← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 9476 | Posts: 18 | Started: 2003-09-02
2003-09-02 23:01 | User Profile
[url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/09/01/state1707EDT0076.DTL]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...1707EDT0076.DTL[/url]
**Burning Man counterculture seeks social, political influence **
DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer Monday, September 1, 2003
(09-01) 14:07 PDT BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. (AP) --
Burning Man, the wild counterculture festival held annually in one of the nation's most remote areas, is coming to cities across America.
It's time to try to influence the very culture against which this year's record 30,500 Burning Man participants rebelled, the phenomenon's founder and resident visionary said in an interview.
Ultimately, executive director Larry Harvey sees the festival's values of libertarian freedom, radical artistic and self-expression, and anti-consumerism becoming a social movement that will influence American politics.
"We came out here to do an otherworldly thing. We came out here to do a vision -- to do the most impractical thing imaginable," Harvey, 55, said as a choking dust storm whipped through the elaborate desert city that participants built and destroyed in a week.
"But now, in this newest phase of the development, we're going back to the world," he said. "I don't want to be a subculture -- I want to enter the mainstream culture, but on our terms."
The effort to spread Burning Man already has begun.
About 100 regional representatives met last week at what participants call Black Rock City, or the Republic of Burning Man.
Two full-time employees of Black Rock City LLC are helping develop regional spinoffs beyond those already growing in places like New York, Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Austin, Tex., -- and making sure they adhere to the philosophy of the original.
Internet sites and organizational tools help regional offshoots communicate and avoid some of the mistakes the original Burning Man made growing up.
Black Rock Arts Foundation, meanwhile, has been set up to raise money and to bring radical art to communities nationwide. Organizers also just distributed what they call a "Burning Man film festival in a box," a do-it-yourself kit that they expect will promote avant-garde cinematography.
"Many people will have the Burning Man experience and feel a part of Burning Man without ever coming here," said Harvey, serially smoking cigarettes and sipping iced coffee as his aviator sunglasses turned opaque in the swirling dust. "We are growing at an exponential rate -- just not here."
What evolved into Burning Man started when eight people torched an eight-foot wooden figure on a San Francisco beach in 1986. The crowd for what became an annual event soon grew to 800.
Eighty people showed up when the event moved to the remote desert 120 miles north of Reno in 1990. It grew to 8,000 by 1996, and has nearly quadrupled since. Harvey calls those phases one and two.
Phase Three is creating regional festivals and bringing cutting-edge art into communities nationwide.
Phase Four is turning those people into an Internet-connected network for social and ultimately political change, in Harvey's vision.
"I think increasingly the political parties don't matter," he said Saturday as participants prepared the climactic torching of what has now become a 40-foot neon-lit Burning Man affixed atop an elaborate 40-foot Aztec-style wood and canvas pyramid.
"I think leaders will rise up in these (Burning Man) groups and a new kind of value-based politics -- drawing renewal from rituals -- will emerge. Then you have a rebirth of democracy, but a different kind of democracy."
Burning Man participants got their most overtly politicized event this year, when Bill Talen of New York City assumed his persona as the Rev. Billy and led his Church of Stop Shopping in nightly shows of satirical songs and sermons denouncing consumerism, the nation's energy policy, and Bush administration priorities generally.
Burning Man is a marketer's dream, attracting a preponderance of highly educated, relatively affluent participants in their 30s and 40s, followed in order by those in their 20s and then their 60s, Harvey said.
"If we let them, there'd be Burning Man vodka and Burning Man everything," Harvey said.
Burning Man is rabidly anti-commercial, however. Though organizers have taken lessons from how corporations operate, corporate logos are banned at Burning Man. Participants are encouraged even to mask the logos on rental trucks or RVs, and Black Rock City LLC's legal arm aggressively targets any attempt to commercialize or capitalize on the event.
"We're the other choice in a consumer world," Harvey said, as extravagantly or barely costumed Burning Man participants donned goggles and pulled up bandanas and face masks against the talcom-fine dust that at times cut visibility to a matter of a few yards. The wind shook the two-story wooden deck on which Harvey sat, and threatened to sail his trademark felt Stetson off into the surrounding desert.
"They're marketing fake authenticity," he said. "We're the real thing. Why else would people come out to this godforsaken place? People think the ultimate thing people want is comfort and convenience. We've proved that's not the case."
Though Harvey inspires near reverential devotion from a cadre of aides and hangers-on, most Burning Man participants have never met him. But many said they also see a grass roots backlash against rampant commercialism.
"This is the influence that needs to go into those Third World cities, not Coca-Cola and Pepsi," said Angela Layton of Beaver Creek, Ore.
"For sure it's going to evolve, and it's going to evolve in society. Burning Man is a reflection of society," said Labro Zabelis, a psychology graduate student from Union, N.J.
Harvey readily acknowledges his vision sounds grandiose.
"But I know what we can accomplish," he said, overlooking the fleeting, illusionary city that sprang up from five square miles of desert. "In the fullness of time, maybe this will disappear -- because it will have served its purpose. The children will have left the nursery."
On the Net: www.burningman.com
2003-09-02 23:30 | User Profile
For the most part Burning Man is a bunch of middle aged and near middle aged ex-hippies or people who wish they could have been hippies, walking about, naked, dropping acid, and other stuff. You have to bring your own accommodations, food, water, and other stuff. I've been invited a couple to times to join organized trips to Burning Man. I was invited this year. The problem is, I really hate hot weather, plus I think I'd just get bored, I'm not much into theater. Some technological aspects, weird homemade bikes, things like that, might be interesting. Also, going would really give a guy bragging rights.
Hard to believe, but one friend who goes just about every year, is a real evangelical Christian. He's given me his, "how you can be a Christian and drop acid, and walk around naked explanation" a few times, but I don't pay attention.
No one has to worry, by the time it hits Denver, it will fizzle out. Everything interesting always does.
I have absolutely no objection to subverting the culture, it all depends on how.
Tune in, turn on, drop out.
Enkidu
2003-09-02 23:30 | User Profile
Hey, what's wrong with hippies? A lot of them are good racialists these days.
Check out the moving 'The Wicker Man' if you want to learn about the Celtic festival that is at the center of the Burning Man. It's a kind of sacrifice. I suppose this might get some Christian's knickers in a knot, but I say--a little syngerism never hurt no one.
2003-09-02 23:37 | User Profile
Well, wintermute has been and I haven't, so I'm sure her observatons are more accurate than my second hand information. I'm sure factually: acid, other drugs, naked walking about, but if wintermute says it's not hippie-like, I will believe her.
Enkidu
2003-09-03 00:21 | User Profile
Woops! Sorry about the incorrect pronoun, Mr. Wintermute, I try to keep up, but obviously got that wrong. Come to think of it, my friend who goes, is only just passed thirty. I don't know when near-middle age begins --- maybe forty. At fifty-eight, I'm near senile.
I think I would enjoy Burning Man, if I could go there for maybe a day and a half. I'm serious about the aversion to hot weather, though. Truth is, I would love for something like this to spread, but the cynic in me says it would be totally changed, probably be sanitized and commercial by the time it got to Denver, or anywhere else.
Sorry again about the pronoun thing, Where did I get the idea? I don't know.
Enkidu
2003-09-03 00:32 | User Profile
Went two years ago for the Hell of it. I'm tempted to post the pictures. The people I ran into ran the proverbial gamut. But it is very hot, and in some areas, very smelly.
I did seem some sexual goings on at one ... tent, that were, shall we say, way out of line. Disgusting.
If you do go, you will see some truly creative contraptions and get ups, though.
My wife wasn't too thrilled with the pics I took, BTW. If I ever go again, she may turn me into the Burning Man.
2003-09-03 06:51 | User Profile
FWI -- The real Wicker Man burnings of the late Middle Ages were as likely as not thrown by Christians. The wicker enclosure was often stuffed with stray cats who were then burned alive. Cats were associated with the Devil and it was a fun sort of exorcism, hearing the cats yowl and smell their flesh burn. It would often be done during Lent, when Penance was the order of the day, but I've heard no descriptions of how penitant the cats might have been. Kids gathered the cats and attended the festivities.
Good family fun. :lol:
2003-09-03 08:44 | User Profile
Roy Batty and wintermute,
Great Posts! Thanks for telling us about the event!
A saw story on it on that odd PBS show [url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/index.html]Egg[/url]
2003-09-03 09:00 | User Profile
This thread was informative. I'd no idea of what "Burning Man" was, and now I do. A sort of cross between Mardi Gras, an anti-globalist protest rally, and Woodstock '99.
BTW, if you reasonably expect to live around 75 years or so, then I'd like to know what 37 or 38 is if not 'middle age'...or at least the beginning of it.
As for THE WICKER MAN, it's a helluva flick. Maybe the only time in his career that Chris Lee got to be menacing while wearing top-siders. Best exchange from the film:
**Woodward: I believe in the life eternal, as promised to us by our Lord, Jesus Christ!
Lee: That is good. For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift these days - a martyr's death. **
2003-09-03 13:38 | User Profile
Cats were associated with the Devil and it was a fun sort of exorcism, hearing the cats yowl and smell their flesh burn.
:angry: Grrrrrrr...
Too bad this pratice only furthered the spread of good old Yersinia pestis eh? I guess there is a sort of cosmic symmetry at work.
2003-09-04 02:45 | User Profile
Message from a young correspondent:
*Hey, dig it. Found the "Burning Man" article in between the Toyota ad and the GE ad in National Geographic. Cool.
This Wintermute seems like a really with-it chick, so I'll leave it up to her to give the full down low. Can't wait to get out there and run around naked, puke in the sand and talk about the future of white people, man.*
2003-09-04 17:25 | User Profile
Nice temples. Let's hope nobody accidentally throws a baseball through one or anything; balsa wood is not exactly known for its durability. :D
Hmm, another aurora avatar, Wintermute? What significance do they hold for you?
2003-09-04 17:51 | User Profile
balsa wood is not exactly known for its durability.
Or its resistance to flame!!!
"Yo, man. Can you smoke that joint away from the Temple?"
2003-09-04 22:02 | User Profile
I don't know about subversion at Burning Man ...
But I'd have to say one my favorites was a UFO that appeared, floating several feet above the ground, flashing strange lights as it silently glided on by. The UFO was composed of balsa wood, wires and small lights, all attached to a couple of bicycles. In the dark, it was quite impressive.
2003-09-05 10:12 | User Profile
Ultimately, executive director Larry Harvey sees the festival's values of libertarian freedom, radical artistic and self-expression, and anti-consumerism becoming a social movement that will influence American politics.
Talent is a terrible thing to waste but the irony of balsa wood temples is probably lost on that collection of talented wasters. Balsa wood temples!? Why a delightful metaphore for White man's slide into irrelevance. Join the revolution folks! Next week we topple the NWO by constructing an invincible legion of dope-smoking plywood tree sloths.
2003-09-05 13:40 | User Profile
Originally posted by na Gaeil is gile@Sep 5 2003, 06:12 * > Ultimately, executive director Larry Harvey sees the festival's values of libertarian freedom, radical artistic and self-expression, and anti-consumerism becoming a social movement that will influence American politics.*
Talent is a terrible thing to waste but the irony of balsa wood temples is probably lost on that collection of talented wasters. Balsa wood temples!? Why a delightful metaphore for White man's slide into irrelevance. Join the revolution folks! Next week we topple the NWO by constructing an invincible legion of dope-smoking plywood tree sloths.**
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2003-09-05 14:47 | User Profile
whitebread!
:lol: :clown: :th:
2003-09-08 00:24 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Sep 5 2003, 10:47 * ** whitebread! **
No time to chat, bro; I'm off to the American Purim...
[url=http://www.forward.com/issues/2000/00.09.15/fastforward.html]http://www.forward.com/issues/2000/00.09.1...astforward.html[/url] Free To Be You and Me (or Just About Anyone) Nevada's Annual Burning Man Festival Offers Wilderness Epiphanies ââ¬âWith 26,000 Fellow Seekers
By ROBERT RABINOWITZ We arrived at Burning Man with some trepidation. This was the first time my wife, Juliette, and I had attended this "annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance" out in the Nevada desert. We knew we were getting close to the Burning Man site when we joined a long procession of RV's alternating with cars with such decorations as latex rubber faces and great swaths of shaggy fur. We turned at a bend in the road, and there, spread out on the barren, dusty, ancient lake bed in front of us, was a campsite of biblical proportions ââ¬â Black Rock City, a seven-square-mile "civic organism," the temporary home of more than 26,000 people.
Founded in 1986 as a small San Francisco arts festival by Larry Harvey, who was working at the time as a landscape gardener, Burning Man took its name from the four-story wooden effigy that is torched at the event's climax. In 1990, the festival moved to the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, adding new space to accommodate the growing crowds of revelers and new dimensions for self-expression in a climate that can fluctuate between 100 degrees Farenheit in the daytime and 40 degrees at night.
As I surfed the Burning Man web site (www.burningman.com) in the days before our journey, I grew more excited about the possibilities for participating in its various activities. I imagined myself brandishing a burning sword as I fought a gladiatorial contest in the "Thunderdome." I would sing a part in the huge communal opera that is written each year especially for the festival. I would join a team creating one of the many huge artworks dispersed across the playa ââ¬â the central plain at the heart of Burning Man.
Yet as we drove toward our camp, located at 5:40 Street and Sex Drive, I was a little intimidated by this place, with its bizarre vehicles ââ¬â a huge head on wheels with flashing eyes, a fire-breathing dragon constructed from three buses with a brass band in its belly ââ¬â and its wildly imaginative camps and tents.
Burning Man's overarching rule, its central mitzvah, is for participants to lose their inhibitions and enter into their own form of self-expressions, whatever they might be. It is this, and only this, that explains what brings together such diverse groups of people. Among the many Burning Man subcultures are the "post-apocalyptics," who dress Mad Max-style, with leathers, shredded clothes and metal studs, their vehicles decorated with post-industrial detritus. Then there are the "peace and love" people, who offer free massages and therapy services and talk of chakras and energy levels. Many people attend for the freedom to walk around naked or semi-naked or to cross-dress. Other groups include the techno-music crowd who dance through the night into the morning; the men who come to stare at the naked girls; the beautiful arty people from New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco; the body mutilators, and those who come to feast on drugs.
There is a clear spirituality and ethos to Burning Man that rejects the societal forces embodied in corporate culture and governmental regulation that prevent us from being the individuals we feel we really want to be or fantasize about being, without fear of judgment or reproach. Given this almost complete freedom of expression, who did I really want to be?
I felt closest to answering the question on Friday night. In the weeks before the event, I had fantasized about holding a beautiful, soulful Friday night service out on the playa, singing and dancing like the kabbalists of Safed, greeting the Sabbath bride as she swept in across the mountains from the East. In reality, Friday was a day of atrocious dust storms that reduced visibility to a matter of a few yards and kept us confined to our RV. The central tent was full of other refugees from the fine dust that penetrated our tents and even our suitcases. Inside the tent I stumbled across Dave from New Orleans, who sat in quiet concentration as he painted the faces of willing participants. I was soon sitting down receiving my own face decoration in the spirit of hiddur shabbat, making the Sabbath more beautiful. Then we returned back to our camp and dressed ourselves in our Shabbat finery. I wore shalwaz kameezââ¬ÂºÃ¢â¬â an Indian outfit of baggy white pants and a long white collarless shirt. I added a white skullcap laced with gold thread that we had bought on our honeymoon in Gambia and sandals with white socks. Juliette wore an Indian outfit of soft, shiny cotton with a purple silk top and a vivid orange turban fashioned from a piece of material purchased from a chasidic tailor in Boro Park.
The weather cleared as Juliette and I began Sabbath prayers. We were joined by several other members of our camp, mostly people involved in filmmaking and animation, many of whom were Jewish. We sang an abbreviated Kabbalat Shabbat, using both the beautiful traditional tunes and the niggunim of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. The most intense moment for me came as I closed my eyes and rocked back and forth to Yedid Nefesh, a song full of yearning for the sort of wholeness that only the divine can bring to the human spirit.
What did I look like with my face painted, dressed in the mufti of several cultures, singing traditional Jewish prayers? What was this: performance, prayer or just exhibitionism? Was this light-hearted playing around with religious traditions, or was it a deep integration? To be honest, I am not wholly sure. Burning Man is a contemporary American version of Carnival or of Purim, a festival of delirium in which we are commanded to confuse good and bad, up and down, in which everyday categories of propriety are turned upside-down and nothing is too clear. Such festivals help us break out of the inhibitions and anxieties that we accumulate in our daily lives, that prevent us from reconnecting with our deepest dreams and aspirations about who we are and what we could be. The questions raised in this process aren't easy, and I am not sure that my experience at Burning Man provided me with the answers.
I suppose that is why I, along with so many of the other people who attend each year, am planning to go back.