Tag Archives: San Francisco

Canada’s 2020 Panda Return Is Red Flag For San Francisco Zoo

September 27, 2024 The Silo Leave a comment

And more recently Finland’s Panda Return is a Red Flag for San Francisco Zoo’s $70 Million USD/ $94.3 Million CAD Panda Gamble

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Currently, there are no giant pandas here in Canada but Canada has “hosted” giant pandas on several occasions, including a long-term loan agreement that began in 2014. Those giant pandas spent five years at the Toronto Zoo before moving to the Calgary Zoo in 2018. They were returned to China in 2020 due to difficulties in finding bamboo- the giant panda’s main food source.

SAN FRANCISCO (Sept, 2024) — In Defense of Animals, SF Zoo Watch, and Panda Voices are calling on Mayor London Breed and the San Francisco Zoo to immediately abandon their reckless and costly plan to acquire giant pandas.

Finland today announced it will return its pandas to China eight years ahead of schedule citing their unaffordable upkeep, following Edinburgh Zoo’s recent decision to not renew its panda contract owing to the extreme cost. Despite these clear warnings, San Francisco’s panda plan — estimated to cost an astounding $70 million usd/ $94.3 million cad over 10 years — has not been abandoned, even as the city witholds funds for vital public services, and the San Francisco Zoological Society struggles with repeated crises.

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Mayor Breed’s plan to import pandas to the crisis-stricken San Francisco Zoo has been strongly opposed by animal advocates. Photo: JackPhoto.com/In Defense of Animals

“Finland’s decision to return its pandas early due to soaring costs should be a wake-up call for San Francisco,” said Brittany Michelson, Campaign Specialist for Captive Animals at In Defense of Animals.

“Finland and Edinburgh were financially better prepared and better managed, yet even they couldn’t sustain their panda exhibits. San Francisco is already in financial trouble, and this panda plan is another disaster waiting to happen.”

“San Francisco City and San Francisco Zoo share the same policy — let residents suffer while running after doomed vanity projects,” said Justin Barker of SF Zoo Watch. “The zoo and the city have cut off funding for the most vulnerable while privileging the doomed panda plan.”

“The fact that the Ahtari Zoo in Finland is returning giant pandas JinBaoBao (Lumi) and HuaBao (Pyry) nearly nine years before their contract ends shows the huge challenge and the financial issues zoos face when hosting giant pandas,” said Taciana Santiago, Co-Founder of Panda Voices. “The popularity of these bears often overshadows the costly expenses and highly-specialized care these very sensitive animals demand. If these conditions are not met, the pandas’ wellbeing will be sacrificed, like we sadly observed with pandas YaYa and LeLe, who suffered at the Memphis Zoo until 2023. We hope San Francisco Zoo, which already faces substantial financial issues, can learn from these experiences and stop their unsustainable and cruel plans to host giant pandas.”

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LeLe died and YaYa became extremely ill at Memphis Zoo. Photos: Panda Voices

Despite its crumbling infrastructure and multiple languishing infrastructure projects, the San Francisco Zoo is moving forward with plans to house pandas.

Meanwhile, other zoos like Finland’s Ahtari and Edinburgh have already concluded that panda programs are financially unsustainable. Worse yet, the San Francisco Zoo has failed to address major animal welfare and labor issues, ignoring serious concerns raised by staff over unsafe conditions and multiple preventable animal deaths. Last week, the zoo’s board retained its leadership, despite an overwhelming 97% vote of no confidence from union members.

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The century old San Francisco Zoo has deferred maintenance and let upgrade projects languish for years. Photo: In Defense of Animals

“Bringing pandas into an environment where the current animals are already suffering is not only reckless but cruel,” added Michelson. “The San Francisco Zoo is in no state to care for these highly sensitive animals when it can’t even meet the needs of those already in its care.”

At a time when Mayor Breed is pausing $33 million usd/ $44.5 million cad in spending for crucial community services such as housing support and violence prevention, diverting millions more toward a panda exhibit is unconscionable. The estimated costs for the panda acquisition far exceed the $25 million usd/ $33.7 million cad the mayor plans to raise from private donors:

$35 million usd/ $47.2 million cad or more for new exhibits and holding facilities.
An annual loan fee of $1-2 million usd/ $1.4 -2.7 million cad to China for the pandas.
$1.5-3 million usd/ $2-4 million cad per year for food, veterinary care, staff, and maintenance.

“Pandas have pushed yet another world-class zoo beyond its financial limits,” added Michelson. “San Francisco Zoo has proven, time and again, that it cannot manage its finances, fix infrastructure issues, or protect its animals. Adding pandas to this mix is a recipe for disaster.”

In Defense of Animals, Panda Voices, and SF Zoo Watch urges the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Mayor Breed to immediately halt the panda plans and prioritize addressing the zoo’s current crises. The panda plan has faced opposition from San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and nearly 14,000 concerned citizens have already flooded the inboxes of Mayor Breed, city officials, and the San Francisco Zoo, urging them to abandon this dangerous plan. Concerned citizens and animal lovers can take action by sending an email at www.idausa.org/sfpanda. For the Silo, Brittany Michelson.

Featured image- Giant pandas Panpan (right) and Yueyue are shown in a Jan., 2019 handout photo from the Calgary Zoo. The first giant Panda twins born in Canada. Handout photo by The Calgary Zoo.

Travel

This is Where Canadians Want to Travel to This Summer

April 22, 2024 The Silo Leave a comment

The trending destinations Canadians want to go on vacation this summer based on Google searches.

Where do Canadians want to go on their summer vacation in 2024?

With soaring inflation prices and the cost of essential shopping skyrocketing, millions of Canadians will plan to cut back on vacation spending. According to data from Ipsos*42% of Canadians say they plan to minimize their spending on vacations in 2024 as a way of dealing with the increased cost of living. Now, as the season changes into spring, more people are wondering what this summer has in store for them from a vacation perspective.

Are Canadians really looking to cut costs when it comes to their annual trip? Or has the economy got us looking outside of our usual go-to destinations?

Our friends at Top10casinos.ca, have used Google search data looking at terms around ‘summer vacations’ to find out which destinations around the world are most in-demand by Canadians looking to book their summer vacation in 2024. So, whether you need some inspiration for your next big trip, or just love a good list, here are the trending destinations Canadians want to go on vacation this summer based on Google searches.

Revealed: Canada’s Top 10 Most in Demand Summer Vacation Hotspots in 2024

Research Reveals New York Will Be Canada’s Favorite Summer Vacation in 2024 – Getting 1.9 Million Searches Every Month

With 1.9 million monthly searches and a 6% increase in searches in the last 30 days, the metropolis of New York is officially Canada’s most desired destination for a summer vacation this year. Analyzing individual attractions that Canadians are most interested in visiting, searches for ‘new york broadway shows 2024’ are up 9,900% and people searching for ‘new york yankees schedule 2024’ are up 5,800%. For Canadians looking for an early Spring vacation, searches for ‘new york weather in April’ are up 750% in the last 30 days.

City Break Destinations Incredibly Popular for Canadian Summer Vacations in 2024

Half of the top 10 most-searched for summer vacation spots by Canadians are city break destinations with San Francisco, Las Vegas and Honolulu topping the list. The data shows that Vancouver residents are getting heart eyes for San Francisco. In the last month, there were 16,550 searches for summer vacations in the Golden Gate City and searches for ‘Vancouver San Francisco cruises’ are up 29% since the same time last year.

The Cold European Country of Iceland Has the MOST Search Increases – Ranking Above Beach Favorite, Mexico Beaches, relaxing by the pool and all you can drink cocktails are usually synonymous with summer, but according to our study, Canadians want to escape the heat in favor of colder climes. With an average of over 689,980 monthly searches and a huge 122% increase in 30 days, Iceland surprisingly ranks in front of Mexico as a go-to vacation destination this summer. Looking at why Canadians might be interested in visiting the land of ice and fire, searches for ‘northern lights’ are up 10,900% and people looking at ‘portugal v iceland’ have increased 1,043% on Google. According to the regional data, Niagara Falls residents in particular are looking for a totally unique experience this summer, with searches for ‘Iceland summer vacation’ up 200% since the same time last year.
Cuba Revealed as Canada’s Most Desired Beach Destination This Summer – Ranking Above Mexico and Costa RicaWith more than 712,000 monthly searches and an increase of 36% in 30 days, Cuba is revealed as Canada’s most desired beach vacation destination for summer 2024. According to the data, Canadians are researching long distance swimming in the country, with searches for ‘swim from cuba to florida’ up 3,500% and ‘vacations to cuba’ up 333%.
The Dominican Republic Ranks in Top 10 With over 97,000 monthly searches for ‘The Dominican Republic summer vacation’ and a 35% increase in the past month – it’s evident the Caribbean Island will be one of the most coveted destinations by Canadians this summer, which is why it features in the top 10. When analyzing search trends on a city level, Montréal has seen a 25% increase in residents’ searching for the beautiful beach spot, and Ottawa shows a 20% surge.

Mapped: Most Desired Vacation Destinations Across Canada, Revealed

Las Vegas Named the Most Desired Destination The gambling capital of the world is the most searched for city across the 10 cities of Alberta with searches spiking by nearly half (48%) since the same time last year. With 1.7 million monthly searches and a 12% increase in Canadian’s searching for the desert oasis summer vacation, Las Vegas has seen a 6% increase in search increases than topspot New York, the city also ranks above favorites Cuba and Mexico.
Greece Ranks Second as Research Reveals European Summer Vacations Most Popular with Ontario ResidentsThe data shows there’s a rapid number of Canadians looking to experience a European summer vacation this year, with both Greece and Italy coming up top in Ontario. Looking at the most searched for destinations, searches for Greece’s picturesque Santorini have increased by 67% since the same period last year across Canada, and Italy’s Rome have spiked 25%.
Costa Rica is the Most Desired Destination by Two ProvincesFilled with rugged rainforests, pristine lagoons and beautiful beaches, it’s little wonder the Central American country of Costa Rica is the most desired by two parts of Canada. Provinces of Quebec and Manitoba both had Costa Rica as their favorite destination, with searches for the tropical country up by an average of 81% across 10 cities in Quebec since the same time last year. Looking at locations on a city level, searches for ‘all inclusive Costa Rica vacations’ are up 300% in Quebec City, highlighting a need to escape busy metropolitan life.
Toronto’s 3 Favorite Summer Vacation Spots are all City DestinationsResidents hailing from Ontario’s capital, Toronto, are interested in keeping the summer city spirit alive, with 3 favorite destinations also being city spots. According to the data, Toronto’s favorite destination is Dubai with a 49% increase in searches since the same time last year. Closely followed by Rome (22%), and Miami (20%).

Methodology

Using articles around the topic of “bucket list travel destinations”, “best vacations in 2024” we were able to collect a list of approx 100 dream global travel destinations. To allow for us to make sure we’re focusing on those who want to holiday in these locations we assigned the prefixes “summer vacations in” to all locations. These terms were then entered into keywordtool.io to collect the average monthly search volume and search trends (over the last 12 months) per state.
Search volumes and trends were gathered using https://keywordtool.io/
All data correct and accurate as of 11th April 2024

Sources

https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/canadians-cut-back-2023-and-plan-continue-cuts-2024

For the Silo, Amanda Evans

Culture

Toronto Streetcars: Historic And Relevant?

January 12, 2023 The Silo 1 Comment

I am sure that many of you will agree that the streetcars that rumbled through Toronto from 1800s until… let’s say 1990’s helped shape many neighborhood. They were the most effective way to connect Toronto’s core with its suburbs and greatly encouraged development of the communities as new grocery stores, restaurants, galleries, shops and banks as amenities have been built near the streetcar lines.

Standing in the middle of road, going nuts being stuck behind a streetcar, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate how important role they have played in the city’s history.

First Streetcars in Toronto

Inspired by the success of horse-drawn streetcars in the U.S., Alexander Easton’s Toronto Street Railway company started operating in 1861. New rail lines played a vital important role in connecting the city centre with its sleepy suburbs. What started as an enterprise with 6 miles of track and 11 cars, turned slowly into 68 miles of track with 361 street cars. The company expired in 1891 and the management was turned over to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).

The next company to take control over the system was the Toronto Railway Company, under which first electric streetcars were introduced. All services were later taken over by the Toronto Transportation Commission, which was later renamed to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).

BuildingstreetcartracksBaySt1918 — Building street car tracks on Bay St. Toronto circa 1918

However, even streetcars had their bad times. In the 1960s they were almost abandoned when people thought of it as an outdated mode of transportation. Thirty years later it fell upon hard times once again because of budget cuts, the recession and its inability to service the rapidly-growing parts of the city.

It took months for the TTC to pull itself out of its bad times, but streetcars somehow managed to return back to their previous fame. Since then, the company’s services have been improving every year, but there are still some issues. Let’s take a look at the current state of the streetcar rail services in Toronto, its advantages and the most annoying faults.

AshbridgesBayStreetcarline1917Vintage Torontowebncfca — The Ashbridges Bay street car line 1917.

Present

Although the number of streetcars crossing the city declined in the latter half of the 20th century, they never disappeared completely. In fact, streetcars have become a vital part of Toronto’s history and nearly every citizen’s life. Nowadays, the city owns 247 streetcars, of which 52 are higher-capacity articulated streetcars. These operate over 11 routes, serving a total of 617 stops over a system length of 75 kilometers. These numbers make it by far the largest surface rail system in North America.

Toronto Public Transportation map — Public transportation in Toronto relies heavily on streetcars in the downtown core which is the thin red lines you see on the TTC map above. Technically, they’re light rail trains, but locals refer to them as streetcars. Each line usually follows a street e.g. 501 Queen St., so it shouldn’t be too hard to get on the right vehicle.

Done right, streetcars can really encourage the overall development of the city, they are able to define whole neighborhoods, reduce traffic congestion, reinforce retail, bring life to streets and fit easily into the surroundings without disruption to existing businesses, residents or traffic.

Pros

One of the main advantages of streetcars is its high passenger capacity. Streetcars carry between 75 and 100 people per vehicle.

Regarding energy efficiency, streetcars are believed to do a little bit more for the environment that other public transport systems. Because every streetcar user means one less car on the road, words such as clean air quality, for environmental sustainability, for climate protection are often associated with streetcars. In fact, nothing drops greenhouse gas emissions faster than effective rapid transit, so if we truly want green for Toronto, streetcars might be the answer.

Another argument made in favor of streetcars is their long lifespan. The vehicles are designed to be very durable and can keep running for over 30 years. In contrast, buses wear out after just 8 – 12 years.

thelasttorontostreetcar — One of the “last” Toronto street cars. image: blogto.com

Since they are longer-lasting than other means of transport, the cost of repair and replacement is typically also much lower.

One ride costs $3.25, making it a very cheap transit option across the city. At the same time they are relatively fast to build, without impacting the city for a long period of time and resulting in minimal disruption to the neighborhood.

Streetcars can be so charming. Well, this is a subjective opinion, but have you seen vintage trolleys in San Francisco or New Orleans? They’re so awesome.

Cons

There are two sides to every coin so we have to mention disadvantages of streetcars, too. Once again, let’s talk about their passenger capacity. Even though they carry a relatively high number of passengers, the difference between a streetcar, LRT and subway is noticeable. Just for comparison, a subway train can hold up to 1500 passengers and an LRV can hold up to 255 people in a single vehicle (depending on speeds, frequency and actual vehicle length and capacity).

Next, streetcars require “loops” to turn around, which slows them down. This is not the case with cars, LRVs or subways.

Streetcars are noticeably slower than cars as they are travelling at speed of about 17km/h. LRVs run at an average of 27km/h and subways at 32km/h.

Streetcars are said to contribute to traffic congestion greatly. Imagine a situation when a streetcar stops to let passengers load on or get off. In such situation, both lanes at of traffic are blocked. This causes delays and angst among riders. If you’ve ever driven behind a streetcar, you know how much of a problem this is. You have nowhere to go, unless you stand far back enough to turn your car around.

At certain times they may pose danger to both passengers and pedestrians. For example, when cars try to pass them before they stop.

When it comes to costs, it is important to distinguish between the cost of laying down streetcar tracks, maintaining the streetcars themselves and maintaining roads. Streetcars require a whole lot of special mechanics and thus the cost of maintenance is much higher.

And let’s not forget about pollution. You might disagree with a statement that streetcars are a reason behind increased pollution in our city, but if you think about it for a second, you will realize there is some truth in it. Since it creates traffic congestions, it also adds to pollution.

Future of Streetcars

Even though many people are getting more and more angry at streetcars, they are not going anywhere. When (then Mayor) Rob Ford tried to cancel the Transit City light-rail-plan and build tunnels underground in some parts of the city, city council decided to keep new transit lines above ground. The main reason behind this decision was the cost of tunneling and powering subways.

And for those unhappy citizens who are queuing up behind streetcars every morning, the least Toronto could do is indicate that they are keeping an open mind about new subway lines. And let’s not forget that the city intends to build and operate new light rail transit lines, which means that people will be able to travel in new dedicated lines, separated from motor vehicle traffic. For the Silo, Jamie Sarner.

Transportation

Porsche Tower Condos Allows Owners To Take Cars Up In Elevator

July 2, 2021 The Silo 2 Comments

New York City is home to over 70 of the world’s billionaires, but when they want to get away to decompress, many shed their suit and tie for a guayabera, white slacks and boat shoes and head to South Florida for the white sand beaches, fine dining, yachting and golfing. Some have been heading to Sunny Isles, Florida where, according to the developer, over 20 billionaires have purchased a home at Porsche Design Tower.

New owners at the Porsche building were the first in North America to be able to take their cars up an elevator to their personal sky garage, including the $USD 32.5 million penthouse. Three patented Dezervators, a glass drive-in elevator rising at 600-feet per minute, will enable residents to keep an eye on their Ferraris, Porsches and Rolls Royces while sitting in their living rooms reading the Wall Street Journal and checking out the Atlantic Ocean views.

The 60th-floor Porsche penthouse comes with a huge living and dining area, state-of-the-art kitchen, family room and four ensuite bedrooms with a total of seven baths, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, 20-foot ceilings and a private people elevator. The outdoor living areas are equally impressive with a private terrace pool and roof pool, two balconies and two summer kitchens. It has two sky garages and a separate 3,000-square-foot car gallery. The gallery can be customized by the owner for fewer cars to substitute a game room or extra living space.

Building amenities include a three-story lobby with glass car elevator observatory, movie theater, game room, oceanside restaurant with indoor/outdoor dining, private wine lockers, oceanside bar and lounge with fireplace and large-screen TVs, oceanfront pool with food and beverage service, Intracoastal Waterway sunset deck, virtual golf simulator, virtual car-race game, ballroom with bar and catering kitchen, oceanfront gym and yoga room, spa, sauna, steam rooms, hair salon and a car concierge available to give the luxury cars a wash and maintenance.

Having broken ground in 2014, the tower is now sold out.

The penthouse is priced at $32.5 million; other units when remaining were listed for sale starting at $6.2 million. Porsche is located in Sunny Isles – a ritzy part of the Atlantic Ocean stretch of Miami Beach to Fort Lauderdale condos. The developer is Dezer Development in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.

In Other Real Estate News- “San Francisco Clock Tower Penthouse”. Few can say that they start off their dinner parties with cocktails inside a century old clock. That is to say, no one except the new owners of this historic three-level landmark loft apartment gleaned from the clock tower of a factory in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood that was converted into live-work spaces in 1992 by architect David Baker.

The historic clock tower was constructed in 1907 and the large building complex that supported it became the West Coast’s largest printing company by 1921. The owner of the business, Max Schmidt, decided to construct a penthouse level in the clock tower where natural light poured in from all four sides of the clock faces so that his lithographers would find it easier to work. In 1930, the plan for the new Bay Bridge was solidified, which would require tearing down a portion of the printing buildings, including the clock tower. Schmidt would have none of that and used his clout, threatening to move his business to the other side of the bay. The city, unwilling to lose one of their largest businesses, gave in and agreed to take the highway around Schmidt’s complex and the tower was saved. In 1992, the old factory was repurposed into 127 contemporary live/work lofts and offices. Commuters have come to depend on the clock as they travel to and from work each day.

Now for the first time in almost a quarter of a century, the penthouse is for sale. The sleek contemporary condo with spectacular city views measures in at a spacious 3,000 square feet of living space, including a room inside the clock itself and has large wrap-around terraces providing outdoor space for lounging and entertaining. The two-bedroom, two-bath residence has been designed to optimize the loft’s spaciousness with an expansive living-dining room divided by a double-sided glass fireplace with French doors opening to the terrace. Original brick walls, hardwood and polished concrete floors and built-in bookcases following the lines of the beams are highlights of the structure. Included are a gourmet kitchen with top-end appliances and space for a table, office, game room, library, large master suite and the clock room.

San Francisco’s historic registered Landmark Clock Tower four-story penthouse loft apartment with conversation piece furnished room inside the clock is listed at $8.5 million.

Visit TopTenRealEstateDeals.com for more celebrity homes and real estate news. For the Silo, Terry Walsh.

Art

Beautiful Minecraft Coffee Table Book Features Stunning In Game Built Art

May 17, 2021 The Silo Leave a comment

Twelve years ago to the day, back in the year 2009 – a Video game called #Minecraft was unassumingly released. The sandbox video game became the second best selling PC-based game in history and was bought by Microsoft for $2.5B usd in 2014.

In keeping with our look back celebration, let’s check out this wonderful book for Minecraft lovers everywhere: Beautiful Minecraft ($19.95, 112 pp., 4C, hardcover).

As they pore over the pages in this remarkable collection, Minecraft lovers of all stripes will find themselves immersed in a world of astonishing creations like floating steampunk cities, massive alien worlds, detailed classical sculptures, fantastical landscapes, and architectural marvels. The sculptures and scenes throughout the book are built from thousands to millions of blocks and represent months and even years of design work on the part of their creators.

I wanted to show how a video game can become a true artistic medium…how players can become artists.

“Beautiful Minecraft is the sort of thing that fans of the game are sure to love because it brings them even closer to the game they love,” said No Starch Press founder Bill Pollock. “Since my first visit to MineCon in 2011, I’ve been inspired by the passion Minecraft fans have for something that is much more than a game. Beautiful Minecraft shows us how in game creations can be high art, and the results are nothing less than amazing.”

For the Silo, James Delaney-author, managing director of BlockWorks: a team of Minecraft artists from around the world. BlockWorks has created artwork for companies like Disney, Microsoft, Warner Brothers, and The Guardian.

Publisher: No Starch Press
Author: James Delaney
Print ISBN: 978-1-59327-765-9
Price: $19.95
Specs: 112 pp., 4C, Hardcover

You Might Also Be Interested In:

The Game Console by Evan Amos
The Arduino Inventor’s Guide by Derek Runberg and Brian Huang
The Hardware Hacker by Andrew “bunnie” Huang

Available in fine bookstores everywhere and from http://www.oreilly.com/nostarch, or by contacting marketingdirector@thesilo.ca

About No Starch Press
No Starch Press has published the finest in geek entertainment since 1994, covering topics like LEGO, hacking, science, math, and programming for all ages. Our titles have personality, our authors are passionate, and our books tackle topics that people care about.

Culture

Disease Did Not Stop Marine Swimming Alcatraz To San Fran Blindfolded

March 7, 2019 The Silo Leave a comment

Shackled but making waves- Jay Platt swimming from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco with his hands and feet tied.

For as long as he could remember, Jay Platt wanted to be a U.S. Marine, and for nearly 15 years, he lived that dream. But in 1998, a rare condition called von Hippel Lindau syndrome (VHL), attacked his eyes, brain, spine and kidneys, forcing his retirement from the service.

“Before VHL I pretty much felt untouchable – until I started having symptoms and the eventual diagnosis,” he says.

"I was scared, confused and angry" Jay Platt explains some of the emotions that he has learned to conquer. — “I was scared, confused and angry” Jay Platt explains some of the emotions that he has learned to conquer.

“I was scared, confused and angry for a number of years; I couldn’t understand why God would do this to me. I went from feeling invulnerable to officially being considered handicapped.”

After a personal journey of acceptance, Platt re-calibrated his sense of purpose by accepting challenges many world-class athletes wouldn’t consider. Along with a record-breaking Mississippi swim while blindfolded, handcuffed and shackled, he swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco with his hands and feet tied, and he was one of fewer than 300 people to hike the more than 2,100-mile southbound Appalachian Trail.

Platt, who is the subject of the new documentary, “Living Unstoppable,” (www.LivingUnstoppable.com), explains his transformation and how others might apply the lessons of his journey to their own lives:

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• The motivation of “can’t” … Something is triggered in people when they’re told they can’t do something. Those who want to do what they “can’t” eventually find a way if they’re motivated and determined. “I don’t care who you are – everybody goes through something in life; nobody gets through unscathed,” he says. “And everyone, at some point, faces something they believe they can’t do – but want very much. If you haven’t yet, you will, and coming to terms with it will be a process.” Use it as motivation for living life to the fullest, and let it show you how beautiful our time on Earth really is, he says.

• The lesson of the severely handicapped little girl: Platt experienced a long period of despair, hopelessness and rage against the universe. One day while at the park, he heard the pure joy in the laughter of a severely handicapped girl who was being pushed in a wheelchair by her mother. “ ‘Listen to the birds, Momma,’ I heard her say – she was just so happy to experience that simple pleasure,” he says. “That has stayed with me ever since; if that little girl could get past her suffering and appreciate singing birds, then I could do much better.”

• A promise to contribute to the greater good: The onset of his VHL symptoms, which included vision problems in his left eye and disorientation, was a very scary period for Platt. During this period he made a promise to himself and God to devote his life to others if he survived. He has kept that promise – his Appalachian Trail hike alone raised $109,000 for charity.

• You are still you; don’t let tragedy totally define you: While Platt is officially retired from the USMC, he is still the same guy who fully lived a proud life as a Marine for a decade and a half. While how you respond to hardship says much about one’s character, you don’t have to remain psychically stuck in the worst part of your life by identifying most with a weakness. Use a handicap, for example, for what it’s worth – something that helps you strive for significance and fulfillment in life. For the Silo, Ginny Grimsley.

About Jay Platt
Jay Platt was medically retired from the Marine Corps in 1998 after suffering complications from von Hippel Lindau syndrome (VHL), a genetic disease that resulted in brain and spinal tumors, kidney cancer, and the loss of his left eye. When told his future would be considerably dimmer than his past, Platt set out to rebuild himself physically, mentally and spiritually, and to challenge himself by setting demanding physical goals. He was one of fewer than 300 people to have hiked the more than 2,100-mile southbound Appalachian Trail; one of three to swim from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco with hands and feet tied; and the only person to swim across the Mississippi River while blindfolded, handcuffed and shackled. The proceeds from his adventures and sales of his documentary benefit non-profits, including the VHL Family Alliance.

Culture

The Metapolitics of Burning Man- ‘Fighting the Lie of The Normal Art Economy’

March 27, 2016 The Silo Leave a comment

OCCUPY BLACK ROCK! THE METAPOLITICS OF BURNING MAN by MARK VAN PROYEN

As annual journalistic rituals go, the annual Time Magazine “Person of the Year” has been the most enduring barometer of the spirit of the moment of its announcement. For close to a century, the banner was “Man of the Year,” but after Corazon Aquino and Queen Elizabeth smiled at the world from the front cover of that inﬂuential publication, gender neutrality became the preferred modality. In 1982 “the computer” received the coveted award, so gender went out the window altogether. But the 2011 award was given to “the protestor,” and the representative image was a masked face of an angry-eyed anonymous person.

TOP Black Rock City from above Photo: AJPN Anthony Peterson BOTTOM Black Rock City seen from Old Razorback Mountain Photo: Peretz Partensky — TOP Black Rock City from above Photo: AJPN Anthony Peterson
BOTTOM Black Rock City seen from Old Razorback Mountain
Photo: Peretz Partensky

This image followed a long year of public demonstrations that started at Cairo’s Taﬁr Square in late January 2011, spread to the shores of Tripoli and then moved on to Damascus. In September 2011, it arrived in New York’s Zucotti Park, a tiny sliver of public space surrounded on all sides by the world’s most prominent ﬁnancial institutions. According to the surging multitudes that participated in what would come to be known as Occupy Wall Street, those institutions were evil, and needed to be called into account.It took the major media a full ten days to report the story of the occupation of that little park, although the story had already been thoroughly distributed via social media networks. The movement’s rhetoric was ingeniously crafted for those modes of distribution, and usually took the form of declarative slogans. These proclaimed that the protestors represented the 99 per cent of the American population that would no longer stand for being ﬂeeced by irresponsible government tax policies, a lack of regulation of the ﬁnancial markets and a vast system of political bribes routinely called “campaign contributions.” Conservative commentators squealed “Class War!” in comic disregard of an OWS placard reminding its readers “they call it class war when we ﬁght back!” From the OWS point of view, that war had been ongoing since Ronald Reagan’s ﬁrst term in ofﬁce. When the major media did get around to picking up the story, “What do they want?” or “What are their demands?” were published everywhere, as if the protestors were unintelligible in their calls for economic justice and political fair play. OWS did not give in to the “demand for demands” and this is crucially important, because their movement never was nor is now a conventional exercise in political advocacy. It is much better to describe it as a case of spontaneous socio-cultural upheaval intended to reshape contemporary political priorities into a more ethical form. In an America where an uber- wealthy minority has garnered a proportionally larger piece of the economic pie for decades, one might have anticipated that the protesters would have adopted a more conventional form of utopian rhetoric. But theirs was decidedly pragmatist. They pointed at real problems that could and should be solved in a political practice governed by simple sanity. One sign read, “I don’t mind you being rich. I mind you buying my government out from under me.” The sign referred to the draconian political atmosphere created when the Supreme Court voted ﬁve to four to overturn the McCain/Feingold Campaign Reform Act in the now infamous Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission decision of 2010. 3

The real issue at stake in the Occupy Movement’s actions is the control that money exerts over the political process. The movement reveals the plutocratic Achilles heel of neoliberal corporatism’s claim that it is more democratic than its chief rivals in model government. I call these rivals “state capitalism” and “theocratic tribalism,” and intend them to be non-euphemistic names for what are conventionally called socialism and religion-based social organization. Because of its distinctly modern emphasis on upholding the prerogatives of individual political actors, neoliberal corporatism is easy to sell as the ideology of choice for free thinkers. But, as history shows, free thinking never stays free for long, because it too has to live in a marketplace of encouragements and discouragements governed by instrumental rationales that are epiphenomenal to the formation and protection of wealth. In other words, those who have the gold set the standards, regardless of any vision of or obligation to social fair play. This insures that instrumental reason will always protect itself from any utopian vision so that in the realms of conventional discourse, we are always given an “intelligentsia” that functions as the public face of bureaucracy and policy. However “oppositional” its posture of hidden loyalty might be, it will nonetheless always end up ﬂeeing from the Socratic mandate that philosophical thinking helps its aspirants to actually live better. From the point of view of the Occupy movement, that mandate desperately needs to be returned to the core of any thinking that seeks to establish anything resembling a political priority.

When I refer to model forms of governmentality, I am not pointing to any operational political entity, any and all of which are circumstantial admixtures of the three models of neo-liberalism, state capitalism and tribal theocracy all achieving legibility much in the same way that tertiary colors do through the mixture of the primary hues of red, yellow and blue. For example, social democracy is really a blend of neo-liberal corporatism and state capitalism. Another example reminds us that there will always be a black market of goods and subversive ideology working in the shadows of any state capitalist system, or for that matter, within any theocratic tribe. Any system conﬁgured around any of these three model forms will also contain latent aspects of one or both of the others, arranged into dominant and subordinate formations. These are always in a perpetual state of change and reconsolidation.

They are also always in a state of subtle redeﬁnition, and the factors that shape these redeﬁnitions can sometimes come from surprising vectors. The Occupy Wall Street movement is one such example, surprising in that it refuses to operate according to the rules of normative political advocacy. Whereas the extremely conservative Tea Party rallies held during the previous year were examples of a durable tradition of anti-government American populism, the OWS movement is representative of an equally durable anti-bank populism that has a long-standing place in American history reaching back to early colonial laws against debtors’ prisons. Even though the two groups blamed different entities for the economic misery that swept the land after the 2008 ﬁnancial crisis, there is an important difference: in an act of support for the second amendment, Tea Party activists often brought guns to their rallies. The only ﬁrearms seen at Occupy Wall Street (and its more contentious sister event, Occupy Oakland) were in the hands of over-zealous law enforcement ofﬁcers. Occupy Wall Street events are signiﬁcantly more complicated animals than their Tea Party predecessors. The movement has gone far out of its way not to be co-opted by the mass media or any collection of candidates for public ofﬁce. Conversely, the Tea Party groups were all too happy to be ventriloquized by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News afﬁliates. OWS had a justiﬁable concern that any such afﬁliation would inevitably lead to the seven stages of political futility: cooptation, division, dilution, paciﬁcation, neutralization, disappointment and betrayal. Because of these concerns, what one sees coming out of the Occupy movement is not an exercise of politics deﬁned by the normal terms and conditions of any conventional political science. Rather, it operates as an example of what Alain Badiou has called a Metapolitics, that is, a strategic restaging of the ethical grounds by which political matters are imagined, understood, debated and acted upon. According to Badiou, Metapolitics is a form of “Resistance by Logic.” 4

No group, no class, no social conﬁguration or mental objective was behind the Resistance… there was nothing in the course of this sequence which could have been described in terms of objective groups, be they ‘workers’ or ‘philosophers’…. Let us say that this resistance, proceeding by logic, is not an opinion. Rather, it is a logical rupture with dominant and circulating opinions…. For the contemporary philosophical situation is one where, on the ruins on the doctrine of classes and class consciousness, attempts are made on all sides to restore the primacy of morality. 5

It is particularly interesting to look at Badiou’s metapolitical thesis in light of his larger project to transform the most basic grounds of philosophical inquiry so as to place greater emphasis on ethics. He is well known for proposing a change in the basic categories of philosophy (metaphysics, ethics, logic and epistemology), seeking to restage them as the interdependent “truth procedures” of “art, love, politics and science.” 6

His metapolitical restaging of the truth procedure of political science can be understood to be of a piece with his postulation of an ethical “inaesthetics.” This seeks to deny the meditative subject/object relationship of contemplation with something suffused with “immanence and singularity,” leading to a “transﬁguration of the given.” The Occupy Wall Street movement has followed suit on this score, fashioning itself as an immanent and singular metapolitical gesture that has embraced a unique resistance by logic that was and still is a vigorous disruption of logic. It has accomplished this by staging a theatrical moment that calls attention to the withering state of the commons, that being the place of democratic co-existence and rational debate where all citizens can freely enter and exist regardless of their inability to rent media time. And let there be no mistake: in the second decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century, social media has become the new commons, needing only a shared event to galvanize its attention to the point of putting a wide-ranging discourse about political priorities into play on a vast and unregulated scale. Occupy Wall Street is one such event, one whose time has clearly come. But the model for this kind of actual/virtual exercise in reformulating a common space into a rhetorical congregation had been established two decades earlier in a very different public location that also galvanized a vast virtual community. It too was a brilliantly conceived exercise in a metapolitical “resistance by logic.” That space was and still is the vast Black Rock Desert, a dry lakebed in northwestern Nevada that is administered by the Federal Bureau of Land Management.

Karen on Eileen and George, from Crude Awakening PHOTO: ROGER MINKOW M.D. — Karen on Eileen and George, from Crude Awakening
PHOTO: ROGER MINKOW M.D.

The event was and still is Burning Man. Since the early beginnings of the Internet, many observers have postulated that there was revolutionary potential in its ability to widely and instantaneously distribute unmediated information. Some have proclaimed it to be the new commons, this in recognition of how the forces of neoliberal corporatism have turned the old commons into shopping malls of various kinds, those being places where the subtle doctrine of “pay to play” began to slowly displace all other opportunities for political participation. Burning Man was the ﬁrst major instance of an organized recognition of this new communal possibility of the digital revolution, and the ﬁrst to act upon it at any meaningful scale. It did so by “occupying” a piece of public land in a wilderness area, and then conﬁguring itself as a kind of free city where monetary exchange and corporate advertising would not be allowed. Participation, collaboration and self-reliance were upheld as paramount civic virtues, and art was deﬁned and welcomed as the product of any “radical free expression” that any person could devise, regardless of any lack of previous experience or education. When web-browsing software ﬁrst became available in 1994, Burning Man was already nine years old, and had already been using email networks and virtual bulletin boards to distribute its messages to a growing audience. The emergence of such communications technologies were a natural ﬁt for the event, and even to this day, it has never paid for any advertising beyond the printing and mailing of its own promotional materials. That was the same year that the mass media initially came out to report on the event. The following year, the population doubled, making it clear that a tax on participants was needed to cover necessary costs for staging the event on a much larger sale. Admission tickets were sold, and federal rules were re-written so that the federal Bureau of Land Management could charge the organizers of Burning Man a hefty fee to use the space. Soon after that, much more money was spent in legal fees to support litigation that should have never have come to any court’s attention, if constitutional guarantees of rights to free assembly and self-expression were deemed worthy of any respect. But they weren’t, because it was difﬁcult to convince certain political operators that the self-expressive thing that had engendered Burning Man’s free assembly of pilgrims had anything to do with art. From their point of view, what was happening at an increasingly large scale every year in the Black Rock Desert on Labor Day weekend was much more frightening, in that its almost complete lack of artistic supervision portended something akin to a mass participation Satanic ritual.7 It also threatened to unmask the lie that art had become.

From the perspective of an art world populated by museum curators, globe trotting art collectors and the toney gallerists working the crowds at international art fairs, Burning Man represents a kind of Special Olympics for Art. To give credence to this view, all any nay-sayer would have to do is attend the event and take in its many starry-eyed unicorns and countless geodesic domes built in service to obscure comic-book deities fashioned from disﬁgured mannequins. If our nay-sayer were guided by courage and in search of additional evidence to support her initial observation, the next logical destination would be the large indoor exhibition space called the Café, which is usually decorated by the work of a great many amateur photographers and collage artists working on heavy doses of misinformed spiritual pretense and undeserved self-esteem. And yet, as revealing as the Café environment might be, it still pales in comparison to the best place to witness Burning Man’s culture of unfettered creativity, that being the array of unmapped theme camps located away from the Esplanade that separates the event’s semi-circular camping area from the mile-wide no-camping zone at its core. Here, one is liable to ﬁnd a vast assortment of incomprehensible do-it-yourself efforts at representational makeshiftery, often times manifested in things that look more like distorted family entertainments than the objects of any conventional art history. Looking like the mutant offspring of a theme park and a slum conceived in the prop closet of George and Mike Kuchar’s Studio 8 Production Company, 8 these provisional amalgamations of such materials such as ﬂuorescent fabric and solar powered lava lamps oftentimes seem to allegoricize the traumas and contradictions of a consumer culture blindly addicted to the debt-driven circulation of pseudo-goods and non-services; all saying something troublingly oblique about an America that is amusing itself to death in the age of Walmart.

The real value of Burning Man lies in how it reverses this model. It does so by simply allowing its participants to amuse themselves back to life through their participation in a week of collective catharsis. Fortunately for our dyspeptic pilgrim, the artistic offerings of Burning Man get bathed in a seemingly endless sea of electro-luminescent blinky lights when nightfall arrives, and her attention will then most likely be diverted by an omnipresent soundscape of pulsating techno music punctuated by the explosive ﬂashings of propane ﬁreballs surging into the sky. To this, add the lumbering peregrinations of large, slow moving vehicles that appear as grotesque carnival rides taken from a Dada-themed amusement park, and the picture of a vastly absurd semiotic entity comes close to completion, a relational esthetics

gesamtkunskwerk 9 that is metaphorically and geographically located at the exact half-way point between San Francisco’s Mission District and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty protruding from the north shore of the Great Salt Lake. It is equal parts game space and refugee camp, and as such, it presents itself as a gargantuan omni-participatory rejoinder to the regulation of subjectivity embedded in the cognitive illusions bred by normative market-deﬁned existence. And for this reason, the ensemble experience of participating in Burning Man provides a much-needed transﬁguration of everyday assumptions about what passes for cultural nourishment. Its chief lesson lies in the way that it demonstrates how well a do-it-yourself social economy can work if and when it reframes itself in the terms of a do-it-with-others ethos, and this represents a profound political revelation as well as its chief metapolitical legacy to be later taken up by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Rather than calling this vast entity by its proper name of Black Rock City, lets give it a more descriptive moniker: the living model of an alternative version of contemporary culture based on advancing an ethical glocalism as the highest of priorities. And then let us note that, in theatrically performing itself as such a model, it also forms itself into a fun house mirror reﬂection of the absurdities of twenty-ﬁrst century existence, all-the-while organizing itself as a temporary corrective for many of that century’s social and political shortcomings, especially those pointed toward systematically excluding people from social participation for no good reason. At Burning Man, the stranger is always welcome, and there are always opportunities for any given participant to do things that she never imagined herself to be doing. And in so doing, she oftentimes learns a great deal about the roles that she plays in her everyday life, in turn allowing her to imagine and act upon other roles that might lead her to a better world, at least for herself and maybe for others. Yes, Burning Man does feature a great deal of so-called “New Age” art made by people who might best be called hippies, and yes, almost all of that art is at best a guileless exercise in naïve cluelessness that is scripted not so much by any “radical free expression” as it is by the simplistic recirculation of pop cultural cliché. At worst, it is something on a par with toenail fungus, but even that can be strangely entertaining when contrasted with the vastness of the desert. Indeed, accounting for maybe two- or three-dozen notable exceptions during the past decade, we would have to concede that almost all of the art at Burning Man is as bad as its detractors say that it is. But in admitting this fact, another obvious question comes to the fore: in the great scheme of things, how important is it whether any of it is bad or good? And following from this, another obvious set of questions: who or what are the entities that are empowered to decide on any such differentiation? What values do they represent? What is masked by the authoritative proclamation of said values? And again: why does any of it matter?

Turnabout being fair play, it now becomes obligatory to imagine what an everyburner might make of the current world of contemporary art, resplendent as it is when ensconced within opulent museum architecture and festooned with price tags that are the monetary equivalent of real estate when it is not. It is undeniable that those environments are the sites of a kind of authoritative coldness designed to intimidate the viewer into a kind of passive submission to the historical authority of those things that are beheld within them. It is also undeniable that the large majority of those snobjects contain very little that conveys the kind of truthful generosity that might reward the attention of the serious viewer who is not party to the vested interests that have been inﬂuence-peddled into the visible existence of their environment’s adoration.

And so, our everyburner would no doubt ask: given the sorry state of the world, why all the fuss? Presumably, money is part of the equation, although it is difﬁcult for the uninitiated to see exactly how it plays out through the elaborate web of private, corporate and public support that buoy any given museum’s orchestration of the importance effect. As Paul Werner succinctly put it in 2005: “The illusion that art museums could be run for proﬁt like everything else was derived from the notion museums themselves had worked so hard to foster: that art and capital were all one and circulated in the same manner.”10

Werner goes on to quote former Metropolitan Museum director Phillipe de Montebello’s statement that “It is the judicious exercise of the museum’s authority that makes possible the state of pure reverie that an unencumbered esthetic experience can inspire,”11 and then goes on to state that “by the same logic, the absence of ‘a state of reverie’ interferes with ‘the judicious exercise of authority.’” Werner drives this point home when he writes “What Brecht wrote of the Nazis then now applies to cultural apparatus of the twenty-ﬁrst century: they want to turn the People into an audience. Same policy, different means.”12

Once again, we are reminded of the truism stating that propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated believe that they are acting on their own free will. How you might ask, and the answer is obvious: in the way of the translation of a certain class of objects—let’s call them symbolic commodities—into a certain class of equities. It is easy to suppose that said equity is simply gained from the fortuitous position that any given investor might take amid the normal value/worth ﬂuctuation of the commodity in question. But works of art are not commodities in same way as are barrels of crude oil or tons of copper, nor is it a form of reserve currency as are ounces of gold or silver. The commodity value of a given work of art is instead a function of its status as a reliquary representation of its own myth status, and that is something that continues to be manufactured long after said work of art leaves the studio of the artist who created it. Ultimately, it is the museum that conﬁrms the mythic status of the objects that it chooses to display and collect, creating a fortuitous feedback loop that points to how the world of contemporary art has been transformed into a rather perverse epiphenomena of the ﬁnancial services industry.

Here is how the normative art economy actually works. Artist a) makes a work of art b) and shows it at the gallery of dealer c), who gets it written about by critic d) and then sells it to collector e) for f) amount of money. Collector e) hangs on to artwork while the reputation of artist a) rises by way others repeating the same machinations described in the aforementioned equation, and then, at a fortuitous moment, she either sells said artwork for proﬁt f)+x , or more normally donates said artwork to museum g), for which she receives donor recognition h), which represents the fair market value that museum g) places on artwork b).

Because the work has been accepted into museum g)’s collection, its fair market value automatically rises, so that donor recognition h) is actually worth much more that the original purchase price f) of work of art b). And it is donor recognition h) that collector e) sends to the tax collector as a claim for a tax deductable charitable contribution that reduces collector e)’ s overall tax burden by a signiﬁcant sum of money (yes, the federal government does support the arts!). The value added portion of this equation lies in how much greater a sum of money donor recognition h) represents in relation to original cost of artwork b), and in many cases that sum is ten or 20 or 100 times the original investment. Thus the economy of art is laid bare, and it can rightfully be called a speculative marketplace in objects that might represent a signiﬁcantly enhanced tax-deductability that can be exercised at some future juncture, all assuming that museum g) is interested in acquiring work of art b) at any point in time. This means that work of art b) has to ﬁt in with what museum g) considers to be a worthwhile esthetic experience, based in part on its own vested interest in perpetuating its ability to exercise such consideration. Werner gets that particular point right when he states that “if the Guggenheim, or any other museum, had actually covered its expenses through admissions, that would have harmed its true function: The manufacture of exclusiveness.”13

But, even though money is a major part of the equation, it by no means is all of it. It is worth noting that Werner’s remarks about the museum world point to a speciﬁc historical moment, and that moment was deﬁned by the aftermath of the politically motivated reformulation of the National Endowment for the Arts that took place between 1989 and 1994. After that reformulation (which effectively ended government support for the arts in the United States), both the world of the museum and the larger world of contemporary art were momentarily recast as perverse sub-functions of the entertainment industry, with a reigning style called “Pop Surrealism”14

This coming to the fore as the stylistic marker for the art of that brief and bygone moment, and indeed, a perfectly useful and legitimate term that could accurately describe much of the art that one might ﬁnd at any given iteration of Burning Man. In fact, it is a far more accurate term than the more common ascription pointing to it as new form of “outsider art.” This is so because at that particular moment, there was a major lack of clarity about what was inside or outside of anything other than what ﬁnancially motivated turnstiles might keep in a state of separation, and in the wake of the cessation of government funding, an increase in audience size became an necessary institutional mandate. Thus, we had an art style that “took its inspiration from popular culture,” meaning that it was trying and failing to be popular culture, rather than the kind of critical comment on it that we saw with 1960s Pop Art. Part-and-parcel with the 1990s embrace of Pop Surrealism as an audience development strategy was another related trend called Postart spectacle, which transformed whole museums into elaborately staged pseudo-operas of the type made famous by Matthew Barney, Paul McCarthy and Martin Kippenberger—artists who all infused Pop Surrealist esthetics with the theme park ambience of an arena rock concert. Finally, it is worth noting that the rhetorical pendent that was hung around the neck of this esthetic shift toward popular entertainment was something called “art writing.” It did not come from the traditional world of art historically trained art critics, but instead issued from a new hybrid discourse that proclaimed itself to be something called “visual studies,” which in many cases was little more than culturally sensitive entertainment reporting—“celebrity porn journalism” to use a deservedly uncharitable term. Its most characteristic feature was a shameless willingness to be used as a tool for institutional audience development.

Nonetheless, in the art world, all of this was brief and transitional, because the focus would again shift in dramatic form after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, making Pop Surrealism suddenly look very anachronistic. Very soon thereafter, Globalism became the new buzzword for a suddenly robust emphasis on a transnational art hailing from under-recognized parts of the world. Presumably, Globalism represented an impetus toward encouraging the embrace of art as an instrument of national liberation, or failing that particular pretense, as a focal point for the kind of cultural lubrication that might politically facilitate desirable access to the labor, natural resources and markets of the developing economies so dearly prized by neoliberal corporatism. It might also represent a politically motivated usage of art as an instrument of paciﬁcation, that is, as an administrative technology for deﬂecting the potential for actual conﬂict into the containable realm of symbolic conﬂict. The visible shape that this newly globalized art took on was not manifested in any particular form of artistic cultural production, but instead, was revealed as a relatively new form of cultural presentation called the Mega-Exhibition. These were exempliﬁed by such time-honored extravaganzi as Documenta and the Venice Biennial, but also by a metastasizing host of newer entries into the global mega-exhibition fray, held in such cities as Istanbul and Taipei. These are giant affairs that operate under the guidance of an elite class of internationally renown curatorial directors, and in addition to operating as certiﬁcation mechanisms for the investability of the art contained by them, they also function as major engines of cultural tourism and transnational ideological propaganda that have been used to enrich the coffers of their host cities. It is also worth thinking about how other imperatives might be in play. As Okwui Enwezor has written, globalism embodies a new vision of global totality and a concept of modernity that dissolves the old paradigm of the nation-state and the ideology of the ‘center,’ each giving way to a dispersed regime of rules based on networks, circuits, ﬂows, interconnection. Those rhizomatic movements are said to operate on the logic of horizontality, whose disciplinary, spatial, and temporal orders enable the mobility of knowledge, information, culture, capital, and exchange, and are no longer based on domination and control… globalism was part of the maturation of a certain kind of liberal ideal, which in its combination of democratic regimes of governance and free market capitalism was prematurely announced as the end of history.15

These attributes are all pointed at the imagination of “a truly uniﬁed world system whereby all systems of modern rationalism would ﬁnally be properly fused.”16

Of course, the inquiring mind will ask, to what end? And more importantly, to whose end? Of course, answers to these questions are never made clear, perhaps because they cannot be made clear. But it is worth pointing out that the impetus toward the aforementioned fusion is a very different thing than the impetus toward cultural diversity, and it is also interesting to note that among the many topics of cultural identity that have surfaced during the heyday of the global mega-exhibition, the debt obligations of post-colonial nation states is one that almost never comes up. That is because the thing instigating and beneﬁting from the aforementioned fusion is a global, trans-national banking system that has learned how to use both art and nation states as tools for its own purposes. That much said, we can go on to productively note Burning Man is also a mega-exhibition, but in many ways it is also an anti-mega-exhibition, especially in the ways that it preﬁgured, mirrored and satirized the “the rhizomatic logics of horizontality, interconnection and dispersal” that have become de rigueur themes in twenty-ﬁrst century art. III

Electrical Suit sketch by Dr. Austin Richards AKA Dr. Megavolt

For all of Burning Man’s claims of being a place apart from the default world that it pretends to leave behind, it nonetheless does seem that the event sustains an oblique relationship to that world. During the technologically addled 1990s, Burning Man seemed to be prophetically far ahead of the cultural environment surrounding it. The chief reason for this was its far-reaching imagination of the ways that new technology could recast how social relations might be reconﬁgured in critical relation to what Naomi Klein would later call “Disaster Capitalism.”17

In those days, the presiding spirit of Burning Man was not any getting back to the mythical garden that so captured the imagination of the Woodstock generation so much as it was a celebration of various kinds of real and imagined love taking place amongst the post-apocalyptic ruins of rampant military adventurism and ﬁnancial and ecological unsustainability. But in 2001, the specter of real apocalypse became traumatically evident when the 9/11 terrorist attacks ushered in an unfunded war wedded to the draconian trappings of the National Security State. Suddenly, the world caught up with Burning Man’s parsing of the utopian and dystopian themes of technologically-assisted social capitalism, making them seem redundantly similar to the mass media narratives about a brave new cyber-economy as well as the emergence of other forms of Postart spectacle that had come into prominence in the art world. The fact that Burning Man had become the putative darling of a kind of trivializing mass-media condescension did not help, and over time the event become more-and-more indistinguishable from the “wild and crazy” caricatures that were heaped upon it. By 2007, the event had clearly become a victim of its own clichés of ﬂagrant silliness, mired in a repetitious cycle of nostalgia for the exuberant 1990s. Soon after that, that the world would pass it by, because in 2008, the story would take another turn, a downturn to be exact. The ﬁnancial crisis that exploded in October of that year once again recalibrated the larger terrain of cultural understanding, and the urgency of that moment began to make Burning Man look every bit as indulgent and frivolous as it did the institutional art world. Soon thereafter, a new concern for the politics of social justice had come into the foreground, eclipsing the themes of alternative identity and self-sustaining community-of-desire that were such prominent features of the event during its 1990s heyday. It was time to pass the metapolitical torch of the do-it-with-others ethos so that a very different ﬁre might be lit with the aid of a few well-placed Falstafﬁan pitchforks.

Returning to Badiou, we read that the ethical understanding of justice is something quite speciﬁc. It is based on the following injunction: “to examine political statements and their proscriptions, and draw from them their egalitarian kernel of universal signiﬁcation.”18

If Burning Man has done nothing else, it has certainly created an Archimedean ground from which such an examination might proceed, much more successfully than anything that happened in the institutional art world during the same time period. Following from this recognition, we might then ask how the metapolitical kernel of Burning Man was passed to Zucotti Park, as if, in an age of social media, the assertion and exertion of any inﬂuence on anything can somehow be supposed to not be operable until proven otherwise. We know that one of the key instigators of the OWS movement was Micah White, the Berkeley-based co-editor of the Vancouver-based journal Adbusters , therefore a Bay Area connection is easily made, although it is not clear if White was in any way inﬂuenced by Burning Man. Because there is a very large contingent of Burning Man participants that hail from New York City, one could easily suppose that their experience of the event might have had something to do with the encampment at Zucotti, especially since Occupy Wall Street initially took place just ten days after the conclusion of the 2011 Burning Man event. But there is one important kernel of indisputable inﬂuence that clearly stands out, and that is Bill Talen, who is better known in his performance guise of Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, a New York-based performance group that has extensively toured the United States and is the subject of two widely circulated documentary ﬁlms. What makes Talen’s performances so timely for this discussion is his evocation of the tropes of a theocratic tribalism that are severed from the politics of hate and fear, all enacted in service to the kind of communitarianism and pleas for justice that earmarked the earliest Christian communities of the second century. Obviously, those same values are in short supply among so-called evangelical churches populated by legions of CINOs (Christians-in-Name-Only), reminding us of how deeply perverted the gospel message has become in twenty-ﬁrst century America. The fact that the more organized churches proclaiming allegiance to the gospels have been outdone on this score by a performance artist should be cause for concern, outrage and cruel mockery. Starting in 2002, the 30-member band and gospel choir of the Church of Stop Shopping has regularly performed at Burning Man, putting on a rousing revival show that is a stunningly convincing mimic of similar services consecrated to “the old time religion” a la Elmer Gantry, only at Burning Man, it was comically staged under the shadow of an 40-foot-tall efﬁgy that echos the real old old old time religion of Neolithic cult worship.

At the forefront of the Church’s performance is Talen’s character named Reverend Billy, who preaches in passionate, Elvis Presley-inﬂected voice about the evils of consumerism and the tragic human cost of debt-driven consumption, backed up by a gospel chorus and small orchestra featuring a church organ. The chorus sings songs about the virtues of an economic democracy that is described as a promised land, and the mood is always persuasively festive, even joyous.

Talen’s passionate and eloquent sermons come across like rhapsodic poems made from the many fragments of Occupy Wall Street signage, and in fact, Talen did perform (sans choir) at the 17 September 2011 beginning of OWS, just a few days after returning to New York from Burning Man. Subsequently, he performed with the choir at Zucotti Park on several other days, to audiences that grew ever larger during the month of October. These were rousing and inspirational shows that galvanized the attention of ever-growing crowds in a way that gave them a coherent group identity, meaning that, for a few brief moments, the Occupy protesters found themselves attending a church of their own politically inclusive revelation, which allowed them to see themselves as being a part of something much larger than themselves.

As always, Talen’s performances were a brilliant obversion of the pernicious role that religion has come to play in American politics, where so-called “values” candidates have been using church afﬁliation for decades as the preferred excuse for supporting candidates and policies that embody the hateful opposite of Christian morality. Such ethically duplicitous rhetoric also has a metapolitical name, and that name is Neoconservatism when practiced by Americans who identify with Judeo-Christian tradition, and fundamentalism when practiced by others. Either way, the word “fundamental” applies in all of its many nuances, especially the one that highlights its deﬁnitional opposition to enlightened sophistication. Essentially, Neoconservatism is a subtle theologicization of the neoliberal doctrine that deﬁnes the subject along the secular lines of economic self-interest, but it deviates from that doctrine in that it assumes that self-serving moral edicts are required when the economic interests of cultural Others begins to gain too quickly in relation to the economic self-interest of the culturally entitled.

Talen’s Reverend Billy performances are so entertaining and well executed that it is easy to miss the seriousness of the metapolitical critique embodied in them. Certainly, they provide a thoughtful and dramatic critique of the empathy deﬁcit disorder that is bred by neoliberal corporatism, and they command and entice their audiences to insist on ethical correctives. As for the relation of his work to his experience of Burning Man, Talen himself has a clear vision of the similarity between Burning Man and the OWS movement. He writes: Burning Man and Occupy Wall Street share this: we discovered that living together is a performance with long-range power. How we live—people watch and learn. Then they live back at us and we change too. We experience the decisions of how to live as drama, and (we found out) as protest—more than traditional theater which rarely has electrical charge these days. For years we were the butt of journalist jokes, calling us refried 60s protesters—angry people carrying signs and chanting. All that was wiped away by the glorious arrival of Occupy, which was the simple notion of living together in public, in a park under the scrapers of Wall. Sharing food, stories, making media, ﬁguring out laws, discussing health, feeding each other—LIVING TOGETHER is the devastating protest form of our day. Burning Man’s fascination—you see it around the world—ﬂows from living together under arid desert conditions for a week. BM also chucks the conventional stage and ﬁnds a new charged theater in sashaying in outrageous costumes and nakedness in front of 50,000 people who are doing the same thing back at you. Burning Man is great theater—leaves Broadway in its playa dust. And Wall Street guys are there too—wearing ﬂuorescent underwear while they check out a 100-foot-long chandelier. How change comes to the world from these two forms of theatrical living— stay tuned! It has begun.” To this I can only say Amen.

notes- *apologies for layout issues, text spaces have been modified to allow for full citation listings.

Alain Badiou,

Metapolitics

(1998), translated by Jason Barker, London: Verso Books, 2005, p. 19.

Jean Tingley, “On Statics,” (text from a leaﬂet dropped near Dusseldorf in 1959. Recorded in

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume VI

, edited by Gunther Stuhlman, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1966 p. 284.

See Adam Schiff, “The Supreme Court Still Thinks That Coroporations Are People,” (July 18, 2012)

The Atlantic Monthly

; http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-supreme-court-still-thinks-corporations-are-people/259995/court-still-thinks-corporations-are-people/259995/

Badiou, Op. Cit., p. 5.

Ibid, pp. 5–6.

For a synopsis of Badiou’s key claims, see his

Manifesto for Philosophy

, translated by Norman Maderaz, State University of New York Press, 1999. Further references to Baudiou’s ideas are extracted from this source, unless otherwise cited.

Claims of Burning Man being a socially dangerous satanic ritual were made on the 18 May 1998 broadcast of Pat Robertson’s 700 Club program on the

Christian Broadcast Network

George Kuchar (1942–2011) and Mike Kuchar (b.1942) were San Francisco-based underground ﬁlmmakers whose low budget works used and misused exaggerated gender clichés to satirize the most preposterous aspects of conventional “sinematic” exposition. George Kuchar’s most well known ﬁlm was titled

Hold Me While I’m Naked

, 1966, while Mike Kuchar is best known for his 1966 ﬁlm titled

Sins of the Fleshapoids.

In 1997, they collaborated on a book of comic reminiscences titled

Reﬂections from a Cinematic Cesspool

(San Francisco: Zanja Press). Here we might note a persistent albeit unconﬁrmed rumor that San Francisco’s long-running stage play titled

Beach Blanket Babylon

was originally indebted in some way to the George Kuchar esthetic. In Jennifer Kroot’s 2009 documentary ﬁlm titled

It Came From Kuchar,

it was revealed that Bill Grifﬁth’s comic character named

Zippy the Pinhead

was modeled on George Kuchar.

Gesamtkunskwerk

literally means “total work of art.” It was coined by Richard Wagner to describe his view opera production as a synthesis of all of the arts. See his

The Artwork of the Future

(1849, translated by William Ashton Ellis) at http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagartfut.htm. “Relational Esthetics” was a term originally coined by Nicholas Bourriard in 1986 as a way of calling attention to certain artistic practices that were/ are less concerned about the creation of a ﬁnal product than they are about the social processes of inclusion and participation leading up to it. Bourriaud deﬁned the approach simply as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.” (p. 113). See Nicholas Bourriard,

Relational Esthetics , Dijon, France: Les Presses du Reel , 2002. For a critique of Bourriard’s thesis, see Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,”

October 110, Fall 2004. Bishop points out that “The curators promoting this ‘laboratory’ paradigm—including Maria Lind, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Barbara van der Linden, Hou Hanru, and Nicolas Bourriaud—have to a large extent been encouraged to adopt this curatorial modus operandi as a direct reaction to the type of art produced in the 1990s: work that is open-ended, interactive, and resistant to closure, often appearing to be ‘work-in-progress’ rather than a completed object. Such work seems to derive from a creative misreading of poststructuralist theory: rather than the interpretations of a work of art being open to continual reassessment, the work of art itself is argued to be in perpetual ﬂux. There are many problems with this idea, not least of which is the difﬁculty of discerning a work whose identity is willfully unstable. Another problem is the ease with which the ‘laboratory’ becomes marketable as a space of leisure and entertainment. Venues such as the Baltic in Gateshead, the Kunstverein Munich, and the Palais de Tokyo (in Paris) have used metaphors like ‘laboratory,’ ‘construction site,’ and ‘art factory’ to differentiate themselves from bureaucracy-encumbered collection-based museums; their dedicated project spaces create a buzz of creativity and the aura of being at the vanguard of contemporary production. One could argue that in this context, project-based works-in-progress and artists-in-residence begin to dovetail with an‘experience economy,’ the marketing strategy that seeks to replace goods and services with scripted and staged personal experiences. Yet, what the viewer is supposed to garner from such an ‘experience’ of creativity, which is essentially institutionalized studio activity, is often unclear.” (p. 52) Bishop goes on to quote Bourriard: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows” (p. 54;

Relational Esthetics,p. 45), Then she adds “This DIY, microtopian ethos is what Bourriaud perceives to be the core political signiﬁcance of relational aesthetics.” (p.54). It is worth noting that there has never been much difference between Bourriard’s assertion of “Relational Aesthetics” art practices and Allan Kaprow’s much older advocacy of Happenings, the ﬁrst principle of which being “the line between the Happenings and daily life should be kept as ﬂuid as possible,” so that “the reciprocation between the handmade and the ready-made will be at its maximum power.” (Allan Kaprow, “The Happenings are Dead: Long Live the Happenings!” (1966) in Jeff Kelly ed., The Blurring of Art and Life: The Collected Writings of Allan Kaprow , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p. 62). The key point lies in how both Relational Esthetics and the earlier Happenings resurrect the tenants of Lukasian social realism by substituting real-time face-to-face encounters for the older tropes of representing and/or narrating ideas of “class consciousness.” More recently, similar activities have again rebranded themselves as “Social Practice Art,” as a way of emphasizing more speciﬁc political ambitions. See Nato Thompson, Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991 to 2011,

Cambridge, MA. MIT Press, 2012. But even here, the obvious equation of institutionally supported “social practice art” with inefﬁcacious postures of mild political concern (scented with the bad faith of loyal opposition) are never directly addressed. An important early instance of a Relational Esthetics artwork was San Francisco-based artist Tom Marioni’s Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art

, a weekly relational esthetics performance that has been ongoing since the mid-1970s. Clearly, San Francisco-based Burning Man is far and away the largest and most complex example. Neither was mentioned in Bourriard’s famous book.

10.

Paul Werner,

Museums, Inc.

, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2005, p. 9.

11.

Ibid., p. 15.

12.

Ibid

p. 58.

13.

Ibid

p. 41.

14.

Pop Surrealism was the name of a 1998 exhibition organized by Richard Klein, Ingrid Schaffner and Dominique Nahas held at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgeﬁeld Connecticut. It contained the work of artists such as Peter Saul, Mike Kelly, Paul McCarthy, Lisa Yuskavage, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, John Currin and Robt. Williams, and could be said to have reprised and expanded upon an earlier exhibition titled Helter

Skelter that was organized in 1992 by Paul Schimmel at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The monthly publication Juxtapose (founded by Williams in 1994) has done much to promote many of the artists associated with the Pop Surrealism movement, but the publication’s claim that the movement originated in southern California is erroneous. The real historical sources of the Pop Surrealism movement is found in the earlier work of Bay Area-based artists such as Peter Saul and George Kuchar, as well as the underground comics movement that was based in the same area during the middle 1960s. Chicago artists of the early 1970s such as Jim Nutt, Gladys Nielson and Karl Wirsum were also important early inﬂuences. The most important aspect of the Pop Surrealism movement lied in its embrace of a populist turn in art that was responsive to circumstances related to the political controversies surrounding government funding for the arts. In 1998, the National Endowment for the Arts published the ﬁndings of a multi-year research project that concluded that the arts were widely perceived to be irrelevant and elitist. The project was called American Canvas

. See Gary O. Larson,

American Canvas: An Arts Legacy for Our Communities

, Washing ton D.C.: US Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1998.

15.

Okwui Enwezor, “Mega-Exhibitions and the Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form,” in Andreas Huyssen ed.,

Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in Globalizing Art

, Duke University Press, 2008, pp. 148–149.

16.

Ibid

p. 149. In an anonymous introductory remark made in the online journal

Italian Greyhound , we read that “Enwezor uses as an illustration of the serious and thoughtfully considered nature of righteous internationalists in fomenting new representations in academic programs and curated collections by pointing to a think tank he participated in 1997 in Italy whose members came from Brazil, Turkey, Cuba, Australia, South Africa, and Thailand, amid other countries. These panelists endeavored to recode the complex dialectics between globalization and the long process of modernization towards market basked-economies on the course of which much of the developing world was set since the early days of decolonization. Enwezor reports that this group drew and reached no conclusions other than to continue meeting at subsequent retreats and biennale exhibitions.” The same anonymous interlocutor also summarizes a response formulated by art critic George Baker to Enwezor’s essay that takes exception to its optimistic assessment of the equalizing nature of enormous international art fairs, arguing that “the only valid deﬁnition of globalization is one that must include an acknowledgement of the invasiveness of multinational corporations.” Baker deﬁantly asks “who and where is the audience for mega-exhibitions?” echoing Enwezor’s use of the words “spectatorship” and “spectacle.” The roving biennale, Baker says, “creates a traveling fair for global elites, excluding both artists and the local populations where such exhibits take place.” Baker dismisses Enwezor’s Trauma and Nation model concepts, claiming instead that “shows such as Documenta existed for years merely as a forum for exported American art and views of art.” Baker further argues “mega-exhibits are in fact created, like the Olympics, with the intent of deﬁning, promulgating, and delineating American culture.” Baker asks “why it is that biennials,” (which are, he says, “essentially the same showcasing of many of the same works repeated in different time zones”) “are the new model for counter-hegemonic spectatorship?” (See the summary provided at athttp://italiangreyhounds.org/errata/2007/06/13/“mega-exhibitions-and-the-antimonies-of-a-transnational-global-form”-by-okwui-enwezor-vs-“the-globalization-of-the-false-a-response-to-okwui-enwezor”-by-george-baker/)

17.

See Naomi Klein,

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,

New York: Henry Holt &Co., 2007.

18.

Badiou, Op. Cit., p. 17.

19.

Bill Talen, Email correspondence with the author, 7 April 2012.

SLOW BURN245BARBARA TRAUB

SLOW BURN

BARBARA TRAUB

Monolith

, 2012

246SLOW BURN247BARBARA TRAUB

Playa Play

, 2000

Greeter Station

, 1997

Double Expusure

, 1995

248SLOW BURN249BARBARA TRAUB

Guiding Light

, 1999

250SLOW BURN251BARBARA TRAUB

Ravishing Raven

, 2000

Desert Rat

, 1997

252SLOW BURN253BARBARA TRAUB

Dust Cloud

, 1996

Tableau Vivant

, 1994

Water Woman

, 1997

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