Tag Archives: theme

Nov 21 2014

A Carnival of Smoke and Mirrors

The new theme has been announced. As per the rumor we leaked on November 16, it’s circus-related:

This year’s theme is about mirrors and masks, mazes and merger. It will be a kind of magic show that takes the form of an old-fashioned carnival. This Carnival of Mirrors asks three essential questions: within our media-saturated world, where products and people, consumption and communion morph into an endlessly diverting spectacle, who is the trickster, who is being tricked, and how might we discover who we really are?

Classic carnivals, as theaters of illusion, upheld a very strict dividing line that separated carnies, cast as showmen, from members of a naïve public who were labeled chumps and suckers, marks and rubes. Our carnival, however, will perform an even more subversive trick — its motto is Include the Rube. The wall dividing the observer from observed will disappear, as by an act of magic; through the alchemy of interaction, everyone at once can be the carny and the fool…

Old-fashioned carnivals were dominated by an all-pervading hucksterism; midways featured barkers, shills, rigged games of chance and skill, and not infrequently defrauded customers — “short change” is a carny term. They also featured titillating freak shows, geek acts and museums of the outré and forbidden. Our midway, on the other hand, will satirize deception while inviting all participants to summon up their inner geek, that secret freak who hides behind the mask of what is called normality. We will turn grifting into gifting; otherness becomes creative self-expression.

Read the whole thing here.

Merger? What does that have to do with carnivals? The whole thing is about deception, defrauded customers, tricksters, and the naïve fools who buy into the illusions being spun by the carnival hucksters.

I think the irony of this theme is what the Commodification Camps are really doing is turning our Gifting into Grifting – by the ring-masters who pursue the “alchemy” of monetization of our beloved Playa. The occult continues to be a core element: “the occulting mask will melt away”, “magic show”, “an act of magic”.

The Fool - a throwback to the very first Baker Beach burn, where they burned a Dog effigy too?

The Fool – a throwback to the very first Baker Beach burn, where they burned a dog effigy too?

They are creating a clear division between the “showmen” (presumably, themselves, since they believe it’s BMOrg who create Burning Man, not Burners), and the “chumps and suckers” who buy their product (ie, us). The subversive magic trick of “you’re all showmen and you’re all chumps at the same time” seems to facilitate their attempts to define Commodification Camps as “turnkey camps, on a spectrum like any other camp”. Are you a safari tourist in a wristband-only camp? No problem, everyone is the carny and the fool at once.

We’ve now had three car- themes in three years: CARgo cult, CARavansary, and CARnival. Is Larry just going through the dictionary?

The design of the Man seems to be the same big humanoid stick figure as this year. At the base, instead of the Souk, will be a bunch of funhouse mirrors, ironic fortune tellers, vendors, and whatever else the Regionals can come up with.

Man base design by Larry Harvey and Andrew Johnstone. Illustration by Andrew Johnstone with Hugh D’Andrade

Man base design by Larry Harvey and Andrew Johnstone. Illustration by Andrew Johnstone with Hugh D’Andrade

At the same time as announcing the theme, BMOrg launched their magical new web site, and a new tag line:

Welcome Home. A city in the desert. A culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers.

Burningman.com now automagically redirects to burningman.org.

They’ve gone for aesthetics over user-friendliness. It looks visually eclectic, certainly more appealing than it used to be; but it’s become more like a maze to find your way through it all. Some pages like the “Tech Innovation” still look like the old site, with its much cleaner navigation at the top.  ePlaya has not changed. You can find it under Menu (top right), The Network, Get Involved, Connect with Burners, then scroll down the page.

The “Burning Blog” is now called “Voices of Burning Man”, and has been integrated into the site. The many comments from Burners are there intact – however, you’ll have to navigate through a bizarre two-tone color scheme and the grouping of posts by category only, and comments 50 at a time. This makes it much harder to read through the comments, a further indication that they’re more interested in what they want to tell us, than listening to what we Burners have to say.

The oldest post readily available is Halcyon’s Let Them Eat Cake “Burning Cake: A Cautionary Tale”; you’ll have to hunt to find earlier posts such as “Virgins And Turnkey Camps Are Ruining Burning Man” and “Turnkey Camps (Moving Towards Effective Solutions)“, which are filed under “The Ten Principles” and “News” respectively. You are no longer able to use “Previous” and “Next” to scroll through all the blog posts. This appears to be a deliberate design feature, rather than a bug; the same with breaking the comments up onto multiple pages so you can’t just scroll through them all. If they publish a blog post that gets the community up in arms, all they have to do is have their friendly “shills” come in at the end once the people have vented with some peace, love, and unicorns stuff and the negativity can be tucked away in the “Older Comments”. They seem to have been trialling this strategy in the comments on their blog over the last week. For example, the “Turnkey Camps (Moving Towards Effective Solutions)” post has 255 comments; but only the most recent 5 are shown with it.

Earlier in the week we mentioned the Burning Man Arts Grants online system, which is for Arts Grants for non-Burning Man projects. The deadline for submissions there is December 1, 2015.

The new Arts Honorarium Grant system is now live too. The deadline to submit your Letter of Intent is December 19, 2015. The link on the Front Page to Honoraria Grants – New Process for 2015 won’t take you there, though.  You can find it under “Important Dates” on the main screen.

As we predicted, the “system” turns out to be just an online form. The form is broken out into a few different screens. You’ll need to sign up with Slideroom and create yet another profile. The Honoraria grants applications appear to be free. Perhaps they listened to our griping, or perhaps their plan from the start was that only the artists applying for smaller grants to bring Burner art to the world have to pay $5 to submit their Letter.

They’ve finally put the dates for the 2015 Nevada burn on their main web site – good news for those who were curious if it was even going to happen. The dates are August 31 – September 7.

The main page of the site lists Upcoming Global Events in a scroll-box at the bottom – all 21 of them. The dates of each are “TBA” – if you want to know when the event is, or where it is, you’ll need to go to their Regional Events page which lists 41 events, including Decompressions.

The “Where Does Your Ticket Money Go” page that falsely claimed they pay $4.5 million a year to the BLM (which we proved to be really $3,485,000, with a missing $1 million+ unaccounted for), now re-directs to the Philosophical Center. It no longer shows up from their search box, but it is still visible in the Internet Archive.

I think BMOrg would be very happy for Burners to just move on and focus on 2015 now, where the fools and chumps will be merged together with the hucksters. Will the community leave them be, and take their silence and the new theme as the answer to our questions? What will this word “merger” come to mean to Burners by the time August 2015 rolls around?

May 24 2014

Souk On This!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Larry reminds us of the statement in the theme announcement:

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Vendors need to submit their proposals by June 9:

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

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

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

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

2010-06-14-fortune-teller-internet-Zuckerberg-600The focus of the Souk is designed to be one-to-one or small-group interaction, playing on the themes of social commerce, experiential exchange, and gifting. In keeping with the spirit of the Ten Principles, no one should ever expect a gift, nor should the giver ever expect anything in return. While we intend to play with the notion of commerce, the real thing is, of course, completely unacceptable. And therein lies the fun of our “decommodity mart,” a place where things beyond value come to be not-bought and not-sold.

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

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

Feb 21 2013

Burnal Equinox 2013 is Coming!

by Whatsblem the Pro

The Machine - Photo by Douglas Hope Hooper

The Machine – Photo by Douglas Hope Hooper

 

Burnal Equinox is coming up once again on Saturday, March 2nd, halfway between Burning Man 2012 and Burning Man 2013. There will be multiple celebrations of the Equinox in various parts of the world, under various names; Portland, Oregon, for instance, has their annual Halfway Home party.

There’s even a virtual Burnal Equinox held online as part of Burn2 in Second Life. . . which is a bit of a full-circle proposition, as Linden Labs founder Phillip Rosedale was originally inspired by his experiences at Burning Man, which he first attended in 1999.

As far as events go, the main hoopla seems to be in San Francisco, which has been holding Burnal Equinox events since 2006, and at the Nevada City, California event, now in its third year.

The San Francisco event, billed this year as an “art salon and mixer,” is themed. The 2013 theme for SF’s Burnal Equinox is “Technology as Savior,” which is explained in more depth here:

Through a multitude of technological devices we have expanded our sense of what is real, what is possible, how we relate and what we find gratifying. We can text one another instantaneously across oceans, meet online and converse with groups of strangers at any given moment about the trajectory of asteroids, express our opinions to political leaders via on-line petitions, and expand our social network of “friends” seemingly without limit! We watch reality shows about other people’s lives and create virtual versions of ourselves as we fly through the Interwebs in enhanced real-time. Miraculous devices have become so ingrained in who we are, how we work, think and relate that we could not imagine life without them or the immediacy and satisfaction they offer. And why would we?! Technology is SAVING our economy and way of life, even as it reinvents everything! That is its magic! That is the miracle! It reinvents itself and our relationship with it in mysterious and accelerating ways! There is no problem Technology cannot help with. Nothing Technology cannot and will not do to enhance our lives and save us from any number of impending destructions! Technology WILL SAVE US, even as it helps us relate to one another in better and more convenient ways!

The San Francisco event will be held from 7PM to 3AM at Public Works, 161 Erie Street, SF, CA 94103 (between Division & 14th St. in the Mission). Please note that this is a 21 and over venue. Tickets are $20 at the door, or $15 with donation of art supplies for Hospitality House’s art program, which puts art supplies in the hands of the homeless and indigent. Supplies especially needed are watercolor brushes and paints, watercolor 140’ paper, quality marker sets, canvases, working sewing machines with all necessary parts included, and craft and jewelry supplies.

For more information about the San Francisco Burnal Equinox event, please visit the Flambé Lounge 2013 special events page.

According to Marketing and Community Outreach Committee member Coryon Redd, the Nevada City event, which is not themed, began in 2011 as a concert by the band Albino. At the urging of local burners, it was expanded into a full-blown burner event with the help of Gretchen Bond, director of the Miners’ Foundry Cultural Center in Nevada City, California.

Redd will be running an event at Burnal Equinox called “Jedi Training School.”

I also spoke with the Nevada City event’s archivist, Kathleen Hoffmann, who gave me this snippet of history: “Our event started in 2011 and has grown larger every year. In 2012 the event doubled in participation. This year we joined with Sacramento Valley Spark, a non-profit organization of and for the burner community.”

I asked Kathleen what she has in store for us. “This year,” she says, “the event is busting at the seams with bands, fire effects and performances, theme camps, art cars, gifting, performance artists and SHENANIGANS!”

From the Nevada City Burnal Equinox press release:

Gold Country Burnal Equinox will be a celebration of self-expression and creativity inspired by the Burning Man event, complete with art, fire performers, fashion shows, costumes, and theme camps. It all takes place at The Miners Foundry, located at 325 Spring Street in Nevada City.

Three stages of entertainment will feature live music, DJs, and performance art. Bring yourself and be yourself. Playa wear is welcome and encouraged. This all-day event begins at 2:00 p.m. and continues until 1:00 a.m. Tickets are $20 in Advance and $25 at the door.

Uchronia - Photo by Douglas Hope Hooper

Uchronia – Photo by Douglas Hope Hooper

Advance tickets are available online from Vendini and Nevada City Box Office. You can also call Nevada City Box Office for tickets at (530) 265-5462, or buy them in person at the Briar Patch Co-Op, 290 Sierra College Drive, Suite A, in Grass Valley.

If you are interested in contributing, volunteering, performing or have questions, please email burnale2013@gmail.com

For more information please visit: http://sacvalleyspark.org/?page_id=686

 

Is your community having a Burnal Equinox event? Tell us about it in the comments!