Career
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 soon became an annual event that over 4 years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990, in collaboration with the San Francisco Cacophony Society, 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 "90s 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 Limited Liability Company to manage the event with Larry Harvey as the executive director, a position he still holds.
He is also the president of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, 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 New York City, 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
