Hi Everyone,
As most of you know, I go to the Burning Man Arts Festival every summer and I bring a project called No Borders Free Bookstore, which consists of about 4 dozen book titles--poetry, fiction, prose, anthologies of writings about psychedelics--which I gift out to people at the festival. This is my seventh year going, second with my partner KD, and this year we decided to apply for funding to help with the expenses. It's over $1000 just to get about a dozen copies each of about 48 titles printed, bound, and transported to the desert.
We applied for grant money from a new Burning Man funding group called BORG2. They dole out their funds by a vote rather than by committee. I'd like to ask that everyone here go to the BORG2 site at
http://www.borg2.com (http://www.borg2.com), and look at the proposals page which is:
http://www.borg2.org/artProposals.php3 (http://www.borg2.org/artProposals.php3) and make sure to look at mine at: http://www.borg2.org/proposals/NoBorders.html (http://www.borg2.org/proposals/NoBorders.html)
The voting page is at: http://www.borg2.org/voting.php3 (http://www.borg2.org/voting.php3) and the deadline for registering is today! The voting itself will be June 2, 3, and 4. I would greatly appreciate eveyone's involvement in this effort! You'll see if you read my proposal links to all the books which you can download for free!
Thanks, everyone :wink:
registered - just waiting for my subscription to be "acted upon", then i'll vote.
proposal looks good.
best of luck, ray
judih
Same here. Best of luck.
thank you so much! it's strange to be asking for art grant money and have the result be in the form of a vote...it occurred to me today i should be campaigning! hehe...i hope something comes of it...anyway, thanks :)
the voting is going on now! the lead candidate has 15, ours has 9, tied for fifth place how weirdly fun :twisted:
vote if you registered!! :P
ray, i've been looking ...
the 'voting' page doesn't show me where to vote.
is there a link?
j
went exploring, found a forum and have just voted.
yes, i've exercised my democratic right. yeah, yeah, yeah.
you're in 5th place so far, no borders friends.
VOTING EXTENDED!
Voting in the BORG2 art elections has been extended to Tuesday, June 7, at midnight. If you're registered to vote in these elections and haven't done so yet, now you'll have a couple extra days to look over the proposals and cast an informed ballot.
******
so it's 1 a.m. or so Sunday morning Seattle time and me and KD see that our vote count is up to 41, 14th place in rank...we got home about an hour ago and someone in that time someone voted for us...very strange indeed...good thing we got new shpongle spinning on my mac to keep us chill and smooth :twisted:
there must be a lot of campaigning going on somewhere - even though you've got a rave review from the first dude's recommendations (sorry, no link handy)
How many people will get grants? Is 14th place good enough?
best of luck...
j
Posted December 4, 2005 at BORG2 Tribe.net Discussion list:
http://borg2.tribe.net/thread/1de82801- ... 093dc6f374 (http://borg2.tribe.net/thread/1de82801-c938-4fbd-ad59-e3cc1ed5b9b9?newpostingid=d8acbd6b-6b5a-4497-9b0a-ce093dc6f374#d8acbd6b-6b5a-4497-9b0a-ce093dc6f374)
I have been to Burning Man seven years running now, and plan to participate as long as it is the crazy desert fest annual city that it has been and still is. I will not be joining local communities of it, or attending conference centers or whatever, because, frankly, these are conventional institutions of power that the yearly occurrence in the desert belie more than anything else I know. I don't have to meet Larry Harvey, and clap for his speech to shareholders, I don't have to pin a namebadge on my lapel and eat dinner with others in the dining hall. Burning Man is, for me, going out to the desert, joining 30,000 others in building something up that nobody completely controls, or experiences the entirety of, then tearing it down a week later, and departing. I live in Seattle and do not participate locally in BM-related events as this is not the desert, it's just some city where the desert magic lingers mostly secretly in hearts. It does not translate well to year-round human habitations. That is simply my view, those who do work all year round in BM-related activities should not take offense from my remarks. We each burn uniquely.
That all said as preface, let me say additionally that BORG2 was a great, great experiment, and the Borg1 response was disappointing...and not surprising. They do this work all year. It is their jobs. They get paychecks. They argue about it, defend it, live and breathe it, sell, shit it, probably are so sick of it by the actual desert event that they end up, most of them, like LH, who I have heard is "over" Burning Man.
Fine, let another take it on, if so. Step back, take a break, try a new bag. Or stay on with the others whom we thank for their great hard work and resent for their stubbornness to needed change. Still, I go with my wife KD and we bring our art, little funded by anyone but our own paychecks, and we participate. We join in, we piss clear, we use the portajohns by rule, we leave no trace. We join in and we have fun, and we hug newbies, and we are as glad as fuck we made it one more year, often very barely. We come home to Seattle and, apart from cursorily reading the BM San Fran list serv, the Jack Rabbits, and the BORG2 tribe discussions, we resume our lives, which resemble our desert lives as much as is possible in this money-sick, war-ravaged, too often darwinian nightmare called Western Civilization.
We'll be there next year, we'll apply for grant money because we are fairly poor, we'll likely get turned down because our art does not qualify for what they seek to fund. We'll work at our jobs, and put away cash as we can, and labor our asses off to get ourselves and our project ready for the desert. It is a cycle. For me, Burning Man participates in my spirituality. I am an Artist, I earned calling myself this, I am proud and humble to do so, Burning Man is for me a pilgrimage. I hope it exists always, whomever is running it.
I don't live in SF. I did not have a chance to help form BORG2, except by email correspondence, and participating in the online vote, and camping with the BORG2 camp. In other words, KD's and my bookstore project was mostly involved in the public, tale end of the organization. Now I see it is apparently not coming next year. That is regrettable. I can't jump in and say "Change a 20 year old event in less than one year? Are you kidding?" and then campaign to continue the group with my daily sweat. I can only regret that it will not carry on and make a bigger dent next year, and beyond.
It seems that BORG2 was more meant to prove a point than to be an ongoing enterprise. That is fine, but I wish it wasn't so. Making change takes time. Civil rights, women's rights, anyone's rights, the peace movement...these campaigns dig in and prepare to last for as long as it takes. Even the religious, the sincere believing ones, don't know when their savior, or whomever, will return, so they prepare for the long haul of believing and working to make the world in the meantime a better place. One vote at a time, one overturned racially biased law at a time, whatever.
For it occurs to me now that BORG2 was in truth more of a political organization than anything else. Out to win hearts & minds, so to speak. To prove its point that democracy in art funding works better, can work better. Now Harvey's response says no, sorry, you were wrong--and everyone, or many in BORG2 say fine, we're done, seeya down the road.
If it's about the Art, then it's about the fucking Art, not Larry Harvey, not the various figures in this group, not me, not anyone in particular. If I was down there, I'd damn well be arguing for new BORG2 leadership to do what B1 is not yet ready to do, that is change and seek new leaders when that time comes around.
But, truly, for me, it is really is about the Art. It's not even about Burning Man for me. Burning Man is part of it for me. On the one hand, I retain my freedom to focus on what I care about. On the other, I don't work up to big projects and reknown and the funding that results in such efforts. It's a trade-off. The benefit is that LH does not hold my Art by his pursestrings. If he shut down BM, or turned it into a fun ride for hipster snobs in SF, I would be very sad, and move on.
I respect enormously those who joined in BORG2, and sought to make a difference, and what I wish for you is this: if you love the ideals of BM, which stand alone in this rotten, corrupt Babylon of a land, then do not abandon it. Keep coming, and find ways to get your art funded and made. Keep about the Art. Support others with love over the filthy dollar. Teach new people to find the creative fire within and chase it in whatever form appeals to them. Don't waste your nights or your breath on worrying over LH and his group at the top. I do not believe that BM is so powerful it can abandon its desert event for his other most mundane, materialist pursuits. If he does, walk away. But remember the desert, and keep it in your heart and dreams.
If an alternative to the main org is sought, no more bets. No more challenges. Turn your back on the ego competitiveness that inevitably corrupts such efforts. We can't take over BM by a single year's challenge to the egoes of its hosts. And I, for one, do not wish to miss the desert party and the great Art and people who show up every year, despite the nay-saying. Challenges to authority must be in the viable form of committed, coherent alternatives from people who believe fervantly in what they are doing, and will do it in perpetuity.
I dream of Burning Man, and it often appears in different forms than the waking live desert event. I wear my BM pendants round my neck always, and occasionally find myself asked about them. BM runs through my blood because it is native to me, to what I would wish for the world to have. As long as my participation is allowed, and not hindered when I am actually at BRC, I will keep going. I believe in the Art, in the city, and in the ideals of Larry Harvey in starting the event, if not who he has become, whoever that is.
I wish you all peace and love and hope that we meet out there, in that desert world a dream from tonight's perspective, but in truth more real than most of what I see on the streets every day.
Love,
Raymond