Black Rock City celebrates ephemerality. We come, we build, we burn, we dismantle, we depart and bring our shared experience home into our lives. The meaning is elusive, or at least, contextual and belonging to the individual as much as to the collective. For long term citizens of Black Rock City, arrival in the desert when it is still barren summons a spatial poesis, a space memory; it exists even before it arises. What then does it mean to contemplate Axis Mundi as a central focal point, a theme, a calling forth in 2026?
We can consult Wikipedia and learn that Axis Mundi represents the core idea of an organizing principle, something we center ourselves around, or something that connects realms above, below and between, or even the axis pole of the Earth’s center. When we consider Axis Mundi we find ourselves at the heart of the matter — finding, perhaps, what is at our core and how we are connected.
Each year Burning Man Project invites a small group of artists to consider the theme, gather their thoughts, and respond with a concept submission for the pavilion upon which the Man rises each year. The Man is the center of Black Rock City. It is the symbol around which we physically and figuratively build our city, our ethos, and plan our annual trek. We aim for the Black Rock Desert and the Man is our central focal point. Thus, when we invite artists to submit a concept, we ask them to communicate their vision for the meaning and manifestation of the Man as a destination, a place to gather, and a symbol that beckons us to come together.
For 2026 we are pleased to share the selected concept submitted by Alexander (Zander) Rose. A long-time community member who first came to Black Rock City in 1996, he has worked on or led projects in Black Rock City that include the Manual For Civilization library at the Man Pavilion in 2025, the Shackleton theme camp in 2019 and 2022, and the Impotence Compensation Project “Fire Symphony” with Jim Mason and Dave X from 1999-2001.
Zander spent his childhood combing the junkyards of the Sausalito waterfront. His education is in design; he’s been an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics, SGI, and created world-class combat robots featured on the television show Battlebots. He may be best known for his work as the original founder of the Long Now Foundation and the creative collaboration known as the Clock of the Long Now, a 10,000 year clock. Perhaps we call him inventor, innovator, and yes, artist. Get to know Zander in this 2025 interview on the Burning Man LIVE podcast.
The concept submitted by Zander is called Cryptomeria, inspired by the Cryptomeria Japonica (Cedar) tree of Japan and specifically by the Jōmon Sugi tree, which is estimated to be between 2,170 and 7,200 years old. He was attracted to this idea because of the heart of the tree, being open and inviting, and his love of doing something unexpected that changes a conversation. Zander says about himself, “I wouldn’t call myself an artist, I like to create a single artifact, or an intervention, that gets people to think. Perhaps you would call me a designer.”
In his concept submission, Zander shares these thoughts:
The Axis Mundi is the place where worlds meet: root and crown, earth and sky, body and spirit. It is not a monument imposed from above, or a pedestal for a hero, but a living alignment revealed through participation. The Cryptomeria Man Base becomes this meeting point. Its roots invite the city to kneel, gather, and build outward together; its spiraling stairways draw bodies upward and inward, tracing the ancient helix that binds our genetic material, the past to future, and self to collective. Visitors will arrive through a pathway of meandering roots, ascend an outer helical staircase nearly sixty feet to the base of the Man, while a second spiral descends down the center, forming the double helix of DNA, and providing a continuous flow of travel. Together, these paths establish a vertical maypole, an axis around which the city symbolically turns.
Instagram: @zander_rosefutures
https://rosefutures.com/
When talking about Burning Man and Black Rock City Zander says:
Burning Man is so many things, and so many different things to so many people. It’s been different to me every year I’ve gone. The biggest thing to me is, that it is a space where nothing is for sale, that has kept it very different from every other thing or place or event on the planet. The commodity at Burning Man is fundamentally creativity and attention. You can do a pretty large thing at Burning Man that can be ignored and dwarfed or do something tiny that is entirely miraculous that changes the few people who see it. I don’t know of any other place that offers those opportunities both for failure and success. I love that about it. There’s never been a year when I wasn’t surprised by something, in someone’s work, or the weather, or never gone without having a magic moment that wasn’t expected. If you arrive with low expectation and allow for high possibility there is no better place to get a response to that openness to possibility and serendipity. You can also have a horrible time, all possibilities are there. You can build your own world and how comfortable or uncomfortable you’re going to be is up to your preparation, your friend group, and I love that civic infrastructure, the idea that the whole thing can be built and work and then come down.
Cryptomeria is one of eight concepts submitted by incredible artists:
- Alberto Marcos
- Caroline Ghosn
- Elnara Nasirli
- Heather Laurie (& Full of Tricks Crew)
- Leyla Brashka
- Michael White
Watch Burning Man Project’s social media for images and information about these artists and their concepts in the weeks ahead!
Cover image rendering of Cryptomeria by Alexander Rose, 2026
