We’ve never met. Not in person, anyway. Well, not in the flesh, I mean. I find it hard to define what constitutes “in person” lately. It seems like a good bit of my person is having an out-of-body experience in a virtual world. And that’s where I met my pen pal.
We’re both Burners, of course. That’s how it started.
We met by the Internet’s water cooler, reading the same Burning Man posts and feeling giddy about summer coming on. Soon, we were sharing photos, little windows into each other’s days just 600 pixels wide.
That’s actually a pretty wide window into someone’s life, if it’s open and the blinds are drawn. Human beings are pretty vast, but we’re also vivid. A lot of light gets through even a tiny aperture, and our sensors are pretty sensitive.
Burners are not special in this way, but maybe we just tend to focus on the same scenes. It’s a startlingly immediate connection, a confluence of perspective, meeting a fellow Burner in the wild.
Not that I met my pen pal in the “default world” at all. I’m not ready to extend that burnerism to the Internet. That’s a little too @GreatDismal a vision of the future.
But wherever we are, screen names and avatars, we’re still living the principles, making normal moments into works of art and giving them to each other. Just because we can’t feel them doesn’t mean they aren’t there, and vice versa.
We can’t be all virtual, though. Our bodies have mass, and the enormous gravity of our eventual meeting at Burning Man exerts a powerful force.
“Will you be my pen pal?”, I asked in a direct message.
She said her heart skipped a beat when she read that. Strong stuff.
And now we make letters and send them to each other. It takes five days for them to traverse the west coast of the United States from south to north, and five again from north to south.
It’s incredible how, in 2011, this still-modern marvel feels like such a long wait. Read more »
It might not be an overstatement to suggest that the single biggest challenge facing Burning Man as it transitions to a non-profit is explaining what-the-hell-it’s-good-for without making it sound like a therapy weekend or an erotic spa.
Why do we need to do this? Well, one reason is that the Media Team frequently gets emails asking things like:
“What bands are playing at Burning Man this year?”
“How many stages do you have?”
“How do I get my act in your lineup?”
Telling these people to look at our website and see what we really do only leads to return emails saying “I still can’t find the bands! Except, is one of them named Temple Burn? Are they playing at the Arctica stage? Is that the main stage?”
Actually, wow, “Temple Burn” is a pretty killer name for a band … I’m calling it. It’s mine. Get your own band. You can be: “Dust Storm.”
Actually, “Dust Storm” is a pretty good name too. I’ll need it when “Temple Burn” kicks me out for creative differences. Hands off.
Your band can be “Gift Economy.” It’s kind of a folk-rock thing, very 60s influenced, writes a lot of songs about peace. Read more »
A program participant of the Bike Bridge welds her bike in the welding course, hosted by The Crucible. A program participant of the Bike Bridge paints her bike in the Art-Bike course, hosted by The Crucible
The Black Rock Arts Foundation is thrilled to announce the award of $10,000 granted from the National Endowment for the Arts for our newest project, The Bike Bridge. This new project, which launched in April of 2011, is the next evolution of our community-focused public art projects. This educational and creative program is designed specifically to engage youth living on Oakland, California.
The Bike Bridge is a collaboration with the youth of Oakland, artist Michael Christian (who has been creating art for the Playa for many years), and with partner organization The Crucible. The 12 enrolled participants, all young women, begin the project with classes in welding and art-bicycle creation, generously hosted by The Crucible. The program culminates in the collaborative creation of a large-scale sculpture made entirely of reclaimed bicycle parts, led by Christian.
In the second phase of the project, artist Christian will work with The Crucible’s instructors and the youth participants to design a “skeleton” structure that can later be embellished by the youths. These embellishments will be made of reclaimed bicycle parts, connecting with “green,” urban bike culture and tapping into the exciting, creative buzz around “art” bikes.
The Bike Bridge sculpture is designed to be the centerpiece of the City of Oakland’s new Uptown Merritt Art Park, to be located adjacent to the Fox Theater in the city’s newly revitalized Uptown district. The City of Oakland was also awarded an N.E.A. grant, in the amount of $200,000, a portion of which will fund the development of the new park. Plans pending, The Bike Bridge sculpture will act as a gateway to the park, which will also feature temporary exhibitions of large-scale works of art.
N.E.A.’s grant of $10,000 sets this ambitious project in motion. Fundraising efforts are underway to meet the project’s overall budget of $60,000.
The Bike Bridge project is funded in part by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts. The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government that has awarded more than $4 billion on projects of artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. To join the discussion on how art works, visit the National Endowment for the Arts at arts.gov.
[Editor's Note: For those of you unfamiliar with him, Reverend Billy is a New York-based performance artist whose work speaks to the heart of Burning Man's principles of decommodification and radical self-expression. He was a Burning Man honorarium artist in 2003, where he performed in front of the Man as part of that year's "Beyond Belief" art theme. Enjoy!]
Reverend Billy’s brilliantly bombastic, boldly brief Earthalujah sermons — now available as a podcast! Watch more episodes and subscribe at revbilly.com/podcast
Sometimes people come up to me and ask “The Church of Earthalujah…what is that? Is it a political rally? Is it a real church? Is it a comedy sketch? What is it?!”
Question: Is consumerism, is consumption, is consuming too much killing us right now? Yes it is. In the Church of Earthalujah we are definitely fighting consumerism. And that starts with the flags, the banners of consumerism are labels. There’s a label on every product, Amen! So, let’s not label anything. Let’s get beyond labels – that’s the devil!
We have an Earth crisis right now that we can’t label. In the old days it seems like there used to be people who would run down to the village common and shout “there’s an emergency here!” The traditional town crier. Someone should be shouting “Hey! The atmosphere! Too much heat! Extinction! Everything’s dying! Do something!” Where’s that person now? There seems to be a giant hush from the governments, celebrities, corporations, religions, armies – all the people who are supposed to be leading us. There’s a hush because they don’t have the right labels. But they look around them and they see what we all see: fires, floods, tsunamis, quakes, typhoons, tornadoes…Yes! That is the town crier! That is the force that is so powerful it’s chasing the God-forsaken celebrities off the front page of the newspaper. And that is the Earth itself getting our attention, and killing some of us.
In the Church of Earthalujah we regard these events as expressions, as words, as communications from a living being. The Earth is talking to us not just through these tragedies but every time we love each other, the Earth is whispering in our ear. When we walk out across a field on a beautiful day the Earth is alive.
Lets continue to live here. Let us ask the Earth to teach us to save the Earth and save ourselves. Amen.
I have a pen pal.
