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Volume 19, Issue #4 | October 10, 2014 
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ROUND-UP OF BURNING MAN WRITINGS:
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GET ME OFF THIS CRAZY RIDE!
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Hello everybody, and welcome to this edition of the Jackrabbit Speaks. We're glad to have ya. We're thrilled to report that the Playa Restoration team has finished its sweep of what was Black Rock City, the BLM has completed its inspection, and we've passed, paving the way for Burning Man 2015!
Meanwhile, the Decompression season for 2014 is well underway, with San Francisco Decompression (aka the Heat the Street Faire, grandaddy of them all) happening this Sunday. It'll be a hoot. Hope to see you there!
Turning our attention overseas, the David Best / Artichoke Trust temple being built in Northern Ireland with the support of Burning Man Project could use your generous donations to make this wonderful project possible. Help out if you can!
And as promised, we're continuing the Turnkey camping conversation in the Burning Blog. A couple thoughtful commentators have shared their personal thoughts on the subject, with more to come. We're doing our best to answer questions in the comments where possible, and/but we're taking in information and opinions to add to our hopper for the ongoing internal conversations on the topic. This will be an ongoing dialog, folks, and we welcome your perspective in the mix.
The Man burns in 330 days! (We love round numbers.)
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Remembering Steven Fritz
Steven Fritz, a longtime member of our Documentation Team who captured countless photographs of Black Rock City and our Playa Artifacts and Material Culture, died in an accident near his home of Portland, OR on September 24.
He was one of the great Burning Man photographers, and his efforts made a singular contribution to the overall quality and professionalism of photos in our culture. He will be remembered as a generous, dedicated, talented, delightful person.
He has over a thousand photos in our archives. Take a few minutes and check out Steven Fritz's photos and remember him for his huge contributions to Burning Man culture.
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Submit Your Burning Man 2014 Feedback by October 15
Burning Man 2014 is in the bag! And now, we want your feedback. Your thoughts, concerns, questions and reflections will factor into our planning for 2015 and beyond!
The staff reads every word and your input becomes a part of our annual staff debrief process. We're always open to your feedback, but we'll be closing the Feedback Loop on October 15 to incorporate submissions in our review process. Submit your thoughts here:
Feedback Loop
Note: while we do send individualized responses to some submissions, we aren't able to respond to every one. Subjects generating a lot of public comment (ahem: Will Call, turnkey camps) will be addressed in the Q&A section of the annual Afterburn Report.
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Internship Opportunity with Burning Man Project
Position Available: Communications Department Intern
Location: San Francisco, CA
Please submit resume and cover letter by 6 pm PT on Thursday, October 23, using this link.
JOB SUMMARY
The Communications Department Intern will support the year-round operations of Burning Man’s Communications Department during fall/winter 2014-2015. The position will provide invaluable experience for someone wishing to learn about media relations, event production, and Burning Man arts and culture. Burning Man, which drew more than 65,000 participants in 2014, is the largest Leave No Trace event and one of the most unique demonstrations of human creativity and connectivity in the world.
Interns will have opportunities to attend high-level meetings, participate in planning processes, draft communications, and work alongside many accomplished professionals in the field of communications and arts management. Work will be conducted in a professional office environment at Burning Man’s headquarters in San Francisco. The number of hours per week is flexible depending upon candidates’ needs, schedule, and experience.
Please submit resume and cover letter by 6 pm PT on Thursday, October 23, using this link.
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The Simpsons Take on Burning Man
Long-time Burner David Silverman (aka Tubatron aka Director of The Simpsons) has informed us that on the November 16 episode of The Simpsons, Bart will be going to an event called “Blazing Guy.”
You do the math.
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Want Up to $30,000 to Bring Art to Colorado's Regional in June?
The kids over at Apogaea write:
"Apogaea, Colorado's regional burn, has $30,000 to fund serious and ambitious art by issuing a small number of large grants to the most ambitious projects. It is nearly impossible to build massive projects taking months of work by large teams with sophisticated construction and interactions with a $500 grant. The Ludicrous Money Round is to help fund ideas and projects that are supposed to blow your mind. Sometimes that stuff costs more. Maybe we can help.
Submit your application before the October 21 deadline!"
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MOOP Map is a Wrap
After another heroic year picking up after us, the 2014 Playa Restoration effort is finished, and it's our greenest year EVER. As always, The Hun has studiously tracked its progress on the Burning Blog.
Read the MOOP Map 2014 series and see if your camp successfully Left No Trace.
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Continuing the Turnkey Camping Conversation
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Tony "Coyote" Perez and Rosie Lila have something to say about that ever-popular topic of turnkey camps. Please read their posts (more are in the works) and join the conversation!
Coyote Nose: A Rich Man Dreams of Paradise
"It was about four years ago when I saw my first 'plug and play' camp. From my perspective my initial impression of a camp of all brand new trailers in a horseshoe with no real social area, nothing but a giant generator and a trailer loaded with brand new bikes in the middle, and the 'campmates' barely knowing each other seemed like aggressive cancer to me."
Rosie Lila: Radical Self-Reliance and Rich People at Burning Man
"In the two weeks since this year’s Burn I’ve noticed a fair amount of press claiming 'the rich are ruining Burning Man' and I’ve seen a handful of stories on Facebook about confrontational run-ins with people at so-called 'rich camps' in Black Rock City. I hear a growing conversation around radical self-reliance and the perceived threat to Burning Man culture posed by 'turnkey' and “plug and play' camps on the playa. I’d like to offer the following perspectives to help inform your own conversations and dialogues on these topics."
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Tripping the Ballz Fantastic
A quick and interesting read if you've ever wondered what an Art Critic™ thinks of Black Rock City:
"In such harsh, isolated conditions, anything you can’t experience in the moment is no longer important. Every performance or art installation you witness represents a sublimation of the spoiled body’s nagging, an overcoming of the niggling mundanities that usually distract and disperse your attentions.
When you stand in front of one of Black Rock City’s many art projects (or crawl under it, or sleep inside it, etc.), you feel you’ve earned your place there, like you’re able to take in more of it because there is less of you in the way. The low-pitched drone of everyday concerns—career, relationships, groceries—falls silent."
Read more on Art Practical.
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How Housing Experiments at Burning Man Could Help Refugees
Camilla Hall looks into ways the temporary shelters of Black Rock City are contributing to designs and technologies for housing more hard-pressed people:
"Burning Man is set in the inhospitable Black Rock desert of Nevada where, this week, 70,000 hippies, techies and adventurers will get down to some serious circus stunts, dancing and nightlong pyrotechnics. Costumes range from a human eyeball to camouflage-style queens in full regalia. Yet, among these curious desert blooms, it is possible to find some radical, sustainable architecture."
Read more on FT.com.
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Black & Burning Man
So, check this out. Our very own LadyBee was waiting in the Exodus line when...
"I talked with a very enthused woman who gave me a copy of her CD: Nu Revolution by Les Nubians! Queen Helene, a newbie, loved Burning Man and told me she was going to write about it. True to her word, she sent me her new blog, Black & Burning Man.
Helene says, 'Yes, I created the blog to continue the discussion about Black presence at Burning Man and also, share the insights of an ongoing experience, because yes, Burning Man is still moving me and shaking my world!'"
Check out Black & Burning Man.
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Burning Man's Gifting Economy and Its Effect on Mainstream Society
Oh, words. "Gift" and "economy" get so misconstrued when it comes to Burning Man. This is a pretty good examination of what gifting on the playa is really like:
"People at Burning Man want to forget about branding, business, money, and the greed that comes along with it… and just for one week create a space where our humanity is not divided into 'quantifiable bits suitable for trading'. What do people do when they want to exchange goods or services? Enter 'gifting'."
Read more at FestPop.
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Interview with Jessica Hobbs: Co-founder, Flux Foundation
This Ladies We Love series keeps delivering. This time the lady in question is Jessica Hobbs, co-founder of the Flux Foundation, which built the 2010 Temple:
"I grew up in a household with a dad who didn’t tell us 'no' if we wanted to use a tool. He looked at us as intellectual beings. We had Barbies and Tonka trucks. Before I got my license I had to learn how to change my oil, change a tire, drive manual. I want the whole world to live up to that example and I often get frustrated because it doesn’t."
Read more on Ravishly.
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Burning Moments
As your Jackrabbits well know, it's not easy to describe Burning Man holistically. It's much easier to do through the example of those brief quintessential playa moments. Here's a neat, short video that does so.
Check out Burning Moments on Vimeo.
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"HOPE" — Video Explanation of Art Installation from BM 2014
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So this is pretty cool. Apparently the reaction to this piece (made by UK Burners) was pretty mixed and confused, so the creators made a video to show their true intentions. Cheese writes:
"HOPE was the art piece we brought to BM2014. We know it confused a lot of people and this was always the intention - it was a visual puzzle without obviously being so. Many people will remember it as "that depressing set of big black shapes covered in negative words near Embrace". One of our favourite moments was watching a group cycle through it and hearing them say "I hope they burn this - it's so depressing!"
The reality was it was a much more positive piece than it first appeared. But just like in real life, you don't find hope easily amongst all the doom & gloom, but it can be there if you persevere and get a different perspective.
So here's a video showing what people may have missed and includes a time-lapse of the build afterwards."
Watch the video on YouTube.
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Deep Playa Wonderings 2014
How about some tunes to close out your reminiscence? Mister Blink writes:
"Deep Playa Wonderings is a performance art project where I bring live music (with my two other musician friends) to art sculptures in the Deep Playa at night, creating sound mediations for listeners. These songs are recorded and then gifted back to the community through uploading them to my sound cloud page so people can reconnect with the energy and melodies of that night (with the ambient playa sounds). This two fold gift is such an amazing project because I get to interact and move Burners on and off playa. I hope you enjoy the second year of Deep Playa Wonderings."
Listen on SoundCloud.
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Participate in the Black Rock City Census!
Be counted! Please take a moment to participate in the Black Rock City Census, so we can better know the demographics of our ever-growing, ever-evolving community. We use this (anonymous) information to better serve YOU, and to help the media, government officials and others know who Burners really are. It'll take about 20-30 minutes to fill out the survey.
Fill out the Black Rock City Census.
Big ups to our Census volunteers, who worked super hard and killed it on playa this year to make the Census possible!
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Bring a David Best Temple to Northern Ireland
David Best, originator of the Temple at Burning Man and designer of 2014's Temple of Grace, has teamed up with UK arts organization Artichoke Trust to build a temple in Northern Ireland. Check it out:
"In Derry~Londonderry, a city historically split by religious and political divisions, there is a long-standing tradition of building and burning giant bonfires.
Temple is a radical arts project that aims to turn this tradition on its head, and we need your help to do it."
Support Temple on Kickstarter.
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Playa Dust: Collected Stories from Burning Man
"A compilation of essays by authors who are part of the universe of Burning Man or who engage the many ideas and landscapes on its periphery. By juxtaposing an unusual array of voices and stories, the volume reveals the complex nature and range of this annual pilgrimage to the desert. Edited by Samantha Krukowski."
Order Playa Dust online.
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San Francisco Decompression — San Francisco, CA — Oct 12
Burning Man Project presents ...
The 15th Annual San Francisco DECOMPRESSION Heat the Street FaIRE!
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Starts at Noon! Outdoor sound ends at 10 pm, except Mariposa which ends at 11pm. Indiana Street between Mariposa and 22nd Street in San Francisco.
Public Entrance: 19th Street & Minnesota
$15 donation before 4 pm; $20 after; free schwag while it lasts. All ages (under 12 free).
You know it's gonna be amazing ... full details and line-ups here.
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Burning Man • PO Box 884688 SF, CA 94188
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