Tag Archives: Bahamas

Aug 24 2024

Burning Man and the Gaza War

Black Rock City has dealt with terrorism before – see Anonymous Terror Group Claims Responsibility for Burning Man Attacks. Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said in 2016 that Burning Man Could Be A Terror Target:

“What better event to have a worldwide impact in Northern Nevada than Burning Man, especially with the ‘loose morals’ that some Burners live by,” Allen wrote in an email to the Reno Gazette-Journal, alluding to the nudity and alcohol and drug use at the event. “Just because it hasn’t happened, doesn’t mean it is not possible. Remember, there was never a bomb at the Boston Marathon until there was. Nobody ever flew into a skyscraper until 9/11.

“If an event of that magnitude happened at this event, the soonest we could get resources to assist us in quelling the issue would be two hours. A lot can happen in that amount of time.”

With the planet on the brink of Global Thermonuclear War, and millions of people marching in the streets all around the world angry about genocide, what better art project to bring to Burning Man than something commemorating the Nova festival, where party-goers were slaughtered by both the paragliders of Hamas and Apache helicopters of the IDF.

This is one of the most triggering, divisive issues of modern times. Surely it won’t be a downer on anyone’s acid trip though…right? Instead it will be the “Must Have” Instagram selfie of the year.

From The Times of Israel:

[Source: Times of Israel]

A source tells us “the shade structure of Nova Heaven was the same one under which dozens of innocents were killed”.

Rest In Peace to the 400 dead party-goers. There are some weird things about this whole situation. The festival’s location was moved at the last minute, just 2 days before the event, from 40 miles away from Hamas to 3 miles away.

[Source: Dust and Tribe]

The BBC reported that Egypt Warned Israel Days Before The Attack, CNN reported that the US gave repeated warnings in the days leading up to the attacks, and the New York Times reported that Israel knew of Hamas’ plans more than a year in advance. So this last minute relocation approved by the Army is certainly very strange.

The Nova rave was actually combined at the last minute with another party called “Unity”:

[Source: Haaretz]

The orders came down from up high: forget the warnings, the show must go on!

If only we still had real journalism in the world, maybe we’d be able to get to the bottom of it all. Instead, like so many things of our times, it’s just swept under the rug as a big unsolvable mystery full of bizarre coincidences…but definitely not a conspiracy of any kind because those don’t exist and if you think they do, you’re a tin-foil hat wearing flat earth kook (and probably an unvaccinated Anti-Semite to boot!)

In the past we’ve had political figures like Grover Norquist, Denis Kucinich and General Wesley Clark visiting Black Rock City. The Washington Post even wrote a story in 2012 about The Mainstream Republican Values of Burning Man. İn 2012 the Occupy movement made its presence felt at Burning Man with the epic Burn Wall Street art project. In 2020 Black Lives Matter was all the rage. Last year we had Climate Change protestors stopping traffic and scuffling with police.

It’s a slippery slope…and look where we are now.

The Org seems to feel strongly that politics has a place on the Playa:

The “Burning Man isn’t political” perspective is based on the false narrative…that Burners find themselves or wish for their experiences to be separate from the world around them. We’re a year-round culture. We are a community of people from around the world, representing countless perspectives, caring about countless issues, with an endless list of reasons why we participate in Burning Man.

The word “political” in this context seems to be used to mean that activities or perspectives that tie together Burning Man with issues outside the physical or social media trash fences are not wanted or welcome. 

[Source: Burning Man web site]

In my opinion politics has no place whatsoever at Burning Man. We travel to this remote, harsh environment to escape reality, not to drag it with us. I remember when Burners had to cover up the Ryder signs on their rental trucks. Now will there be political yard signs on display?

[Above: Playa gifts from 2015 and 2024. Source: Anon]

Politics is not part of the Tin Principles in any way. If there is a “Civic Responsibility” to honor the 400 dead victims of the Nova Festival, then the 40,000 dead Palestinians should be honored too. But is a giant, drug-fueled rave really the appropriate place for these energies of death to be summoned in a pentagram?

The Nova Heaven organizers will be banging a gong and playing some thumping Israeli psy-trance:

Nova Heaven will also feature a large gate-shaped art piece with the “We Will Dance Again” motto, along with 405 laser-cut angels to represent the Nova victims and a spiral staircase with 100 English and Hebrew messages including “love conquers all” and “compassion unites us.”

Organizers have arranged for several of Burning Man’s famous “art cars,” including a fire-breathing dragon and an illuminated zeppelin, to swing by their home base on the desert landscape…They have also set up a series of events framed around the motif of angels and “dancing again,” including sets from Israeli DJs, music from handpan musician Noah Katz and “healing sound experiences,” such as a gong performance from David Shemesh.

[Source: Times of Israel]

If it’s all going to be peace, love, and laser-cut angels…why is security needed? Is this going to be the new trend now, plug and play camps posting armed guardians to keep the riff-raff out?

The group appears to have taken steps to prevent any vandalism or protest of the type that has taken place against some Israelis in the United States since Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza. The group says it has recruited dozens of “Guardians” who watch over the installation in six-hour shifts around the clock to “ensure meaningful connections are made to the art piece.”

[Source: Times of Israel]

Their opening on Wednesday at sunrise (the original attack happened at 6:29am) will feature Infected Mushroom and Axolotl. Axolotl will be playing a Monday event at The Temple with a Palestinian artist. Something for everyone, I guess.

May 2 2017

DumpsterFyre Glee: Why So Many of Your Industry Friends Had a Great Friday

Opinion by Terry Gotham

Unless you were somewhere totally isolated like a private cay 40 miles south of Miami, you couldn’t have missed the deliciously schadenfreude-laden miasma of coverage and commentary surrounding #fyrefestival. This fuck up eclipsed the Pepsi, United, Nivea and all other corporate scandals this year so far by several orders of magnitude. The feed of one Seth Crossno, live-tweeting as William N. Finley IV gave us a window into what happened at the hastily organized pet project of Ja Rule & Billy McFarland. If the name Ja Rule is unfamiliar, please review this clip of him losing a drag race at the beginning of Fast & the Furious 1.

If the name Billy McFarland sounds familiar, I’m sorry you were tricked into joining Magnises, the network for rich posers. Get this, he thought he could fund & produce a destination festival because his last venture was this company that promised members could “unlock their cities and take their lives to the next level.” However, members repeatedly complained that they’d be contacted last minute to be notified that their tickets were not available. That’s right, to quote the Business Insider report directly:

Each time, just before the show (often the day before the event or even the day of) a representative for Magnises would send an email explaining that the startup would no longer be able to provide the purchased ticket and offer to help reschedule the seat for another date.

“They send the same email for every problem, but it’s like fill-in-the-blanks for what the problem is,” the person said.
~Business Insider, 1/24/17

So, Fyre leadership includes a rapper who was an also-ran in 2001 and a guy who pump faked trust fund kids, conning them into joining a fake influencer network. In the grand scheme of things, this is in no way the worst group of people to put together a music festival, but here’s the thing. McFarland has a history of grift and shenanigans, documented wonderfully in a timeline over at EDMSauce. But from a logistics perspective, neither Ja Rule or McFarland would be the ones actually “throwing” shit. Production companies have an army of leads, venue scouts, technical directors, sound people, lighting people, talent people, in addition to the entire hospitality/guest services battalion who are needed to be people people, for the attendees. While many mega-festivals like Coachella or Ultra or Burning Man are colossal endeavors, they’re not unknown quantities.

Festivals aren’t “big risks” for the people who keep their lights on by throwing these things. They are “deeply calculated” ventures with multi-year profitability timelines and insane amounts of market research. Ask any regional Burning Man coordinator. They’ve got a pretty good idea how many tickets they’ll sell, as does a seasoned EDM promoter or talent buyer at a venue. The costs associated with destination festivals are well known, given that there are a dozen successful ones thrown there every year. Holy Ship, Mad Decent and a number of other brands have done pretty well keeping profits ahead of costs when it comes to festivals on cruise ships and despite this year’s black swan event during BPM, Mexico hosts hundreds of thousands of party tourists every year. But, to hear McFarland tell it, they just started a website and marketing campaign before anything else:

We started this website and launched this festival marketing campaign. Our festival became a real thing and took [on] a life of its own. Our next step was to book the talent and actually make the music festival. We went out excited, and that’s when a lot of reality and roadblocks hit….
~Rolling Stone, 4/28/17

To hear these people talk about the massive challenge it was to do site scouting, some napkin math on flights/carrying capacity of the space, labor costs, and the tiniest bit of logistics analysis burned even more deeply when a “notebook” surfaced with planning notes. If they didn’t find it, I’d say they made it up, and even now, I’m still struggling to believe it’s not satire.

The allergic reaction to work that anyone associated with this festival has, speaks to how a lot of people think parties happen: You get a lot of attractive people in a place that has bass and beer and you’re good to go. McFarland continues:

The morning of the festival, a bad storm came in and took down half of our tents and busted water pipes. Guests started to arrive and the most basic function we take for granted in the U.S., we realized, “Wow, we can’t do this.” We were on a rush job to fix everything and guests were arriving and that caused check-in to be delayed. We were overwhelmed and just didn’t have the foresight to solve all these problems.
~Rolling Stone, 4/28/17

So, to sum up, McFarland didn’t check that the site had access to water, power or adequate plumbing for sewage (it didn’t), didn’t check to confirm that his site wasn’t being used for another event that weekend that had been taking place in that location on that date every year for 60 years (it did, the George Town Regatta), and didn’t produce any inclement weather, disaster or hazardous situation plans in case of emergencies. Oh, and they told the important people not to show up when it looked like they didn’t have it under control. Does this sound like the mud-laden disaster of TomorrowWorld 2015? If it doesn’t, it should. These failures have one thing in common: a belief that money and BEAST MODE can replace experience, well paid teams that know what they’re doing and days/weeks on the ground ensuring you’re prepared for every possible problem.

One of the secrets that you learn when you start working with people to throw parties is that the people who do it, especially at the street or community level, do it because they hate bad parties more than most. Sure there’s this idea that if you throw dank parties you’ll be rich, but that’s something you’re disabused of almost immediately. Venue costs, fickle talent, licensing, law enforcement, dude bros, bath salts, and a thousand other things put a damper on any kind of rags-to-riches success story very quickly. Events, underground or retail, may not be brain surgery or translating Middle Egyptian, but they aren’t something you can just throw money at like an app or a promising pop/rap/edm star. And reality reminded us of that on Friday.

This debacle has progressed to the “class action lawsuit & apology tour” segment of any really bad consumer-facing failure, with public statements in Rolling Stone by McFarland and an amazing non-apology apology from Ja Rule (after he was found). The eye-watering $100,000,000 lawsuit announced Monday is going to attempt to teach the pair a very expensive lesson. Honestly, didn’t have to be this way. The people I know who’ve managed throw profitable community-driven parties (especially ones that aren’t 100% licensed and legit) for years are some of the most skilled business people I know. And they’d throw a hilariously good party with even a drop of the capital Ja Rule & DudeBroMcFarland had access to.

By the time the smoke clears on this public lesson in production, how many millions of dollars will have been frittered away to not have a party? How much money was spent compensating Instagram “influencers” instead of DIY artists? How many video cuts of trailers and fantasy play were created instead of paying seasoned producers to create something truly great, not just for the elite, but for anyone who was willing to behave? Way better destination events have been thrown this year, with more than one jokester on Twitter saying they wish they’d gone to BPM. Which gets to the heart of why this commodified pratfall was so viscerally enjoyable to so many people you know.

These events, especially before the bro-ification of EDM, used to be safe spaces, away from the over-produced, airbrushed universe of Instagram & “Fuck Me I’m Famous.” The parties and festivals we all hold dear in our hearts were our refuge away from the exact people who are now throwing these events and bringing in their racist, elitist, “Commodification Rocks!” friends. This is the central reasons why the response was so visceral from so many people who do theater, fine art, marketing, events, music, live performance or any industry lateral to those sectors. We’ve mourned the money changers swarming our temples for over a decade now, and we’ve been able to do nothing to fight back. So when some fresh-faced kid and a washed-up rapper decide they can do what we do, only better, and then fail so hard it becomes the #1 trending topic worldwide on Twitter and earns coverage from the New York Times and every other major, they can’t help but smile. Not because they like to see people fail, but because many of them made similar mistakes, albeit on a much smaller scale. Even more of them have tried to work with Triple-AAA talent over the years, only to be told they charge too much, are too “focused on rules,” are too indie, alternative or not-corporate friendly enough. Any pro worth their salt has touched events that are recognized the world over, and they can see bad ideas from a mile away. NYMag had a great write-up by one of these people.

Maybe now the festival circuit will remember that you can’t jerk skilled tradespeople around, you should make sure your disaster plans are in place, and when the old Union guy says the thing isn’t safe, maybe listen to him. Hopefully we can all spend a little bit of money on parties & festivals that practice this stuff, and let Further Fyre Festivals collapse under the weight of their arrogance and commodification. And now, I leave you with a bunch of Fyre Festival memes, because that was a long article and you’re a champ for sticking it out.