Jim Mason's response to Ladybee

[jimmason]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Burnside [mailto:bobburnside at comcast.net]
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 3:37 AM
> To: Jim Mason
> Subject: Re: [Shipyard Announce]: What to do about Burning Man . . . ?
>
> Dear Jim,
>
> When I read your statement, I thought you might have had a bad
> experience with your own art proposal so I asked Lady Bee about it
> and here's her reply.... (now pasted below at the end of this
> response).
>


Thank you for writing bob. And yes, I have already seen ladybee's reply. It has been making the rounds and many responses to it have also been making the rounds. All have been interesting.

I was disappointed by the intellectual dishonesty in how ladybee represented the points in our "We Have a Dream" proposal as well as the continuing refusal to notice the large sea of people massing here saying essentially "We are excited to make the art great again. Will you work with us to do that?". How can she possibly say no to that sentiment? Instead, the note shoots the messenger, while ignoring the content, and picks at details (often misrepresented) without engaging the larger issues and ideas. Most discouragingly, it does not show any appreciable leadership towards solutions, only more resistance.

As usual, we were again given a rosy representation of the state of art at burning man. Ladybee suggests a couple tweaks here and there and all will be fine, showing once again that her head must be buried deep in playa dust. "Her" own artists are coming out in droves against this blatant refusal to speak and deal with the truth. All we have done here is finally create a frame and forum where people could really speak the truth of what is happening, and not have it dissipate into thin air.

I have been doing this for 10 years bob. You can see most of what I've done out there at www.whatiamupto.com. I love burning man like I love few other things in the world and want to continue doing so. But the current deep malignancy of dissatisfaction amongst the artists is not sustainable and is destroying the event. And efforts by artist after artist to talk about the problems and ask for real change have gone nowhere, despite years of effort.

Unfortunately bob, we have learned that it is impossible to change the borg though discussion. We have tried that for years. The Borg is capable of ingesting METRIC TONS OF DISCUSSION in the service of not really changing anything. We specifically DID NOT propose this as a discussion because we have had so many discussions over the years that went nowhere. Lots of smiled affirmations of "we get it" and "yes, I agree we should move in that direction", then nothing. The discussion has only been used as a pressure relief valve for the boiling frustrations in the community, but not to really explore ways to change things and then enact them.

So after years of trying to make the dissatisfaction go away the discussion way, we have finally been forced to do it the ugly way. And that way is by pinning the Borg with their own principles, policies, vocabulary and a heaping mound of the artists who give their gifts to the event yearly. Expose the hypocrisy and resistance to change that has so many artists and general participants so frustrated and many streaming out the door. We had to issue an ultimatum. There was no other way. And we had to accept looking like complete jerks while doing it.

Now we are trying to turn the corner and make this more of a discussion, not so much a list of demands. But the core principles and gist of the proposal people are clearly saying yes to in droves. The voting is really already largely done. We are now starting the endgame of figuring out how we are going to implement most of this. The borg cannot ignore that so many people have so clearly said they want RADICAL CHANGE, REAL DEMOCRACY, and REAL TRUTH SPEAKING and maintain any semblance of ability to argue that they are responsive to the community. Currently they are not responsive. Everyone knows that. And the Borg knows they are expert at diffusing all frustration and critique through faux discussion, so they continue doing it.

So we have given them a choice. Put real participation and decision making power back in the hands of the participants or we are leaving. And we are going to organize as many people as we can to either fix it spectacularly, or leave it spectacularly. We are saying that the borg's representation of the current state of affairs is a lie. Are you reading the petition? People are calling the Borg liars. That the beautiful vision we read about in all the literature is not, in fact, happening for many people any more. It is for some, but it is not for a very large body of people, and particularly not for many of the artists.

It is silly to suggest that we would start all this strum und drang just because I didn't get a grant last year (even though ladybee's representation of the proposed project leaves out much of what was actually proposed and further elaborated through discussion). In fact, if the burning man organization agrees to listen to its people and act on the core ideas of our proposal, after a much needed IMPLEMENTATION discussion with the general community, I will agree to build a huge conflagration of Chaos and Art in the desert this year, and not ask for a dime to do it. I am not after anything here other than fixing what is broken. I am only trying to suggest we give things away in the honest manner that they should be given away. Or rather, I should say WE are only trying to better distribute power, curating and funding decisions amongst ALL those who contribute value to the event, Borg included. And we ALL know the Borg has contributed hugely and skillfully to the creation and maintenance of this event. But ownership of Burning Man is radically distributed.

In the end, I don't know how any close and honest reader of our proposal could see it as anything other than a passionate plea to make something we all love, fabulous and wonderful again. The unending storm of affirming comments to the petition only proves this desire and the community's agreement with the gist of the proposal.

How many thousands of people is it going to take saying as much on this petition before they believe it? If they think this is just the local malcontents, they should put the proposal out on the JRS and see what the "other" people think? There are no "other" people. They will get the same response- only magnified by a factor of 10 or so, as there is at least 10x the audience on the JRS as we have likely reached so far (but it is growing fast, so who knows. . .). And for the record, the original plan was to start this by hacking the JRS list and sending the proposal out to the full 40,000 or so of us. But we decided that was unfair and would wrongly expose our little family tiff to too many Nevada/BLM politicos and others that shouldn't be audience to this. So we started it on our local lists. But now it is everywhere and nearly everyone is saying basically the same thing. The signers are not "the other ones". They are from most every nook and cranny of the Burning Man community.

What are they saying? They are saying that they love this event and they feel it is going in a bad direction. They are NOT asking for the old event. That is a cop-out reading that many are suggesting. People want a good and changing event. They want it to be different and surprising each year. They don't want it to be stale. It is stale currently. We have proposed solutions for ensuring it does not replicate staleness. Most of these solutions are based on putting the art curation in the hands of the participants in some manner, centrally incorporating guest curators to ensure a constant stream of fresh ideas, and lessening the scripting around what the artists are asked to do.

The details of doing this will be worked out later. We only wrote enough detail to show plausibility. We only opened the space for imagination and further elaboration. Any more detail would have made an already ridiculously long proposal even more ridiculously long. More discussion and refining will be needed to figure out how to specifically enact these ideas and the additional good ones that are already surfacing (like the "post event grants" to notable and ambitious art that just showed up).

But the community clearly wants the core of the proposed ideas. That is the vote. Can you hear it? It is like a 90% positive vote or something. Hello? Is anyone listening out there? Is anyone in the borg really reading the proposal honestly and in detail and then reading the comments with an open mind?

We did this because we love this event and community like no other we have ever been involved with. Really, you might consider this whole thing an act of love. It is a gift to the Burning Man organization and the community in general. The intent was to encourage people to get reexcited and recommitted to applying themselves to the event again with vigor, if the Borg will allow us to do it. And that is now what people are saying they want to do, in droves. They want to make it work. They want to try again. They want to make it great. You can read this everywhere in the petition comments.

In the end, it is really quite easy for the Borg. The Borg just has to say yes. Say yes and they win. Say yes and they get all this renewed enthusiasm and desire to make things great. They can then say all these things were their ideas all along and they had been planning on making these changes anyway. Call us assholes and terrible human beings and we hurt everyone's feelings without need. That is fine. But accept the gift. Allow the people to make the event great again, in ways that we don't even know now, with people we can't even imagine now (local and faraway). That is what everyone is telling the Borg they want to do. The Borg should listen to them. They will only win if they do- and the larger community will win as well.

Thank you for writing (and reading).


Jim Mason
The Shipyard


PS- you are welcome to fwd this back to the theme art list or wherever
ladybee's comments were posted.


"We have a Dream" petition is at: http://tinyurl.com/6151h



> Hi Bob-
>
> Here's the backstory, as well as what I think about the petition. You
> are free to forward this far and wide. - LadyBee
>
>
> Thanks for asking. Indeed, he applied and didn't get a grant last year
> for his Big Bang project - essentially twenty minutes of the fire
> cannons culminating in a fuel-air bomb explosion that would have been
> life-threatening unless it was perfectly orchestrated. We all know the
> margin of error on playa is considerable! in addition, he wanted FORTY
> THOUSAND DOLLARS for this 20- minute entertainment. Undoubtedly cool,
> it was too dangerous and too expensive to fund.
>
> What do I think of the petition? It contains some good ideas, notably
> increasing the art budget, which we'd already planned for next year,
> and giving grants to non-theme art, which we already do - we "stretch"
> the idea to fit the theme if the project is really good. Yes, everyone
> knows that and wonders why various funded projects don't seem to be
> based on the theme....that's why. This year we will be clearer about
> this and devote a percentage of the grant funds to non-theme art. We
> prefer interactivity but in fact we also fund art that lacks
> interactivity - think of Michael Christian's Flock in 2001.
>
> What I find disturbing about the petition is that a small group of
> local artists seem to feel that they "created" the event, made it
> great, and are now entitled to curate and manage the grant program -
> as well as having access to 10% of our ticket sales income. Have they
> not noticed that we now have artists from all over the country as well
> as Europe making art at the event? They seem to think they are the
> soul and center of the art commmunity....but there are dozens of art
> communities who contribute to our event. We love our local artists,
> but we also love new participants and we welcome artists new to Burning
Man.
>
> Looking at the responses to the petition, I'm appalled at the errors
> and downright ignorance about our art process. This tells me that
> people do not read the art information on our website, and probably
> don't look at the gate handouts either. If they did, they'd know that we
do not "bar"
> non-theme art, we don't "banish" playa art to the deep playa, we don't
> prevent people from bringing their art unless it's dangerous, and we
> don't "decide" what art makes it out there. All art is welcome at our
> event, whether registered on the website or not. This year we had
> about 50 "walk-in" projects that just showed up; we ask them to check
> in at the Artery and they get placed and assisted. Artists can place
> their art where they like; we only map it if they don't have a
> preference. I also noticed that several folks said they were going to
> bring art, but we made them "jump through too many hoops", so they
> didn't bother. Oh, please..... we ask for basic safety; hundreds of
> people comply every year and don't seem to give up so easily. What are
> these hoops? We require that each piece be lit at night, so people
> don't drive or bike into it and get hurt. We ask for a clean-up plan,
> so folks don't leave big messes for us to clean up. If the art has
> propane and fire, we ask to see their plan for storing their tanks and
> a diagram of the gas lines. If a structure is big and people will be
> climbing or entering it, we make sure that it's engineered properly.
> If it's going to burn, we need to see the burn platform so the playa
> isn't damaged. If you think this is too much, try creating a piece of
> public art in any American city and you'll see how much bigger the
> hoops can get! And then try burning it!!!!
>
> Here's my big question to the petition folks: if so many of your
> supporters haven't bothered to educate themselves about our process by
> reading our site, do you expect them, and the rest of the community,
> to read through hundreds of multi-page art proposals so they can make
> informed choices when they vote? I'd guess that a popular vote will be
> a popularity contest - people will vote for their friends.
>
> You will note that in the petition site, if you respond at all, you
> have voted for the petition. Very Diebold! They don't provide any
> forum for discussion, which is the most valuable thing the petition has
created.
> There are two very interesting dialogues going on about it, on the
> EPlaya: http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic.php?t=7610 or
> http://eplaya.burningman.org/ - Black Rock City - Nature of Burning
> Man
> - we have a dream petition - and on Tribe.net in the Burning Man tribe
> - Take Back Burning Man thread. You have to be registered on Tribe to
> access that - just create a username and password as usual. Both of
> these dialogues are interesting and thoughtful, and seem to be founded
> on actual knowledge (! ) instead of assumptions, hearsay, and bitterness.
>
> This is a time of challenge for Burning Man, with so many new
> participants. How do we engage them? How do we keep the art lively,
> interesting, and cutting edge? We welcome feedback, fresh ideas, and
> criticism of our art process. Demands, however, are not so appealing,
> especially when based on entitlement, hostility and self-importance.
>
>
>
>

[Rob the Wop]

My question is-
There were two threads on the petition, one was removed.
Now there are two again.
Why are spamming the board with redundant information?

[Bob]

I'd leave it alone, and would have given Jim slack on the previous identical post. Imagine yourself trying to make sense of the eplaya structure and norms on first face.

[jimmason]

i reposted it because i didn't realize it had been moved. i thought it had been lost.

i originally posted it immediaely before the eplaya went down this afternoon, at least for me, and then i had to check out of the hotel i am in here in chicago. i am now at kinko's. when i looked, i didn't see the new topic and figured it didn't go through, so i posted it again. then i went and started reading around and saw it had been moved, then wrote nicole a note asking her to leave it as a separate thread.

piling everything in one thread makes it difficult to navigate the information and debate. as this post is the record of a specific exchange of "ideas" between me and ladybee (in excruciating length, for which i apologize, but there is content here that takes length to address), it seems that it should stay as a separate thread. that is my request to nicole. we can use this thread to battle out the relative merits or lack thereof of what ladybee and i have said about the matter at hand- or tell both of us we are both full of shit and come up with a better set of specific proposals, or agree that everything is just fine right now and be done.

i unfortunately now have to go get on a plane to come back to sf. i've been trying to keep up with this all week from a hotel room in chicago, armed with only a laptop and a cell phone, while not attending the conference i was supposed to be attending. and now i need to get on a plane and come home, so i will be off the keyboard for at least 8 hours.

think good thoughts,

jim

[stuart]

Jim,

while there are aspects of your proposal I don't dig I just wanted to say that I appreciate the care and effort.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

RADICAL CHANGE, REAL DEMOCRACY, and REAL TRUTH SPEAKING

Right!

Lets start with the removal of all RV's and Trailers!

Next the best art won't show up until people organize their camps or a group to protect their art from damage or theft.

The Lily Pond is the best example of the most delicate and finest art that ever appeared on the playa.

Once that happens, along with Manditory Naked hour! Hehehe I love plugging that one! All art will be quick and easy and not the best examples of what can happen on the playa.

A II Z

[buzzcut]

The more I read all of this the crazier it makes me. What is all this whining about? Why is everyone attacking Lady Bee? In my experience 2001,2002,2003 I found Lady Bee, The Artery, and Black Rock Arts to be nothing but supportive and helpful. No one ever stood in the way of any art I have produced.
Art by committee? Inexperienced curators that dont know jack about what they are doing? Stupid ego driven drivel. Lady Bee has proven herself, curating art from all over the planet. Get real people. MAKE BETTER ART. You dont need BMORG's approval, just do it. If your imaginations and creative impulses are so dead that you have to blame BMORG then why go to Burning Man? I go for the art. Its all that matters to me in Black Rock City.
I missed the burn this year. But 2005 Im gonna kick ass. I dont need BMORG, or anyone elses permission. Thank god Black Rock City exists. It is what we all make it. If you arent making art, you ARE the problem.