Jrs V13 I15

JRS VOLUME #13; ISSUE #15

Burning Man Update: The Jack Rabbit Speaks
Volume 13, Issue #15
April 2, 2009

Hey guess what? The Burning Man office is moving! Yep, our lease ends here on April 30, whereupon UCSF (who owns the land on which we sit) will be razing this building to the ground and building a women’s and children’s hospital. We’ve known about this for a long time now, and have been searching for new digs for a while. Thing is, our list of requirements for a new space is about as long as it is unique, and it’s hard to find the Goldilocksian perfect place … luckily, we’re patient enough to wait for it.

So patient, in fact, that rather than jump into the WRONG situation, we’ve decided to occupy a smaller temporary office space to host our core functions (administration, accounting, ticketing, desktop support, meeting space, etc.) while the rest of the office staff will work from home/virtually for a while. We expect this will be our situation for the next 6-12 months or so, until after the coming Burn, when we find and land the right building that serves ALL our needs. Weird, huh? Well, we are nothing if not resourceful, and lucky to be flexible enough to make it work. Suffice to say it’ll be an interesting transition, and a fascinating part of our ongoing evolution.

This story was picked up by Steve Jones in the San Francisco Bay Guardian last week (http://tinyurl.com/clhgwk) and we’re hearing back about our search from some very interesting new resources here in the city, so we have faith that this search is just a stepping stone on our path to some major evolutionary developments!

(And to answer the question: the move is completely unrelated to the state of the economy – the impending UCSF development here was part of our initial lease in this space.)

We’ve been in this space since 2002, and many wonderful things have transpired in this combination office, gathering space, and living museum of Burning Man history … parting is most definitely sweet sorrow. If you have enjoyed a meeting, an event, a party, or a at BMHQ, take a moment to think fondly of it. We’ll be creating an archival video of the space before it all comes down, and will likely post that for your viewing pleasure.

And don’t forget, Burning Man’s Open House is this Saturday, April 4th at BMHQ … it’s your last chance to say goodbye to our beloved office! Join us! Details here: http://tinyurl.com/co4amp

And with that, onward! With our community growing and expanding so rapidly, there’s just more and more to tell you about all the time, it seems. Rather than blather on about it all here, check it out down yonder.

Finally, this Rabbit completely screwed up and missed an opportunity to tell you about the spring kick-off party for the Friends of Black Rock / High Rock, which took place March 21. Our apologies to them for leaving them high and dry (heh. get it?) and to y’all for leaving you in the dark about it. Anyway, the Friends do invaluable work fostering the stewardship of the Black Rock Desert, and are more than worthy of your interest and your click (here: http://www.blackrockdesert.org ). Please do check ’em out and get involved.

-PQ
(Associate Rabbit)

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LATEST NEWS:
+ BURNING MAN ON TWITTER!!
+ CONTRIBUTE AN ELECTROLUMINESCENT CREATION FOR THE 2009 MAN BASE!
+ DO YOU BELIEVE YOU WERE STOPPED OR SEARCHED BY BLM LAW ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE?
+ BLACK ROCK SOLAR INSTALLING SOLAR ARRAY AT PAIUTE RESERVATION MEDICAL CLINIC
+ LA CONTESSA BUILDERS FILE SUIT AGAINST ALLEGED ARSONIST
+ VIDEO FOOTAGE OF THE BURNING LIFE REGIONAL EVENT
+ BURNING MAN INSPIRATION TO ACTION IN TENNESSEE
+ MAKE YOUR OWN GRAYWATER EVAPORATION SYSTEM
+ SEEKING FOOTAGE OF A CAVALLO INSTALLATION FOR DOCUMENTARY
+ NIMBY THANKS YOU!

PARTICIPATE:
+ BURNERS WITHOUT BORDERS $5K STIMULUS PACKAGE

EVENTS & HAPPENINGS:
+ COLORADO’S APOGAEA 2009 DATES ARE SET
+ BURNING MAN PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON

PHOTOS & IMAGES:
+ BURNING MAN 2008 PHOTOGRAPHY FROM JOSH EDELSON

ADMINISTERRATA:
+ Want to unsubscribe from the JRS? Srsly? OK, here’s how: http://tinyurl.com/2rwqzx

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BURNING MAN ON TWITTER!!

Burning Man has joined the ranks of the Web 2.0 world, and if you’re into Twitter’s micro-blogging goodness, you should follow @burningman for all the latest updates from the Man.

http://www.twitter.com/burningman

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CONTRIBUTE AN ELECTROLUMINESCENT CREATION FOR THE 2009 MAN BASE!

This year’s art theme is titled “Evolution – A Tangled Bank”. In 2009, the statue that is Burning Man will rise above a kind of tangled bank consisting of irregular wooden triangles. No two elements of this organic composition will be quite the same; together they’ll create what’s best described as a chaotic truss. At night this vaulted pavilion will come alive with luminous life forms, scratching, crawling and skittering their way around and through it. A rendering of this structure is featured on our website at:

http://burningman.com/art_of_burningman/bm09_theme.html

The Burning Man Project invites you to contribute to this design. We wish to create simple electro-luminescent animations, creating the illusion of exotic and fanciful life forms. Your submission need merely be two or three line drawings that we will convert into an illusion of continuous movement. Such figures will be rendered on 10- inch diameter discs attached to the pavilion. We are also interested in considerably more ambitious creations: any pre-fabricated EL animation that will span lengths of ten feet or more. Design submissions should be made in a PDF format and sent to:

light-designs (at) burningman (dot) com

Honoraria are not offered in exchange for this work. However, we will endeavor to retrieve any larger-scale light effect from the pavilion before the Man is burned. The name of each contributing artist or group of artists will be featured on the 2009 Burning Man theme art web page and in this year’s digital Burning Man Journal. Please include your name, contact information and your locale, as well as any queries, with your proposal. The deadline for submissions is April 22, 2009.

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DO YOU BELIEVE YOU WERE STOPPED OR SEARCHED BY BLM LAW ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE?

The Burning Man Project has received numerous complaints from participants that Bureau of Land Management (BLM) law enforcement officers may have overstepped their bounds by stopping participants without reasonable suspicion and/or searching participants without probable cause during the last two years. Lawyers for Burners (LFB), a self-organized community group of lawyers is considering whether legal action is appropriate.

If you had an interaction with BLM law enforcement in 2007 or 2008 in which you believe you were stopped without justification, reasonable suspicion or searched without probable cause, then you could be a potential plaintiff. Specifically, participants who were stopped and searched by BLM law enforcement, but did NOT receive a citation may have valid claims.

If you wish to communicate with LFB concerning potential legal action and whether you should be a plaintiff, please visit http://www.lawyersforburners.com … click on “Go To Form” on the left side of the page and fill out the intake form. Please note that, since you are communicating with LFB about possible representation, any information you report on this website will be subject to attorney-client privilege, meaning that the information will be kept confidential by LFB and cannot be disclosed to the government without your permission. (Please also note that submitting information does not mean that LFB has agreed to represent you in any legal action, as that decision can only be made after the preliminary information is collected and analyzed.) The purpose of collecting this information is to determine whether your Constitutional rights were violated, what action could be taken, and if LFB should represent you in any such lawsuit. Even if you are not sure you want to be a plaintiff, we would still like to hear of your experiences with BLM.

(Please note that we have already received many reports from participants both on and off-playa, so if you have already submitted a report there’s no need to respond again.) Thank you for your feedback!

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BLACK ROCK SOLAR INSTALLING SOLAR ARRAY AT PAIUTE RESERVATION MEDICAL CLINIC

Black Rock Solar is at it again, folks. Yep, Burning Man’s spin-off nonprofit-cum-Johnny Appleseed of free solar power is right now installing a 30kw solar array for the Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation’s medical clinic.

When you head to the playa, you’ll be able to see it right there at the intersection of Routes 447 and 446. You can’t miss it.

As part of this effort, the Black Rock Solar team is helping two members of the Paiute tribe learnhow to become solar installers so they will be well-positioned to acquire green jobs, which are gonna be all the rage right soon here.

How cool is that? Very. Freakin’. Cool.

More information: http://blackrocksolar.org

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LA CONTESSA BUILDERS FILE SUIT AGAINST ALLEGED ARSONIST

La Contessa was a highly-realistic, mobile, interactive replica of a Spanish galleon, originally built for the festival Burning Man. Many of the builders were members of the Extra Action Marching Band. From 2002 on, the galleon was stored and then reassembled many times for Burning Man visits and other desert parties. In spite of what the builders thought was a friendly relationship with the person owning the land on which La Contessa was stored, it was deliberately and admittedly burned to the ground by this landowner, Mike Stewart, without warning on December 5, 2006.

See: http://tinyurl.com/cp8cc9 for a comprehensive story written by Steve Jones of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The 100-plus artists who created La Contessa planned to have this piece for many more future activities, parties and festivals. It was still a functioning art car and was visited several times a year, with the last visit taking place just three months before the arson. The artists have been working on a claim against Mike Stewart since he admitted to burning it, and officially filed Monday March 9th, 2009 under the VARA Act, with Simon Cheffins and Greg Jones as the plaintiffs and a long list of ‘interested parties.’ The claim is for $900,000, a number that was provided by independent estimators and based purely on the time and materials that would be required for contractors to reconstruct a similar piece.

Share your stories, join the cause on La Contessa’s Facebook page:

http://tinyurl.com/cq4thm

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VIDEO FOOTAGE OF THE BURNING LIFE REGIONAL EVENT

After this Rabbit gave him a little poke in the ribs, Danger Ranger writes in to pony up some video footage from the Burning Life Regional Event, which took place in Second Life virtual world last year. This is some incredible stuff, folks … it even has the “lines on the highway POV scene en route to the playa” and the obligatory trance soundtrack! Nice. Says Danger:

“Here is a link to a 10-minute video of the art at last year’s Burning Life Regional event:

http://tinyurl.com/ad9y89

Here is a New York Times article about artists in the virtual world of Second Life:

http://tinyurl.com/adlacg

For more info about Burning Life events and social activities, you can subscribe to the announce list by sending a blank email to:

secondlife-announce-subscribe (at) burningman (dot) com

-M2danger”

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BURNING MAN INSPIRATION TO ACTION IN TENNESSEE

Carmen Mauk of Burners Without Borders (http:// burnerswithoutborders.org) writes:

“I received the following e-mail from Mike in Tennessee, a friend we made at the Bonaroo festival who was a great help to us in coordinating logistics. Although he has never been to Burning Man, he received the transmission of what we were attempting to do there and brought it back to the school where he teaches.

At the end of the Youtube video, there is a photo of a girl with the most satisfied smile on her face after her piece burned.

Enjoy!

Carmen

——————-

Hey Carmen-

I just wanted to share this because Burning Man/BWB has been such a terrific influence for me the past year. How else could a Burner respond to Youth Art Month when the theme is ‘Art Ignites’?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfLNodiwNyA

This project was in response to Tennessee’s Youth Art Month Flag competition. They asked students to utilize their logo in a design constrained by a photocopied form. I gave my students the options of submitting their paintings to the competition, keeping them, or contributing to the burn sculpture, and 95% said “Burn it!”. I hope this was more of a statement on their desire to participate rather than their feelings about their talent! 😉

Anyway, I teach at a private school and we have plenty of support, but we just started meeting with our local, rural, public school art teacher to share ideas and resources. I will let you know if this effort grows because somehow it’s the Burners Without Borders initiative that sparks my cooperative energies.

Mike”

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MAKE YOUR OWN GRAYWATER EVAPORATION SYSTEM

Did you know it’s illegal to dump graywater on the playa? Yep. Do you know what graywater IS? OK here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graywater

Now, Larry Breed writes in to tell us about his really cool graywater evaporation system that you can make yourself, and that he will be workshopping at the upcoming Burning Man Open House on April 4 at BMHQ! Larry writes:

“Life on the playa uses fresh water; and life on the playa therefore produces waste water — potty water, yes, but also ‘graywater.’ What to do with graywater? Dumping it on the ground is bad manners, and also illegal; so Burners pack it out, pay Johnny to take it, or build fabulous devices that make it disappear. These fabulous devices are evapotrons, and every one of them is one of a kind.

Fabulous, but no longer one of a kind! Starting with a demonstration/ workshop led by the inventor, you can build a wind-powered “Gray-B- Gon” evapotron that will dispose of all your camp’s kitchen, shower, and other non-potty water. (For small to medium camps, and average wind.) You round up the 2×4’s, old bike wheels, and panty hose (and a few more items), and we will provide instructions and the harder-to- find (or to-make) parts.

Please check out the evapotron online and see if it’s your cup of — um, tea. Search for Gray-B-Gon on http://www.instructables.com and let us know in advance if you want to build one – email the workshop leader at ember (at) burningman (dot) com .”

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SEEKING FOOTAGE OF A CAVALLO INSTALLATION FOR DOCUMENTARY

An independent filmmaker is producing a documentary about Quill Hyde and A Cavallo (the carousel of ’07, http://acavallo.org), and seeking footage of the carousel on the playa. If you have video of this installation, or know someone who does, please write to Ada at horse.drawn.movie (at) gmail (dot) com .

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NIMBY THANKS YOU!

Rachel and Snook, instigators of NIMBY art space write to give us the latest about their new warehouse, which YOU helped make happen.

“The last time you heard from us we were raising funds for the relocation of NIMBY (http://nimbyspace.org). Thanks to your support we are now settling into our new beautiful 64,000 square foot space in East Oakland, CA. Shops are getting set up, art installed and creative energy is running rampant. Thanks to the entire community for making this possible. We are excited to be at the beginning of 10 more years of serving the DIY and artist community.

Call for Photos: Hundreds of artists have worked at NIMBY over the past 5 years. Much of the art you have enjoyed on the playa including Colossus, Steampunk Tree House, Fata Morgana, The Disgusting Spectacle, Dance Dance Immolation, 2PiR, and so much more was created at NIMBY. We are compiling an online archive of photos to document this amazing history. We are looking for photos of NIMBY made art during construction and when installed on the playa and beyond. Artist information, bios, web-links, photos and video of NIMBY events are also useful.

To contribute, please send information to Rachael (rachael (at) nimbyspace (dot) org ). Please include photographer information if you would like the photos to be credited.

A preliminary list of NIMBY artists can be viewed here:

http://www.nimbyspace.org/artists/

Please help us to make the list complete!

**Please Forward Widely**”

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BURNERS WITHOUT BORDERS $5K STIMULUS PACKAGE

Deadline for Applications 4/24

President Obama has offered up his multi-bazillion dollar stimulus package and rather than wait around to see if it takes, Burners Without Borders is offering a stimulus package of its own. Over the years, we have learned that real change starts at the grassroots level and sometimes it just needs a little boost to get going. Well, BWB is taking $5,000 of your generous contributions from this past year to help jump start civic projects in your neck of the woods.

We are hoping to stimulate a lot of projects and are offering awards from $100-$1,000. It’s simple. Gather your community, find out what you care about, and let your imaginations run wild. The deadline for submissions is 4/24. You can check out the details and fill out a simple application at http://www.bunerswithoutborders.org.

We are here to support you in making your project a success. We can help you get the word out to the appropriate networks in your community and are happy to help you brainstorm ideas-just send an e- mail to projects (at) burnerswithoutborders (dot) org.

Yes We Can…Surely We Will!

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COLORADO’S APOGAEA 2009 DATES ARE SET

Thursday, June 4th – Sunday June 7th

Plan your holiday and get there early, because once you arrive, you won’t want it to end. Apogaea is only 4 days long, make the most of it!

Visit the Apogea website for details on arrival times, location, volunteering, and registering your theme camp, sound camp, art car, performance or workshop.

http://www.apogaea.com

Ticket Sales:
Tickets will go on sale in mid-April
$50 Pre-Sale
$60 at the Gate
Scholarship tickets will be available for $25

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BURNING MAN PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON

Photographer Ed Hoffman is participating in a gallery showing of more than 50 large fine art color prints of Burning Man 2007 and 2008, taken with a medium format camera (Rolleiflex). There will be an Open House on April 24 starting at 5:30pm, and the show runs through May 23. Check it out if you can!

Location: ART HOUSE
420 Franklin Street
Olympia, Washington 98501

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BURNING MAN 2008 PHOTOGRAPHY FROM JOSH EDELSON

Great stuff from photographer Josh Edelson. 99% safe for work. It’s that last 1% you need to worry about.

http://tinyurl.com/cckdt8

{====================================================} ==============ADMIN ON AND OFF THE JRS============== {====================================================}

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Soundtrack for this JRS: Dirty Projectors, The National, Music Go Music, Voxtrot, Elemeno P