Sarah Pike — Altars to Ashes: Transfiguration & the Material Culture of Grief at Burning Man

Drawing on seventeen years of research at Burning Man’s temples, this paper explores the ways in which matter and emotion are transformed and reformed through sensual bodily experience and ritualization. The new materialism of Jane Bennett and others that challenge our assumptions about the relationships between humans and nonhuman substances like dust and ashes shape my interpretation of Burners’ experiences at the Temple. Attending to transfiguration and material culture at the Temple furthers our understanding of the ways in which participants experience Burning Man as both an extraordinary place apart from ordinary life and in continuity with the vibrant things that make up the world in and outside of the event’s boundaries.