Coming up with good themes for Midwest Burner events isn't easy.

For a little inspiration, try browsing through what other creative people have done with their Theme Camps at Burning Man 2004, 2005, and 2006.

It's also handy to have a good dictionary, thesaurus, and a solid set of reference books.

If you have a basic theme in mind, try exploring the concept with a visual thesaurus.

Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Themes help focus our attention and inspire our creativity, plus they're just fun to do! The whole community is involved in brain-storming and coming to a consensus about Midwest Burner event themes. Once the discussion on the Midwest Burners Yahoo Group starts sizzling, we collectively come up with some amazing ideas! This page is an opportunity for you to add your ideas to the mix.

These event themes were suggested through the theme suggestion form below.

Click a theme title to see the description. Click it again to hide it.

This list is in no particular order.

Listed in reverse chronological order.

Aquatic Inferno Suggested by: Zay Theme used at: InterFuse 2009 Theme developed online by group consensus Water covers around 70% of the Earth’s surface and is the basis for life as we know it. Water is a dynamic element, constantly changing shape, transforming, and moving all life within it. Liquid water is a symbol for many things like fertility, fluid adaptation, regeneration, refreshment, purification emotions, the Unconscious, and deep hidden secrets. This theme is about all underwater life, especially the creative self-expressions that develop around the nexus of heat and water. Life in seas, rivers, lakes, streams, and ponds depends on heat from sunlight. Some of the most exotic life forms live around deep-sea volcanic vents, hot springs, geysers, and even cave pools. Our Midwestern burner communities similarly grew, centered around heat, usually in wet environments. It rains almost every time we gather but we’ve always managed to burn regardless of how soaked we are. We’ll burn underwater if we have to! It's about time we celebrated the watery aspect of InterFuse. At InterFuse 2009 you will experience the submergence of our community into a hydro-thermal playground! Our underwater universe will be teeming with aquatic creatures! Build a submarine to explore the Secrets of the Deep! Create a funky crab costume and scuttle about sideways! Construct an eerie garden of undulating tubeworms around an undersea volcano! Transform your camp into Poseidon’s realm and hold a soirée for all Atlantean gods, water-nymphs, mermaids, and sea monsters! Two fire-breathing sea serpents guard the depths of this steamy, boiling Aquatic Inferno! Every water creature is invited to swim through and play in the serpents’ sea cave. You may leave the leviathans burnable gifts and write messages on the cave walls. On Saturday night, all denizens of the deep will display their unique skills of fire and celebration to inspire the serpents to shed their skins in the flames of regeneration and creativity!

Technophilia/Technophobia Suggested by: Zay Theme used at: InterFuse 2008 Theme developed online by group consensus Technology: Do we love it or hate it? Does it isolate us or bring us together? Does it make our lives easier or does it add layers of complications? Do we own our tools or do they own us? Can we live without our technology? Can it live without us? We shape the world through our technology but to what extent does our technology shape our world views? This theme is a study of modern life that is very relevant to us as Burners. Modern technology is both a consumer product and a means to promote consumption. Yet it can also be used to create art and to connect us. Technology extremely enhances our creative abilities yet also enhances our destructive abilities. As we know from our experience with the fire arts, destructive technology can also result in positive beautiful things. Burners are especially suited for examining our relationships with technology. We are some of the most technologically savvy people out there. We’ve used the tools of the Internet to connect with each other and build a community like no other. We are intimately familiar with creating new uses for technology and subverting it to our own fun purposes. At InterFuse 2008, we will mock, celebrate, exaggerate, demonstrate, and use technology to create. Bring your fearful or hopeful vision of our technological present and future. All robots, cyborgs, couch potatoes, slaves to the machines, Luddites, interactive tutorials, genetically enhanced humans, virtual selves, icons, nuts & bolts, flotsam & jetsam etc. are welcome! You can take this theme in any direction! Unveil a new and enhanced IF08 Theme version 2.0. Come set up your office cubicle camp, post-apocalyptic scenario, personal billboard, or cyber-utopia. Form a techno cult or create a reality TV game that has gone horribly awry. Show off your inventions, bio-fueled art car, or invite people to add to your open source installations. Create recycled trash art, build a DNA sculpture, or assemble something else so engaging that people find themselves sitting around it for 36 hours straight sipping energy drinks. At the center of this technological cacophony will sit that most loved and most hated icon of modern technology, that mighty conduit of modern culture, that unmatched propaganda and marketing tool, THE TELEVISION! The TV will be large enough to serve as an open performance stage and projection screen. We will be filling our giant television with our own content. All participants are invited to create Premier Entertainment Programming and clever personal advertising to display on our TV. There must be NO dead air time! Our modern society churns out tons of STUFF! So, around the giant television will be piles of personal technology sculptures created by YOU. Bring an effigy of whatever technology you fantasize about burning. Does your cell phone drive you crazy? Build a larger than life cell phone with non-toxic materials like wood, cardboard, paper, cloth. NO BURNING ACTUAL PLASTIC TECH DEVICES! You could give your effigy evil teeth or put something in the screen to express it’s annoying qualities. Put your art on the pile around the TV and watch it all BURN on Saturday night when we use our favorite medium, fire, to transform technology and reclaim it as an authentic tool of our imaginations. Welcome to the Machine!

The Afterlife? Suggested by: Thoron Theme used at: InterFuse 2007 Theme developed online by group consensus We humans observe life-forms constantly begin and end around us. As self-conscious beings, we sense our own beginning and ending. Human history is full of contemplation on this subject. This contemplation has always been expressed in a rich variety of art in all forms. The artist seems best suited to capture the complex feelings the idea of Life and Death provoke within us. This year at InterFuse, we are participating in this ancient attempt to convey our conceptions of the Afterlife. The Afterlife? theme is a meditation on the interplay of Life and Death. The theme involves a question mark as a symbol of the questions this theme poses, such as: Is there an afterlife? If so, what will it be like? How does our conception (or lack of conception) of the Afterlife affect our lives now? While the acceptance of the inevitability of Death can prompt apathy, it can also prompt action in Life. Many people believe that what we do in this life affects the afterlife, whether it's a paradise/hell or another cycle of reincarnation (or freedom from such a cycle). For those who believe that we simply blink out, then Death can be a motivation to avoid wasting life, but rather drink deeply of it and leave your mark. Likewise, the consciousness that we may die at ANY moment can help us live life like it matters NOW instead of acting like we're going to live forever and become groggy with distractions and routine. How would you spend the Moment Before the Afterlife? InterFuse 2007 is your opportunity to express your ideas of the Afterlife OR Life without an Afterlife. When thinking about bringing a camp, interactive game, costumes, and art, here are some things to consider. What process will take us to the Afterlife? What do beings in the Afterlife look like? How do these beings interact? What will the Afterlife look like? How does Life affect the Afterlife and the Afterlife affect Life? How do you feel we should honor Life that inevitably ends? Whether you bring a monument to honor Life and those who live it, a Hell-themed camp, a spirit-body costume, a giant slide into oblivion, a psycho-pomp service to ferry souls across Lake Gaia, an eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die feast, an interactive karma game, or something vastly more clever and original, participate like it’s your last minute on Earth! Welcome All You Mortals!

The Archaic Imagination Suggested by: Zay Theme used at: InterFuse 2006 Theme developed online by group consensus One of the definitions of "Archaic" is: "Of or belonging to the early or formative phases of a culture or a period of artistic development." Our artistic heritage is rooted in ancient peoples’ conception of the world. People have always used many forms of art to question, struggle with, explain, enhance, and enjoy the experience of life. Early imagination was inspired and expressed by stories, re-enactments, images, and sounds manifested around the community fire. This year, around our communal fire, we will explore the many symbols, archetypes, feelings, and manifestations of ancient myth, folklore, and fairy tale. This theme is all about expressing those elements of ancient creativity that resonate most with us. We will use them to play with each other and, in doing so, create our own wonderful tale. Feel free to take this theme in any direction. Both light and dark territories of our consciousness are manifested in folklore. If you're not feeling the fairies and elves, then you could get with the Valkyries and Bluebeard. Or you could create a new fairy-tale full of never-seen-before fantastical apparitions. Since we're not re-enacting any specific story or period, we can delve into the Archaic Imagination, take what we want out of it, and add our own modern interpretations (flame throwers, sound systems etc.). After all, our burner culture is a confluence of the high-tech and the primal! Come help us create all manner of mythical apparitions and enchanted spaces at InterFuse! Turn that roll of fake fur into a satyr costume! Turn your theme camp into a phantasmagoria that entices and astonishes all who dare to enter! Populate the hills and forests of Ozark Avalon with bedazzling chimeras that intrigue and charm those who encounter them! Bring your symbols of intention and imagination to be immortalized in the flames of the Pantheon! Become the Hero or Heroine in a marvelous adventure of your own design! Once upon a time at InterFuse...

Mad Science Suggested by: Aldric Theme used at: InterFuse 2005 Theme developed online by group consensus This year we are celebrating the whimsical crack-pot inventor aspect of ourselves. InterFuse will be a mad social experiment in Chaotic Fusion. Our hypothesis is that the close proximity of multiple interacting visionaries will generate an endless supply of creative energy. We predict Chemistrophic Reactions of the Fourth Kind! The Midwest Burners invite you to come test our hypothesis! Bring your monsters, loyal assistants, lasers, Tesla coils, clones, dimensional doors, weather machines, rogue robots, psi-testers, solar ghost collectors, time machines, alien technologies, strobes, and EL wire. Transform your camp into your personal workshop. Conduct live demonstrations of your most radical creations. Volunteer to be a test subject for bizarre human experiments. Cram that tesseract into your Mystery Machine and come create "chemistry" with fellow eccentrics.

Celestial Disembarkment Suggested by: Zay Theme used at: HullabalU 2 (2004) Theme developed online by group consensus Coming back from a fantastic voyage through the Vault of Heaven, intrepid Midwest psychonauts return to base for decompression, with many stories and artifacts from our cosmic journey.

Good theme concepts are broad enough to inspire many forms of participation, including Theme Camps, costumes, gifts, art installations, performances, etc. For example, when we picked the InterFuse 2006 theme, people suggested various fantasy themes like the Wizard of Oz. A theme like this is narrower because there can be only so many Lions, Scarecrows, Tinmen and Dorothys. So we went with The Archaic Imagination, which covers all folk tales, fairy tales, and myth.

Theme concepts should also enhance inclusivity. Religious or social themes can be divisive. Topics or questions in religion or society that can be broadly interpreted according to personal belief are better.

The most successful themes are those that aren't so abstract. The Burning Man 2002 Floating World theme was wildly successful as people went all out with an ocean motif. The 2003 Burning Man theme, Beyond Belief (going beyond the forms of religion to the immediate experience behind it), was harder to express since it was more abstract.

Finally, when we're thinking about themes, we also consider how the Man/Main Effigy will work with the theme. It's a bonus if you can explain how your theme idea might be expressed through the Man/Main effigy. The more participatory and interactive your themed Man idea is, the better. For instance, the InterFuse 2005 theme, Mad Science, included Der FrankenMann. This effigy was a table and torso and everyone built and attached appendages to it. We brought our Monster to life in true mad scientist style!

These are all suggestions. Don't worry if you don't have a detailed theme plan. We want to hear your ideas anyway! Many times people have offered a simple idea and it catches the imagination of the rest of us, who fill in the details. That's the colloborative method in action!

Bring on the themes!

Would you like to add to the list of themes we'll be considering for the next Midwest Burners event? Fill out the form below and click the Send button. All serious suggestions will be added to the list for group consideration.

Your Name:
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Theme Title Suggestion:
Your thoughts about how this theme could be interpreted or applied at a Midwest Burners event: