Tag Archives: LLC

Nov 12 2013

They Ride Roughshod

by Whatsblem the Pro

The principle of Decommodification that so many burners hold dear takes yet another brutal pounding this week as Australian chartbusting singer-songwriter-actress Missy Higgins releases her new music video. . . ‘We Ride,’ also known as the theme from the film Spark: A Burning Man Story. The single, along with the rest of the Spark soundtrack, is now available on iTunes.

The film, featuring footage shot at Burning Man 2011 – in other words, images of thousands of unconsenting, uncompensated burners and the art they built and transported to the Black Rock Desert at their own expense – would be forbidden by the Decommodification rule, if not for the fact that the people who forbid you from doing things like making commercial films at Burning Man happen to have a large financial stake in this one.

If you or I attempted to release a documentary shot at Burning Man, and followed it up with a soundtrack and a single by one of Australia’s top musical acts, the corporation that runs Burning Man would initiate legal proceedings against us in the name of protecting the culture from commercial exploitation. The fact that they have no problem with that kind of profiteering as long as they themselves have a financial stake in it and get a cut of the money should tell us something: that, once again, they’re not at all interested in protecting us or our culture, and care only about making money and protecting their monopoly on exploiting us and our creativity.

If the culture, the event, and burners as a group need to be protected from predators with commercial interests, then there should be no exceptions.

When challenged on what some consider their money-grubbing hypocrisy, the Org typically has one of two general responses, depending on the nature of the complaint: either they take the stance that Burning Man is a culture in an attempt to justify the exploitation of so many hard-working volunteers, uncompensated artists, and other unpaid participants, or they take the stance that Burning Man is a business entity in an attempt to justify their iron grip on the trademarks associated with it.

How long will we allow them to have their cake and eat it too? If Burning Man is a culture, then everyone who participates in and contributes to that culture should share ownership of the trademarks, and either be equally allowed to profit from them, or equally forbidden from doing so. . . no exceptions! If Burning Man is a business, on the other hand, then there shouldn’t be a single volunteer putting in a single minute of unpaid work on it. So which is it?

The film has already made over a quarter of a million dollars since it was released less than three months ago.

It may be worth noting while watching this film that the general consensus among old school burners seems to be that it sanitizes quite a lot of the dark side of Burning Man, and functions a little too heavy-handedly as pro-Org propaganda, and not an accurate reflection of reality.

What else should we have expected? Caveat emptor. . . and caveat possessorum, too.

[update from BurnersXXX] – note the “ignite.me” in the video credits, that seemed like an independent site to me at first, but now it appears to be yet another sales and propaganda channel for BMOrg. It was launched in December 2012 and the movie premiered at SXSW in Austin in March 2013…

Oct 29 2013

Getting the Last Word: A Year After His Death, a Burner Speaks His Mind

by Whatsblem the Pro

Paul Addis -- PHOTO: SF Weekly

Paul Addis — PHOTO: SF Weekly

It has been a year now since Paul Addis, the man who went to prison for burning the Man early in 2007, leapt to a cruel death under the steel wheels of a BART train at Embarcadero Station in San Francisco.

So much has been said about Addis and his actions; people have expressed some very wide-ranging – and very strongly-held – opinions, calling him insane, a criminal, troubled, brilliant, a genius, a pointed performance artist, a bold rebel, and much more.

Whatever you might think of Addis, the response on the part of the corporation that runs Burning Man was very telling for a lot of people. . . many of whom stopped attending in protest after Addis was convicted and sent to prison on the strength of the testimony supplied by Burning Man’s leadership.

Love him, hate him, or wonder. . . but nobody who knows even part of the story has forgotten, or ever will forget, Paul Addis’ early burn.

There’s a lot we could say about all of it, a year after his suicide. Addis was barred from working in his rather lucrative chosen profession, thanks to his felony conviction for burning the Burning Man, and reduced to whatever minimum-wage jobs he could find as an ex-con on parole. One can only imagine the sense of helplessness and despair that led him to throw his body into the path of an oncoming subway train. Love him, hate him, or wonder, but in the end he was our fellow human being and our fellow burner, and deserving of at least some minimum of our sympathy in his darkest hour.

Spokespeople for the corporation that runs Burning Man – Marian Goodell in particular – have persistently claimed in public that Addis’ conviction was out of their hands, and expressed sadness that he was convicted of a felony serious enough to carry a prison sentence with it. . . but that claim remains one of the most glaring examples of slick, dishonest, corporate-style insincerity on the part of Burning Man’s executives in the event’s history. It doesn’t matter what you think of Paul Addis, who is gone forever. . . but it does matter what you think of the people who brought the hammer down on him. It matters a lot.

In the video below, Paul Addis speaks for himself from beyond the grave about the early burn, the response from those who hold the keys to our kingdom, and the comeuppance he received. We wish his friends and family an easy first anniversary of his death, and good closure going forward.

[Update from ed: 10/31/13] Thanks to Burner Dave for providing a link to radio traffic from the night after Paul Addis lit the Man.

Oct 25 2013

Rich White Trash

by Whatsblem the Pro

"Great burn. . . see you back at the sty, Larry!"

“Great burn. . . see you back at the sty, Larry!”


MOOP is “matter out of place,” the burner slang for litter. It’s very highly frowned-upon to litter at Burning Man; you will likely have a nasty confrontation with someone if you MOOP deliberately, or even if you wear things that are MOOP-prone, like feathered headdresses. The event takes place on federal land that belongs to all Americans, and not littering the place up is a condition of the permit issued by the Bureau of Land Management, originators of the slogan “leave no trace.”

Each year after the burn, the mighty Playa Restoration Team spends a month or more on the playa, gridding out the abandoned skeleton of the city and doing an astonishing job of picking up and properly disposing of even the smallest bits of MOOP, like carpet fibers and cigarette butts (and they even seem to manage to make a good time out of it). Using GPS, they mark problem areas on a map; the camps that get marked yellow or red on the annual MOOP map may have serious problems getting placement from the corporation that runs Burning Man the next year.

Check out this detail of the Restoration Team’s final MOOP map for 2013, and note the two circled camps:

DetailMap

See the yellow and red marking “Ego, Ergo Frum Camp” and “Camp Whatever” as main MOOP offenders? It’s not the first year these camps have left behind significant amounts of litter and detritus — their MOOP footprint was similar in 2010, for instance — but the name of the main camp has been listed differently on the MOOP map each year.

Why? Because “Ego, Ergo Frum Camp” and “Whatever Camp” are actually the public and private sides of First Camp, where the Board of Directors spend their burn. These are the people who adapted “leave no trace” from a Bureau of Land Management slogan to one of the Ten Principles that many burners consider sacred, holy writ. It’s kind of like the way the Board of Directors tells you not to commodify Burning Man. . . while they commodify Burning Man.

These aren’t people who lack the resources to have someone else pick up after them, if they just can’t do it themselves; some of them have social secretaries camping with them, for god’s sake. . . but if First Camp was your camp, you wouldn’t be allowed back after leaving behind that kind of mess multiple times in recent years.

Burner, these people aren’t like you. They don’t represent you, and they have no problem with double standards that treat you as lesser beings and hold you to a higher standard than them. They don’t deserve all the loyalty and support you give them. . . but if you have the will, they can be replaced.

We need new leadership! Out with the corporatists! Burning Man for burners!