PAGE TWO

[Simon of the Playa]

bullshit.

i can smell it through my screen...

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

yeah, no.

[some seeing eye]

I tried

[Lonesomebri]

Adding regionals to the summer festival circuit is on. Finally, finally the news will get out! Catering to the wealthy, the influential, the connected, the tech bros out on the playa will only get the Burn paradigm so far. The guy with Airbnb tried to get all the comforts of Boca Raton set up out on K, but that darn road from BRC airport out to their ac digs is a bit bumpy. I remember a family SUV stopping in front of my camp one sunny weekend. They we're hyping the Love Burn. Oh yeah! It was a Burn, it had djs and everything. They left the SUV running so the kids could enjoy the AC and watch a movie while they hit the porta's and chatted up the prols. Turns out they did the exact same for the Man Burn. They had some vehicle pass and drove out on the playa. The kids enjoyed the movies, even if they already seen em a dozen times. Who knows maybe they were writing a book. They said that the in-SUV movies were great to keep the kids occupied while waiting for ignition.

[The Rod]

And now back to our regularly scheduled obsession

[some seeing eye]

Adding regionals to the summer festival circuit is on. Finally, finally the news will get out! Catering to the wealthy, the influential, the connected, the tech bros out on the playa will only get the Burn paradigm so far. The guy with Airbnb tried to get all the comforts of Boca Raton set up out on K, but that darn road from BRC airport out to their ac digs is a bit bumpy.

Actually Chip, who used to be on the board, started Fest300. It was acquired by a festival and sports ticket agency, then subsequently acquired by the $5 B annual revenues Endeavor Group Holdings Inc. Chip is still selling festivals.

[The Rod]

ew

that shit should have no place here

[Elorrum]

wow, saying a plane crash isn’t a failure just because they didn’t stick the landing.

[FlyingMonkey]

It's been quiet here.

That's either good or its bad.

I'll try harder.

[Lonesomebri]

I think the proliferation of social media has made seeking of info here a rarity. Though the season is just beginning

7inm3a.jpg

[FlyingMonkey]

"Hi, I'm looking for a camp that is the antithesis of what burning man was founded on. And no, I don't care that I am the cancer that makes the event worse every year."

[Simon of the Playa]

"Hi, I'm looking for a camp that is the antithesis of what burning man was founded on. And no, I don't care that I am the cancer that makes the event worse every year."

[FlyingMonkey]

Still no Barf emoji. Mods????

[Sham]

Still no Barf emoji. Mods????

I will escalate this to the ePlaya IT Team.

[Elorrum]

Ah what sad shit. ANYBODY can make and bring art to burning man. No special permission or curating is needed. Grants for art through a gallery type approval network philanthropy lens is so vomit emoji to me. I think they are growing and encouraging salable commodity and celebrity.

[The Rod]

yeah but making art takes money.

burning art to burning man takes a fuck of a lot of money

[Elorrum]

yeah but making art takes money.

burning art to burning man takes a fuck of a lot of money

No I don’t think it necessarily requires this, unless art has to be expensive on its own, or huge. This foundation is establishing a global burning man art brand with high expectations. Not democratic or inviting to open participation at the scale expected.

[The Rod]

Show us your art that didn’t cost you anything to make or bring to burning man then.

[Elorrum]

Show us your art that didn’t cost you anything to make or bring to burning man then.

I certainly could show you things which didn’t cost a lot of money. That I could personally afford. That I feel were artful attempts. I tried to make something every year I went to decorate my camp. I think everybody should try to think of something once in their life that they can afford to make and pay for, that gives them pleasure, inspires a new skill, and that they can share. I am making things from copper, found objects, currently. I worked on a Peter Hudson zoetrope, and an art car, both of which I gave both time and money to. Sorry the photo feature here isn’t working for me.
I gave to the boner pillar too. Some of my favorite art at burning man didn’t scream expense, or great difficulty.

“Possibly the most revolutionary idea at the core of Larry’s artistic legacy was the decoupling of value from the finished piece of art as a material thing, and the elevation of the shared experience of making and then publicly destroying the piece as the work of art itself.“ I don’t think he proposed spending shit tons of money, or don’t bother. Eventually it will be just spectators and well funded giant expensive things…

The finish line cost about $10, and it was a lot of good yelling cheering interactive fun… art? Nah, but it was something I thought of and made. There’s a picture in this old thread. https://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic ... 42#p733742

You so contrary

[FIGJAM]

I thought "The Finish Line" was a fantastic idea.

One of my favorites.

[ygmir]

I thought "The Finish Line" was a fantastic idea.

One of my favorites.

I'll second this^^ FJ.
the Finish Line was one of my all time favorites. Brilliant in it's simplicity, super fun and interactive, people would instantly smile and some interact, as soon as you'd unroll it, Elorrum.
Well done.

[Simon of the Playa]

thirded...


big art does not have to be big expensive.


just well thought out and executed.


most wonderful job, Elorrum.

[some seeing eye]

4thd

A participatory art project >>> a spectator art piece

The participatory ones are less likely to be commodified in a coffee table book.

[The Rod]

I went to a "burn" without much, if any, "big art" once, in 2021. It was a big rave on the black rock playa. It was fun, but Burning Man it definitely was not. Is it the art that makes the Burn or the other way around?

Is it the participation? In the form of free participation that costs next to nothing (short of tickets, transportation and desert survival resources) to bring to the playa, or is it the participation that costs money to source, build and bring?

One of the aspects of burning man and burning man culture that I think most people can agree to appreciate is how it breaks down the barriers between art, artists and the viewer. At burning man everyone is an artist, even someone who brought a roll of construction barrier and stretched it across a road. At burning man everyone is encouraged to become a participant instead of a spectator.

You say you donated to the Bonerpillar, please forgive my lack of memory regarding your donation/grant/participation, The Bonerpillar greatly appreciates every contribution it got. It was a project of "great expense and great difficulty". You want to take a guess as to why The Bonerpillar has not returned to Black Rock City since 2016? hint: the answer starts with an 'm' and rhymes with 'honey'

I'm not arguing with the point that art doesn't have to cost money to be considered art. I'll stand corrected in regards to my claim that making art takes money. It doesn't always take money, but often times it does. And lets not kid ourselves into believing that burning man is anything other than a sport of privilege...

But I will stand by my point, bringing "big art" to burning man does *usually* take money. And time. And under capitalism, time = money. So by default, bringing large scale art to burning man is often off limits to artists without large scale budgets or the connections to fund their large scale dreams. People can criticize "big art" as encouraging spectating rather than participating, but the argument that spectating and engaging on an emotional level with art is by definition an act of participation can also be made. Some examples of large scale art with participation (beyond mere emotional observation) built in: the Zeotropes, Alien Siege Machine, Trojan Horse, the car skewer stack thing until it got cordoned off etc

If someone is inspired to build and make a piece of huge imaginative art at burning man and they apply for a grant in order to do so, that is automatically relegated to "creating salable commodity and celebrity?"

For me, one of the best things to come from my years at burning man was realizing that the only thing separating me from the people building/doing crazy shit was the fact that I wasn't the one doing it and If i wanted to be, I just had to do it. That empowerment and subsequent trajectory altering combination of developing skills and cultivating resources to build a big stupid art project, changed my life for the better, and I'd bet good money that I'm not the only one who got inspired to do big things after seeing big things at burning man.

The argument that big art encourages spectating and spectating is bad for the event carries some validity, but to categorically dismiss efforts at supporting big art as vomit inducing just because the argument otherwise can be reduced to "spend shit tons of money or don't bother" misses several marks of what makes burning man so special.

And I'm the contrary one? Looking at art and culture through a lens of nuance rather than absolutism Isn't contrary..



But on the bright side, we got Simon to talk about burning man again for the first time since Trump won the election so thats got to count for something.

[The Rod]

Also worth mentioning that Peter Hudson has been the recipient of BMORG grants, fundraising campaigns in the range of tens of thousands of dollars, his zeotropes have been featured in Rolling Stone Magazine and installed at many commercial festivals (paid gigs I am sure) and exhibitions around the world.

The very definition of celebrity and salable commodity you are railing against. How do you reconcile your own involvement in and support of such commodified big art with your position against such things?

[Elorrum]

I don’t need to reconcile shit for your argumentative flex. I went along as things developed over time, it wasn’t a planned dissonance. You have beaten out of me any desire to clarify my opinion for you. You win.

[ygmir]

I like cheese

[some seeing eye]

Maybe I need to make a new thread or an essay. Participatory open source art has been a reaction by artists against commodified collectability. Non-collectable individual burner art would be that with the BMORG as the "artist."

[Lonesomebri]

Bigger isn't better, no matter intentions. Trying to be the loudest on the block is a hollow win. You all made it another festival, with a very high cost for "participation".