AfrikaBurn greeters bell (photo by BettieJune)

AfrikaBurn 2013 — Burning Man’s official African regional Burn — is underway in Tankwa, South Africa. Now in its seventh year, AfrikaBurn is rightfully touted as “the spectacular result of the creative expression of a community of volunteers who, once a year, gather in the Tankwa Karoo to create a temporary city of art, theme camps, costume, music and performance!”

The event takes place May 1-6 on an expanse of remote desert in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa akin to the Black Rock Desert of Nevada (albeit a little more rocky), and its population has steadily grown since its inception … they’re expecting 8,000 participants this year. Read more »

[This post will be updated periodically as new media coverage occurs.]

Photo by Scott Stallard

Judge allows Burning Man lawsuit against Pershing County to move ahead
S.F. Examiner (4/29/13)
A federal judge ruled that a lawsuit against Pershing County, Nev., by the organizers of Burning Man can move forward.

Federal judge in Reno makes rulings in Burning Man lawsuit
Reno Gazette Journal (4/29/13)
Several arguments in the lawsuit filed by Burning Man organizers against Pershing County will get to stand trial after a federal judge also dismissed several of their allegations.

Burning Man’s Lawsuit Against New Fees Moves Ahead
NBC Bay Area (4/30/2013)
The Man does not abide the county’s fee. A lawsuit filed by organizers of Burning Man against Pershing County, Nevada — where Black Rock City sets up every August in the desert — over the local government’s new fees for the event is going forward, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

San Francisco, April 29, 2013 — U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones issued an order Friday denying Pershing County’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Black Rock City, LLC challenging the County’s unconstitutional festival permitting process.

Burning Man organizers sued Pershing County in August 2012 after the County breached a series of agreements it had previously entered into with Black Rock City, LLC, and enacted an unconstitutional ordinance that singles out the Burning Man event.

“The ordinance is nothing more than the county’s thinly veiled attempt to exact more fees or drive the internationally-renowned art event out of Nevada,” said Raymond Allen, Government Relations Manager for Black Rock City, LLC. “Both actions are violations of the First Amendment.” Read more »

FLOAT project poster

Every year, the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) — Burning Man’s sister non-profit dedicated to the funding of interactive, participatory and civic art projects around the world, year round — awards grants to support art projects that reflect and forward its mission.

In 2012, one of those grant recipients was FLOAT, “a participatory art/design project using air-quality-sensing kites in Beijing, China. FLOAT had two components; a workshop and a public installation. The workshops gathered local Beijing residents to make kites with an air-quality-sensing module, and the public installation was a group kite flight in parks throughout the city using these kites. The air quality data was fed and geolocated onto a mapping API, and displayed through LED lights. A series of longer term installations throughout the city offered residents ‘air quality stations’ that displayed air quality data in real time, previously recorded data and education about urban health. Through the poetics and playfulness of kite flying, FLOAT sparked dialogue on urban environmental health issues, and gave agency to city dwellers to map, record and engage actively in the monitoring of their environment.”

A scene from “Stars in the Haze”, by Joshua Frank

If you find this ingenious and important project intriguing, we highly recommend you watch “Stars in the Haze”, a fascinating short documentary film about the project, written, shot and edited by Joshua Frank.

You can see a full listing of all of BRAF’s art grant recipients from 2013 and years past here on their website. These grants are made possible by the generous donations of good folks like YOU. If you’d like to help, please donate.

City Lights Bookstore SF, where modern American literature was born, announces:

Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society LAUNCH PARTY !
Thursday, May 16, 2013, 7:00 P.M., City Lights Boosktore, San Francisco, California

“An evening of irreverent antics

with Kevin Evans, Carrie Galbraith, John Law and friends

celebrating the release of

Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society
Edited by Kevin Evans, Carrie Galbraith and John Law

published by Last Gasp Books

Come one, come all…..at your own risk.

A template for pranksters, artists, adventurers and anyone interested in rampant creativity, Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society is the history of the most influential underground cabal you’ve never heard of. Rising from the ashes of the mysterious and legendary Suicide Club, the Cacophony Society, at its zenith, hosted chapters in over a dozen major cities, and influenced much of what was once called the underground. The Cacophony Society’s epic exploits radically changed the way people live and play in the world. The group inspired Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and Burning Man and helped start pop culture trends including flash mobs, urban exploration, and culture jamming.”

What has been said about Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society:
Read more »

Butane-Propane News, April 2013

The April 2013 issue of Butane-Propane News (BPN) (dubbed “The New York Times of the LPG industry”) has a great article by John Needham about flame effects artist Eric Smith, Burning Man Fire Art Safety Team (FAST) Manager DaveX, and this little shindig out in the desert called Burning Man. You might have heard of it?

“Spire of Fire” in downtown Reno, 2011 (photo by Bill Kositzky)

If you saw the beautiful 48′-tall tower of insane flame effects known as “Spire of Fire” either on playa in 2010, in downtown Reno, New York, Las Vegas or elsewhere, then you know Eric’s work (together with Steve Atkins). And if you’ve ever seen fire (e.g. if you had your eyes open) in Black Rock City then you know DaveX’s handiwork … yep, he’s the one who makes it possible for us to burn safely out there.

These guys are not only involved with flame effects and fire safety in Black Rock City, they also travel the country (and beyond) conducting workshops for would-be fire artists, teaching them how to build and use flame effects safely, thus ensuring that more fire artists are being born all the time and people are finding creative outlets for their inner fire bug. Which? Is great, by our standard.

Tales From The Playa are dreams and memories of events that took place at Burning Man, as told by its participants.

The Vault of Hivin’ (photo by Phoebee McAfee)

The camp fell together by happy accident. At a dinner in 2003, I seated my brother the construction guy next to my BFF the drag a capella singer, hoping their shared love of Burning Man would get them through a meal. Over that meal they conjured The Vault of Hivin’, a bewinged VW beetle towing chalkboards for a spelling bee, and a sound system that blasted the Bee-gees, the B-52’s, and Sting. They decided to collaborate on this vision and camp together, reasoning that the construction gearheads needed artistic vision, and the drag queens needed a ratchet up with implementation. After a decade of sticking together, we are truly a ragtag, multigenerational family of folks who love our annual reinvention fest. Having campmates with wildly diverse skills is a gift – somebody has to remember how to put up the shade structure, and somebody else has to make it blingy but not moopy.

Miajuana! (photo by Ralph Davila)

Our best theme was probably Miajuana! which combined Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling with a Titty Tequila bar festooned with a whole laundry line of the largest and smallest bras we could scavenge (until the big bras all got appropriated as costumes.) Our construction wizards built a regulation-size wrestling ring on two trailers, surrounded by a two-story viewing platform and a repurposed tiki bar. The drag queens pumped lavender mist water on the shockingly large crowds who came, while the gearheads offered goopy-cheese nachos, and tang-and-tequila margaritas; we had colorful ringside commentary and interactive NSFW “burro rides” during intermission. We poured through gallons of booze and bales of chips, but the canned ‘cheez’ and pickled jalapenos never seemed to run out. Wrestlers of both genders showed up with their own multicolored masks. When it rained, it deteriorated into clothing-optional mud wrestling which ended when we all stopped to watch the double rainbow. It took us eight months to develop amnesia over that one. Read more »

If he could describe it, he wouldn’t have to paint it.

“We created The Burning Man Project,” founding board member Harley DuBois told 200 of Burning Man’s regional representatives and community leaders.  “And now we’re figuring out what it is.”

This was the common refrain among the main speakers from the Burning Man organization at the Global Leadership Conference.  After 25 years we’ve gotten “here” – and perhaps from this vantage point we can figure out where “here” is.

“What if we were able to take the network you have (as regionals) and the network BRAF has, and the network that BwB has, and connect them in three dimensions?” asked founding board member Marian Goodell.  “What would that look like?  What would that be?  How would that work?”

She didn’t have answers:  she was asking.

More personally, “The six founders are figuring out how we fit in,” DuBois said.  “You’re trying to figure out how you fit in.” Read more »