Burning Man 2027 · Interactive Monument
Love Chain II
A 168-hour hug marathon that never closes.
For seven days and seven nights, volunteers clip into 20-foot chains beneath a glowing 20-foot marquee and offer free hugs — around the clock, to anyone who walks up. Led by Tex Allen and Catherine Foshee.
The Love Chain II sign at sunset on the playa — red neon, a glowing heart, and lights across the playa beyond.
The Concept
One chain. 168 hours.
Never unclipped.
Love Chain II is an uninterrupted 7-day community hug relay. In rotating 4-hour blocks, 1 to 10 volunteers clip into 20-foot chains at the monument and offer free hugs around the clock. When one shift ends, the next locks in — the chain, and the welcome, never break.
Four-hour shifts
Six shifts a day for seven days. Every hour of Burning Man 2027, someone is on the chain.
Room to roam, reason to stay
Each hugger is tethered by a 20-foot chain — free to move, dance, and greet, anchored to the heart of the piece.
Sunrise, whiteout & 4 a.m.
The sign stays lit and the hugs stay free through dust, dark, and dawn. That is the whole point.
Pick a shift on the relay
Tap any block to hold it in the sponsor calculator below. Days run across, six 4-hour shifts run down each day.
No shift selected yet — 42 to choose from.
Origin Story · 2017
It started with two people,
two chains, and 24 hours.
In 2017, for Burning Man’s “Radical Ritual” theme, Tex Allen and Catherine Foshee drove rebar into the playa and locked themselves to 20-foot steel chains for 24 hours straight. They shared over 1,200 embraces and collected wishes on a paper chain, later carried to the Temple. Love Chain II evolves that single 24-hour act into a 7-day community relay — same heart, now held by hundreds of hands.
Radical Ritual
24 hours chained on the playa. 1,200+ embraces. A paper chain of wishes, carried to the Temple.
Of Burning Man leadership
Tex and Catherine bring 13 years of Burning Man leadership to building, crewing, and holding this piece safely for a full week.
Clown noses gifted
Their past project WhyTheNose gifted 50,000 clown noses over 6 years — proof this team finishes joyful, large-scale gifts.
The Monument
Built like infrastructure.
Lit like Vegas.
An 18- to 20-foot modular mast of box truss and structural tubing, topped with double-sided tiered cabinets reading “FREE HUGS HERE!” and “OPEN 24/7” — IP65-rated silicone LED neon-flex, shatterproof polycarbonate marquee bulbs, and a diffused, backlit warm-white heart at its center.
The Science · Heart Coherence
The sign lights up
with your heart.
Up to 10 active huggers wear HeartMath Institute Inner Balance ear-clip sensors measuring real-time Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and heart-brain coherence. A dust-hardened mini-PC with a Bluetooth Low Energy gateway aggregates the telemetry offline — no playa internet needed — and feeds a lighting controller. As coherence rises, the monument climbs through five stages. Try it:
Stage 1 — Vegas Barker
The sign flashes over a 25% glow while the heart breathes slowly, calling people in from across the playa.
Coherence 25% · 1 hugger on chain
Every 4 hours
At shift change, the arrow chase reverses upward for 30 seconds — then slams downward as the new shift locks in.
Recorded 24/7
Dual weather-hardened cameras record around the clock to local storage, synchronized with second-by-second coherence logs.
Fully offline
Telemetry is aggregated on site by the mini-PC and BLE gateway. The science works in a whiteout, with zero connectivity.
Guinness World Records
Two records in sight.
The project intends to connect with Guinness World Records to document the installation for both titles below. The continuous cameras and second-by-second coherence logs are built to give that documentation a complete, verifiable record.
World’s Largest
Free Hug Sign
An 18- to 20-foot double-sided marquee, lit day and night for seven days.
World’s Longest
Free Hug Session
168 uninterrupted hours of free hugs — a full week, with no gap in the chain.
Get Involved
Sponsor a shift.
Or be the hug.
Sponsorships are time-based, via PayPal: $400 sponsors a full 4-hour shift, in increments from $25 for 15 minutes up to $2,400 for a full 24 hours. If all 42 shifts are sponsored, that’s $16,800 toward the build. Target placement is along the high-traffic 6:00 artery or the Keyhole.
Selected: one full 4-hour shift — $400.
Email opens with your selected shift and amount filled in. Tex replies with the PayPal details — no payment is taken on this page.
🫂 Volunteer Hugger
Clip in for a 4-hour shift and hug whoever the playa sends you. 1 to 10 huggers per shift, so bring friends.
🔦 Shift Lead
Hold a shift together: welcome the crew, watch the sensors, and lock the next shift in at the 4-hour mark.
🔨 Build & Strike Crew
Raise a 20-foot flat-pack monument on earth augers — and leave no trace taking it down.
Funding
$26,000 total budget
Total project budget for the monument, power, science, and a week on playa.
Funding request — a 50% match — in a Letter of Intent for a Burning Man honorarium grant.
Raised if all 42 shifts are sponsored at $400 each.
Shift sponsorships alone could cover 65% of the total budget.