We welcome new Burner site justburn.us to the blogosphere. It’s great to see the Burner community continuing to develop outside the party, and to have more voices joining the conversation about the future of Burning Man.
They seem to have a number of scoops, with a mole on the inside of the recent Burning Man 4-day offsite summit.
Larry Harvey has been asked to testify before a Congressional Committee whose motto is “Blow the whistle on fraud and abuse”. From justburn.us:
WASHINGTON DC – In an interesting development the founder of the Burning Man art and music festival was listed as one of those called to speak at an upcoming meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
While the exact substance of the testimony that Mr. Harvey is to give is unclear a source close to the matter said that it had to do with questions relating to an obscure US Code. Under title 50 sub-chapter 4 section 842 of US Code those groups or parties that are considered to be subsidiaries or successors to the former communist party are forbidden certain rights and freedoms. It is unclear how Burning Man has any relation to any successor or subsidiary but it has been theorized by an individual who was formerly a Burning Man staffer that the concern comes from the recently announced discussion at Columbia University about Burning Man as a religious and philosophical movement, a talk that is to be moderated by someone from the Department of Religion. Commenting on the information the unnamed former staffer had this to say:
While I cannot get in to exact details I will say that Black Rock City LLC has long had a history of speaking in public about aspirations for Burning Man that were global and for drastic world change. Larry Harvey himself is quoted as speaking about this in many papers. I wouldn’t be surprised if his call to DC has something to do with that.
In an attempt to corroborate these claims a source provided information that seems to imply that a Title 50 Chapter IV S 842 violation might be the item of concern that has resulted in those in Washington DC calling for a hearing. This is some of the information that this source provided:
“needless to say we’re ambitious and we think we can effect the course of things in this century, we hope to” -larry harvey
“my partners are thinking beyond our lifetimes in doing it, it is a bit of a legacy project, which is really interesting, a very interesting exercise and then we’re saying 100 years, and that’s an interesting thing because if you do that it makes you think differently about the present, and so what would make something that durable, what will keep it alive that long, well, we’ve seen we’ve been alive and grown for a quarter of a century so it doesn’t seem like hubris to imagine an entire century at all” -larry harvey
“… commandeer some part of the public environment and make your own show, create your own rules, and then, before the authorities [show] up, … melt away back into the jungle. It is an anarchist notion … all that you can do is fight these little guerrilla battles …” -larry harvey
While it is hard to say the true intent behind these supposed calls to change the world through Burning Man, it appears that those in congress want to know more. Considering that Burning Man takes place on federal land it is likely within their scope to ask questions about what their intentions are. Though it is unclear what will come out of these hearings many feel that this is nothing but a witch hunt.
Justburn are thinking that this is going to be something that is against Burning Man, but maybe not. Maybe this is about all the agencies trying to get their slice of the Burning Man money pie.
.
They also have another big scoop. They suggest that the Temple will be moved to a different location, and its burn will be treated as a religious ceremony so fines can be given out for people causing disturbances.
Marian Goodell, director of business and communications for BRC LLC, who appeared to avoid the question of obscenity as it related to nudity and free expression, feels that the greatest impact to the event could be the Chapter 201 violations that would relate to The Temple. Though some changes to the location of The Temple would be required to fully adhere to state law she feels that applying the law could be a benefit to the community, in a prepared statement she had this to say on behalf of the LLC:
Upon further review of the pertinent law and participant feedback we feel that this might result in a win for our community. For years people have complained about distractions during the Temple Burn. The continued distractions and recent rise in drone use has given us cause to act on behalf of the community. We feel that using the power of state law, in partnership with local law enforcement, can ensure those who cherish the solemnity of the Temple Burn will continue to find what they seek.
An individual who has information regarding the changes made available a document that goes on to list the possible changes to The Temple burn and the justifications for any participant impact. It shows that BRC LLC intends to use the provisions under Chapter 201 section 270, which deals with disturbing religious meetings, to enact the changes many have called for in yearly feedback. The regulations under NRS 201.270 state that the following infractions would quality as a misdemeanor under state law and would be enforced to protect community interests.
Every person who shall willfully disturb, interrupt or disquiet any assemblage or congregation of people met for religious worship by noisy, rude or indecent behavior, profane discourse, either within the place where such meeting is held, or so near it as to disturb the order and solemnity of the meeting; shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
In order to further comply with the extended provisions of the regulation BRC LLC will move The Temple further out to ensure that it complies with NRS 201.280, which prohibits the distribution of alcoholic beverages within 1 mile of any camp or field meeting for religious worship during the time any such meeting is being held.Some feel that the much asked for changes to The Temple burn are a way to cover up the impending First Amendment restrictions that attendees can expect when state obscenity laws are fully enforced.
.
They also had a high-level source inside a closed room meeting of the 6 BMOrg principals:
SONOMA – In a closed door meeting the six members representing Black Rock City LLC, which is responsible for the annual Burning Man arts and music festival, agreed that mistakes had been made regarding their annual financial disclosures to the Burning Man community. A high level source attending the 4-day long offsite “Staff Retreat”, where staffers and organizers examine “the state of Burning Man”, confirms that event founder Larry Harvey became aware of the issue last week when a newly hired intern was doing an internal audit of the Afterburn website, where the financial data is posted.
Representatives from the six member board of Black Rock City LLC itself could not be reached to comment on the exact details of the mistakes that were made, as the retreat is ongoing, but an individual who wished to remain anonymous was quoted as saying:
It had been going on for 10 years or more, and I cannot believe nobody noticed sooner.
Sources close to the LLC reveal that the mistakes made are likely related to the possible intentional redaction of information about the multimillion-dollar corporations sources of income in the annual financial reports released to the public. Public records show that since at least 2001 the Financial Charts released by Black Rock City LLC show only expenditures, leaving out an itemized list of income sources.
In a prepared statement released this morning Marian Goodell, Director of Business and Communications, had this to say:
We at Burning Man value transparency. At the heart of our shared ethos is Decommodification. We believe that this founding principle guides us in creating an event free from the concerns of profit making and we strive to protect our community from those who would exploit it for financial gain. It is unfortunate that for over 10 years we have not been reporting the sources of our income and we will get to the bottom of how that happened. We are committed to doing right by our community and expect to have this matter resolved soon, holding whomever was responsible for the oversight to account.
Long held up as an example of financial transparency and goodwill on the part of Black Rock City LLC it is unclear how the lack of income disclosure on the annual financial reports released to the public went unnoticed for so long. With the annual staff retreat wrapping up soon sources close to the LLC claim that a series of resignations is likely.
.
I should point out, that all of these posts had the tag “satire” attached to them. Well done, they almost had me fooled until I got to the bit about the resignations.
“Is Burning Man some kind of cult?” seems like an uninformed question that would only – could only – be seriously posed by a total outsider with little to no clue as to what it is we actually do in Black Rock City and beyond, or why. It’s natural and appropriate to scoff at the blatherings and jibba-jabba of fairytale-addled fools who think the event is some kind of week-long ritualistic orgy designed to call Satan Himself up from the brimstone-choked depths of Hades. . . but once you set aside the obviously absurd elements of such accusations, is it possible that we ourselves are failing to see the proverbial forest for the trees?
Clearly, the mere act of building large art and then burning it for kicks has very little to do with religion, and it’s absurd to claim that it does, no matter how you dress it up with similarities and parallels from actual religions. Just as clearly, it’s dead common for older veteran burners to openly mock and deride anything that might resemble cult dogma or cult leadership at Burning Man. That mockery and derision is often friendly and good-natured, but just as often contains some measure of genuine hostility against the for-profit company that runs Burning Man, for various – and often perfectly valid – reasons, historical or otherwise. . . the point being that it’s wildly out of character for cult members to behave that way, unless their ‘cult’ is a consciously self-mocking institution like the Church of the SubGenius.
On the other hand, some Burning Man attendees and enthusiasts do, at times, display behaviors that make you wonder. . . and since the dose makes the poison, it might be the shrewd move for our community to be cognizant of those behaviors, and actively examine them.
For instance: A distressingly large segment of our community seems to have a real hard-on for making up rules for other people to burn by instead of just regulating their own actions. . . even when the ‘rules’ they’re pushing on the people around them are actually just their personal preferences or traditions, and lack any connection with any of the actual rules we are unfortunately burdened with on the playa. This isn’t a problem as long as those people remain ignorable; when they get strident enough to go beyond talking and start genuinely interfering with other people over it, though, they’re crossing a line. . . and applying strong peer-pressure to adhere to unwritten dogma regarding sacred cows is an example of some pretty cultish behavior.
But what is “interfering with other people” and what isn’t? It seems simple to me: if someone does or says something that doesn’t violate the personal boundaries that every human born has a right to, and doesn’t impede you from doing and saying what you want in response within the same boundaries, then you have not been interfered with no matter how offended you might feel. You don’t like seeing Gay Pride parades in your city? Sorry, but Gay Pride parades are a legal form of free expression. You’ll just have to put up with them, or move, or stay home on those days, or leave town, or go blind, or kill yourself. . . your choice! It doesn’t matter how icky you feel about gay sex; any queasy, obtrusive prejudices that might squirm within your tiny soul are thoroughly trumped by other peoples’ rights. Feel free to bitch and whine openly about it, though, so we all know who not to invite to parties. It’s your right!
Similarly, you may want silence during Temple burn. If so, be responsible for yourself and don’t falsely claim that the free expression of others is violating your rights, because it doesn’t matter how much you want silence or how much Lynyrd Skynyrd makes your skin crawl (did you know that the band’s original name was Gay Sex? It’s true!) You demanding the silence (or invisibility) of others is marginalizing them and is an attempt at violating their rights, not the other way around, and it doesn’t matter at all how very much you wish they were silent, or respectful, or invisible, or dead, or impossible. Find the silence within yourself, wear earplugs, or move your ass someplace where it’s silent. To insist that others cater to your desire for quiet is nothing less than an attempt to assert your dominance while you appropriate and violate the rights of others. The fact that you’re using a quasi-religious dogmatic doctrine of “silence is mandatory because the Temple is sacred” to do it pushes you over the line from control freak jerk to a creepy unofficial member of a nebulous, godless, leaderless cult.
While the Temple provides us with the most obvious and dramatic example of burners acting like brainwashed cultists pushing dogmatic rules on each other, the much-vaunted Ten Principles of Burning Man are the big wellspring of burner-on-burner control freakism. You can’t swing a flaming ball of paraffin on the Internet without hitting five or six armchair lawyer-burners. One of the hallmarks is when someone interprets “Radical Acceptance” to mean that nobody has a right to openly dislike or even disagree with anyone else in the community. That’s a false interpretation; it’s a Drainbow interpretation rooted in quintessentially phony-baloney-mahoney-malarkey concepts of blinkered positivity and universal love, and it encourages entitled asshats to think they’ve been wronged when someone else takes a turn and expresses their own opinions.
We see a lot of people get upset in the Burning Man Facebook group because they think they should be able to say anything they want without it being criticized. This is the same wrong thinking that the Temple-shushers (and the Pride parade haters) employ; people expressing themselves by disagreeing with you, criticizing you, or even openly mocking you do nothing to take away your ability to express yourself; your right to say what you want to say has not been restricted in any way. You might allow your emotions to restrict your own freedom if you’re thin-skinned, but that’s entirely your fault and your responsibility. . . so by trying to throw the big Burning Man law book at people for not being unquestioningly respectful of your words, you’re being the bad guy. You’re piggishly objecting to their right to express themselves. Just like the stereotypical hyper-Christian Right-wing conservatives who cry ‘foul’ over same-sex marriage and Gay Pride parades, you’re being a gigantic, hypocritical Tartuffe about it, and exceeding the boundaries of your own rights in a big whiny crybaby attempt to limit the rights of others.
If you take things so far as to make a credible threat of violence, or if you actually assault someone, then you’ve really crossed the line and it’s you who should be punished, not the people who offended you. . . and there are many eyewitnesses who will tell you that this did happen at the 2012 Temple burn, with the debut of “Free Bird.”
Credible (but mostly not-so-credible) threats have been popping up frequently, all year, in Internet forums like Facebook groups, whenever people talk about Temple burn and silence. People who feel that the Temple is sacred and who are ostensibly among that subset of burners devoted to peace-‘n’-love values express an inner desire — and sometimes an eager willingness — to do violence to those who break the sacred silence; they vent by making suggestions to each other as to how to use aggressive action to enforce that silence. . . a punch in the face, or a thrown object, or (less credibly) tar and feathers; if the transgressor is a sound car, vandalism. It’s almost unbelievable that the supposedly profound high-minded feelings that people claim to get by watching a building burn in silence can inspire them to abandon the veneer of universal love in favor of thinking and acting in such a low, base fashion just because the silence is broken. If you’re prepared to set aside your commitment to peace and love in order to use threats and violence to enforce your dogma regarding something sacred to you, what the hell else are you but a cult member? It may not be much of a cult, but you’re sure playing your role as a hypnotized dogma addict to the hilt.
A lot of the most common examples of what I’ve been talking about are disconnected from anything that can reasonably be called a sense of the sacred, and probably shouldn’t count at all towards Burning Man’s cult quotient; still, they’re obnoxious and constitute a minor threat to those who would prefer to burn their own way. All you have to do is read some of the comments people have made in response to things that our own Burnersxxx has written about “plug ‘n’ play camping” to see what I’m talking about; a lot of burners are vocal about their belief that you’re doin’ it wrong if you’re not roughing it in a tent. To those folks I would like to point out something that should be obvious: the expectations you have of others are like your personal deluxe recreational vehicle. You sit there inside the artificial construct of your expectations and your us-versus-them mentality, soothed by your perception of yourself as a superior being, while you rather radically exclude anyone you deem too wealthy or too comfortable to possibly be burning correctly.
Other quasi-cultish behavior that burners typically indulge in concerns ticket scalpers. “What’s the best way to harass people on Craigslist and eBay who are selling $700-$800 tickets?” asks someone in the Burning Man group on Facebook, and the answers come flying in: make appointments with them and don’t show up; report them to the Org; get the seller’s phone number and use it to post fake ads for a dozen other festivals. One person even suggested an elaborate scheme involving public wi-fi, fake names, fake accounts, and a hearty helping of skullduggery. The whole thing is peppered with mostly non-credible threats of violence against hypothetical scalpers, rather than real threats against real scalpers, but one has to wonder what kind of e-mail is being sent to the people who get called out on Facebook for posting tickets for sale on Craigslist. Never mind that scalping makes up a truly tiny percentage of Burning Man ticket sales, or that a lot of scalpers end up getting hoist by their own petard anyway when ticket prices plummet as the burn approaches; some people feel that they just have to be the Anointed Hand of Holy Burnerdom and go on a full-blown crusade against the ticket-Saracens. That’s not the behavior of people trying to protect their festival; it’s the behavior of zealots who are foaming at the mouth about their sacred cow being milked, not because it deprives them of milk, but because the cow is sacred.
If you feel, as I do, that our core tenet and most precious asset as burners is PERSONAL FREEDOM, and that entering our culture is in part a process of learning to be free of even your own hangups and assumptions, then what we’re talking about here is people who think they need to burn down our metaphorical village in order to save it, right along with Black Rock City. It’s another manifestation of what Americans have been busy at for the last few decades: shredding their own constitutional rights in order to combat terrorism. The conflict itself is false and what’s really going on is a takeover by corporate oligarchs, but if you accept it at face value, what you’ve got is a War on Terror that the terrorists are winning. Why? Because “they hate our freedom” and have successfully forced us to give that freedom up in order to fight them.
Enough hyperbole and analogy. How serious is all this, really? Am I just trumping things up to make it sound worse than it really is? People accuse us of that kind of yellow journalism all the time, and I find the accusations insultingly inaccurate. You want to know how serious these things can get? Let me tell you a story:
Less than two weeks ago, in a conversation about a short dramatic film that was made on-playa, a Temple-shusher took such great offense at people expressing the idea that maybe there’s nothing particularly sacred about the Temple that he blew a fuse. His name was Juan Antonio, and he entered the fray by asking why anyone was allowed to make a short dramatic film using the Temple as part of their set:
“So they chose to use a sacred space as a free filming location. Why doesn’t the BMORG squash this video like the insect it is?”
A lot of trivial online dick-measuring contests begin with such posts. I’m no fan of sacred cows, and firmly believe that humanity will never be free until the last king is hung with the guts of the last priest, so in typical fashion I invited Juan Antonio to instead squash his inappropriate, intrusive sense of the sacred like the hippie bullshit it is. That’s a pretty typical exchange for an Internet forum and signifies nothing; what was unusual was what came next: Juan Antonio almost immediately suggested a meeting in the flesh, making dark insinuations of violence to be meted out. Not a credible threat, to be sure, and sillier than almost any other response could have been. . . except that his menacing rhetoric included an allusion to some personal information about me that he got from Google. I noticed it, but let it pass. . . and when I made fun of him for being an Internet tough guy, he tried to save face by changing his tack to suggesting a bout in the Thunderdome, which made for a less absurd-sounding, more socially acceptable threat.
A little creepy, no? But only a little.
It gets worse: not satisfied with having made a creepy jackass of himself by being an anonymous online tough guy demonstrating his access to Google and his willingness to invest time and effort into stalking the person with whom he was having a dumb, meaningless online brawl about the sacredness of a Temple with no gods in it, Juan Antonio actually paid a website to get my home phone number, and spent some serious time scouring the web for information about me. That night, with his number blocked, he called me up and tried to intimidate me by reciting factoids about me, like my home address, my date of birth, my former occupation, etc. He was saying things like “So, what’s it like over there at [home address]? Maybe I should come over and check it out.”
A short time after that phone call, Juan Antonio posted a picture of my house to Facebook.
Well hey, I’m not that easily intimidated, and two can play that game. I’ve always heard that turnabout is fair play anyway. I didn’t have any proof that the phone call really did come from the rabid-sounding cult-gimp jousting with me on Facebook over the supposedly inviolable sacredness of the Temple, but it took me almost no time at all to find Juan Antonio’s phone number, posted for all to see in an open group devoted to the theme camp he’s with. I called that number, and sure enough: same voice. He wasn’t expecting to hear back from me, and it took him long enough to figure out who was on the other end of the line that I was able to get him to admit that he was indeed Juan Antonio. . . and then, after I identified myself, that he was in fact the person who had called me earlier, and who had posted that picture. He sounded rattled, the little dope, that I had found him so easily.
How many Juan Antonios do we have, exactly? Examples of quasi-cultish behavior abound among us, but the example most likely to lead to open violence – the controversy over how to behave at Temple burn – is still very new. While there were indeed some isolated violent incidents that very first time the strains of “Free Bird” shook the hush out of the ember-laden air, we have yet to see how the schism between Temple-shushers and sacred cow snipers will play itself out at future Temple burns. I predict there will be at least a little bit of high-profile violence at Black Rock this year over it, if burners can’t communicate with each other about it effectively enough to head that off at the pass.
Ultimately, I am really not sure how to answer the question of whether or not Burning Man is a cult, but I think it’s non-insane to take that question seriously. In general, burners are a very diverse group of people, and the truth is likely to be that while the very question “is Burning Man a cult?” is just eye-rollingly dumb in many ways, there really are those among us who might qualify as members of an almost unique variety of cult: an inverted cult of people pulling the wool over their own eyes; a cult whose dogma is strong but whose actual religious aspects are so vague and fuzzy as to be mostly undetectable, and certainly not central to the workings of the cult. A self-organizing burner semi-pseudo-cult, if you will.
Let’s take a look at the common characteristics of cults, and see how it all stacks up.
Cults, almost by definition, use techniques of undue influence to reform the thought processes of followers. What are those thought reform techniques, typically? According to the International Cultic Studies Association, this is a list of elements that in one combination or another might constitute the “mind control regime” of a cult:
GROUP PRESSURE and “LOVE BOMBING” discourages doubts and reinforces the need to belong through the use of childlike games, singing, hugging, touching, or flattery.
ISOLATION/SEPARATION creates inability or lack of desire to verify information provided by the group with reality.
THOUGHT-STOPPING TECHNIQUES introduce the recruit to meditating, chanting, and repetitious activities which, when used excessively, induce a state of high suggestibility and dependency on the group.
FEAR and GUILT induced by eliciting confessions to produce intimacy and to reveal fears and secrets, to create emotional vulnerability by overt and covert threats, as well as alternation of punishment and reward.
SLEEP DEPRIVATION encouraged under the guise of spiritual exercises, necessary training, or urgent projects.
INADEQUATE NUTRITION sometimes disguised as special diet to improve health or advance spirituality, or as rituals requiring fasting.
SENSORY OVERLOAD forces acceptance of complex new doctrine, goals, and definitions to replace old values by expecting recruit to assimilate masses of information quickly with little opportunity for critical examination.
NOTE: Not all of these features need to be present simultaneously for a mind control regime to be operative.
What I’m struck by in reading that list is that while an awful lot of those shoes do seem to fit in a weird way that is mostly suited for comedy, it’s only seriously compelling in the context of a ‘cult’ that people perpetrate upon themselves, rather than something that is being forced or foisted off on them. “Love Bombing,” “Sleep Deprivation,” and “Sensory Overload” are things we’ve got in spades, but even if Larry Harvey and his fiscal human centipede of old frienemies really are the leaders of this alleged cult in any way, shape, or form, they probably aren’t even aware of it. It’s hard to concoct any kind of scenario in which the Org actually has any deliberate hand in this at all, even though a certain amount of the cultish behavior centers around things they have actively promoted within the community, like the Ten Principles. Sometimes the role of “hippie cult leader” is thrust upon you even if you’re not Charles Manson. Sometimes by your followers.
The same insights – which I get a good laugh out of – hit me when I look at lists of the things that cults have in common, according to those who study such things.
Michael D. Langone is an American counseling psychologist who specializes in research about “cultic” groups and psychological manipulation. He is Executive Director of the International Cultic Studies Association, and the editor of a journal called Cultic Studies Review. Dr. Langone is also the author of a reasonably authoritative list of signs and characteristics of cults and cultic activities. . . and even if you scoff mightily at the idea of any whiff of cultishness in burner culture, you’ll probably find applying Dr. Langone’s analytical prowess to Burning Man at least a little bit entertaining. I know I did.
Dr. Langone writes:
Concerted efforts at influence and control lie at the core of cultic groups, programs, and relationships. Many members, former members, and supporters of cults are not fully aware of the extent to which members may have been manipulated, exploited, even abused. The following list of social-structural, social-psychological, and interpersonal behavioral patterns commonly found in cultic environments may be helpful in assessing a particular group or relationship.
Compare these patterns to the situation you were in (or in which you, a family member, or friend is currently involved). This list may help you determine if there is cause for concern. Bear in mind that this list is not meant to be a “cult scale” or a definitive checklist to determine if a specific group is a cult. This is not so much a diagnostic instrument as it is an analytical tool.
The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members’ participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt iinorder to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
People have some pretty crazy ideas regarding what Burning Man is all about. Even hardcore burners have a difficult time agreeing just what it is we’re all doing out there, unless they are wise enough to define it as something very open-ended that is many different things to many people.
One of the more common misapprehensions that so many people have about Burning Man is that it’s a hippie peace ‘n’ love (and sex and drugs) festival. While it’s true that every variety of hippie – from crafty, hard-working old ’60s-vintage radicals with tons of skills, to ragged young drainbows in tie-dyed Grateful Dead Army uniforms begging “the universe” for tickets and water – can be found in Black Rock City, that’s because it is a city, with many diverse streams of culture. Among the teeming masses of Nevada’s third-largest urban center, there’s plenty of room for quite a large number of every species of hippie without it being all about them. “Burners are hippies” as a meme is just plain mistaken.
Burners are people who tend to have certain things in common, but the commonalities are striped across a staggeringly broad spectrum of other cultures. . . so broad, that I would go so far as to say that burner culture is probably the most eclectic human culture yet devised, taking the worthiest bits and pieces from many sources and melding them into a tasty gumbo of mutual understanding and acceptance. Sometimes respect goes hand-in-hand with that acceptance, and sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s fine; we’re not a fundamentally hippie-based culture, and it’s fairly well-understood that we don’t have to love or even like each other to make room for each other and do what we do. The oft-heard playa sentiment “fuck yer day” does not generally mean “GTFO.”
Good. Very, very good. — Image: abbiehoffman.tumblr.com
Another very popular myth is that you have to be rich to go to Burning Man; there’s a persistent tall tale among non-burners to the effect that Black Rock City is populated entirely by elitist multimillionaires, which seems rather at odds with the notion that we’re all hippie beggars who eat out of dumpsters and hit up working people for spare change so we can buy weed.
I know a lot of financially challenged people who go to Burning Man. Not a few of them live well below the poverty line all year ’round, often because they are artists and because they donate a lot of their time and effort. I know a lot of non-artists who go to Burning Man and are financially challenged, too. . . and I don’t mean that their stock portfolio took a bruising when the housing bubble burst; I mean they have trouble paying the rent on time and feeding themselves decently, and sometimes have to spend weeks or months living in their vehicles.
There is, of course, an eternal and vital intersection that brings the rich into contact with the creative poor, transforms entire swathes of decayed cityscape in flurries of urban renewal, and foments patronage of the arts. . . and if Burning Man is representative of that intersection, it is the crossroads of an Art superhighway with Big Money Boulevard. The usual result of that kind of interaction is that some crumbling, dangerous neighborhood with cheap real estate fills up with artists looking to live cheaply, and the money follows them and eventually injects some hoidy-toidy into the area, driving the average rent up and driving the struggling artists out, to seek shoestring budget living elsewhere and start the process over again.
Burning Man is different. There’s no real estate market to sway, just ticket prices. . . so there’s no way for the money to gentrify us and drive out the funky low-budget players in favor of “white cube” art gallery snobs.
It does take a significant investment to render yourself playa-ready, obtain a ticket, and transport your ass and your gear to the Black Rock desert. . . and the cost can get much steeper if you happen to live someplace on the other side of an ocean. Your investment, however – and it is an investment, not just money blown on an expensive vacation – doesn’t necessarily have to involve much in the way of actual cash.
How, though, do the burning poor manage it, exactly? How can you do it too?
In a nutshell, the answer is simple: Find some burners who have more going on than you do, and make yourself useful. If you can manage to identify and fill a necessary function for an art project or theme camp or other conclave of burners, then you’re GOING, and that’s all there is to it. Take up the slack for your crew, make yourself invaluable, and your crew will take up the slack for you. This could mean a month or two of unpaid labor on some massive art gewgaw; it could mean signing up for some crucial role in an established theme camp, like cook, or art car driver; it could mean joining DPW and earning your patches (although you won’t typically get a free ticket your first year). For some, it might mean being pretty and sucking cock on demand in some venture capitalist’s swanky RV; if that’s an acceptable billet in your view of the world, more power to you; nobody can tell you you’re wrong but you, and I would like to respectfully request your phone number, please.
This article is the first in what will be a regular series that will show you one avenue to getting to Black Rock City in a very practical and detailed way: I am embedding myself with the International Arts Megacrew to work on their 2013 project, known as “The Control Tower.” Initially, I’ll be making swag and soliciting donations of essential equipment and materials for the project, and my role will change and expand as the project progresses and evolves.
The International Arts Megacrew is the group that built architect Ken Rose’s Temple of Transition in 2011. Their 2013 project, the Control Tower, will be built at the Generator, a brand-new community industrial arts space in Sparks, just outside Reno, Nevada. The Generator is managed by the Pier Crew’s Matt Schultz, and generously funded by an anonymous donor who has underwritten quite a bit of playa art over the years.
I wasn’t a member of the IAM’s Temple crew in 2011, but I did show up for the last few weeks of their build, and assisted the welders, mostly by grinding metal for hours on end in oven-like heat at the Hobson’s Corner site in Reno. I first became acquainted with the Pier Crew people while working on Burn Wall Street (sorry about that), as the two projects shared space at the Salvagery. When I saw how incredibly cool the Pier’s project was, I donated some old fencing swords I had for the skeletal crew of the ship they built, and served as humble shop bitch providing elbow grease and other assistance to the gentleman who designed and built the ship’s anchor.
The Pier Crew amazed us all in 2012 — Photo: Jason Silverio
When I first visited the Generator, it was to interview Jerry Snyder about his Ichthyosaur Puppet project. Matt Schultz was there as well, and we got reacquainted with each other and spent some time touring the space as Matt gave me the lowdown on his vision.
“The Generator,” he told me, “is not just a place for Burning Man projects. This will be a space for the entire community, where anyone who is willing to pitch in and contribute a bit is welcome – without paying any fees whatsoever – to come and make art, learn new skills, and teach new skills to others. We’re going to have some serious tools here for people to use. They’ll have to bring their own materials, unless someone here who doesn’t mind sharing happens to have what they need.
“It’s an arts incubator,” he sums up. “A hive of creative people who share their talents, resources and ideas to make amazing new art.”
Schultz points to the freshly-painted walls of the gigantic open space, which is still brand-new and mostly devoid of any hint of tools or activity. “We put out the word, and a whole crew of volunteers came in here and did all that painting. That’s what I’m talking about when I say we need people to be willing to contribute. It’s a tribal thing; if you behave like a member of the tribe and don’t mind spending a little bit of your time doing things that help everyone, then there should be no problem with you being here and getting all kinds of benefits from the space and the resources in it.”
As we talk, I reflect on the welcoming nature of our community. It’s true that I’ve got a little bit of an inside track, but there’s no favoritism in play here; had I shown up cold, knowing nobody at the Generator and having no history with them, we would be having the same conversation, and I’d be given the same opportunity to participate.
“Is there anything I can do to help out today?” I ask.
Schultz shows me to a room where painting supplies are stored, and gives me instructions for painting the spacious bathroom, a job which someone has begun but not yet finished. He leaves the building as I get to work with the roller. . . to an extent, the trust here is given freely, to be rescinded if necessary, rather than earned. I spend the rest of the afternoon painting happily.
It’s a lot less empty this week — Photo: Whatsblem the Pro
The next day I show up early for a meeting with the IAM’s leader, James Diarmaid Horken, aka ‘Irish.’ The space reserved for the Control Tower build, empty the day before, has erupted into a fully-equipped meeting and planning zone overnight, with pallets screwed together to support a large L-shaped expanse of whiteboard, a big desk at which Irish sits working, a model of the Control Tower in bamboo and wire, and a complete living room set, with artificial houseplants and decorative sculpture making the semicircle of couches and coffee tables seem warm and homey in the cold sterility of the giant warehouse.
As I’m waiting for the rest of the group to assemble and come to order, I stroll around surveying the other changes that have taken place while I was sleeping. There are more tools, more tables, more spaces marked off on the floors in chalk. Someone is setting up welding equipment and a really expensive professional-grade drill press in a large side room. The Generator is still mostly just a big empty industrial space, but signs of life are unmistakable, and it is booming and blooming with a palpable vitality.
Old friends and new ones drift in, gathering to find out what the Control Tower project is all about. I chat with Ken Rose, the IAM’s architect, about the computational architecture behind the construction techniques that will give the structure great strength using a minimum of materials. “Russian mathematicians came up with this stuff about a hundred years ago,” he tells me. “Open-lattice hyperboloids like the one we’re going to build offer very good structural strength using only about 25% of the materials we’d need to build a rectangular frame structure.”
Soon the meeting is underway, and Irish is giving us a run-down of the road ahead. He has made lists of equipment, supplies, and materials we’re going to need, and written it all on the whiteboards behind him, with other lists and notes that give us an idea of what skill sets are going to be required. The prospective crew members listen intently, their eyes focused on the whiteboards, or the scale model, or on Irish and Ken as they explain their vision and the rough timetable they’ve devised. They tell us about the vast array of programmable LEDs, and the flamethrowers, and the lasers. They talk about everything from the meaning behind the ideas, to hard logistical challenges that we’ll be facing.
When the meeting is over, we unwind a bit, eating watermelon and bouncing ideas and Nerf darts off each other’s heads. Other people on other projects are knocking off for the day as well. A small but spirited war erupts in one of the still-open areas; Nerf guns are more abundant here than is probably typical of industrial work spaces. As I’m minding my own business and looking over a coffee table book of art by Leonardo da Vinci, a Nerf dart strikes me directly in the forehead and sticks there.
The next few days are a flurry of activity. My mornings are spent doing research and making phone calls, trying to drum up support in the form of donations from local business people. In the afternoons I get my personal working space at the Generator set up, so I can work on carving and tooling leather to make swag for people who donate to our project. More artists and more tools are showing up, almost hourly. The first ribs of the ichthyosaur skeleton that Jerry Snyder is building hang on a huge rack. Someone seems to be constructing a dance floor in one corner; judging by the work, whoever it is must be a master carpenter.
Irish calls me on the phone one morning soon after the Control Tower meeting. “Will you be here this evening around ten o’clock?” he asks me. “We’re having a laser test.”
“Lasers?” I say, ears perking up. “Of course I’ll be there.”
When I arrive, two people are unloading some serious laser gear from the back of a truck inside the Generator. The fellow in charge of the lasers is Skippy, an Opulent Temple member who provides OT and other organizations and events with laser light shows, using an array of equipment mostly salvaged, rebuilt, and repurposed from discarded medical equipment. When he’s ready and his smoke generator is puffing away, we turn the lights out, and he activates his multicolored little wonders of science in a dazzling automated sequence that lasts over an hour.
We’re all friends, or at least not enemies. We’re working hard, and we’re having a blast doing it. We’re not just building art, we’re building a new world. One day, if humanity doesn’t destroy itself somehow and civilization manages to endure, the day will come when automation makes us all redundant as workers; when that day comes, everyone will be like us: doing only the types of work that they find worth doing. Soon come, soon come.
You can read Part Two of The Poor Man’s Burning Man at:
We welcome new Burner site justburn.us to the blogosphere. It’s great to see the Burner community continuing to develop outside the party, and to have more voices joining the conversation about the future of Burning Man.
