Jul 31 2015

FoxCarn And The Betel Store

FoxCarn & the Betel Store is the China and Taiwan regional project for Burning Man 2015.

The project will feature “worker” participants drawn from Burning Man attendees, who will make Apple parody products as part of an interactive art installation in which participants will experience working in an electronics factory meant to draw parallel to the real-life Foxconn, complete with a robotic overseer arm overhead.

The installation draws from both the Taiwanese-owned but China-based company Foxconn, which manufactures much of the key electronic components in Apple projects under inhumane labor conditions, as well as the Taiwanese tradition of betelnut beauties who are a common sight in the Taiwanese countryside. As described by organizers, this is meant to call attention to commodity fetishism in contemporary capitalism as well as the role of gendered labor.

[Source: New Bloom]

The FoxCarn Facebook page is more direct in its commentary on FoxConn:

They met their lucky $2888 funding goal on Kickstarter. Looks like robotic overlords are pretty cheap, these days.

The Jackrabbit spake:

A cybernetic collaboration between Taiwan, China and the Burner diaspora, FoxCarn & the Betel Store, will set up shop in the Midway at the Man base this year. Exploring the symbiotic relationship between Chinese factories and Western consumer culture, FoxCarn’s rallying cries include: “Consume different! Think global, exploit local. Decommodifying the fetish, unalienating labor. Circulating gifts of Taiwan and China with the Burning world.”

FoxCarn & the Betel Store is the third in a series of regional projects from Taiwan and/or China to Black Rock City.

The first was Enlightenment in 2013, an eighteen-foot tall meditating man.

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The second was the Taiwan Temple Market last year. They return to the market theme again in 2015 with the Betel Store.

The team for FoxCarn is largely composed of members from these past two projects plus the organizers of Dragon Burn, Shanghai’s regional event. The team mixes up “diaspora” Taiwanese and Chinese, with Taiwan and China-based expats.

ian china contact Ian Rowen is the China Regional contact for Burning Man. He has put together and continues managing the concept and the team, and has written all of their copy.

Nathan Melenbrink is the lead architect and robot designer. He, Jiyoo Jye, and Tiffany Cheng (Taiwanese-American) are all students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Nathan designed the 2014 Dragon Burn effigy.

Kenny Yu, from Hong Kong, is the lead graphic designer.

Michael Huang, Taiwanese/Chinese-American, freelance designer and fire lead on Enlightenment, is co-managing.

Jen Childs and Nick Kothari, Dragon Burn organizers based in Shanghai, are leading up China-side sourcing along with Elaine Kang. They are also providing additional design help.

DJ Furth, Beijing-based filmmaker, cut their Kickstarter video.

Jimi Moe, Spring Scream co-founder and member of the Taiwan Temple Market last year, is helping with materials production.

Ty Chen, founder of dance troupe Luxy Boyz, will choreograph the “product launch” on Tuesday night, during which Ian Rowen will don a turtleneck and wire rim glasses for the launch of: iSwag: their most personal swag yet. Tagline: “This changes nothing!”

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FoxCarn robot team. Photo credit: FoxCarn & the Betel Store

Ian Rowen, the producer of this project, recently gave an interview about the project to Taiwanese Columbia University student Brian Hioe in New Bloom magazine:

IR: FoxCarn shows how Taiwan is implicated in China’s economy as investor, manager, and mediator between the Chinese party-state land masters, Chinese labor, and global capital. The design of the space, with the FoxCarn factory and the adjacent Betel Store, also in some ways reflects cross-Strait economic geography. In general, the piece takes aim at commodity fetishism and capitalism more broadly, and is meant to give participants a visceral reminder that their objects of desire don’t materialize from thin air, without real human and environmental costs. In this way, we intend to playfully “unalienate labor”.

BH: I also want to ask about the aspect of the betelnut beauties. This is something distinctively Taiwanese and isn’t something which has any direct relation to FoxConn that you’ve incorporated into FoxCarn. What is the role of the betelnut beauties in regards to FoxCarn?

IR: FoxCarn is the production side of our project, while the Betel Store is the sales and marketing side. The Betel Store satirizes Apple, and adds a uniquely Taiwanese sense of place that highlights the erotic imaginaries that drive so much of consumer product marketing. Instead of the Apple Store’s “genius” salesperson, our sales staff, male, female or otherwise, will be a “beauty”. By, if you will, “decommodifying” the oft-fetishized betelnut beauty, our project also plays with desire as a motive force of capitalism, not just in the sales of stuff, but in the deployment of the human body. So we’ll swank up our otherwise sleekly minimal Betel Store with gaudy pink lighting, and our staff will wear provocative Taiwanese/Chinese uniforms, including Betel-branded dudou.

IR: FoxCarn & the Betel Store are in a premier, highly-trafficked set of tents located right at the base of the Burning Man, the center of the whole event. The Man Base is meant to manifest the year’s art theme, and in recent years has also been a showcase for the globalization of the event’s culture. This year the theme is Carnival of Mirrors, so they’ll be sent up like a Carnival Midway, hence our name, FoxCarn. Burning Man is a big place—with 70,000 people and thousands of projects, there’s too much for one person to see. But pretty much everyone makes it to the Man Base, so this is a perfect spot to interact with the very wide variety of creative and influential people that compose the city’s population. Given Burning Man’s increasingly broad impact beyond its temporary urban confines—and with most major press organs in attendance—we also look forward to our message, and our “goods,” spreading far and wide. We’re also building our online presence and community. Of course, supporting our Kickstarter is a great place to start.

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Last year, with Caravansary and the Silk Road, the theme was commerce and trade. We had a souk at the Man base, a market place selling (ironic) timeshares and whatnot. This year, in the carnival, it looks like we have ironic retail stores again (and ironic Commodification Camps). We get some subliminal messaging about our robot overlords thrown in, buzzing over our heads while we enjoying playing rubes at the carny.

I’m surprised they’re not handing out “Hello Titty” t-shirts or something. Perhaps that’s more of a Japanese thing.

First we had the iPhone on the Playa, now we have an Apple Store and iPhone factory. This comes after previous Burning Man ~~advertising~~ ironic looks at commodity fetishism:

Image: Curtis Simmons/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Image: jojomelons/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Mal Mart presents Baal Mart and TaarGay. Image: Wayne Stadler/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Image: Blip.TV documentary on Helco

Baal Mart, 2012. Image: Wayne Stadler/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Image: razlfections.com

SpamTanic by Karen Weir (Burning Man 2012) Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Image: Hiker Carl

Some of these were pretty funny. Some of them fell flat. It’s a fine line – let’s hope that Foxcarn and the Betel Store falls more on the funny side than the thinly veiled commercial promotion side.

Ultimately, psychologically, the thing that you are mimicking and emulating is the thing that you are promoting. The irony helps make these mainstream brands more palatable to those who might otherwise be offended by them. As They say, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. And as They also say “sex sells”. It doesn’t matter whether money changes hands: you are being sold this commodity fetishized lifestyle at this art project that supposedly parodies it.

For anyone interested in exactly how subtle and psychological modern marketing can be, I highly recommend Douglas Rushkoff’s book Coercion: Why We Listen To What “They” Say. It was published in 2000, before social media, smart phones, and Big Data, but everything described is still part of the system and working better than ever.

Apple is the world’s most valuable company, and a core part of the Bay Area tech scene. Many current and former Apple employees are Burners, as are many loyal Apple users. Building robots for Apple is right there at burningman.org, on the Founders page. Slavery, robots, and the tech industry are interesting themes with which to build a bridge towards potential Chinese Burners. To me this showroom and production line says “commerce and politics” more than “art and culture”.

Burning Man is becoming a must-see place for an upwardly mobile generation of Mainland Chinese, and there is even a major Chinese theme camp now. More on that “coming soon”…

Jul 18 2014

Bringing Burning Man to Berkeley

There is a free event tomorrow in Berkeley, to promote Burning Man culture. The CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association, John Caner, teamed up with some independent Burners who wanted to see more Burner art in the East Bay. They decided to throw a community-building event in the spirit of the festival.

The second annual Berkeley Spark will happen in Civic Center Park (Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way) this Saturday, July 19. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

From East Bay Express:

If you ask someone who has been to Burning Man to explain it, they’ll often say that you can’t fully understand the magnificence of the experience until you go. But for those who aren’t up for the trek (or the dust), there’s now a way to grasp the event without leaving the safety of the Berkeley bubble: Berkeley Spark.

John Caner

The idea for Berkeley Spark came about partly through the organizing efforts of Downtown Berkeley Association CEO John Caner, who hadn’t attended Burning Man until last year. In October 2012, Caner was walking past Revival Bar + Kitchen after Berkeley’s Sunday Streets festival when owner — and burner — Amy Murray asked him to meet some fellow burners who were discussing how to bring Burning Man art downtown. Eventually, the group realized that instead of merely bringing the art of Burning Man to Berkeley, they could go a step further and create a community-building event in the spirit of the festival.

Kat Parkin, who has been attending Burning Man for six years, had recently moved back to the East Bay after 25 years away and decided to take the lead on organizing the event as a way to re-immerse herself in her surroundings. “I’ve been gone a long time, and what better way to get to know my community than by throwing a party?” she said.

Described as a “community-driven art, innovation, science, and technology festival,” the second annual Berkeley Spark will happen in Civic Center Park (Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way) this Saturday. It will feature a market with items that those going to Burning Man may need on the playa, interactive art sculptures, Burning Man theme camps, workshops, food, a beer and wine garden, and a hip-hop open mic, a musical performance by Laura Inserra from the multidisciplinary performing art and music organization Samavesha.

While the festival does offer resources for those preparing for a trip to the playa in August, organizers emphasized that the event is intended for the whole community. “It’s really a fun festival that isn’t just about Burning Man,” said Caner. “It’s about igniting creativity.”

Michael Caplan

The organizers also hope that the event draws more people to the downtown Berkeley area and highlights its cultural and commercial revitalization. To that end, the City of Berkeley sponsored the event last year and is doing so again this year. “We’re the first city to put money into a Burning-Man-related project,” said Michael Caplan, Berkeley’s economic development manager. Caplan’s hope is that the tech innovation corridor — a new feature of the festival where attendees can meet with local designers, hackers, and innovators — will help generate enthusiasm for Berkeley’s emerging start-up and maker scene. “Bringing several thousand people who are interested in Burning Man to come and experience downtown — that’s a good thing,” he said.

Despite the City of Oakland putting money into the event – the first city to do so with a Burning Man related project – BMOrg have been uncharacteristically quiet on this. It seems to perfectly fit the mission of the Burning Man Project to facilitate and extend Burner culture, so what gives, BMOrg? No ~~keynote~~ panel opportunities for your directors? Or still feeling “burned” from when the East Bay community didn’t like you claiming all the credit for the Peralta Junction project?

May 24 2014

Souk On This!

Burning Man have launched “souk.burningman.com”, written by Larry Harvey. If this is a glimpse of where they are going artistically with their new web site, then I like it. They’ve also started a Pinterest, to give you some costume and decoration ideas.

This year the Man is going to be surrounded by a market arcade, a bazaar of vendors. It sounds similar to Center Camp. There will be music, but no amplified sound. Instead of walking through the Man base like recent years, you will be walking through the market around The Man. Is this symbolic of a new, post-profit, marketplace-oriented Burning Man 2.0?

For many years the Burning Man has stood atop an art pavilion. Since 2011, a Circle of Regional Effigies, known as CORE, has surrounded this interactive art environment. Originally arrayed in one great circle, these large-scale sculptures were meant to represent the many communities of Burning Man. Spearheaded by Regional Contacts, this project dramatized the continuing expansion of Burning Man’s culture; it formed a perfect metaphor. It is one thing to hear that there are colonies of burners vaguely floating like a vapor in the greater world, but it is quite another for thousands of people to witness this movement made manifest by the creative collaboration of living, breathing groups of people.

In 2012, Burning Man’s art department reconfigured this array by clustering these projects in smaller scaled circles. The nearly half-mile span of one large circle meant that most people could experience very few of these simultaneous burns, but now participants could witness several at one time. This also affected the experience of the regional groups themselves. Rather than labor in the relative isolation produced by one large circle, each group now inherited a neighborhood: a place in which resources could be shared and fellowship with nearby regionals could thrive.

2014’s art theme, Caravansary, will extend this logic one step further by merging CORE with the interactive art pavilion of the Burning Man. Our plan is to bring the Man back down to the ground, closely encircle it with a tented pavilion framing a courtyard, and invite our regional communities to co-create this space. ..

Getting together in the courtyard all seems nice enough. There’s more, though. Much more. Commerce: the Eleventh Principle.

Larry reminds us of the statement in the theme announcement:

“This is not a tourist destination, but a home for travelers who come here bearing gifts. Amid the twisting and the turnings of its souk, participants will come upon an inexhaustible array of teeming goods and unexpected services. Anyone may pose as ‘merchant’ here, and anyone may play a ‘customer’, but nothing in this strange emporium shall have a purchase price — no quid, no pro, no quo — no trade at all will be allowed in this ambiguous arcade. According to a rule of desert hospitality, the only thing of value in this marketplace will be one’s interaction with a fellow human being.”

…We may conceive this as appropriating the culture and the manners of traditional marketplaces such as one might find in a bazaar, while simultaneously regarding every article of commerce as a gift, a sort of decommodity. This is premised on an essential idea: the value of a gift is unconditional. Gifts in this conception do not pass from hand to hand, they pass from heart to heart; it’s not that we possess a gift; it is that it possesses us, and therein lays its transformational power. Gifts may therefore be said to be bearers of being, and for purposes of play within our souk, this signal fact shall be regarded as a “trade secret.”

Translated into practice, this means that it is perfectly okay to employ all means of salesmanship involved in soliciting “business” or extoling a “product.” But it is emphatically not okay to entertain any form of exchange value. A gift may be given, and a gift may be received, but true gifts cannot be trammeled by a self-regarding expectation. For example, should someone offer a gift to a merchant, that merchant has the option to accept it — graciously receiving gifts is a part of the art of gifting. But should the giver then demand things in return, this is, while not a sin, most certainly a breach of etiquette. As this example suggests, our interactive premise has one foot planted in the culture of gifting, and another firmly fixed in the customs of commerce. Discovering that subtle and wavering line that distinguishes these two value systems will be a large part of the fun.

So there you have it. Burning Man is about commerce.

Now that BMOrg is dressed up as a non-profit, with the founders looking to cash out for big buck$, commerce is becoming integral to the Burning Man ethos and culture. We’ve gone from “all commerce is banned” to “we never said we were against commerce” to “commerce just has to co-exist with other principles like Gifting”.

If you walk through Downtown San Francisco at lunch time, you will encounter all manner of vendors touting their scause, which they will happily inform you about for free without the expectation of you giving them anything in return. Just time and attention – and, if they’re lucky, conversion to their viewpoint. Was this the inspiration for the souk? Some people might love this. It’s a chance for hipsters to make new friends! Others might find it intrusive – “charity beggars” was a term for the touts I learned today from Facebook. Larry’s description of the bazaar suggests all of these touts would be welcome, indeed, encouraged. What will the merchants be hawking in the souk? 23 and Me? Bitcoins? Infowars.com? Burning Man Project scarves?

Unlike the large-scale sculptural projects …participation in the Caravansary can be made widely accessible to many different kinds of people. There is really no logical end to the various roles and activities that can be contributed to this effort. For example, in any normal marketplace businesses must always train a very careful eye on their competitors. And for purposes of burlesque, these faux shops may satirize the manners of capitalism, sending out touts to befriend customers or using barkers to attract attention. It really wouldn’t be amiss to advertise a shop as “Going Out of Business.”

Yet this satirical facade will also mask a deep collaboration, a cooperative spirit that is the opposite of competition. The Burning Man Project will create an Internet discussion list that will allow regional groups to share ideas. We also anticipate that participants in this project will continue to improvise and elaborate around emergent practices innovated by fellow groups throughout the course of the event. By this method we can transform our Caravansary into a real community within our city’s greater community, an actual culture that evolves from day to day.

Inside the tents, the shops will all be laid out the same way. Tenants can decorate them differently. If you’re from a Burning Man Regional, better bring enough local inventory with you to give away tchotchkes to 70,000 people! And enough staff to work the market 24/7 for a week. “It may take you hours to find out what the price of anything is going to be”, says Larry. “The merchant might want to invite you back to his home for dinner with his family”. Larry is going to have a shop there, he is very enthusiastic about this. I’d love to know how many hours he ends up actually putting into working the customers at the House of Larry souk vestibule.

The architecture of the Caravansary will feature tents that form a circular arcade. These will be divided into two equal parts. Vestibules in the forepart of each tent will form cushioned public lounges that face the Caravansary’s central plaza. Behind these we will house our shops. Fronted by ornamental screens indented by counters and provided with side entrances, these capacious spaces may be subdivided and most certainly should be furnished and decorated by our shopkeepers. The things that might be offered by these shops may include services, both useful and strange, amenities, such as cooling beverages or tea, and performances. In the spirit of Radical Inclusion, drop-in contributions by the general public should be welcomed whenever appropriate. Furthermore, we encourage participants to preserve the spirit and history of the original CORE movement by creating gifts that represent the identity of their home communities.

Performances conceived by local groups are also welcome (with the exception of DJ’s and bands that employ amplified sound — our arcade is a place for conversation). By these means the antic life created by our Caravansary can become a conduit of Regional culture.–by Larry Harvey

Larry Harvey goes into some detail about the thinking behind Caravansary in this speech from the Burning Man Global Leadership Forum 2014. “If everyone does this, it’s going to be the most meaningful and interactive thing, at the heart of the event, that’s ever happened”. Perhaps. Or, it could be like the Black Friday chaos, except everything’s free instead of being discounted, there’s no security, and none of the staff get paid.

BMOrg are offering grants of up to $1,000 to Souk participants. This works out to about 1 cent for each person in the city. I suspect some supply chain issues. We may need to airlift in some more challah.

Vendors need to submit their proposals by June 9:

Grants will be awarded to selected Souk proposals, to a maximum of $1,000. Awardees will also be eligible for a limited number of gift tickets, vehicle passes, and early arrival passes. Funds, tickets, and passes will be issued only to a Regional Contact or to a project lead that one of our Regional Contacts vouches for.

Your proposal should include:
. An overview of how you intend to use the Souk space
. An estimate of your peak operating hours – whether your space will be primarily daytime, nighttime, or around-the-clock
. An interactivity plan
. A Leave No Trace (LNT) plan
. Desired amount of Souk space (12×12, 12×24, 12×24, or 12×50)
. A rough sketch of how your space will be laid out

Deadline for proposals is Monday, June 9th at 10 PM Pacific Time
Send your proposal and any questions to souk-applications@burningman.com.

I’m not sure if Larry Harvey, Marian Goodell, or any of the other bright sparks at Burning Man have ever worked in retail. I have, and this doesn’t seem very practical to me. It’s hard to provide an acceptable level of one-on-one interaction to even 3 customers at once, let alone 70,000. It’s not easy doing an 8-hour retail shift, and this will be in one of the busiest markets on the planet. Hot, cold, windy, dusty, no bathrooms, no air conditioning, no stock room, no boss to complain to, no sales commissions…BYO food and water.

The focus of the Souk is designed to be one-to-one or small-group interaction, playing on the themes of social commerce, experiential exchange, and gifting. In keeping with the spirit of the Ten Principles, no one should ever expect a gift, nor should the giver ever expect anything in return. While we intend to play with the notion of commerce, the real thing is, of course, completely unacceptable. And therein lies the fun of our “decommodity mart,” a place where things beyond value come to be not-bought and not-sold.

The Souk will be open around the clock from Monday at 12:01 AM through Friday at 5:00PM. Your design and interactivity plan should anticipate 24-hour operation. If your space is going to be unstaffed at any point, consider offering self-serve options for “do it yourself” interactivity while your team is away, for instance a “gift one, leave one box,” or a photo-op background.

We hope it’s great, rather than yet another art project envisioned around heavy street theater that fizzles due to inadequate organization (like Burn Wall Street, which was originally going to have bank tellers). I’ve been to some actual souks in the middle east and it is full on, those markets are crowded, noisy, aggressive, and smelly – full of pickpockets and shoplifters. Lock up yer bikes!

Burners.Me: Me, Burners and The Man

Snarky. Cheeky. Grumpy. Dopey. Never Bashful.

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FoxCarn And The Betel Store

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