 100% community driven to this day. Begun with no firm infrastructure, it quickly became apparent that a leadership group was necessary to give direction and protection to the event. Originally founded by seven individuals (Debra, Wordplay, Chw, Rhythm, Uncle Jonah, Diesel and Theory), Transformus now has an LLC board of directors, community planning committee and team leads – all volunteers – who together drive the event through minimal policy and responsible safety teams. The event has grown quickly: in 2004 350 tickets were purchased and participants came from 10 U.S. states. In 2009, 1,223 tickets were purchased and participants came from over 33 U.S. states and several foreign countries.
Transformus is basically “organized chaos” built around two central events: an effigy burn on Saturday night and an art burn on Sunday night. These “burns” mean various things to various people and remain completely undefined by leadership. A temple is built each year by the community dedicated to those who have passed. All are invited to personalize the temple before being burnt as part of Sunday night’s art burn and each structure is designed and built by volunteer teams. Artistic expression is a very important part of Transformus and many participants create interactive art installations specifically for the event. The LLC seeds this artistic expression through the fair distribution of Creativity Grants [1] with over $25,000 distributed to the community since 2006. Grants are allocated not by the leadership but the community through a jury open to anyone without a conflict of interest. Attendees build a temporary city called Mysteria then remove every trace before the event ends. Mysteria is composed of smaller campsites called theme camps [2] which offer services to the community. Popular past theme camps include Camp SCIENCE!, Bacon Camp, The Pallet Bar, The Intergalactic House of Pancakes (IHoP)," the Dirty Southern Burners,[3] Cape Sphere, Litt Valhalla, Ohio Burn Unit, Radical Faeries, The Visible Trash Society, The Philadelphia Experiment (PEX),[4] Baron Samedi's VIP Lounge and Ball Pit, Willy Wonka's, Big Puffy Yellow,[5] Camp Crayola, Kasa de la Kozee, Temple of Boom, Elders Camp, Green Man Camp, Local Fauna, and Party Liberation Front (PLF).
Several themes and/or ethics are encouraged during the event, based on the ten principles of Burning Man [6]. These include:
Transformus was formed in 2004 as an art, music and spiritually-focused counterculture festival, independent from Burning Man. In 2005, prior to the second event, Transformus became The Southeast Regional Burn, an official Burning Man regional. In June 2008, Burning Man's regional committee revoked Transformus' status as an official Burning Man event. In a letter to the Transformus community, Burning Man cited lack of civic responsibility and transparency as the reasons. In 2009 Transformus' was warmly invited by Burning Man to reapply for official event status but chose to remain independent.