The American festival Burning Man set to take place this year from August 29th – September 6th 2021, has just presented their official theme called ‘Terra Incognita‘. Although due the current pandemic, the celebration of the event (as all of the other big live events in the world) is still uncertain, the organisers are already working towards it, after the cancellation of its 2020 edition.
Almost a month ago, the promoters of the popular festival released a statement via their blog The Burning Man Journal. In that article titled ‘Look, We Just Don’t Know Yet‘, the organisers cleared some details in order to lower the speculation and expectations of moving the festival forward this year. They avoided confirming many details about the edition stating that it was ‘simply too early to make the call.’ Nevertheless, after the recent update confirming Burning Man’s official theme for the year, fans might have reasons to believe that the festival could be taking place.
Stuart Mangrum, the director of the Philosophical Center of Burning Man Project, was the one sharing the news about the 2021 theme giving an extended explanation behind the meaning. ‘The phrase “terra incognita,” latin for “unknown land,” traces back to the Egyptian scholar Ptolemy, who used it in his Geography to label regions not yet mapped by the Roman Empire. During the Renaissance it was applied rather more cynically to lands not yet under the flag of a European power. And of course in modern times, with our world mapped down to the micron, it has assumed a purely metaphoric meaning, referring not to geography as such but to any unexplored subject or field of discovery’.
Image Credit: Burning Man Journal
