History
Kiwiburn celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2013, with the theme enlighTENment! Mark ‘Yonderman’ Stirling and his partner Jane discovered Burning Man by accident in 1994 while on a camping trip in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Mark decided to stage the first regional burn in New Zealand in late 2003 as part of the South Island’s Visionz festival. It was met with great enthusiasm from the participants, so the 2005 and 2006 burns took place as stand-alone events, attracting around 200 people (Mark co-ran these events with Grant ‘Tribalman’ Knowles, a friend and local drum-maker/festival organiser.
2007 marked the first year the festival was held on the North Island. In mid-2006, amidst the planning for the 2007 event, a group of highly enthused, motivated burners joined with Yonderman to form an organisational structure and bring the event north. The event was aptly named Megamorphosis, which means Massive Change. Kiwiburn has helped create a large community of burners around New Zealand, and the annual event, along with the occasional localised gatherings, continue to maintain its unique culture.
A small team of devoted and talented Kiwiburners from around the country now organise Kiwiburn. These people had a vision of what a New Zealand burner event could be like, and the people who came not knowing a thing about the culture of Burning Man continue to embrace it, and want more. Information and reviews of subsequent Kiwiburns can be found in the annual Afterburn Report.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)