BORG2 BULLHORN #17: State of the BORG2

[jimmason]

The BORG2 Bullhorn (B2B): No. 17, 5/20/05

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-------------->your agenda for this week<-----------------

{ THE STATE OF THE BORG2 }
{ THE STATE OF THE MONEY IN THE BORG2 }

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THE STATE OF THE BORG2, a not so regular announcement by Jim Mason (who has Mr. Jones well wrapped and safely stored in the back room for a few moments)


In the beginning, someone or another said . . .

"The BORG2 plans to set up various structures so we can elect committees that can intern appoint councils to study the situation and propose additional committees that divide into subcommittees, with chairs, presidents, secretaries, and treasurers, requiring oversight from an as of yet undefined assembled body of experts that will advise and endure the committee that was elected to do all of this in the first place. Out of this, we are quite certain, will come Art."

. . . and amazingly enough, 5 months later all of this has happened, and we have, in fact, arrived at Art. A huge pile of it to be exact. Look here and be impressed and inspired. http://www.borg2.org/artProposals.php3. Good Lord there is a lot of it.


Yes, the path to here has been brutal.

The BORG2 has waddled through a slough of bureaucratic despond, hacked through forests of malaise and confusion, and generally wasted for thirst in a parched desert of raving and electronica, to the astonishment of all. But now we have emerged again, back at the Art that we originally set out to do this with.

In the beginning, the BORG2 rose up to make Burning Man about the ART again. That we *even* had to argue this point is a bit disturbing. But in fact, we did. The issue of the centrality of art in this high minded civic experiment out on the flat earth is, in fact, at issue.

We started this by stating the obvious: that Burning Man has wandered from its foundation in ART and we didn't want its unique creative glories to slide any further into a decadent dirt rave. That we wanted the propagation of this experiment to be more than a vague party network. That COLLABORATIVE CREATIVE WORK, BROADLY DEFINED, WAS AND IS OUR MAIN VEHICLE TOWARDS COMMUNITY.

This notion seemed to get everyone quite excited. Lots of people jumped up and down a whole bunch for a couple months. But then it got kinda quiet. And that seemed to be about it.

We didn't hear much from borg1 either. Yes, they upped the art budget by $200,000 in response to all the hoo hah, loosened the thematic and interactivity requirements, and brought in some extra curators. This was all great and in the direction requested, and we thank them profusely for it. Asses were well covered, wounds were bandaged, and something was done to improve the situation. But still, there was no clear statement about the PRIMACY of creative work at the event and in its propagation outward. No one stood up and said, “let’s go there” or “this is what we are about”. It still seems left to be about anything, in the hope that it will be about everything, for everyone, but in reality threatens to become about nothing with so little core and clarity of purpose.

That core, we have said clearly, is art. That is our method and our tool. What we had before, and what we want to move forward with again, are the deep and meaningful ties formed in the crucible of WILDLY COLLABORATIVE ART-MAKING, in the harshest of conditions, challenged constantly by our inexperience, inability and lack of resources, but ultimately realized by the people that join together to make it happen anyway.

Into this vacuum of leadership on the art question has now stepped many individuals with great projects that want to have a go at it. The list at http://www.borg2.org/artProposals.php3 has reinspired me and everyone else I know who has looked at it. And the resulting discussion at http://borg2.tribe.net is proving that the public posting and review of art ideas is an excellent tool for inspiration, collaboration and resource sharing towards the cooperative manifestation of art.

Over the next couple weeks the Art Council and Guest Curators will be preparing and packaging these proposals for public consideration and voting. We invite you to join the process and help refine the projects with us at http://borg2.tribe.net . And after that, help us build them.

After that we are sure many trucks of dubious mechanical veracity will appear to haul them over the Sierras and Great Basin, from many directions, towards unknown ends.

Who is driving this long train of trucks and where it is going, we are not really sure. But *not* knowing is usually more interesting than knowing in the end.

That is, afterall, where all of this started.



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THE STATE OF THE MONEY IN THE BORG2

OR

THE BORG2 ART FUND: Spare Changing our way to 250,000 DIMES.

Yea. Yea, i know. We said we were gong to raise $250,000 dollars. But we are artists. Sometimes we don't do what we say we are going to do. Often we do more, like 110% or 1100%. But when it comes to money, we often do only 10%, but deliver 110% nonetheless.

So that is what we are now going to do here. The BORG2 now commits to raise 250,000 in DIMES. $250,000 DOLLARS was WAY too much. And we like change anyway, honey coated or not. It's become a bit of a theme around here.

We already have 150,000 DIMES ($15,000). We only need 100,000 DIMES more to reach our new (and more reasonable) goal. We plan to distribute the 250,000 DIMES ($25,000) in grants in amounts between 1k and 5k. No, these will not be any 20k sugar daddy art grants. But 5k is still a TON of money by historic burning man standards. Much has been done by many for less, or zero for that matter.

But to get to $25,000, we very much need your help.

ALL of the $15,000 current dollars have come from individuals like you and me, giving a couple dollars here and there. Many of these small dollars and smaller coins bundled together has summed to $15,000. Our only large donor (the $25,000 pledge) backed out after Chicken insulted fat old people that like to snuggle in domes. Be careful who you insult. Especially if your name is Chicken John. So now it is back up to us. And for us, the financially dubious and irresponsible, we propose something simple and we hope effective.

We call it the: "ONE BURRITO AND ONE BEER" pledge program.

Here's how it works.

You are poor (or at least not used to giving money away) like the rest of us. But you are used to eating and drinking beer, like the rest of us. In fact, you do it all the time. It’s real easy. So we propose a simple slight of mind (or hand).

We ask you to consider giving the BORG2 "ONE BURRITO AND ONE BEER" a month, for each of the next 4 months until the event. One burrito and one beer is about 10 bucks. If you do that every month, that will be 40 bucks total by the event, and you won’t barely even feel it. You just say "yes", pay $10 via paypal or snail mail, and we'll send you an email each month to remind you.

If we ask you for 40 bucks right now you won't even consider it most likely. But if we ask you for "one burrito and one beer", leaving you with the salsa and chips, you might actually pause to consider it. You might even consider it to the point of CLICKING HERE (http://www.borg2.org/donate.php3) or sending an email to jimmason @ longnow .org that says "OK fine, you get the burrito and the beer, I’ll keep the salsa and chips". It's that easy.

Now of course, you can give more. You might consider a "Pollo en Mole Especial Con Margarita", which is about 20 bucks a month, or you might consider the dinner for everyone "Tacos Para La Familia" which is about 50 a month, or even margaritas for the whole bar, which if reasonable size, is about 100 a month.

But those other options are for the special people. The regular people, like you and me, we just give "ONE BURRITO AND ONE BEER". That’s all.

If 200 people do this, with a couple opting for the "Pollo en Mole Especial" or "Tacos Para Todos" options, etc, we will easily raise the remaining $10,000 needed.

But this only works if YOU, yes you, do it.

Only by the bundling of MANY small donations can be built a BIG pile. There are WAY more than 200 of us. In fact, there are 1500 on this list. If EVERYONE on this list gave "ONE BURRITO AND ONE BEER", we would have $60,000 + the $15,000 in hand for a total of $75,000. That’s a lot of money for art. That’s at least 20 projects, well funded.

MANY SMALL DONATIONS BUNDLED TOGETHER *DO* MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

And really, you are only giving money to yourself to give away anyway, as you get to vote where it goes in the end. Think of it as a personalized art giving program, with the currency being Mexican food.

Because after all, if there were no burritos to survive on, there would be no art underground in San Francisco. What all of you survive on elsewhere I have no idea.




Jim Mason thanks you very much for reading and considering.




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The stuff on the bottom from Frank, now unwrapped and safely back at his seat.
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