Over 100 Burning Man Regional Contacts and Community Leaders converged last weekend in San Francisco to attend the 4th Annual Regional Leadership Summit. A generous donation of space at-cost from the Bently family made it possible for us to hold our event at the beautiful state-of-the art Bently Reserve in Downtown San Francisco. The purpose of the Summit was to bring together leaders from across the world to exchange ideas, learn new skills and to explore the nature of community as it pertains to the evolving Burning Man Regional Network.

The 4th Annual Regional Leadership Summit brought together over 100 Regional Contacts and Community Leaders from around the world: Photo by Nightshade

The Summit kicked off on Thursday with rolling registration and happy hour at a neighboring bar and restaurant. Just like Burning Man, the Regional Summit is a family reunion for many who return to San Francisco each year to participate. Thursday evening’s happy hour was packed with Summit guests, Burning Man staff, and the local Burner hosts who so graciously open their homes to our out of town guest during the Summit weekend. Later on that evening, many of the Summit attendees caught the midnight screening of Alice in Wonderland in 3D. In pure Burner fashion, there were white rabbits, Alices, Queens of Hearts, and many outrageous and Wonderland-ready costumes.

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Birthday Boy Lloyd Taylor working on Bliss Dance

 A few weeks ago we went to a birthday party out on Treasure Island for our friend Lloyd Taylor.  The best part, aside from singing happy birthday and having cake and getting to know new friends was being in a working studio.  Lloyd is the Production Manager.

They are building “Bliss Dance”, and she is Marco Cochrane’s 40 foot tall vision.  

As you can see from the photos here the statue is huge and beautiful.  40 feet is a lot of woman.

The goal is to bring Bliss Dance to Burning Man 2010.  They have applied for an Art Grant and are waiting to hear the results of their application.

They have a great web site that has a fabulous gallery of photos of what is currently going on.  And on the best days, the web cam is working, so wander over and check it out

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Last week Lloyd sent a note that said “With the arms and left leg mostly complete, we start the left upper torso this week. Soon we will be attaching some mesh skin and testing lighting. So come visit us at Bliss Dance on Treasure Island, help if you can or just chill in the great space with killer views.”

To contact them Click on 07 Project Links, and contact them on Facebook

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ScrapEden SF: Request for Proposals Composting Contraption $10,000-$15,000
Timeframe:

Proposal Due to BRAF 3/15/10,

Grant Award Announced 4/1/10

Project Completed by 6/1/10

The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), in partnership with the San Francisco Department of the Environment, is seeking artists to develop another public art project for ScrapEdenSF, an ongoing program pairing artists with community groups to create artworks that are designed to inspire and motivate residents to recycle and compost more effectively. BRAF is currently requesting proposals from San Francisco Bay Area artists for the Composting Contraption.com·post [k?mp?st] is a combination of various decaying organic substances that are being decomposed largely through aerobic decomposition into a rich black soil.

con·trap·tion [kuhn-trap-shuhn] – a mechanical contrivance; gadget; device.

Imagine inventor Rube Goldberg meeting up with biodynamic farming pioneer Rudolf Steiner.

The Composting Contraption will be a human-powered, interactive, kinetic artwork designed to inspire, motivate and educate San Francisco residents to increase the practice of composting at home and to take better advantage of the City’s green bin organics collection programs serving the residential, commercial, and institutional sectors.

This new work of art will travel to local festivals, street fairs, farmers markets and schools to increase awareness of composting (and recycling to some extent) and change the composting behavior of San Francisco artists and residents to divert recoverable resources from being disposed of as solid waste, in keeping with the City’s zero waste goals. The artist is not expected to bring the contraption all around town, but will work with a local community group to train them on its use so they can tour it around in an educational campaign.

Materials used for this new mobile sculpture MUST primarily be made of reclaimed, recycled or reused materials diverted from local landfills.

For more information about how to apply!

If you’re into Burning Man culture and its place in the global community — and you live in the Bay Area — you’ll want to attend this great event on March 5th, including a thought-provoking talk by Larry Harvey.  Don’t worry if you can’t make it, plans are in the works to make the video of the speech available on the Burning Man website afterwards.

UPDATE: This event is now at capacity, and we’re no longer accepting RSVPs. Thank you!

Larry Harvey, photo by Scott London

Free Talk by Larry Harvey
and
The Convectional Caucus

This is a free, private event.  If you wish to attend, you must RSVP to: caucus-rsvp [Email address: caucus-rsvp #AT# burningman.com - replace #AT# with @ ]

Join us for this very special event!  This social mixer is a rare opportunity to meet the visiting 100+ Regional Contacts and community leaders from all over the world! They will be in town to participate in the 4th Annual Regional Leadership Summit. Designed to strengthen and spread Burning Man’s culture, the Summit is an opportunity for the visiting Regionals to learn from one another and to be inspired by the Bay Area Burning Man community.

On display will be a cross-section of our cultural fabric from around the Bay Area. Community organizations, Burning Man departments, related non-profits, and art groups will be on hand to share their missions and goals for the future. They will be displaying materials expressive of their methodology for both Regionals and you to absorb and take home, inspiring growth in world-wide Burner culture and events.

At approximately 6:30pm, Larry Harvey will speak, addressing these issues as well as the future of Burning Man’s culture and community in this ever-changing world.  This is his first talk in the Bay Area in several years and is not to be missed.

We hope you’ll join us on the 5th to learn and share what you know. Help us take a monumental step into the future of our global culture!

This is a free and private event.

So I always thought that Mardi Gras equaled Girls Gone Wild. Period.

I was so, so wrong.

I would get mad, working at the Burning Man festival, when others more wet behind the ears than I and my dusty cranky faction would say, “Yeah, Burning Man’s great! It reminds me of Mardi Gras!”

You don’t know what you’re talking about, my subconscious would scream. Have you any idea what it takes to live in a van for 2 months out of the year, in one of the harshest environments on Earth, laboring like a hard-time prisoner and eating nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and bacon? … Do you have any inkling as to the effort involved in building a fantastical city out of THIN AIR for FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE, and that we have to TEAR IT ALL BACK DOWN TO NOTHING?

(The subconscious, you see, can become quite the Bill Hicks-level righteous aggravationist when faced with 10-hour days under the hot sun in hangovery dust storms.)

But you know what? On Friday and Saturday nights? When we’ve built the city infrastructure and every-thousand ticketholders have come and added the bells and whistles and finally put down the tools to suit up in their finery and go out on the town and look at what other people have been working on all year in their spare time? It DOES remind me of Mardi Gras. Now that I’ve been to Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident, I get it.

dear Pan, please bless the proceedings and continue scaring the little children. Amen

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