Meet me in the balcony and baise-moi — PHOTO: Oliver Fluck
There’s a moment at Burning Man that is etched indelibly into my memory: while biking out in the deep playa, I spotted a mysterious object way off in the distance, too far from Black Rock City itself to be seen from anyplace in town. Was it a mirage? The playa has no shortage of them, and they can distort distances to the point that it’s impossible to tell if something is ten miles away, or only a quarter of a mile or so. I pedaled toward the tiny enigma and watched it get noticeably larger, indicating that maybe it wasn’t so far away as to be unreachable. A little more pedaling in the arid desert silence, and the blip resolved itself into a rectilinear structure of some kind. . . and then, as I finally got close enough to see clearly what had drawn me so far from the mother of all parties, my jaw dropped. There, all by itself in the middle of that vast sun-bleached gypsum plain, there in the trackless, blank heart of a mercilessly empty land, was. . . a movie theater.
This was no makeshift, ramshackle attempt. Anyone can put up a screen and project movies onto it, almost anywhere, but this was different. The movie theater I was looking at was made of brick, and looked like it couldn’t possibly have been built anywhere else. It seemed to be a permanent structure, and it looked old and a little run-down, but who on Earth would build and maintain such a thing – who COULD build and maintain such a thing – in such an empty, godforsaken place, so devoid of people and so far from anything and everything?
The building was tiny, but looked like it was neatly sliced out of a larger theater somewhere, as though some dimensional anomaly had warped space-time, causing a discrete section of a cinema in the Midwest of the 1950s to extrude itself through some mind-shattering Lovecraftian shortcut to the Black Rock desert. The thing was truly, clearly a labor of love, with a lighted marquee sporting Art Deco touches, and regularly-scheduled films being screened on-time in a genuine theater interior furnished with real theater seats. They even had a candy counter with those big movie-sized portions.
The laborers of love behind the Bijou are a couple of burners named Release Neuman and Sam Gipson. Their shared vision and loving attention to detail has given a unique and landmark experience to every burner lucky enough to stumble across it while braving the depths of the wilderness outside Black Rock City.
When I read their Mission Statement at the Black Rock Bijou website, I was really impressed. The experience I had the first time I saw the Bijou was entirely what they’d had in mind for me right from the start. The Bijou is built purely to blow minds, and designed to be discovered accidentally. Release and Sam run a tight ship of a genuine theater in pursuit of that mind-blowing quality, knowing that some hokey half-assed Halloweeny mock-up would not achieve the desired effect in the minds of those who stumble upon their brick mirage. The attention to detail is remarkable. . . and the Bijou isn’t just a strange visitor from another place; it’s as much time machine as anything else. The films shown Monday through Saturday at midnight, 2:00 AM, and 4:00 AM are all films that might have been screened in the theater the Bijou is modeled after: the Royal Theater in Archer City, Texas, made famous in the film The Last Picture Show.
I got together with Release and Sam to talk about the Bijou in August of 2013.
WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Release, Sam. . . how did a fully-equipped old-school movie theater come to be operating in the depths of the Black Rock desert?
RELEASE: Here’s how it started for me:
Sean Penn: the Milk of human kindness
The first time I remember hearing about Burning Man was around 1997. I met this kid who was just out of film school, named Lance Black. Lance won the Academy Award a couple of years ago for the Milk screenplay, but this was long before his fame and fortune. He said there was this festival in the desert that 10,000 people went to, where they burned a big man in effigy. Lance said it was a crazy and fun adventure, and since I was with an Internet company at the time that was very cutting-edge, making made-for-the-net TV shows and films, we commissioned Lance to go make a film about Burning Man with a friend of his. I’m not sure I ever saw any results of that project; apparently the trip had gone a bit chaotically and the footage didn’t get through post-production before the company went out of business. As it turned out, we were ahead of our time in a bad way anyway; serving up streaming video didn’t work very well on 56k modems.
At any rate, I was intrigued by what I heard. I had been into the EDM scene since the acid house days of the 1980s, and some of my more with-it friends had gone up to Burning Man as part of that interest. They came back saying I really needed to go.
In the Summer of 2003 I was in one of those agonizing reappraisal times of life, and I decided, for no particular reason, to check out Burning Man. Something inside me, I guess, said it was time. . . but I was very uncertain as to whether or not I would like it. I have never been a camper and feared physical discomfort. Moreover, I feared being trapped there, maybe not liking it and wanting to go home right away. A friend and I decided we’d only go up for one day and one night, to get a toe in the water. We planned on going in Saturday afternoon and leaving Sunday morning, and we really didn’t prepare at all; another friend, Morgan, told us that we didn’t need to bring anything, since we could just come to his camp, have dinner there, and spend the night.
We never found Morgan, or his camp.
We spent the entire night wandering around the playa, with only a few bottles of water in our backpacks. We were quite cold for much of the chilly night. We didn’t know anyone. We watched the Burn in astonishment, wandered from art piece to art piece and theme camp to theme camp, meeting the most interesting people. At sunrise we found ourselves sitting around a fire with a group of strangers.
Every minute of the experience was magnificent, and we had the time of our lives. . . and now I feel like an alcoholic talking about his first drink; I’m still trying to recapture the buzz of that first Burn.
Caught up in the sheer wonder of my first visit to Black Rock City – the art, the people, the city itself – the thought popped into my head of an old movie theater. I really don’t know why a theater came to mind, but it had a little to do with wandering into the front door of Paddy Mirage, an installation that had a funny front door painted like it was an Irish pub. You’d walk through this Irish pub door and find yourself standing on a dance floor the size of an acre. I liked the weird juxtaposition of that sense of a familiar kind of place (the entrance to a pub) with what you got when you walked through the door – and through the looking glass – into this unexpected, unfamiliar environment. Then and there, that first and only night of my first Burn, I thought that someday, I wanted to build a movie theater in Black Rock City. I thought it would stun people and evoke a sense of wonder, just like the Fishmobile and Paddy Mirage and the Ambience Ambulance and the tented bar whose name I forget that served “Pink Things.” They all left me in a state of awe and delight. I thought about it for a few years, but didn’t share it with anyone. . . I mean, who do you tell? “I want to build a movie theater in the middle of the desert!” It sounds insane.
WHATSBLEM THE PRO: How about you, Sam?
SAM GIPSON: Well, in between Release’s de-virginization and the birth of the Bijou, I was declining Burning Man invitations from him. This became an annual discussion I had begun to expect from him, thinking I knew this kind of thing wasn’t for me. I guess I had it in my head that this was some kind of trip to Yosemite (I love Yosemite, for the record) but definitely not something I wanted to go all the way into the desert and spend that much time doing. Life’s funny. . . I judged Burning Man for years, and now it has opened me up to taking on life’s little curiosities instead of judging them. It was definitely a rite of passage for me.
I finally gave in to Release’s seduction and met him on the playa in 2007. I was blown away. . . I had never seen such liberation, openness, and – above all for me personally – creativity. There were no boundaries, and when that many minds are firing off together with no boundaries, you have a culmination of genius. What I was seeing on the playa was genius. I was trying to rationalize, reason, make sense of it all. Who was this wizard behind the curtain making all this stuff? It took me a couple of days but I stopped spectating quickly. I wanted to throw myself in. I wanted this, I had been wanting this, and Release knew it before I did.
The next year, we were out in deep playa, and Release said something about how cool it would be if there was a fully-functioning old movie theater right there, far away from everything. I didn’t think about it much; I may have laughed. He kept going, though; he stressed that this wouldn’t be a screen and a few chairs, this would be the real thing. A mind-fuck for the deep playa traveler. Real movie-sized candy, a candy counter, real seating. . . a real theater. It was a fun conversation and that’s how I took it.
The next year we found ourselves at Burning Man again and he brought it up again. We had more laughs and thought nothing of it. A few months later, he called me and told me that he really wanted to pull this off. I hadn’t taken him seriously until that point; I didn’t realize it then, but I do now; that’s where the wizard behind the curtain of Burning Man is hiding: long journeys into the deep playa.
Once Release made the decision to pull the trigger, he gave the design and execution of the job to an artist who we’ll refer to as ‘Skam’ for a number of reasons. This gentleman had worked with Release before, and he had an impressive résumé that indicated he was well-qualified for this massive undertaking. I was going to come in and assist this guy in anything he needed, and together we were going to make the vision of a movie house in the deep playa a reality.
Unfortunately, at a point when we were already about $7,000 pregnant, Skam abruptly vanished. Spirits were very low; here we had this warehouse and all this equipment, but no foreman, just some vague and unreadable plans, and no real qualifications ourselves for pulling off a large art installation of any quality.
Release told me he was willing to just cut his losses and heed the sign that this may not be meant to be. . . but by that time, I was a little too excited about the project. I had enjoyed three years of Black Rock City at the cost of others getting their hands dirty, and I felt overdue. I literally begged him to stay with the project and let me take the lead. I told him I’d do the project with a cheaper budget than Skam’s, and capitalized on our friendship with the old “you know damn well you can trust me.”
Release was very reluctant. He kept asking me discouraging – but necessary – questions, like “are you sure you know what you’re doing?” or “this is a huge undertaking, you know that, right?” or “have you ever done anything this large before?” I countered with more cheap shots like, “as a friend, I’m asking you to let me have this. Consider it a token of our friendship!”
“Welcome to the burn! Are you mentally prepared to take a loss?”
I think between the guilt trip he knew he’d have over it, and the determination I was showing, he had to relent. . . so we got busy redesigning, and started anew. I later found out that he was mentally prepared to take a loss!
We recruited two more artists to help with the execution of the Bijou: Matthew Pearson, and my brother, Rocky Gipson. What you see in the build video is three guys hammering it out for two months in a warehouse. That’s it. That was shocking information to everyone who asked that first year, and even I look back on it and say “what were we thinking?” I would never try anything that big again with just three people. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re ignorant, though. . . and now we have a group of over a dozen that help get things done, whether it’s painting, building a website, or bringing extra candy to the scene mid-week.
Basically, the road from the Bijou’s conception to its birth was a spontaneous turn of events that in no way could have been planned. It just worked.
RELEASE: Ha ha, yes, all true. Sam is describing that first year of the Bijou: 2010. After that we gradually grew the team by word of mouth. What was especially fun in that first year is that the Bijou was a surprise to everyone, including the Artery and DPW. The DPW folks would stop by and look on in astonishment. One DPW guy wondered if the reason we were so far out in the deep playa was because were on some sort of punishment with the Org! We explained that no, it was actually part of our concept. In fact, if it were on the Esplanade, it wouldn’t be the same at all; it would lose its magic. The Bijou is designed to be stumbled across, and I only ever wanted it in the deep playa; it’s the only place I ever want to do any installation. The deep playa people are my tribe at Burning Man. We’re not the bridge and tunnel crowd.
WHATSBLEM THE PRO: Why a theater in particular?
RELEASE: I have always been interested in film and classic film, going back to my childhood. I enjoy turning the unfamiliar on to the magic of classic cinema, and the Bijou lets us do that.
Searching for the Bijou
One of the great things about the playa is that it’s sort of a continuous exercise in being in the moment. So in the moment, when you duck under the curtain and enter our auditorium and a big John Ford image from the Monument Valley envelops your consciousness, it’s quite an experience. Sometimes in that moment you rediscover the magic of cinema, or might discover it or recognize it for the first time. That’s what the Bijou is about.
WHATSBLEM THE PRO: I love it! You’ve transplanted a physical cinema to what Cacophonists call “the Zone,” — a concept that itself sprung from cinema, especially Andrei Tarkovsky’s1979filmStalker — where we are forced to look at it with new eyes, as though it’s something we’ve never seen before. . . a rediscovery via forced or voluntary unfamiliarity, providing the visitor with a pry-bar for the mind.
I also like that your theater is smack dab in the middle of such a blank geographical canvas. The playa itself becomes a sort of theater as soon as anyone shows up and starts doing things, making things, and being things on it. The Bijou serves as an avatar of the playa-as-theater; it’s a kind of meta-playa within the playa, or meta-theater within that larger theater. Thank goodness you’re not showingSynecdoche, New Yorkor any films about Burning Man in there; you’d probably create a cultural black hole or something and destroy us all!
So, what’s the current state of the Bijou, and what are your plans for it for the future? What do you need to make those plans a reality? How can people get involved and help?
RELEASE: As you may know from our Kickstarter, we are undertaking some significant improvements, and if we get enough support from the burner community, we’ll be able to afford all of them for this year.
Our tradition is to execute a giant mural on the city-facing side of the theater each year; each year the illustration ties into the theme in some way. For this year, in honor of the Cargo Cult theme, we will execute the most famous desideratum in cinema history: Rosebud. That famous logo from Citizen Kane will grace the wall in Wildfire blacklight paint, illuminated by a massive spotlight. If it turns out like we want it to, it should stop you dead in your tracks, thinking about Rosebud and your own desiderata.
We’re also going to double the size of the lobby. It’s just too small for the crowds that like to pop in and visit us, so we will expand it and create more of a social space.
Lastly, and this is the big challenge, we’d like to create a huge vertical neon sign, in the tradition of most classic movie houses, with the theater name: BIJOU. Imagine that radiating out across the deep playa, a beacon and a lighthouse for the deep playa traveler. It’s expensive to do right, so while we’ve only asked for $10,000 in our Kickstarter, we really need to go well past that goal to get everything done that we want to do. . . $15,000 would cover it nicely.
“Let’s settle this in the Thunderdome!” “No, let’s settle it in the Orgy Dome!”
One ugly curveball that came our way – one of those “five minutes before the playa” shockers that always challenge an art project – is that our candy donor for the last two years dropped out. We have been so lucky, each of the last two years, to get 4,000 theater-sized units of candy – everything from Snickers to Skittles to plain and peanut M&Ms – donated gratis to the Bijou. This made it possible for us to provide candy for virtually everyone that walked into the theater. We are looking for another donor. We realize it probably won’t be on that scale, but any leads in that respect would be much appreciated. We must have candy at the Bijou, though we probably won’t have the supply of prior years.
People can get involved and help in so many ways. At this point the best way is the Kickstarter, as fundraising is the current priority. Donating is great, but we could also use some help getting the word out through social media for the short remaining duration of the Kickstarter.
As for the build, our construction team is assembled and will be heading to the playa a week from Sunday. It’s a bit late to join that group, as early arrival passes are all distributed and we don’t have the opportunity to expand that further. . . but if you’re interested in helping us to build next year, get in touch via our Facebook page and let us know. Also, there may be opportunities to help us with tear-down this year, which is a much quicker process and usually begins within twelve hours of the Temple Burn. We do have to MOOP and do that stuff; many hands make easier work! Just give us a shout and we can connect you.
Beyond that, we’ve made investments this year and last so that the Bijou can be a perennial playa installation. We now have two big storage containers with the Burning Man Org, which greatly ameliorates the hassles of getting the theater to and from the playa. Provided the fundraising ends successfully, this year we will take the marquee, the sidewall, and the lobby up a big notch. We have taken steps to expand the team, which was originally just us and a couple of close pals. We came to the inevitable realization that the Bijou is just too big an undertaking for one small clique, so we’ve opened the clubhouse to those who share our passion. . . which means, of course, that it’s not like it was before. I think it’s better!
Each year we will reassess and let our imaginations inspire us as to how the theater should evolve. That first year we didn’t even have doors on the front. Each year we keep improving it, taking it closer to the ideal.
In my fantasies, eventually the theater will have a bona fide balcony up on the second level, beyond our raised platforms. I’d also love to get that camp that makes popcorn all week to come out and provide popcorn. A soft drink machine may be over the top, but a boy can dream. . . and if I could, I would love to hire an actress who looks like that sad old lady who ran the Royal Theater in The Last Picture Show, and have her stand behind the counter, taking tickets and giving out candy. Someone who looks like this is her job, and like she doesn’t even know she’s at Burning Man; someone who looks like she thinks she’s in Anarene, Texas, and it’s 1951. That would be the ideal!
Lastly, when it’s time for the theater to go, I don’t want it to just disappear. I’d like us to return to the playa, build the exterior completely, board it up, stick a ‘CLOSED’ sign on the front door with an apologetic, hand-written note from the owners, lamenting that we were a victim of changing consumer tastes, and talking about how we just couldn’t compete with that new multiplex in Black Rock City anymore. I want graffiti on the building, so it looks as if it’s clearly been abandoned and has gone to pot. Then the next year, we’ll reopen it as a seedy porn theater. The year after that, we’ll board it up and graffiti it up again. Finally, we’ll have a deliberate arson staged as performance art. The theater will go up in flames, calamitously, as fire trucks from Black Rock City race to the deep playa, sirens blaring. That’s how I’d like it to end.
Whatsblem the Pro recently published a very interesting discussion with Official Burning Man blogger (Burning Man Official Blogger? Burning Man Blog Official?) Caveat Magister. One aspect of the discussion was the way art and money have always been intertwined, in some ways it is a symbiotic relationship.
The most successful way the art world has dealt with this throughout history seems to be the Patronage model. The wealthy patron provides the artists with room, board, and materials, usually in a space that lets them get away from the conventional world to focus on their art. The Patronage model has always existed at Burning Man – if you follow Whatsblem’s icthyosaur link you can read about one such anonymous donor who by creating the Generator in Reno is enabling other Burners with a collaborative space, not just their own tribe. In San Francisco, some of the Burners I know have recently “crowdsourced patronage” with [freespace], an experiment in temporary zones that hit its Indiegogo fundraising goal and appears to have been successful.
It is the Patronage model that is most hurt by the BMOrg’s heavy handed “Do Not Use The Words Burning Man” and “we own your photos not you and we will charge magazines to publish them” approach, especially in 2013 when we live in this brave new world of crowdsourcing, social networking, and the sharing economy. “Snapchat” and “you voluntarily assign copy rights to us implicit in your ticket purchase”, are two alien dialects that may possibly never be translated into a common communication. Just as BMOrg are starting to really crack the whip and get the leash out on destroying any members of their community who dare to use photos of themselves or their camps at Burning Man – even the dinosaur content industry, which fought against the Internet for more than a decade, is now adopting the “all you can eat” inclusive, sharing economy models of Pandora, Netflix, Soundcloud, Instagram, Facebook, Hulu. Ten years ago, these guys were thinking like BMOrg are today. In ten years time, they will all be trying to figure out how to be more like Snapchat – which is a truly new business model, one that captures the zeitgeist. Snapchat away all you want, if the photos are temporary how can BMOrg ever catch you?
In the meantime, any Burners who want to attend Burning Man have BMOrg to deal with. They’re struggling to catch up with the 2000’s, when people could take pictures from a cellphone. They only recently decided they should try to own YouTube. Patronage? That’s a model of the arts from the Rennaissance. That would be too hard, too complicated.
“We are going to have a photo shoot in front of your art car, and we are going to make $150,000 from it, and you can not mention on your Art Car’s web site that it is going to be at Burning Man from Aug 26-Sep 2, and you can not include a 12 second YouTube video of your art car at Burning Man”…wow. Just wow. It’s reverse patronage – the artists make the art and pay for it, and the Patrón collects all the cash. And then doesn’t even just starve the artist by collecting the cash – punishes them too. Makes it as hard as they can for the artist to sell their art anywhere else, to try to make a living from the tens of thousands of people who love enjoying their work for free at Burning Man after they had to raise money themselves just to get it there and take it away. BMOrg: “You can’t claim that you painted this painting at my house. It’s my house and I make the rules!” – Burner Artist “but you just made $150,000 selling photos of people at your house in front of my painting. Can’t I even show people a photo of my painting?”
Some people were amazed to learn that they couldn’t use photos of their camp for camp fundraisers, or couldn’t have any other references to Burning Man. Others were amazed that this was even an issue, saying “so what? These are the rules, why can’t you obey them”?
In the last week, a recent case has been brought to my attention. This case clearly shows the way BMOrg enforces these policies – robotic, like Nazis. “you’re breaking our rules, take it down”. It also highlights how arbitrary this process is – as I will show you, in trying to protect a trademark for an arts festival, and their right to monetize all images, they arrogantly assume that they own “anything” that remotely looks like “their” festival, wherever in the world it happens. What are the trademark looks of their festival? It’s a statue of a man on some kind of base, and some street signs. Other than that, it’s the stuff that we bring and display that creates the “Burning Man look”. This story is a classic case study of the unfairness of Burning Man’s approach to this issue – do they really feel that their income stream is threatened? Sadly, this is a case where there really seems to be no reason – other than “we make the rules and we tell you what to do”. If there is a reason, the overwhelming amount of good they are rejecting by judging generous behavior to be “bad” because of rules being interpreted in word and not spirit – is a crying shame. “Throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. This tale shows how the organizational structure that is at the top of this pyramid, has changed from “hey, we’ll give you guys a sandpit, you bring your toys, and let others play with them too, everyone will want to play in the sandpit because it has the best toys and people share them”… to “if you ever brought your toy to the sandpit, that’s ours forever and we’ll make as much money from it as we want, and we’ll try to stop you playing with your toys outside the sandpit”.
Welcome to the Unfortunately Not Curious Case of the Fish Tank.
A motorcycle at Burning Man? That’s against the rules! Oh, you didn’t get the memo? It’s called the Constitution of the United States of America, you should read it. Burning Man does not own United States Government parks. The Bureau of Land Management looks after 264 million acres of them. Can you park your art car amongst those acres, without having to pay a fee to Burning Man? Of course. Land of the free, home of the brave! Take a gun, there might be bears. What about on the national day of independence? Surely you have to pay a fee to Burning Man then? You’re on Federal land, with a vehicle that you once took to Burning Man! Again, no. It’s a free country, which means you don’t have to give money to Burning Man for things that have nothing to do with Burning Man… photo by Burnersxxx copyright(c) Burners.Me 2012 All Rights Reserved. This photo may be used by anyone for any reason including to make money; except for Black Rock City LLC or any of their agents or to make money for the Burning Man organization or any of its subsidiaries at any time for any purpose, whether commerical, personal, or charitable.
I first met the Fish Tank at 2010’s Burning Man, Metropolis. It liked to park outside my RV with its killer sound system blasting away while the operators took a day time nap. I loved it! And we were at 10 & J, so about as far away from disturbing the neighbors as you can get and still be in Black Rock City. I was camped with Villains and Vixens who joined the larger umbrella of Overkill. This was the first time I had been in an organized camp – organized in the sense that there were wristbands for meals served twice a day, a chef cooking for 100 people, a sound system inside a 100-foot authentic Mongolian yurt, camp workers in hexayurts, high rollers in Mega-RVs, hot masseuses on staff, live improv shows every night. That’s right, the kind of camp that haters like to hate – the dreaded “plug and play camping”. You know, as in “I got a low income ticket and I rode around on art cars for free all week. I didn’t buy one drink, people kept handing me them for free. Oh, but I hate those people in RVs, they just stay in them the whole time and never contribute anything to the party, they’re not real Burners”. A common attitude amongst the Burnier-than-thous, which completely misses the point that no people on low income tickets are bringing art cars to Burning Man or putting down their credit card for an open bar for 70,000 people. And we know the guys at the gate collecting $25 million+ aren’t either.
Radical self-reliance, or Safety Third?
The stated reason for Burnier-than-thous to be against Plug-n-Play camping is it’s not radically self reliant. But if you’re standing in line waiting for your chance at a stinky portapotty, and watching gorgeous supermodels going in and out of a rockstar bus with air conditioned marble bathrooms…is there maybe a teensy weensy bit of jealousy that could be the real factor? No? You’re just a hater, and it’s them that’s in the wrong? They are so radically self-reliant that if they need the bathroom or a shower they can have one, and you are so reliant on The Man that you have to stand in line for a stinky portapotty that you hope’s gonna have some paper in it. It’s easy to hate the guy driving past you in the Lamborghini, until you are that guy.
Let’s say that you think there’s some potential danger involved in the 16-hour plus trek back through Exodus, Reno, the mountain passes and the congested freeways of San Francisco at the end of Labor Day weekend. There are 30,000 vehicles taking pretty much the same trip at the same time, and many most are being driven by people who’ve been partying their ass off for a week in an environment where whatever you want will manifest and it’s free, and sleep is difficult due to noise, heat, dust, or FOMO. So let’s say you want to do the sensible thing – get someone to be the designated driver. Well that sucks at Burning Man, not everyone is going to put their hand up and volunteer to be that – especially if it’s not their RV.
So, deals get cut, people get paid, maybe they get a ticket and a place to stay, maybe someone kicks in for their camp dues. Which in most cases, are splitting the expenses of the camp amongst the people who camp there, not lining peoples’ pockets. And someone is hired as the driver. That person looks after the RV, keeps it tidy, keeps strays out, meets with the honey wagon and the water truck if they can flag them down.
To me, this is not only reasonable, it is sensible. If you could afford it, you’d be crazy not to do it. Lives are on the line, and the danger factor is massively amplified compared to normal driving. The statistics support this. To many Burners though, what I have just described is anathema. The worst evil in Burning Man. Rich people in RVs with camps with staff. How dare someone pay someone to go to Burning Man! Burning Man is about Decommodification and Gifting!
What about the sparkle pony who gets a free ticket, a place to stay in the RV, even a flight out there? What does she have to do to the RV owner before she is considered a whore? Sexual acts? Nudity? Just accepting the gift?
Where do you draw the line? This is a question we keep asking on this blog, and we try to highlight where lines are being drawn by BMOrg that are not fair, and detrimental to the event. And not just BMOrg, certain factions in the Burner community too. Often though, the Burners who are “line drawers” or “Burnier-than-thous” parroting the company line, are not independent spokespeople but part of factions or groups within the bigger group. BMOrg, the Theme setter, the Petri Dish controller. Memes are spread through tribes and then get accepted as unassailable truths. The Org is so vast and nebulous with its volunteers and friends and contractors, it’s become harder to tell anymore who’s a “BMOrg Burner” (aka Kool-Aid drinker) and who’s a civilian with no dog in the fight – other than to just enjoy the party. Many of the people critical to our posts on this blog have later come out to admit they work for the BMOrg. Fair enough, we welcome criticism, and if we dish it out we need to be able to take it. We enjoy the party, but we’re not there now, so this is a more appropriate time for criticism. We call them out when they deserve it.
The idea of “don’t use the words Burning Man” and “don’t use photos of your camp” for camp fundraisers, was just so extreme for me that I believe it is a line drawn that BMOrg needs to retreat back behind. Or, just loosen the reins a bit. What is it they’re afraid of?
As far as I can deduct, BMOrg’s primary concern driving this is that others will be misrepresenting the values of their brand “Burning Man”, and that this will therefore lower the value of the brand – by reducing the maximum amount of money they can get licensing it. They make royalties from people selling movies about Burning Man. They charge $150,000 to magazines to print photos of the event. Who the photographers are, and who they work for, is not really relevant. There are many professional photographers at Burning Man, there are many amateurs too. In writing this blog, I very frequently go to images.google.com and type “Burning Man”. There’s a lot of them. In fact, Burning Man is such a visually wonderful interactive spectacle, that I would be surprised if there are many people who went there and didn’t take at least one photo. Especially now that pretty much any mobile phone is a camera, not even smartphones.
BMOrg’s stated reason for having to own every photo, video, and other type of recording ever taken at their event, is so that they can protect the privacy of participants. Which they don’t seem to be all that effective at, given how many images are floating around the Internet for free, often containing partial or full nudity.
Another reason, which seems more likely given the way this organization operates, is that they want to own as much of the IP of the event as they can, so that only they can make money from it. This “no-one can profit from Burning Man but us” idea is wrapped in ideology and the (Cargo) Cult-ish 10 Principles. The shrink-wrapped packaging seduces you that this is a party where everything is free, it’s not about money. It’s about being yourself, expressing and sharing yourself, giving to others. In reality though, their IP ownership policy has more in common with Citizen Kane or how Rupert Murdoch has run his business for the last 60 years. It’s the Mickey Mouse model – as in this is what Disney, a massive owner of content, does. We own the content, only we make money licensing the content, if you use the content and try to make money from it that’s piracy and we’ll sue.
Hollywood has spawned a whole industry, a whole economy. Hollywood is an ecosystem, with a symbiotic relationship between all the participants. When Hollywood is winning, all the people working in Hollywood are winning. More interesting projects, more jobs, more opportunities, more people. It’s a good example because we can also see how when Hollywood is hurting, that hurts many of the people in it too. We saw this in 2008 with the 3-month long Screenwriter’s strike. You’d think that there are so many scripts sitting in filing cabinets in Hollywood that they could punch them out for years without ever hiring another writer again, but no, this was a major disruption to the industry. Actors seemed to be the ones hurt most, and people who made their living renting equipment to the different productions. The catering companies. The people owning the studios, they were all fine; but the broader ecosystem was doing it tough.
Burning Man is like a backwards Hollywood. Flip the model on its ass. All the theme camps, all the art cars, all the actors, all the costumes – that all belongs to one pyramid-shaped entity. Not the one who paid for it. The one that you paid. The Man that you worship. You paid them for the privilege of owning whatever spectacle you chose to create for them. Who’s them? BMOrg. In Hollywood, an actor can come from nothing, achieve rapid success, and then reach the ladder down to where they came from to elevate others. Like Mark Wahlberg’s tale in Entourage, David Bowie playing Andy Warhol in the true life tale of Jean-Michel Basquiat, or Good Will Hunting wunder-kid Ben Affleck who is now a Director and chooses actors to get jobs in his movies.
In Burning Man’s view of how this economy should work, we Burners pay BMOrg’s salaries and expenses, and we pay them a profit to put in their pockets every year, and in addition we pay all our own expenses, we pay to create the art, we bring large amounts of supplies and give them away for free, they own it all, and if we ever want to use photos or the name of the party we created, we better stop. That’s theirs.
Fallen Angel, Basquiat 1981
In Burning Man, you bring the best costume? BMOrg will put it in photo shoots and make money. Bring a cool art car? BMOrg will put it in photo shoots and make money. Put the same photo on your web site where you try to raise funds to support the art car? BMOrg will send you cease-and-desist letters, escalating in tone, until they’re ready to sue and take even more of your money.
Think I’m over-stating it? I’m understating it. And when I say “make money from photo shoots”, each single one is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Recently we discussed their IP policies in the context of theme camps: Do Not Use the Words Burning Man. The policy applies beyond camp placement, anyone who buys a ticket is assumed by their legal department to have consented to it. So this is really about anyone using any photos from Burning Man in any way that is not clearly “personal use” (or “fair use”).
An art car is sometimes built and owned by one person. Just like an art project. Usually though, it’s a team effort. And this is one of the great things about Burning Man. In Whatsblem’s recent interview with Caveat Magister, they talk about the way the LA Burner orientation is to build a garden together. They get it – bringing us together in a [free|space] of fun and play, is why we all go to this party. Likewise, usually it is a team effort to put a camp together. For larger camps, someone has to pay to rent the generators, or the port-a-potty, or buy the supplies. Usually a few people chip in, or maybe everyone in the camp pays a fixed fee to cover the budget. A large camp budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars – a major camp on Esplanade, maybe $350,000. I would name them but I wouldn’t want to Dis them…those are some of my peeps…
How big is a large camp? 50+? 100+? The camp I was in last year had about 260 people. 70% virgins. I won’t be doing that again. This year I have 20 close friends who all want to camp together, with a varying amount we can afford to spend per day. We all understand to stay somewhere costs money every day. And we want some luxuries, and luxuries cost extra. Some in the camp can afford more than others. Everyone has to chip money in, including some people we’ve never met, friends of friends. We have people coming from more than 10 countries, and even from the US everyone is coming from totally different places with totally different logistical issues.
We need systems to communicate with each other. Packing lists. A location. Walkie-talkies, GPS. Bikes. Sound system, booze. Barbecue, ways to cook. Water, tons of it. We use the Internet to co-ordinate, the latest technologies. Those of the camp with experience, share theirs with the rest of our friends on our facebook group.
But sooner or later, inevitably, money has to be spent for the camp. And money has to be collected for the camp.
And here’s where the complications begin. Money means spending. Spending means credit cards. Credit cards require bank accounts.
Do you pick one person, to be “the Bank” like when we played Monopoly as kids – everyone gives all the money to them, everyone trusts them to do the right thing, and everything goes through their personal account?
What about for an art car, where multiple people maybe from different States might be driving it, multiple people have kicked money into it and feel like part-owners. Who’s going to get the insurance policy? Who’s it going to be registered with at the DMV (the real one, if it’s street legal)?
What if it’s in the Macy’s parade in New York and Macy’s wants to take a photo of it? Who owns the rights? The person who drove it to New York, the person who built it, Macy’s? Macy’s wants to know. Lawyers get consulted.
This problem, of how more than one person can own a thing, was solved about a thousand years ago. The invention was called a Corporation. Corporations have come so far, that they are now recognized as persons by the Courts. Although they have special rights that make them even more powerful than persons, due to the fact that they’re not acutally a person. For example, you can’t jail a corporation. And theoretically it can live forever.
So many artists and camps use this simple and widely accepted technique, common in the world of business and insurance and bank accounts, to manage the annual expenses involved with attending this event. What name is the bank account in? Do we have a Paypal account? How do we get the funds from Kickstarter or Indiegogo – or Art Grants? Shall we get a Square so we can take credit cards at our fundraiser? All of this is made quite simple by having an LLC (which means Limited Liability Corporation). It provides a legal structure so that if I kicked in $5000 for a sound system on an art car, and then someone else was driving the art car and someone jumped off it and hurt themselves, that person wouldn’t be able to come directly at me for being responsible. I just kicked some money into the company for the sound system. The company can have insurance to protect everyone.
Shouldn’t these companies be non-profits, if they want to go to Burning Man? Isn’t an LLC something that’s for profit? Well, technically yes. But you need to understand that things aren’t as simple as that in this country. You can’t just decide to start a company and decide to call it a non-profit so that you never have to pay tax. That’s not how the IRS works. You’ve got to apply to them for permission. In the last couple of years we started Reallocate.org and went through this process – it took 18 months, a lot of paperwork, and the pro bono contributions of a pretty big law firm. And this is for a legitimate charity, nothing to do with Burning Man, a philanthropic start-up.
It’s not practical to go through this process just so that you can get insurance and raise funds on an art car. And even if you did, it’s highly doubtful the IRS is going to just rubber stamp approve it. “Oh, you have an art car? OK, you never have to pay tax again then”. Having said that, I’m aware of a number of theme camps or art projects that do have a registered 501(c)3 charity – this year’s Control Tower springs immediately to mind.
Control Tower is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of Control Tower must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
What is it?
Control Tower is a large scale interactive artwork at Burning Man 2013. It is a complex, challenging and experimental artwork that embodies the ongoing mission of the International Arts Megacrew – to create & support big, collaborative art projects that promote the creative development & self expression of people from all walks of life.
Control Tower will be a 60′ tall interactive platform to which we invite any and all artists to contribute. Every aspect of the tower will be interactive, from the never before seen experimental flame effects, to the massive & dazzling array of RGB lasers, to the shifting patterns that play across the entire surface of the artwork.
Just because something is a corporation, does not mean it’s trying to make money. Corporations can be holding structures, ownership structures, insurable entities. Just because the structure of a corporation is not that of a tax-exempt non-profit, does not automatically mean that it is trying to profit.
Which brings us to FishTankLLC.com . A company founded by Burner Dr Andy from New Jersey, a highly respected orthopedic surgeon who in his spare time teaches at the world’s top medical colleges, and help kids in the developing world, low income kids, and kids with special needs. In the US he puts hours every week into doing this. Andy is a Merry Prankster from the old school, he loves Burning Man, he loves fun, he designed his art cars to be very open and accessible. He completely gets the true spirit of Burning Man, openness and inclusion and gifting. Everyone involved in Fish Tank go out of their way to respect Burning Man’s rules. If you see Fish Tank on the Playa, hop on for a ride, or dance away next to us! Just don’t jump off.
This company was not founded on a grand vision of taking over the world with half-tank, half-fish mobile sound systems. It was founded on a much more practical basis: the need to manage the logistics and expenses of moving these art cars around the country to various events, one of which is Burning Man.
“Wait a minute – did he just say various events?” – yup. That’s right, although this might be hard to believe for some Burgins, Burning Man did not invent art cars, and is not the only place you can see them. Like mega-art car Robot Heart, Fish Tank has operations on both coasts. And between the two vehicles, Angler Fish and Fighting Fish, they have been to:
– Electric Daisy Carnival (Las Vegas)
– Free Form Festival (New Jersey)
– Art Basel (Miami)
– Houston Art Car Parade
– Hot August Nights (Reno)
– Halloween Parade (New York)
– BUKU (New Orleans)
Some people at these events recognize the Fish Tank from Burning Man. But the vast majority have no idea what Burning Man is, even in the art car world. I would challenge you to name any other Art Car you’ve seen at Burning Man, that has been to more events outside the Playa than the Fish Tanks. It’s not easy to get to these things from Point A to Point B, it’s expensive, it’s not profitable. $3/mile minimum. Without patronage it would not happen. The more art cars go to events away from Burning Man, the more people want to go to Burning Man to see all the art cars.
Wherever Fish Tank goes, it draws a crowd. This is in Reno, most of these kids knew about Burning Man but almost none had been. They didn’t realize there was so much stuff like this there:
In fact, people love the Fish Tank so much, that when Vogue magazine wanted to do a story about Burning Man, out of all the 500+ art cars available, they wanted to feature the Fish Tank. Which of course the friendly and accomodating owners of Fish Tank helped them out with. “Sure, we’ll stay here and not do anything else until your photographers are finished. Sure, I’ll move from my seat so I’m not blocking your shot. Sure, I’ll get off my own art car so that you can take it over and pose on it”. It’s a party, it’s a city, we’re gifting, whatever we can do to help out Black Rock City, we do.
In the past, Fish Tank has been asked to provide a “taxi service” for everyone from BMOrg to DPW to Alex Grey, helping people get across the Playa. It has transported the sick and wounded to the Medical Center, on many occasions. With the added bonus that the owner is a highly skilled surgeon, who I’ve seen provide plenty of free medical assistance at the party. If you’re a doctor, you swear to the Hippocratic Oath, which says if you see someone who needs your help, you help them. You don’t swear to the oath that says “if someone is sick in front of me, I will only let the official Burning Man medical team help them”. It doesn’t work like that. Someone’s injured, you help them immediately, you radio for assistance, someone comes out on a quad bike, it’s often easier for the art car to take them over to the Medical Center than the quad bike. Or, someone passes out on the art car, you check their breathing and heartbeat, you take them to the medical center. You maybe even stay there with them for a bit to make sure they’re OK. This type of help doesn’t just get provided on the odd occasion by Fish Tank. It’s part of what Fish Tank is all about – leading by example, and representing a higher standard of civil behavior towards one another. Helping, caring, sharing, giving. Keep it nice and keep it happy, don’t rock the boat, don’t make waves, don’t piss people off. Calm, mellow, happy. Just create smiles – miles and miles of smiles.
Every year, the Fish Tank does an “art tour” of the Playa for mobility challenged or other special needs Burners. BMOrg themselves don’t put on anything like this to make the Burn easier for these people. Without Fish Tank doing this, they’d get nothing. They’d be lucky if they got approved to get a Segway or a golf cart.
So what does Fish Tank get, in return for both everything they’ve given at Burning Man, and for promoting the art cars of Burning Man to literally millions of people around the country? Without ever directly promoting Burning Man, without even using the words Burning Man – they don’t need to, they’re bigger than Burning Man. Burning Man is just one of the ponds that these Fish Tanks go to swim in. It’s the one with the most rules and restrictions, but they go out of their way to obey and respect them.
What do they get?
Well, they certainly didn’t get any money from Vogue. The $150,000 for the photo shoot went straight into the coffers of BMOrg (minus, we hope, the 3% cut the BLM takes of any money anyone makes on the Playa).
And, they didn’t get much support from Burning Man’s on site operations crew, the Department of Public Works. Last year Fish Tank couldn’t trade an entire keg of beer for the right to use their on-Playa fuel station. Only “special” art cars that had been given the secret handshake could do that. Later we found out that a keg is a miniscule, insignificant quantity of beer compared to the amount that camps like Distrikt were gifting them. But should they really have to beg? Fish Tank brought hundreds of gallons of extra fuel, and churned through a lot of it when they helped out the handicapped, and emergency situations with injured Burners. Who decides what’s fair, and what’s just plain mean? Shouldn’t Fish Tank at least get a gas top-up after that ride? It’s not like they’re trying to steal gas for free, they’d be happy to pay.
Nope, basically all they get is one big slap in the face. A “fuck you very much”. From DPW, from the BMOrg, from the Haters and the Enforcers and the Bullies.
Let’s start with the letter:
From: Nathan Aaron Heller To: “info@fishtankllc.com” Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 8:59 PM Subject: Use of Images Obtained at Burning Man
Greetings to you at Fishtank LLC,
My name is Nathan Heller, and I am from Burning Man’s Intellectual Property Team.
I hope this email finds you very well.
It appears you have been to the Burning Man event, and therefore you may know we take two principles very seriously: Decommodification and Gifting. We do not allow commercial use of images obtained at the Burning Man event without our prior permission.
It was recently brought to our attention that your website is using images obtained at the Burning Man event.
We really appreciate your efforts in reaching out to and informing the broader Burning Man community about your amazing art cars and your services, but we must ask that you please make the following changes at your soonest convenience:
We see images obtained at the Burning Man event are included on these pages of your website:
Perhaps you are unaware, non-personal use of images and video obtained at the Burning Man event is prohibited without prior written permission from the Burning Man Organization. We define “non-personal” as beyond friends and family. Guided by protecting the principles of Decommodification and Gifting, we also prohibit third party commercial use of images and video obtained at the event without our prior written permission, and we cannot permit these uses. This information is found in the Terms and Conditions for entry into Burning Man, on the back of the Burning Man ticket, in the Survival Guide mailed to all participants, and on our website. You can read the Terms and Conditions here:
We really appreciate your art and year-round outreach to the broader community, but we must ask that you please remove all uses of images and video obtained at the Burning Man event from your website, and please notify me once you have made the changes.
Please let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to hearing from you at your soonest convenience.
You can read more on Burning Man’s approach to intellectual property here:
“Brought to our attention” – ie some burnier-than-thou thought that snitching makes the world a better place. “Dear Burning Man. I would like to bring to your attention, that this art car says it is going to be at Burning Man. AND, they have a 12-second YouTube video at their site that appears to be from Burning Man. Yours truly, Anonymous”. ALERT ALERT! MAYDAY! Call in the SWAT team!
What’s the issue? Well, Fishtank, LLC has had money contributed to it by a number of people over the years. They formed an LLC to better keep track of the various contributions, which are in the tens of thousands from multiple people. It needs annual maintenance and the logistical expense of moving an art car like this around the country is quite high. They can keep finding more backers to gift money in, or the existing owners have to keep pouring money into it. It’s kind of like a boat, in this regard. Once you get it, you have to keep spending money on it whether you use it or not, and the more you use it, the more money you need to spend on it.
In the world of boats, most familiar to the people involved with FishTank, a standard model for this is Chartering. Which the Fish Tank does not do. We know of other Art Cars which are available for rent at certain events, such as the Lady Bugs from Brooklyn. But that doesn’t work, the FishTank is for fun, the owners want to be with it when it’s at all these events. The people who might want to rent it for Burning Man, are probably already on it and putting money into its expenses and upgrades.
What about selling tickets? That is completely against the open nature and design of the Fish Tank. And against the Burner principles of Radical Inclusion and Decommodification. What about something like Tiki Island did – for a certain level of Kickstarter funding, you get seats for 2 people on an evening cruise. It’s possible, but just another form of ticket selling – and borderline a commercial use of the vehicle on the Playa.
So you’re left with fundraiser events and Kickstarter. And you can’t use any photos of the art car at Burning Man in any of them. No matter who took them. If there’s video of your art car on YouTube that someone else took, you can’t embed that in your site. Maybe, you can’t even link to it. People just have to take your word for it that the Art Car has been to TTITD.
Fish Tank wanted to be a bit different. If a corporate wants to use it for a big event or a photo shoot off Playa, they can book the whole thing to be at the event. It’s not like renting a car – this is a mobile art installation that has to be shipped cross-country, driven correctly, and maintained in a state of operation. If you’ve got the money, you can rent the Fish Tank, they’ll get it to you and drive you around. The ultimate limo.
But it’s not like they can do 3 of these events a week. Given the logistics, at best they would probably only get a few events per year. Which would pay for themselves and promote the Fish Tank further, but would also cause wear and tear on the vehicles and probably not leave them with enough profit to cover the storage cost and profit-forbidden Burning Man sharing.
Which left them with one other idea. They wanted to sell their own line of merchandise. This would be something they could do at any event they went to (except Burning Man). Often, after the parade is over, the Fish Tank stops, but people still mill around. Why not sell them a T-Shirt, or some quick-dry swim trunks?
None of these t-shirts mention Burning Man. None of these t-shirts have photos taken at Burning Man. They don’t even have a photo of the Fish Tank. So, how is it that Burning Man is being exploited by Fish Tank? How is Fish Tank hurting Burning Man, and what is the economic impact of that hurt? Anyone can go to YouTube and type “burning man fish tank” and see a hundred videos…but put a single one of those videos on your page, all of a sudden you’re attacking Gifting and Commodification, you’re exploiting Burning Man for your greedy personal commercial gain. YouTube, who sells ads while we’re watching videos, would seem to be the one who is actually doing this, actually making the money.
What did the Fish Tank do that was so bad in the eyes of Burning Man that they wanted to send their legal department on the offensive?
Well, let’s take a look. I will use screenshots because they may well change their web site to comply with Burning Man.
SCHEDULED APPEARANCES
July 20-22, Reno Art Car Fest ~ Friday evening = Party at Harrod’s Mutant Rides exhibit at the Auto Museum.
Saturday = exhibiting at the Nevada Museum of Art and a party that night at the Art Museum with DJ Spooky.
Sunday some of the cars will drive into the mountains to a great campsite for swimming and partying and for those that want to stay, camping.
August 26- Sept 2, Burning Man ~Returns Home for a week on the Playa during the annual Burning Man festival where over 50,000 people are invited to ride the Fish! Black Rock City, NV
Bad, huh? They used the words Burning Man. They even said the dates that the party takes place, and that they would be there. I can see Larry’s millions melting away before my very eyes. Oh, the anti-Decommodification! To say the name of the event, and when it takes place! Outrageous! And then to offer free rides to people? How dare they!
But wait a minute. Didn’t Burning Man just say they’re being reasonable about how you use the words Burning Man?
2. Use of the words “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City”
Now, a word about words. You may use the term “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City” as part of descriptive text, but do not use these words as the central adjective (or only adjective). Burning Man does not want people confused about who is sponsoring or producing the event. See the examples below.
Totally OK:
“A Fundraiser for Camp Forgotten Monsters at Burning Man.” Or
“A Fundraiser for the John Frum Institute Art Project at Burning Man,”
Not OK:
“Burning Man Fundraiser for Camp Forgotten Monsters.” or
“Burning Man Fundraiser for the John Frum Institute Art Project.”
Nuanced, but different. Two Fundraisers doing art events.
Reasonable enough, right? But irrelevant. Fishtank is not using the words Burning Man to promote a fundraiser, or an event that could be mistaken for some kind of association with Burning Man. It is using the words Burning Man to promote Burning Man! It is clearly saying that they will be at two upcoming festivals, one in Reno, and one Burning Man. They don’t claim to own Burning Man. No-one could possibly be confused about what this page says. The use of the words Burning Man is in the context of describing Burning Man. And, PS, they’re offering to gift rides for free to every single person who goes to that party. What’s in it for them? How is Fish Tank making money from this?
There’s got to be more to it than that. Well, not really. Let’s go to the next violations Nathan has pointed out:
Look familiar? Maybe, because you’re seen the Angler Fish Fish Tank at Burning Man. And you’ve seen Rob Buchholtz’s sculpture Wish, the high tech flower trees at Burning Man. But this photo was taken at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. If an art piece was displayed at Burning Man once, does Burning Man deserve to get money any time that art piece is used away from Burning Man? Does Burning Man own any rights to photographs of things taken outside of Burning Man, if they were once at Burning Man?
Absolutely not. I would hope, not even for Honorarium Grant recipients – although I have to say, if it turned out that in order to get the grant you had to sign an even more onerous contract transferring the ownership of your art to Burning Man, it would not surprise me.
If you look at the photo above, it’s pretty easy to tell it’s not Burning Man. What are all those people doing wearing normal clothes? What are all the market stall tents in the background? You would think that in the circumstances (those being, not actually looking at the photo you are saying is a problem) BMOrg would open with the benefit of the doubt – “hey, we were wondering, are these photos from Burning Man, or something else”? But no, we don’t get reasonable doubt here. We don’t get innocent until proven guilty. We get “assume we’re in the right and you’re in the wrong because we’re BMOrg”.
Seriously. The guy didn’t even look at the photo. Look at it yourself and it’s clear.
Now, if these people were being disrespectful to Burning Man’s ownership policies, there would be photos all over this site of Fish Tank at Burning Man. There are none. Why is that? Surely that is because they are complying, not violating. But BMOrg doesn’t give them credit for this. It’s all or nothing – we’ll punish you for the 1%, not thank you for the 99%. No exceptions – except for the exceptions. Like, the Temple builder David Best. Nothing against David, I appreciate his art. But he was selling dinner with him at Burning Man for $1000 a pop. He certainly uses the words Burning Man to promote his career as a commercial artist, it would be hard for any major Burning Man artist not to. They should be able to.
Look at this a different way. What makes you think this photo is anything to do with Burning Man? It’s the art car, right?
We wrote about taking the Fish Tank to the Playa last July in this article: Shhhh…don’t mention Juplaya. I didn’t just write the article, I wrote the check to the logistics guys and bought the fuel. That stuff ain’t cheap…but it sure is fun. Guess what: if you go to the Black Rock Desert at other times of the year than Burning Man, it also can get dusty. And if you bring an Art Car with you , it might look like Burning Man. Especially if it’s a famous art car associated with Burning Man from Vogue magazine. But that doesn’t mean Burning Man owns it. Their permit for the commercial rights to the Playa is only for a small period of the year, anyone can show up at any time the rest of the year with art installations, art cars, theme camps, and take all the photos they want of it. They don’t even have to give BLM a cut, if it’s not an organized event.
So, what else? Well, this next one Fishtankllc is not disputing. Sure, they can take it down from their site – in fact I just checked, they already have. They can’t take it down from YouTube, it’s not theirs. The video belongs to whoever posted it, according to YouTube (part of Google). But is this really hurting Burning Man?
Burning Man is going to make at least $25 million at the gate this year. This 12 second video – which really is illustrating the capacity of this art car to transport multiple people at any type of event – says nothing about Burning Man, doesn’t link the Fish Tank to Burning Man, and is clearly not confusing to anyone interested in the trademark “BURNING MAN” for Arts Festivals featuring some music. FishtankLLC are not throwing any such events.
Fish Tank took the link to this video down, but it is still there. On YouTube. Along with thousands of others. And, guess what? YOUTUBE IS MAKING MONEY OFF THEM. Here’s the most popular video, at 4.3 million views since last year someone is cashing in big time on all the hoop-la:
What is the problem Burning Man? Why is it OK for Google (which owns YouTube) to make tons of money out of Burning Man videos, and not OK for Fish Tank to link to 12 seconds of video hosted at that site, that doesn’t contain advertising of any sort, and really does not say anything or confuse anyone about Burning Man? They’re not showing the Man, they’re not showing any significant art work, they’re showing the Art Car they made and paid to take to your party and drive your guests around in.
Is it because you like to pick on the weak, but are afraid to pick on the real violators of your policies because that might be a tougher fight?
The more they force themselves out of the fund-raising process of the tribes, the more they will make themselves irrelevant to Burner culture. Embrace and extend, or resist and #fail.
I’m sad to say, I suspect there is some link between my past contributions to the expenses of this particular art car, their generosity in inviting me to off-Playa events with them that I covered on this blog, my recent post critical of the BMOrg’s IP policies…and this out of the blue attack from BMOrg accusing them of not understanding Gifting or Decommodification. Outrageous and unjustified charges, all Fish Tank can do is comply, there is no Ombudsman, no process of arbitration, no appeal. What’s fair, and what’s just, that never comes into the equation. It’s unfair and unjust for BMOrg to attack Fish Tank for using photos that have nothing to do with Burning Man. It’s unfair and unjust that Vogue does a photo shoot at Burning Man and features the vehicle, and Burning Man gets paid $150,000 by Vogue for photo shoots on the Playa, while the Fish Tank can’t even get a gas refill after driving handicapped kids around all day. But the greatest injustice of all, is that after everything Fish Tank has ever done for Burning Man, all it takes to incur the wrath of the BMOrg and being immediately accused of “being ignorant of and violating 2 of the sacred 10 principles” by the paid IP enforcer goons of the BMOrg…is linking to a 12 second YouTube video and providing the name and dates of the party.
If you don’t draw the line at this, then there is no line any more. Justice is over, tyranny has begun, we all mean nothing and must obey at all costs. “No spectators! You must participate so that we can monetize your radical self-expression! Content is king, the more unique the content you create for us at your expense and gift to our commercial organization to license it, the more we will be king! Do not use videos of Burning Man, unless you’re Google, then please make all the money you can from them so you can buy us!”
Norway is so close to the North Pole that in summer, the sun doesn’t set. Even in parts of the country further South, like the capital Oslo, 22+ hours of sunshine a day are the norm in summer, with temperatures around 30° C (86° F). We walked into a club at 11:30pm and it was still daylight outside, we left at 2am and the sun was rising and people were out walking their dogs. Norwegian people are wonderful, boaties and big drinkers with a very wry sense of humor. I’ve been several times, and can’t wait to go back again to explore more of this beautiful land.
Alesund, Norway throws an annual Midsummer’s Festival, featuring the world’s largest bonfire, made of recycled shipping pallets. Recycled for this purpose, so they can be destroyed for temporary entertainment! Fire is important to these people, since it wipe out the whole town in 1904.
Their 2010 bonfire set the record as the World’s Largest Bonfire. The tower was more than 130 ft high, built without any cranes, I guess you can say they’re pretty handy building stuff even they own toys, you also can make your own Raptor toys, if you go into it.
The occasion? Sankthans, or ‘Midsummer’, an annual festival in commemoration of John the Baptist’s birth. The day is celebrated on the 24th of June (around summer solstice) in Scandinavian countries and other parts of Europe.
In Alesund, the traditional bonfire, known as Slinningsbålet, is taken to the extreme. In 2010, a record was set for the tallest bonfire at 40.45 meters (132.71 ft). The previous record was 37.84 meters (124.14 ft) set in 1993. The base of the structure is approximately 20 meters wide (65.6 ft).
About 30-40 pepole partake in the build, and to light the structure someone must climb to the top to ignite it. If the fire doesn’t burn from top to bottom things could end badly.
Yep, some crazy Norwegian climbs 133 feet up that fucker and lights it. Then gets down – quick, I bet.
The festival has overtones of both religion and drunkenness (which go hand in hand…red wine+coke = Jesus Juice) and it can trace its origins back to the pre-Christian, good ‘ole Pagan days.
Midsummer is a church festival in commemoration of John the Baptist ’s birth. The day is celebrated on the 24th June is named after John the Baptist Danish names of saints, St. Hans. The day was a holiday until 1770 when it was abolished by the party daily reduction . ”Midsummer” comes from jónsvaka , which is Old Norse and means “vigil for Jon” (a variant of John). Midsummer Eve is celebrated 23 June , the evening before the feast day, in the same way as Christmas, Easter and Whitsun Eve.
Midsummer celebrations are related to the old, pre-Christian midsummer tradition that has been celebrated in different ways throughout northern Europe, often as a popular midsummer party than a Christian festival. In Norway celebrated particularly Midsummer’s Eve as a summer party 23 June, many locations with sankthansbål if weather permits.
The popular midsummer celebration is older than the church feast and celebration has traditionally involved games, dancing and drunkenness .From the Reformation in the 1500s , however, opposed the church and the government strenuously that they regarded as immoral celebration.The tradition was weakened in countries like Denmark, Norway and the UK , but remained better in Sweden , Finland , Estonia and Latvia .Where is the non-Christian celebration of the summer solstice is still widespread and strong, in Sweden and Finland, the tradition is for the Christmas season that is more important than party time celebrating midsommar and Juhannus . Similar traditions to celebrate midsummer and John the Baptist, often with bonfires, found throughout Northern Europe, the UK and Ireland.
Slinning bonfire is a sankthansbål annually are created on Slinning Odden in Ålesund to then be burned on Midsummer’s Eve . The bonfire is built mainly of pallets, crates and barrels.
The tradition of the fire is old and spans hundreds of years back and at that time there were several large sankthansbål who were among others around the Ålesund.
