Last week I participated in the Midwest's local regional Burning Man, called Lakes Of Fire, for the seventh time. For those who don't know, Burning Man is a week-long annual art festival with more than eighty thousand people. Lakes Of Fire is 5 days long and gets 2,300. At both of them, near the end, a giant wooden artwork (the Effigy) is burned to the ground along with a show of fire spinners, fire breathers, and fireworks. But it's so much more than that. It's a worldwide movement with branches in 36 US States and 32 countries, as a social experiment based mostly around ten principles: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-reliance, Radical Self-expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation, and Immediacy.
I encourage you to read the 10 principles in full. They are not a list of rules that make you superior. Not at all. They're things that tend to happen more at burns than outside them (what Burning Man participants, or "burners", call "the default world"). The principles are practical advice for getting people to be able to build bonds, and learn to rely on each other and trust themselves more, creating a massive amount of value for themselves and each other. Sometimes quick bonding is good and sometimes it's bad. But now I've come to recognize that I've seen these ideas at work in every volunteer organization I've ever been a part of, even when they were not expressed in these ten concise ideas.
The above is the sign at the entrance to Lakes Of Fire 2024: Imaginarium Aquarium. I submitted my own concept for the entrance sign, although the one above was chosen, and rightfully so because it looks great. Here's my concept art, which you can click on to see it enlarged:
The previous five or six weeks had been very hard for me in a lot of my friendships and volunteer-organized groups, so I was counting on the trip to replenish my stress level and rejuvenate my enthusiasm. I'm happy to say it did so.
Last year, I and a team of friends at i3Detroit maker space built a giant parade puppet of a life-size brontosaurus, with materials paid for by the Lakes Of Fire art grant program.
camp sign by Dan "Pups" Welcher
We happened to camp next to a theme camp named Frequencia. They liked us so much, they asked us to officially join their camp this year! It's great to be part of a theme camp. We were able to charge our batteries from the camp generator, and use the camp kitchen. Best of all, we made new friends.
giant oyster created by Oscar Bee
I didn't create another puppet this year because I joined the Art Grant Facilitators team. As someone giving out art grants, I couldn't receive one. I was assigned several artists, but they didn't need much help from me, and I got info from them smoothly. On the one hand, I brought value in that they knew if they emailed me, I would respond promptly. There's value in that. On the other hand, I didn't have much to do, and I wanted to be put to work to support this organization that exemplifies my priorities in life.
"Seahorse Surprise" by Melissa Larson
It occurred to me it would feel more natural to move up into positions of greater responsibility within the subculture if I had a burn name. That's a nickname that burners give each other. You're supposed to be given one through circumstances that occur at a burn. This year, not having a burn name began to be bothersome. Years ago I already knew what would be the perfect burn name for me, but I was attending with people from Penguicon and i3Detroit, to whom I'll always be Matt, so my suggested name just never took. I related that to my new campmates, who didn't know me from any other social context. They enjoyed making it their mission to call me by that name in front of everyone.
My burn name is "Epcot".
I went to Walt Disney World in Florida every year of my life until I was twenty, and Epcot was my favorite place in the world. In 2008, I invited some people who made giant musical Tesla coils to Penguicon. I sat on the front lawn of the hotel in an audience of more than a thousand people, while a pair of giant singing Tesla coils made music with lightning. I thought ... "I'm creating something like Epcot. It's really possible." It was a dream come true. I try to bring some of that to my maker space as well. And what we make at our maker space, often, is art specifically to bring to Lakes Of Fire. That spirit that I felt is alive at burns. I wanted a burn name that reflects the animating spirit that drives me when I'm there.
The contrasts, and the similarities, between Lakes Of Fire and Epcot are meaningful to me personally. Here are a few of the similarities.
The style of parade puppets I create was inspired by the puppets in Epcot's Millenium Parade.
Both places are known for geodesic domes.
Like the pavilions of World Showcase in Epcot, the pavilions of Lakes Of Fire surround a lake. In both places, they light up beautifully around the lakeshore each night, filling the surroundings with a laser light show that reflects off the glistening water.
Epcot is the only other place I've seen a fireworks show accompanied by dramatic music and inspirational speeches and performances over the PA system.
So much walking.
It's not commonly known that EPCOT is an acronym that stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, which sounds like a great description of Burning Man. Lakes Of Fire is run by GLEA, which stands for Great Lakes Experimental Arts.
Now for the contrasts. The approaches to an experimental prototype community of tomorrow are very different. Before it was a theme park in Florida, Walt Disney intended Epcot to be a utopian city where residents actually lived and worked. It was an exercise in total centralized planning. The eventual theme park was conceived as a World's Fair. Black Rock City, created during Burning Man in the Nevada desert each year, takes the opposite approach. An experimental prototype community of tomorrow, as decentralized as possible. And it's working.
People at Epcot are divided into the guests, and the staff, called the "cast" (cast members have been consistently wonderful people, in my experience). Whereas at a Burn, it's co-created together by unpaid volunteers, with the "no bystanders" principle of Participation. When you attend a burn, you are creating it. There's no one who you can turn to and say "I paid for you to give me an experience, now where is it?" We're all responsible.
At burns there are people wearing khaki called Rangers who are walking around as our collective eyes and ears, for anyone to go to if they need help. They're not staff, they are from among us.
Burns are for amateurs, so even if you're a professional, you collaborate with amateurs in the principle of Communal Effort.
The staff of Epcot have prepared things for guests to do. Those are the things you are supposed to do there, and if you do something else, it's out of place. You are not supposed to:
read poetry at a cooking class.
play basketball in an art gallery.
sell handmade crafts at a tech conference. (Unless it's my convention Penguicon.)
Each of those things has a point. But a burn is beautifully pointless! There's nothing you are supposed to do! It gives you an intimidating level of choice which confronts you with having to ask yourself questions about what you want, that maybe you normally avoid asking. I can just watch new people as they go through disorientation, wondering what to do, slowly changing as something amazing opens up and they get more in touch with what they do and do not want.
We're getting free chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven while standing in line for free ice cream out of an ice cream truck mounted on a bicycle. The ice cream truck is made to look like a giant shark. When suddenly a stranger standing in line dressed half in ninja-gear and half in scuba-gear asks if we want to hear him recite a poem, and we say we want him to, and he recites it, and it's perfect! How did that moment happen?
While both Disney World and Burning Man have sophisticated systems for on-site emergency medical care, Epcot is tailor-made to remove as much danger as possible. And burns are not benign. But do not misunderstand that as recklessness. We are at Lakes Of Fire to get better at danger. Not to avoid it. We are as safe as necessary. But not as safe as possible! What would be the point? There are physical risks, such as setting the art on fire. Most commonly, there are emotional risks. (Remember how I said forming quick bonds with other people can be either good or bad?)
We burn not to be as safe as possible, which would mean staying home and doing nothing, but to get better at danger.
There are real stakes at a burn! That's why every weird choice you make is so potent! You are outside your comfort zone. The stakes are usually sane ones, but they are real.
(By the way, this year's theme was Imaginarium Aquarium, which put me in mind of Ada Palmer's progress metaphor of fish tanks in the above article.)
There are so many ways Burning Man's decentralized and empowered societal changes can thrive where the centralized societal changes of World Fairs and Walt Disney can't keep up. But both of them want a future that's different and better. In the late 20th Century, and in this century, many people have given up on the idea that the future can be different and better. At Burning Man events, there is no requirement that participants want progress. It's not one of the ten principles. But when you're participating in the principles, you're burning, and you're doing what progress is.
And you're doing it whether or not you care about it. What you believe is not my foremost concern, and what I believe about progress need not be my fellow burner's foremost concern. "Action, not language, is the fundamental unit of meaning at Burning Man." That's from "The Scene That Became Cities: What Burning Man Philosophy Can Teach Us about Building Better Communities", by Caveat Magister, from whom I have cribbed several points here. If people can be in love with a book like they can be in love with a person, I'm in love with that book.
The Burning Man movement shows how the future can be different and better, through a method that I've devoted the past 20 years of my life to, in every organization I've been a part of. Instead of forcing people to contribute out of fear, get out of their way, and encourage them to make the contributions they want to make, that they see right in front of them, because they are the eyes and ears on the ground who know what needs doing. We get satisfaction from contributing to things we're intrinsically motivated to do, when it directly provides meaningfulness to us and those who are doing it with us. This is the realization of the dream of an experimental prototype community of tomorrow.
Thanks for the detailed write-up! I'm glad that you were able to recharge yourself some at Lake of Fire. I like your concept art for Imagination Aquarium and agree that what they chose looks great (refreshing!). ... I didn't know/remember that EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, but I can see why you embrace the name. Do you want me/anyone who doesn't go to Burning Man try to switch over to calling you that? I agree, things can be better, and helping people imagine and embrace that is a great thing.
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nemorathwald) wrote2024-08-01 10:36 am
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I agree, things can be better, and helping people imagine and embrace that is a great thing.
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