In the comments on our recent piece about Burning Man being featured in Town and Country, Burner KP mentioned that the party also made it into Delta Sky magazine. Sure enough:

This video is an interesting look at Burning Man and the evolution of consciousness. Author Darrin Drda is a practitioner of Engaged Buddhism who has worked with the Dalai Lama, here is the blurb from his latest book:

As global temperatures rise and natural systems decline, humanity is being forced to confront the darkening shadow of material progress and mechanistic thinking. Meanwhile we can see the dawn of a more enlightened worldview that honors the interdependence of all forms of life and all aspects of reality. Between complete breakdown and universal breakthrough lies the Middle Way of The Four Global Truths

Perhaps some of you going to Symbiosis can let the Paiute people know that we Burners are part of Gaia‘s sacred evolution too.

[Updated 5/16/12 9pm - Oli from Zoo camp has spoken in their defense, analysis at the end]

Our recent post “Look daaahling, a Sparkle Pony” has been very popular, and seems to have stirred up a response from the BMOrg. And a good response at that – kudos to Evil Pippi, we support her sentiments and are glad to get some back story on the matter. Let’s be clear, Burners.Me’s position is:

Art Cars , Artists, and Art Projects should be able to do anything they want to raise the money to get them to Burning Man.

But that doesn’t mean, kill people, hurt animals, destroy Burning Man. Anything is anything within reason, and with respect to our values and our community.

In the case of the Town and Country alleged “birthday”, it doesn’t seem like the breach of the Decommodification principle, could be justified by the ends. It didn’t lead to any support for the arts, it was just blatant cashing in and over-the-top gentrificaition. And it left a trace. In other words, total commodification. And lack of respect for our culture.

It seems that the whole affair was a publicity stunt staged by Krug, and Town and Country were some of the hacks brought in for the event.

Krug, a centuries-old luxury champagne house, and its publicity machine, staged and hosted an elaborate dinner party at the trash fence on Friday night of the 2011 event. Pre-event, Krug’s PR agency pitched members of the media to photograph and report on the staged dinner for publications such as Town & Country and W Magazine. They invited society bloggers to the “exclusive” champagne dinner with the expectation of getting even more coverage, and pro photogs to shoot it. And it worked.

No harm done, right? Well, not only did they violate “Decommodification”, one of the Sacred Ten Principles; they also violated “Leave No Trace”, which really is the golden rule. Not only from BMOrg but also on the permit.

My friends and I came across the scene of the dinner on our art car, The Slug, en route to explore the deep playa late on Friday night. We slowed down to check out the remains of what appeared to have been a fantastically fancy party staged on a long constructed dinner table, lit by large hurricane lanterns. The stained tables had empty water bottles and other party residue strewn about.  And it was right along the trash fence. What a great place for such a dinner, we marveled. But was anyone going to clean it all up? Not a soul was around.  Krug just took their commodified photos and left the mess for us. 

apparently the Slug can be seen in the background

Now just, so you know, the Slug isn’t just any old art car. In fact, it’s

the skankiest, nastiest, Mad Max-ing-est art car out here. It started life in the mid-60s as some kind of truck, and now it’s smelly and dusty and LOUD. And unbelieveably cool. It’s pretty much the only car I would want to be seen on, and that’s really saying something.

Of course, being Burning Man, there’s always another opinion

If you don’t know it, The Slug is the least “artful” “Art Car” on the Playa. It’s just an old truck with an upper deck and a really loud sound system, but it’s been kicking around for a long time and it’s TEN TONS OF FUN!!! 

Anyway, the Slug is not at fault here. They’re just pointing out the Principles Violations. Back to the miscreants, the Naughty owners of Krug. We can’t just blame Krug, this seems like the acts of a minion not an owner. Although Carl’s title is “International Brand Ambassador”. Quite the diplomatic mistake, Mr Ambassador. NYC restaurant the Fat Radish was at fault too…

Carl Heline, Krug

Seizing the opportunity to entertain the creative spirits and bon vivants that had descended upon Black Rock Desert for Burning Man, the annual art event and temporary community based on self-expression, Carl Heline from Krug and his friends Phil Winser and Ben Towill from The Fat Radish embarked on an ambitious three-day build out for their dinner party in the desert.

In addition to catering breakfast and dinner for the Zoo Camp (120 people spread across 30+ RVs), we built a dinner table for the 120 Zoo Camp guests and hosted a seated three-course meal (accompanied by Krug Grande Cuvee) out on the playa. We began the build on Wednesday the 31st and completed it just hours before the first course went down the following day, with string lights, lanterns, and a walkway leading guests to the long table. Our head catering chef, Ana Morris, spent all day prepping the dinner back at the campsite, located about a mile away from the dinner site. Just before the dinner, our team drove our refrigeration van out toward the dinner and plated all the dishes from a makeshift kitchen space we created just next to the table.

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Krug might be a good champagne, but they shouldn’t have done this. Boycott Fat Radish! Boycott LVMH! We need a “Camp Town And Cuntry”, along the lines of McSatan…

[Update 8:54pm PST: Burner Oli from Zoo Camp made this statement in their defense:

Hi everyone, my name is Oli. I am the creator of the Zoo camp.

I have been to BRC for the past four years. On my first year I was still living in France and heard about BM from friends in the US. That was 2007. At the time nobody in Europe knew about BM. On 2008 I finally hit the playa with 3 friends, knowing nothing about it. We discovered the playa, its amazing people and its values… a life changing experience.

On my second year we decided to create a camp and share this experience with other Europeans who didn’t have a clue about BM. On that second year the camp had 75 members and 70 of them were virgins on the playa. Burners were saying we were crazy to bring so many virgins but everything happened perfectly… playa’s magic!

On the third year the camp had 110 people, 60 virgins amongst them, and last year 130 people with at least 50 virgins. I mention this because I want to outline our passion for BM’s values and our passion to share these values with new people. Every year we have tried to bring more to the playa, more creativity, to give more time and energy.

Now please allow me to clarify the incident that you are talking about as I think it is worth explaining. You have shared what you saw and felt, please let me share with you what really happened.

Ben and Phil, two 27 years old amazing British guys who created a restaurant in New York (The Fat Raddish as you mentioned it), are our friends. They proposed to take care of the food of the camp, budget which has been divided within the camp members, as many other camps do. Everyday they prepared the food of our camp and also organized the dinner on Thursday night for my birthday. My birthday dinner on the Thursday night has been always been a tradition of our camp.

Carl, who is also a friend for many years, proposed to bring champagne to celebrate my birthday. The champagne he brought was shared at the beginning of the dinner with everyone who was there. The dinner lasted all night and over 700 people joined what was a great night.

Unfortunately it happened that Carl decided to publicize the fact of having bringing his Krug to the desert. When Carl offered to bring the champagne he clearly stated it would not be with any promotional intent. This has been done without Zoo’s approval. Had we known it was going to be used that way we would have refused it BIG TIME!!!

And yes, I personally saw photographers who were friends of Carl and who were taking pictures all night. I never imagined pictures would be used for press. In fact it was only after BM, once we saw the article in the press, that we learned they were used in a commercial effort.

In regards to the location, we were granted a permit for the construction of this incredible table at this location. Everything was cleaned up after the dinner and the rest was finished in the morning light. The only thing not removed immediately was the dinner table.

The table was incredible, it was built by Phil who is a fantastic architect. On Friday afternoon, when we came to dismount it, it was being used by dozens of burners who were using it to have lunch and dinner so we left it there until the end of BM. Over four days hundreds of people used this beautiful table. Phil and Ben even received a medal from the BM organization for its construction.

Now, how can you say that our Art cars were Krug art cars? Our Art Cars had nothing to do with Krug… nothing at all! They were built by the members of our camp, amongst them many burners who participated in the construction of the Waffle. That’s why it had the look with the wooden sticks that many people on the playa recognized.

I am deeply sorry for this incident. What was supposed to be my birthday dinner gathering friends on the playa has ended up being used outside of BM for commercial purposes. This was completely unknown to me and to the Zoo and the concept of it is against our will. We are sorry and can only regret.

However, I do not think the Zoo camp should be blamed as much. For 4 years the Zoo has integrated hundreds of virgins, coming mainly from Europe and the 4 corners of the world trying its best to promote the values of Burning Man.

Our camp is deeply in love with Black Rock and respect its values. To condemn hundreds of people who have participated in this camp because one person has crossed the borders seems very unfortunate.

I am the creator of the camp. Blame me if you must, condemn me if you must, ban me if you must. I take full responsibility. But please, do not deprive the rest of our members. During the last 4 years they have brought happiness and color to BM and it would not do justice to put on them the blame created by the act of one person.

We understand your concern, we agree and deeply regret that a border has been crossed. We have been living with it since last year and I tell you it has been a heavy burden on our shoulders.

We have always striven to do our best for burning Man, but sorry to have fucked up on that one.

PS: After four years and a lot of sweat for BM… I didn’t get tickets at the lottery this year…. maybe justice has already been done!]

I have to say, I feel for Oli. And it’s not just me – dearly departed Action Girl thinks so too:

It is not fair to say that the entire camp nor the art car’s organizer’s were necessarily implicit in the connection with Krug. Don’t really have that information. It could even be possible, I suppose, that few in the camp outside of the Krug representative & hired guns knew much about the commercial connection or thought the “birthday party” was anything but a birthday party.

Did they really SIN? When we see all the things that happen around us with war, crime, politicians – in the scheme of things, is this really the worst thing that’s ever happened at Burning Man? Can we blame everyone at Zoo Camp? Isn’t Burning Man about love, a world without hating and blaming? Sure, it’s clear someone hooked up PR and sponsorship for this party. And it wasn’t BMOrg. But it seems like they did get permits and approvals. And no-one’s saying money changed hands on the Playa. It was a way to fund a party, it seems like a great dinner, wish we were there.

That doesn’t excuse pollution, though. I don’t care if you’re on the streets of Manhattan or you’re a darktard speed bump on the Esplanade. Pollution is the biggest problem in the world. Burning Man should be a way to teach everyone to live in harmony with Nature, no matter how harsh. Burner Oli doesn’t really address the LNT…just saying “we cleaned up”. But, I’m not sure the Slug would lie. Then again, I’ve never heard a truthful word from a slug before. Have you?

So what you gonna do, Burners? Hate? Judge? Other negative emotions? Or forgive, love, include…and learn? 

[...more coverage over at Laughing Squid]

I’ve been a fan of Parkour from the first time I saw it, and was particularly fascinated to learn about how it’s not just jumping off shit, it’s making the world a better place.

Some Parkour-capable Burners are trying to raise funds to make a movie about their exploits. It’s great to see Parkour at Burning Man, there’s tons of cool stuff to jump off, and the Playa is probably a bit easier to land on than concrete.

Ephemerisle is a Burning Man inspired event on the Sacramento River, this year from June 6-10. A number of floating platforms are constructed, with art attached. Need to cool off, or take a leak? Just jump in the river.

We construct a floating city on the Sacramento River Delta and live on it for four days. You could think of it as Burning Man on water, but there’s a lot more to it. Burning Man is now a large, polished, centrally organized, and carefully controlled event. Ephemerisle has elements of Burning Man in the early 1990s: a new adventure into an alien environment, with discoveries, adventures, and mishaps along the way. There are no tickets, no central organizers, no rules, and no Rangers to keep you safe. It’s radical self-reliance. New to life on the water? So are we! We’re figuring it out as we go.

Since there’s no central organizer, the event only happens if people contribute. Here are some things you can do: bring art, give talks, build your own boats and platforms, make music, help build this wiki, go wakeboarding and enjoy being a pioneer.

Ephemerisle 2009, photo by Dav

Originally the event was organized by the Seasteading Institute (http://seasteading.org/) to promote the cultural concept of seasteading – the construction of autonomous floating nation-states – in a hands-on and accessible way. TSI bravely did this event with no insurance the first year (2009).

In the second year, TSI abandoned the event about a month before it was to begin because the insurance costs turned out to be around $300/person. As a community we decided to show up anyway and create an unofficial self-organized event. Despite the lack of central organization, it still worked quite well, and around 120 people showed up and had a great time.

For 2011, there were no central organizer, but things came together great for another Not-Ephemerisle Event.

After the 2011 event, TSI officially abandoned the Ephemerisle name and handed it over to the community.

Wired Magazine covered the event in 2010:

When participants weren’t trading visions of their utopian futures, they floated around and enjoyed art and music. Pirate accordionist Jason Webley and trapeze artist Miriam Telles regaled spectators. Interactive art bobbed beside the boats. And a heady gathering called “Memocracy Conference” gave festival-goers a chance to share radical ideas (or memes) about the future of biotech, telepresence, life extension, secessionism and robots.

[Updates 5/18/2012, 5/19/12 added further comments from Oli, Bob Stahl, and links to PR analysis, Bloomberg, Bummer Hummer, hate sites; 5/20/12 added Absolut video, directors comments that video is not Black Star beer commercial, ePlaya discussion]

[Update 5/22/12 - the controversy continues. Most recent discussion here]

There’s been quite a passionate response across the Burner Community to the Naughty Krug affair.

Here’s a breakdown of the meltdown, a great timeline analysis of Krug’s PR faux pas.

In general, it seems the thing that pisses everyone off the most, is that they Left A Trace – the caterers didn’t clean up immediately after the dinner party, they just abandoned the dinner after their Town and Country photo shoot. MOOPs be damned.

Sign the petition against Krug here (thanks Burner Moishe). So far 25 people have, out of a goal of 10,000. It’s not clear how much Krug those people bought in the last 10 years. A recent petition, against scalpers, after a few months has only obtained 326 signatures of the 10,000 sought.

Here’s a list of some of the other brands owned by LVMH, for those who feel this is offensive enough to warrant a boycott:

Moet, Veuve Cliquot, Mercier, Hennessy, Glenmorangie, Belvedere, Ardbeg, Domaine Chandon, Fendi, Donna Karan, Pucci, Givenchy, Kenzo, Berluti, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Loewe, Celine, Thomas Pink, Acqua di Parma, Christian Dior, Guerlain, Bulgari, TAG Heuer, Zenith, Hublot, Chaumet, Ruinart, Sephora, 10 Cane, DFS, Le Bon Marche.

No Krug signs visible on the Playa

Is Krug really to blame here? It doesn’t seem like Krug has been using Burning Man to promote their products, they just donated some champagne to a party and got a brief mention in a Town and Country story on a popular event. There is no Krug or Burning Man logo in sight, in the story or the photos. Google gets as much brand placement in the story as Krug. There’s no evidence (yet) that Krug did anything to promote their brand’s association with Burning Man, other than supplying 5 cases of champagne for Oli’s birthday party. There are no Burning Man themed Krug ads, no press releases or video commercials, no special temporary stores made by Burner artists. OK, when W magazine wrote about it, Krug put a link to their story on their Facebook page; it doesn’t seem like they did that for Town and Country, Silkstone, or any of the bloggers. It seems to me that the organizers who threw the party (Zoo Camp), and the caterers who failed to clean up (Fat Radish) are the ones who really fucked up here. Silkstone, parent company of Fat Radish, were the ones trying to promote their connection with Krug (now removed from their site, but cached here) – not the other way round. Town and Country shouldn’t have printed their story if Burning Man refused permission after their contact, but that’s nothing to do with Krug.

If Grey Goose donates a case of vodka to your camp, and your camp throws a birthday party in which people show up in cheesy head-dresses and leave MOOPs everywhere, is that Grey Goose’s fault? Maybe so, if the invites say “Grey Goose Exclusive Burning Man Dinner”…

Isn’t this video from Aboslut Vodka a much more blatant attempt by an alcohol brand to cash in on Burner culture? Krug certainly didn’t do anything like this, so why aren’t Burners upset with the largest alcoholic spirits brand in the world?

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Here’s some video of the Krug event as it took place – no Krug signs to be seen anywhere:

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Burner Marty has suggested a new addition to the Burner vocabulary:

krug (noun)

1: a person who defecates directly onto the playa
“Last night, I almost ran over some krug with my art car in deep playa. It REALLY upset me, because by the time I got the car turned around for a second pass, they were gone.”

2: a person who flagrantly and intentionally disregards the ethics of Leave No Trace.
“Our neighbors were such fucking krugs that they left behind an entire sofa covered in mayonnaise. At least, I think it was mayonnaise.”

Krug’s Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia pages have already been updated to reflect the affair:

In 2011, Krug, with the Silkstone events agency, shot a marketing campaign at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. Festival-goers were told they were attending a birthday party, but were filmed and photographed as part of this campaign. The Burning Man organization posted an exposé on their blog^[3], rebuking Krug for breaking many rules of the festival both in letter and spirit, including product placement, photography for commercial gain and leaving behind a mess. Members of the Burning Man community denounced the campaign and Krug in various social media.^[4].

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Burner Emkay came here to share with us this beer commercial (thanks for that!) If this is really a commercial, it’s as much for the iPhone as it is for Black Star Beer. [Update 5/20/12 6:42 pm the Director has contacted us to say emphatically that the video is NOT a Beer commercial, he made it for his friends:

It seems like the Burner Fundamentalist witch-hunt has accused an innocent victim. Next Fleetwood and El Monte RV will be in trouble for all the YouTube videos their brand is in! I'm leaving the link up because it's great]

I have to say it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen. It is definitely not in your face marketing, it seems to be compliant with Burner culture, it’s well made and the soundtrack is wicked. Made me want to try Black Star beer, a Montana microbrew. The video’s worth watching just for the shots of Root Society, it was filmed entirely on an iPhone 3Gs.

Burner Bob Stahl has an interesting insider take on things, throwing some blame back in the direction of the BMOrg who allowed this to happen and benefitted from all the publicity - more so than Krug. Were any of them invited to the dinner, we wonder?

I’ve worked DPW a few times. Frankly, this kerfuffle seems pretty minor compared to the hassles of dealing with certain funded artists and the trash their installations generate during the event and what they leave behind after the event. And pretty indicative of the long-standing miscommunications among the various departments, and of inconsistencies in enforcing the most basic requirements of the permit.

Seems apparent, or at least likely, that *somebody* with the org told these people it was okay to build their long table in the art space. Somebody with the DMV approved their branded party bus, somebody else blithely signed off on the media credentials of the writers and bloggers and photographers involved, somebody else looked the other way when they drove their catering truck out there, and somebody else didn’t follow up on the after-dinner mess.

Of course, I could be wrong that the org is just shamelessly trying to cover their asses and make this a *community* problem.

Halcyon has provided a “Decommodification Report” vlog to the official blog of Burning Man on the matter, in which he talks about giving out free coke and corporately sponsored ice cream:

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Some of the vitriol is showing the ugly side of the Burner community. It’s not all peace and love, there are some passionate haters. Someone’s even gone to the trouble to create a snarky “Hate Page” on Facebook. And then we have this video:

Take a chill pill, people. Remember it’s a party. The reason to go is entertainment, to have a good time. To forget about all the dramas of the Default World for a while. If you get a spiritual experience out of it, great – but does that justify hating and a lack of forgiveness? Most religions teach the opposite, to rise above those negative emotions. We’re all friends in Black Rock City. Spending large parts of the year upset, because of something that happens during a crazy week of fun, seems self-defeating to me. That is not the attitude that’s going to make the world a better place.

Burner Wolfy expressed his concerns about this very well, in the comments of the BMOrg blog:

As someone who saw the before and after of this party honoring the zoo camp founder I can honestly say that everyone – as always – had different levels of respect for BM. Such is life, tolerance for others and allowing people their own experience is part of life and part of BM. I commend The zoo founder for speaking out and saying sorry but not for blaming Carl from Krug, you accept the gift of a party and drinks then you accept the backlash of opinions of others, krug isn’t the first or last brand to donate or pay for their product to have presence that’s just how life goes – reading about people saying death to ad or marketing people or sue a magazine that wrote what seems to be a nice story about the art and luxe side of brining man is sad and judgmental. There are tons of people who have millions taking jets to BM and others who have no cash and Sleep on dirt. Just like real cities in real life BM had all types of people and ur doesn’t seeming anyone lied, they did a party and took photos a story ran in a magazine that affluent people read and if those people go to BM they will probably get upscale rv’s and segways and have chefs and eat and drink fancy foods and wines, what’s the crime in that?
Town & Country registered with BM and did a story about this dinner and the style and art and various components that they saw relevant for their readers just like the new York times wrote about the upscale rv’s that had been in display or the bar that had people read porn to get served and posted on their personal Facebook which promoted their local bar in the city they’re from.
Despite everything said or done there’s plenty of judgement here which isn’t why I love BM I thought we were creating a city that allows everyone to be free from the usual judgements of life outside this city,
If the crime is not cleaning up then make sure to clean up but I’ve seen a million things done wrong and that’s human nature we need to address that everyone respects the rules but also one another and calling out people for doing their burn their own way is wrong unless it’s hurting another. I’m sad by all of this as I thought burning man fellows were family and you don’t treat family this way

Oli, maybe not everyone in your camp knew, but how in the hell could someone with your background, with your experience, with your expertise in promotion/branding not see what was happening around you?

You are neck deep in the cross promotional world of PR companies and websites in NYC (likehttps://www.thecools.com/) and party clubs in France doing business/cross marketing events with Moet Hennessy http://www.institutbonheur.com/
http://thecools.tumblr.com/post/13205321097/yosuzi-sylvester-and-olivier-van-themsche-of-the

And someone could draw some pretty strong conclusions from the fact that Institut Bonheur promotes mostly Moet Hennessy spirits at its events, that Antoine Arnault (son’s of the owner of LVMH) owns a part of your businesses in the USA, that your business partners are Pierre Raygot (PR manager) and Elie Riachi (Artistic-DJ director) for the Zoo camp/Institut Bonheur.

Seems like this dinner was a way to thanks shareholders and business partners at
no cost for Olivier, Pierre and Elie. Then Moet Hennessy can use BM’s
trendy image to promote Krug as a trendy champagne (See Also: pre-sold article to W, referenced here http://eplaya.burningman.com/viewtopic.php?f=189&t=50492 but taken down, and the pre-sold article to Town & Country )

So Olivier, either you are not being honest, or maybe you don’t know your promotional business as well as one might expect.

Friends, the playa is like the subway: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Go to Media Mecca at Center Camp, or tell a Ranger. The Media Team at Burning Man has kick-ass PR pros and lawyers on site and available around the clock to respond to this sort of thing. It’s attempted often, VERY few slip through like this one. Don’t let it happen again.

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Temptres said:

I went by your table last year on Friday night at about 2am and it was completely abandoned and trashed. It was covered in half eaten food, plates, bottles and nitrous canisters. Yes, I am going to call you out publicly for your table being covered in hippy crack canisters. You left that table a mess for hours in the empty playa. Everyone knows how windy the playa gets… that moop could have gotten everywhere in the time you left it alone. I have never seen one spot of burning man so disgusting before… not even the sound camps. No excuse. To blatantly lie about cleaning up is also unforgivable. Your camp disgusts me. Learn how to be a burn and don’t leave your trash every where. Leave No trace remember!

This video features an epic concours d’elegance of Mutant Vehicles of all shapes and sizes from last year’s Burn. Cruisy music too, it’s growing on me…

A new documentary comes out this month about the Trojan Horse, one of the star attractions of 2011′s Rites of Passage.

Black Rock Horse, directed by Todd Darling. The film documents the misadventures of installation artists Alaya Boisvert and Douglas Bevans as they attempt to stage the burning of a Trojan Horse replica at the 2011 Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada.

The wooden horse is 52 feet high and 44 feet long, and it weighs more than 26 tons. As the film opens, Darling exposes the beast’s innards. Inside is a sort of dance party “fuelled by absinthe.” It looks remarkably spacious, but that is likely a trick of Darling’s cinematography. Outlined with neon lights and complete with a bar inside, the installation is aesthetically interesting. In the daylight, the edifice draws a cast of Trojan soldiers and a variety of beautiful young women dressed as Trojan princesses or goddesses. The festival called for volunteer “slaves” to drag the horse across several hundred metres with two-inch thick, fifty-foot ropes to its final destination, where it would be burned to the ground.

The goal of the Trojan Horse was to create the largest piece of interactive performance art ever in Black Rock City. The budget was in the tens, not hundreds of thousands. They had 260 volunteers for their casting call for soldiers, slaves, and other Trojan parts. And sparks shot out its butt!

The Trojan Horse project was made all the more amazing by the artist’s peculiar handicap, which I wasn’t aware of until I saw this video. I think this is what happens if you go straight from the Playa to Jack in the Box. I wonder if this character will be in the documentary a lot?

You can buy the DVD here for $20.

This video took me home. Thanks KJ and Stefan Spins, I thought this was better than the Dr Seuss one. Almost makes me want to go out and spend $1050 for a ticket…

(some other Evil Pippi)

Thanks to Evil Pippi, who just spared some time out of her busy day to give Burners.Me an interview. We gleaned some new information on the facts behind the Naughty Krug affair:

What do you think about Punishment or Banishment as response to this?

I’m  a Burner from the Cacophony Society Days, and a CS response to this would be to just prank the hell out of you until you got it. Banishment doesn’t work, it becomes a game of “whack-a-mole”, because they just show up at other camps. Burning Man has gone to that extent before, in ’97 or ’98 with the Capitalist Pigs.

I agree with your comments about some of the vitriol, it has hit a nerve in the Burner community, as you would expect, some of the responses are just over the top. What Burners want to see is a modern-day tar and feathering, and I think what’s happening in the social media is exactly that.

My concern is I don’t want to see advertising agencies taking advantage of this, and trying to pull all kinds of PR stunts this year. 

How long was the mess there for, and did they clean it up themselves?

I saw it late on Friday night, maybe about 4am. There were still candles burning, and some food still visible. They served the dinner party with fine china and crystal glasses, all that had been cleaned up by the caterers. No empty Krug bottles were visible anywhere, but I did see some empty Perrier bottles. [Note: Perrier is owned by Nestlé. Krug is part of Louis Vuitton Möet Hennessy (LVMH). However the Vice President at LVMH for Research and Development is named Eric Perrier]

Was this authorized by Burning Man?

No, definitely not. There is no such thing as a medal from Burning Man, that must have been something created by one of the other camps. Action Girl checked the authorized art installations, and theirs was not one of them. There is no placement record with DPW. Also, their art car was only registered by the DMV for night use, and it was clearly used during the day. People didn’t like the way it looked, the truck was too visible, so they weren’t allowed to use it in day time. Also they got a lot of noise complaints for their sound system. Maid Marian ran into Olivier at South By Southwest and called him out on the noise problems, he was very dismissive.

The bombshell was not dropped publicly until now, due to everyone’s preoccupation with the ticket crisis. With Action Girl leaving, I called her up and asked “what about this” and they agreed to let me post, but I was speaking from my own experience, it was not an official message from Burning Man.

Evil Pippi also provided us with some off-the-record commentary which we will not divulge. However Burners.Me will continue to keep bringing you this story, and our opinions about it, as it develops.

Burning Man’s founder Larry Harvey speaks to the Commonwealth Club in 2011. This is a fascinating and thought-provoking interview. The interviewer knows how to offer the tiniest possible amount of prompting, to elicit great responses from Larry. The audience seem spellbound, and Larry’s on fire compared to his form in Washington.

Sure, at times this blog has been critical of the BMOrg. Hell, we have a whole category dedicated to snarky posts: our Complaints Department. This is not just complaints for their own sake, or to stir up Web traffic – we feel that improvement is unlikely to happen without continually re-testing the underlying assumptions. AKA “a squeaky wheel gets a greasing”.

Let it be said on record that we consider the founders of this event to be amazing people, who have contributed an enormous amount to the world, and deserve the  gratitude of all Burners. We extend that to all the founders, including all the Burners who made the art and made the experiences and created the party. Especially those who are not professional artists, but somehow this forum has encouraged them to express themselves artistically anyway. In a multi-disciplinary fashion, as Larry discusses here.

Watch this interview and you’ll realize that this is someone pretty special in the world.

Of course, giving BMOrg some props doesn’t mean that we have changed our position that Burning Man should embrace change, remix as times go on, and broaden the community, rather than “we innovated once, now let’s maintain the status quo forever and keep it small and exclusive for a hundred years”.

photo by SeraphimC

 

The guy is a sage, that’s for sure. And he speaks pretty humbly, all things considered.

[if] we’re gonna to moderate the appetite of the consumer society, which is going to destroy us, then we have to find satisfactions in life that don’t require high levels of consumption…and then there’s what Coco Chanel said: the best things in life are priceless, but the next best things cost a lot of money”

The interviewer hits him straight away with “yes, but…coffee and ice”. I would also say “yes but, RV service, tow trucks, charter flights, Temple Burn seating“. Not to mention camp dues. Larry’s response:

“The ice is obvious, it’s a public health issue, there’s no refrigeration, you need to preserve foodstuffs. [umm, potable water in the desert isn't a public health issue?]

“the coffee, we needed a civic plaza, we looked for an attractant”. [umm, free coffee, water and ice would be a great attractant.]

“We’re not doing it to make money, we lose money. We did it for the sake of public interaction and to create a civic environment that led to communal feelings”. [I call bullshit. Check out the lines at Center Camp, coffees are $5.25 and staff are volunteers. The official BMOrg position is that they feed their crew with the coffee profits and donate the ice profits to local villages]

…We sell it, radical self reliance is one of the values.”

(yes but, we’ve used this image a few times!)

…WTF – Larry you’re losing me with this argument. If you care about the safety and well-being of the community, then meet the lowest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You should sell water, food, lights, condoms, blankets, sunblock, and yurts. Oh, and toilet paper and hand sanitizer – anyone ever been in a Portapotty on Sunday, when everything has gone?

Meet the most basic needs of the community. Provide somewhere that people can go to in the case of emergency, or that the darktards can visit without feeling foolish. Maybe in the Burner Strike dungeon. The problem with line drawing is it’s a slippery slope – who draws the lines, and if you’re excluded, what can you do to be included? If you draw the line, then turn a blind eye when your colleagues and friends cross it,  it will breed resentment in the people towards the hypocrisy of their leaders.

Does “radical self reliance” mean it’s fine to be a darktard, as long as you survive? Methinks, not. “Lift your game, dickhead!” would be the Burners.Me suggestion. We prefer radical inclusion, find a way to embrace what the diverse factions within the community want, instead of playing whack-a-mole chasing sinners against the cult. But if they’re acting in a less than optimal way, there should be some social conventions, perhaps even a camp or two, where we can give them a chance to learn and choose to remake themselves as a true Burner, cognizant of the consequences of their actions. They can be reformed as a Former Darktard, and spread the light to Virgins.

“What did Emerson say? A specious consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.“

Brilliant!

…”To the extent that Art has spiritual work, it contemplates the unknown. TV shows, sitcoms, ads, look for the unknown you won’t find it. Art is about what is unknown, what must emerge from us, and what must be found by us, and discovered. So art is a wonderful breeder of that, because often times people are doing things that in fact are on a frontier of some kind, no-one ever did this, they go well beyond any industry standard you can think of. There’s something about the culture we’ve originated that’s radically cross-disciplinary”.

Boom! Larry on fine form. He also has insightful things to say about the “one-upmanship” of the neighbors that Burning Man encourages, something acutely rife amongst wealthy egotistical tech nerds. In a healthy, positive way – as I wrote that last sentence, I was visualizing this amazing art car (I think from 2007′s The Green Man):

Towards the end of the interview, it all starts to go a bit fuzzy. Larry brings in a Citizen Kane self-reference. Is he saying there’s a Freudian reason for Burning Man – he did it all to get laid? That motivation for innovation seems to have worked pretty well for Mark Zuckerberg (anyone know if is he a Burner?)

…”My partners and I are thinking beyond our lifetimes, it is a bit of a legacy project…if you do that it makes you think differently about the present. What will make something that durable? What will keep it alive that long?… It doesn’t sound like hubris to imagine an entire century at all. And now we’re in a position of founding an institution that will house and generate culture and function as a community, and wondering how we can ensure that it won’t be perverted and it won’t be subject to internal divisions…it won’t perish”

Simpsons creators play tuba on the Playa

Great challenge. I mean it – a truly cutting edge, intellectual and sociological challenge. An historical challenge, even. So why not use the technology of the 21st Century that San Francisco  leads the world in - such as Social Media, crowdsourcing, big data, advanced mathematics, Creative Commons – to tap into the intellect of the 350,000 strong Burner community, which includes pretty much all the people who created those technologies? The Burner community includes people like Matt Groening and George Meyer, Elon Musk, Google, and David Chiu. You want to really leave a legacy? Make the phenomenal idea you had (or should I say, “inherited” from the Cacophony Society) your legacy: “the people make the party”. For sure, you created the context, you took the risks and managed the logistics and you got the authorities on side. You fought the legal battles and the Law Enforcement Officers, you lobbied the politicans and created innovative ticketing systems and doled out some Art Grants along the way. But don’t discount the contributions of tens, even hundreds of thousands of Burners over 25+ years. They had to do many of those things too. OK, we get that you made the party by picking the themes, creating the context, banking the money. Finding the insurance company to underwrite this – I’m sure no easy task.

So after all that, you’re going to make the legacy too. Fair enough – it’s your right, as founder and owner of “That Thing In The Desert” – but we encourage you to consider the bigger picture, the highest realization of your Self, a selfless legacy that truly Gives. The gift (to Burners, to Art, to humanity) that keeps on giving.

Maybe at this point I’m losing some of you who’ve managed to read this far. Well, from about 50:00 into this interview, Larry’s lost me. WTF, again. Is this the voice of a prophet, and my own ignorance prevents me from following along with his train of thought? Maybe I’ve just had one too many noisy art cars parked next to me while sleeping on the Playa. The raver’s curse…

This year will see the Third Burning Man Ultramarathon. Participants run 50km around a course. The race begins at 5am on Wednesday, August 29th. Last year there were about 60 participants, all in race bibs. The course was four loops around the Esplanade and deep playa then a final out-and-back that went along the Esplanade to 2:00 and C then back to the finish line.

Here’s a great report from last year’s event.

The second loop was interesting because there was daylight now and as you ran you would pass by all sorts of Burners who were heading home after a full night of partying out on the playa.  If Burning Man is the place where all the freaks go, we were running by the most hardcore that exist in the freak kingdom – and they were all staring at us like we were the weirdest people they had ever seen.  We were the freaks to the freaks.  And we kept running.  You had acid heads with beers in their system chasing after us trying to run alongside until their energies gave way.  A woman in only her underwear was shuffling along with her legs locked together towards the port-o-potties.  As we came up behind her I realized why she was shuffling – she had shat herself.  Yes, this clearly was the hour when the animals were still wandering free out of their cages.  The junkies were scouring the land.  The werewolves were looming about.  A lost soul came up on us, suspiciously asking if we were undercover cops.  We assured him that we were.  People stopped what they were doing to check us out.  There was a chorus of comments:

“You guys are crazy!”

After yesterday’s rare transit of Venus, we thought it would be good to highlight the work of an artist who supports the divine goddess energy. Bay Area sculptor Marco Cochrane created the amazing Bliss Dance to highlight feminine power:

“What I see missing in the world is an appreciation and respect for feminine energy and power that results when women are free and safe. Bliss is intended to focus attention on this healing power and as 60’s as this sounds….make the world a better place.”

Bliss Dance, 40 ft high, was made by the self-taught artist without the aid of  computers:

Bliss Dance is an original 40-foot sculpture by artist Marco Cochrane. Without the aide of computers, the artist constructed Bliss out of steel rod and tubing utilizing two (2) layers of geodesic triangles, covered by a skin of stainless steel mesh and lit from both inside and outside by 1,000 LED lights controllable by a customized I-Pad application, with spectacular results. Held together by 55,000 welds and supported by six (6), 2.5-inch solid steel rods in the weight bearing ankle. Weighing in at 7000 pounds , Bliss was a manifestation of the artist’s goal to marry the masculine feel of triangles, trusses and steel with the feminine form and spirit.

Although Bliss Dance was inspired by (and created for) Burning Man, it is available for all the world to enjoy at Treasure Island.

Marco’s follow up piece is called Truth and Beauty, using the same model. The statue will be more than 60 foot high. Here’s an interview with Marco about both pieces:

Truth and Beauty was half-finished for 2011′s Rites of Passage, and the torso made an appearance on the Playa.

Burner culture is certainly becoming bigger, better, badder, and broader. Burner Fred Turner, a cultural and literary historian and software engineer, gives us a lecture on what the Burning Man festival means in the tech world. How the lobby at Google had photos of people in loincloths twirling fire.

The culture of Burning Man constitutes a cultural infrastructure for a new way of manufacturing. The notion that culture should be infrastruture is a little bit new

…Burning Man literally serves as a factory space for new products for Google

If you are interested in the aspect of Burning Man which is an idea factory for “commons based peer production” and “high tech art”, you will enjoy this.

I thought it was telling that he starts with the history of the military background behind the counter-cultural movement. If you’re interested to understand more about this, this 22-part series about Laurel Canyon’s role in the history of rock and roll is fascinating and informative. Until I read it, I had no idea that so many major 60′s figures had military backgrounds – like Jimi Hendrix and James Morrison. The thesis and the antithesis. Google provides internal training seminars for its staff on Burning Man, and in 1999 the entire company shut down so that they could go to Burning Man.

Personally, I suspect this talk is more of a recruiting pitch for Google, than a valuable contribution to academic discourse. However it does have relevance to the conversation about commercialization at Burning Man. BMOrg are definitely not as well operated and successful as Google, so when the lecturer tries to draw those comparisons, I raise an eyebrow. Like “you can bring your dog” is a “powerful manufacturing mode”. Dude, it’s Silicon Valley. Hipsters can bring their dog everywhere.

Here is some interesting “eye in the sky” footage from 2011′s Rites of Passage Burn, filmed by San Francisco web and video design agency ZMInteractive using a remote controlled quadricopter. It’s a perspective of Black Rock City that most of us have never seen before – as well as a great way to find the  nearest Honey Wagon.

Aerial shots of the Temple, Man and the Trojan Horse:

The 65-foot long superyacht Christina:

Hovering over the Distrikt day party (looks like pretty early in the day):

Here’s a video from 2011, well made by last year’s Virgins MotionPicturesIbiza on an iPhone, to get you in the mood. You will spot many of the 43 flavors of Burners here.

The geeks from the USB Bus could use some pointers from the cameraman here, forget the dude at 5:50 and go for the girl at 5:52.

Who wants to go home? Not even a month now, are you excited yet?

Thanks to French Burner Heliprod for shooting this great drone view of Burning Man 2011

Gawker wrote this article after last year’s Burn – although it seems to mostly quote Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. It’s not plagiarism if there’s attribution! Personally, I’ve seen how some rich people do Burning Man, and this article barely scratches the surface. Let’s hope things stay that way…

How Rich People Do Burning Man

Unless you’re wealthy, you’ve probably been spending Burning Man Week moping about how you couldn’t afford tickets to America’s favorite festival of radical self-expression this year. But make no mistake: Those rich people touring the playa on their Mad Max cruisers are suffering, too.

As the Wall Street Journal tells us, many of this year’s Burners With Money to Burn are doing all they can to avoid the heat, food shortages, and other potential inconveniences of Black Rock City life by spending shitloads of money to recreate the comforts of home. Reps from the RV rental company Classic Adventures RV, for example, tell the WSJ that Vanity Fair New Establishmentarian and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk hired them to set up “an elaborate compound consisting of eight recreational vehicles and trailers stocked with food, linens, groceries and other essentials for himself and his friends and family.” That’s not all:

[Classic Adventures] charges $5,500 to $10,000 per RV for its Camp Classic Concierge packages like Mr. Musk’s. At Mr. Musk’s RV enclave, the help empties septic tanks, brings water and makes sure the vehicles’ electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning, televisions, DVD players and other systems are ship shape. The staff also stocked the campers with Diet Coke, Gatorade and Cruzan rum.

But isn’t part of the point of Burning Man to “rough it,” radically? Perhaps in the olden days this was true. But rich people bring to the festival their own values and beliefs:

• Sleeping in a tent sucks
• Being really hot sucks
• Making your own art is hard, especially when you have no artistic skills or actual creativity whatsoever

About that last item: The WSJ tells us about one San Francisco real estate mogul who either didn’t feel like or lacked the capacity to construct their own sculpture, and therefore they hired a “team of artists and metalworkers” to built one on their behalf. The mogul wasn’t available for comment, but a chef who cooks up gourmet meals for Burners with refined tastes explains: “People have less and less time to be radically self-reliant.”

Despite their relatively resplendent accommodations, upper-crust Burners can’t shield themselves from every hardship:

Adam Stephenson, a 40-year-old marketing director for Symantec Corp., says that even though he is paying a premium for RV service, he put a lot of work into building a shade tent and buying costumes and supplies. And the RV isn’t the Ritz. “It’s not super easy,” he says. “The air conditioner is not on all the time.”

And when the A/C does break, the rich people sweat just like the poor people sweat. The sun treats everyone the same. This is one of the lessons you learn out there on the desert, when you’re not mastering leadership and contemplating how creativity can bourguignon-beef up your bottom line.

via Black rock city News, Video and Gossip – Gawker.

I remember what a shock to the Burner Eco-System it was when Town and Country magazine did a piece on Burning Man’s Krug-swilling society set. My how time flies!

Now, not even a mere year later, Burning Man is declared dead by no less a source of chicness than Modern Luxury – famous for such titles as “San Francisco”, “Miami”, and “Dallas”. What’s next – a turnkey Burning Man theme camp of your very own, in Robb Report’s annual “unique gifts” guide?

The journalist Adam Fisher attended 4th of Juplaya this year – which I guess can no longer be considered a secret, if it’s in Modern Luxury.

Juplaya, I’ve been told for years, is an insiders-only affair, a Burn for true burners, a scene only accessible to the manifestly hardcore.

     “When I go to festivals, I want to feel like I can do drugs and fuck out in the open,” said Hot Sauce, a pixieish thirtysomething blonde whom I met on the playa. “And I can do that at Juplaya.” Her friend Menkini, 33, demurred, but only slightly: “I just want to drive fast and blow shit up.” (The two activities haven’t been allowed at Burning Man proper for years.)

     Hot Sauce and Menkini’s idealized fever dream of the countercultural festival—rife with public sex and bounteous pills and explosions strafing the open desert—will be familiar to anyone who has been to Burning Man (and a lot of those who haven’t). The jaded-burner refrain is as predictable as it is constant: You should have been here a few years ago when it was really wild.

These two sound like a couple of chicks I’d like to have at my party!

The author touches on a current hot button in the Burner community, people being paid to work in camps:

Though it’s hard to notice on your first—or even your tenth—visit, the tracks of the capital-E establishment are now everywhere at Burning Man. You can see it at the improvised landing strip/airport set up every year for the jet-in crowd. You can see it in the art, such as the 40-foot-tall sculpture Bliss Dance, which was the star of Burning Man 2010 and has an estimated value of $1.5 million. You can see it in the camps: A decade ago the festival was plastered with prank flyers announcing that Hilton was building a burnable full-service hotel on the playa. Today there is a hotel, and it’s no joke: “Ashram Galactica” comes complete with a concierge and rooms that are doled out each night to lucky plebes. None of this ostentation would pose a problem if it didn’t introduce the one thing that is supposed to be strictly verboten at Burning Man: services—and with them the inevitable servant class to provide them.

 The author is almost embarrassed to admit that he enjoyed waitresses taking his drink order (like any of us can enjoy in any bar or restaurant in the world), or sleeping on clean sheets (again, really not such an in your face example of the 1%).

photo by Peter Ruprecht

I’ve even found myself at camps where a waitress came to take my order, and where the community art-building project was outsourced to hired artists. I’ve experienced the festival both ways: as a commoner, sleeping in a pup tent and surviving on gorp and jerky, and as a guest of the new burner elite. And though there’s nothing like arriving by Cessna and sleeping under clean, freshly changed sheets, many fear the effects of too much civilization on an event designed to be anti-all-that.

Cruising the barren wasteland, looking for a good time, the distant thump of Ghost Bass from the Fish Tank drew the author back to the party girls.

Finally, after rolling down the window to catch the warm desert breezes, I thought I heard something: It was just a thump carried on a gust of wind, but unquestionably a techno beat. “Ghost bass,” my buddy proclaimed. We chased after it, and this time we hit pay dirt. The bass emanated from a giant fish—really an art car called Fish Tank, a piece of rolling sculpture in the shape of a toothy anglerfish, complete with tank treads, a wraparound couch, blinking lights, a booming sound system, and a rotating disco ball. Jumping out of our SUV, we joined the party. The crowd was all we were hoping for: attractive, scantily clad, and clearly enjoying themselves. Whether their high was natural or chemical I could not say, but it was infectious.

     Soon I found myself in the midst of a passionate conversation about (what else) Burning Man. “The burner tail is eating itself; it’s imploding,” said my new friend Hot Sauce, recently transplanted to San Francisco by way of London. An eight-time Burning Man veteran, Hot Sauce is a stalwart of one of the biggest, flashiest, most high-profile camps on the playa—the New York City–centric Disorient. But after not getting her ticket in the lottery this year, she was having second thoughts about her allegiances (she eventually caved and bought a ticket). “Last year at Burning Man, I had the overwhelming feeling that I was being watched,” she told me. “There were police spotters everywhere, scanning the crowd. We’ve been at Juplaya for days, and I haven’t seen a cop yet.”

      Not 20 minutes later, two Pershing County sheriffs rolled up in a police truck to check on us. They displayed a surprisingly tolerant attitude about the Juplaya hijinks there and elsewhere. “I haven’t seen anyone really be a jerk,” said Officer Nathan Carmichael, “although there have been some education issues.” He cited the risk of fireworks setting nearby pastures ablaze, and of skinny-dippers inadvertently fouling the local hot springs.

     “Everybody is here because they don’t like authority,” said Officer Thom Bjerke. “I don’t want to arrest anyone, but my job is to get them to comply with at least the spirit of the law.” His main concern, he emphasized, was the health and safety of those who were on the playa. “It’s not Burning Man—there’s no safety net, and no medical staff out here,” he added, registering the massive fireworks being set off in the distance. “And it’s so easy to blow off a hand.”

Or a tire. The Pershing County officers were probably much happier with Juplaya because there was very little nudity and almost no kids.

For a glimpse of what life is like aboard the Fish Tank during 4th of Juplaya, check this out – you probably want to hit mute, there’s a lot of wind noise. No parade speed here! Check out the impact of hitting the playa serpents at about 0:30, yee-haaw!

photo from the Life Cube

Burning Man is so old skool, it’s in the Museum. The Smithsonian Museum that is. They’ve just published an article entitled “Cities, Bridges and Burning Man Don’t Build Themselves“, a salute to various forms of global construction expertise.

As humankind expands into the far reaches of the world, we build things. Bridges, cities, buildings. How do those things get built? Well, a lot of people and a lot of cranes, usually.

The example they include is a 5-minute time lapse video of Black Rock City being built in 5 weeks. The implication is, New York and the rest of the storm-ravaged east coast can learn a lot from Burners.

That’s right, Burning Man doesn’t build itself. And neither does BMOrg build it. Burners build it. With some help from DPW.