Nowhere (like it) 2023

The car jolts as we wind our way down the road to Nowhere. Dust rises in the blistering heat, shapes blurring like a mirage in the distance. We are deep in the Monegros desert, close to the site where many famous Spaghetti Westerns were filmed given the similarity to the American Wild West. A perfect setting for a place that feels like the final “Burn frontier.”

I’ve found that most Burns have an acclimatization phase. It takes a couple of days to fully switch off from the default world. Nowhere is in a league of its own, its wild antics grabbing you by the shirttails and pulling you in immediately. As we arrive, overheated greeters welcome us, taking us through an initiation ceremony that ends by crawling through a rabbit hole. And just like that I am sucked into the Nowhere dimension. A mind-boggling jaunt through a city free, fluid and feral, where rules are not only bent but pulled out by the roots and razed to the ground. This would be my third time here, but nothing could quite prepare me for what I would find inside.

A storm is brewing as I look for my camp, the sky grumbling angrily as dark clouds gather. Suddenly the heavens open, and people scuttle in all directions seeking shelter. Fire restrictions mean there are no burns here, so the cycles of nature are celebrated as rituals. “Nobodies” (as participants are called) delight in the epic storms that flash through the steaming playa. Many let the rain beat down on them, arms splayed, faces turned up to the sky. Others drop to roll on the ground, caking themselves in mud and rising up covered in it like desert monsters. The storms that barrel through disrupt any order, flooding camps and adding to the chaos that fuels Nowhere. Within minutes the site becomes a muddy battlefield, until the sun blowtorches the earth dry.

The extreme environment sets the tempo for the experience. Nowhere is not for the fainthearted or those hoping for any level of comfort. Build and strike are long, hot and tortuous. The city is built and run through literal grit, sweat and tears. The art, though ingenious, is small and sometimes makeshift, and the landscape is a barren expanse of brown dust plagued by mosquitos at dusk. Nobodies mill around in this post-apocalyptic world mostly naked given the stifling heat, hair matted with dust. The feral, rough round the edges look is de rigueur when in survival mode. There is a reason why the event is held at the hottest time of the year in one of the hottest parts of Spain. “Burns aren’t supposed to be easy,” one of the organizers tells me in a gruff voice. And Nowhere definitely isn’t.

As the storm stops, one of my campmates struts into camp. His naked and deeply tanned body is draped in a pink silk robe that is soaked through, his bare feet caked in mud. He has just competed in the slut Olympics workshop and recounts the eyebrow-raising hurdles with a cheeky grin. Nowhere is unashamedly sex positive. One just needs to scan the What Where When guide and the amount of adult-only workshops to realize that anything goes. Although located in Spain, Nowhere’s 3,000 or so citizens come from all corners of Europe. Walking through the Barrios (or camps) you hear a melting pot of accents: French, German, Dutch, British — countries where the counterculture has long rebelled against limits to personal or sexual freedom. Here, what might be found behind closed doors in a Berlin afterhours club has been normalized and brought out in the open. This creates a self-reinforcing loop attracting more people keen to explore this type of play.

The city draws us out of our comfort zone and makes us question our social norms. It’s a place that’s made me reflect on my own hangups. One afternoon at camp, a dazed participant walks past, his body slick with oil. He’s just come from Liquid Love, where a jumble of people roll blindfolded on a giant tarpaulin slathered in oil. Although activities are carried out in a framework of consent, the sexual aspect can be intense for some. In this context, safe spaces and dialogue are important. While a liberated environment can be positive, a balance needs to be struck between one’s Radical Self-expression and everyone else’s.

Beyond the kink, the activities led by Nobodies push boundaries in other ways, with a healthy amount of snark. You can receive a “naughty tomatoes punishment,” participate in a primal hunt where Nobodies chase each other wildly down nearby canyons, be initiated in the art of trampling, or simply learn how to throw a drink in someone’s face. Perhaps the crown goes to the lapidation workshop where sinners are thrown into a pit and stoned (with large sponges) by an angry mob. Under a brutal sun, the “sinners” are exposed to the elements as a large crowd heckles and pummels them with sponges from above. In this bizarre and hilarious re-enactment, one of the “sinners” crawls out of the pit and breaks free, escaping madly into the playa. As Oscar Wilde once said: “every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.” Something tells me he might have liked it here.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is a soft side to Nowhere. When it was set up in 2004, the neo-hippie ethos dominated. There are spaces dedicated to meditation, movement and yoga, and talks exploring aspects of the self, emotional connection, and release. At dusk, most of the city gathers ceremoniously on top of the nearby hill to watch the sun set. The tightness of community is palpable as thousands of hands clap and cheers rise in unison in this desert home away from home.

While the days are spent sheltering from the heat, at night a myriad of beautiful small-scale art is illuminated and comes into focus. I walk through a field of lights that changes color when touched. The light circuit is channeled through others and, holding hands with strangers, we form a human chain that makes the entire field change color from red to glowing green. Later, I recline on my back with other Nobodies to stare up at a giant kaleidoscope that stretches to the sky. While many pieces are purely aesthetic, some have a social message. For instance, a large hand sculpture made of metal contains all the negative COVID-19 tests collected at the gate in Nowhere 2022. It shines a light on the issue of pandemic plastic waste, and the lasting impact it has had on our environment.

The revelry accelerates as the week goes on, moments flashing past and blurring as if on overexposed film. Too fast to process. Scenes of a community living radically are imprinted in my mind, like peering through a peephole into a raucous parallel reality. It feels like we’ve fast forwarded to a future without conventions and gone back in time to before rules existed. Boundaries are pushed until new ones are created, jagged and bendy like newly formed scars. In the background, the mighty “Manster Wheel” by the Propane Punk Circus spews out intermittent fiery flares like liquid energy, as if plugged into the electricity of the crowd. I observe the post-apocalyptic-looking scene as a man is dramatically illuminated in one of the circular cages, arms spread out like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. There is no physical Burn here, yet the whole playa is on fire.

Nowhere, with its flammable blend of hard and soft energies, is an acquired taste, but one that grows on you. It strips everything we are used to in a way that can feel uncomfortable. But in this space where anything goes, we test our limits, question our hangups, and plug into a more primal energy. When there are no more external guidelines, we follow our own internal compass. One of my campmates shares how he witnessed the transformation in his partner: “I saw her dancing, chest proudly bared, moving to the music, in her power. She was beautiful… because I knew how difficult it had been for her to feel comfortable in her own skin… To let go of what she had been told is right and wrong.” A middle-aged woman, she had been brought up conservatively to see her naked body as provocative, as dirty, to be covered up. But here she embodied another version of herself. The one that wants to dance in the sunset. That wants to live wild and free.

This space offers a no-holds-barred approach to revelry in all its forms. We pack up and go back to our more orderly lives, leaving this parallel world behind. A place that we called home for a week - that was Nowhere like we’d ever been before.

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About Roxane Jessi