The third session that was recorded as part of my dissertation research was a discussion panel with the founders of three of the leading transformational festivals in the world, Deogo Ruivo from Boom festival in Portugal, Harley Dubois from Burning Man in America and Eule and Sara from Fusion Festival in Germany.
During the discussion the panel talk about each festivals history, values, dynamics and the possibility of future collaborations. The points discussed during the talk have relevance to various parts of my dissertation and also provide referenceable information about each festival.
The body of text below display the transcribed version of the recorded lecture;
Boom, Fusion & Burning Man
- Discussion Panel.
Diogo Ruivo (Boom), Eule
(Fusion), Harley DuBois (Burning Man).
Discussion moderator - Isis van
der Wel.
Isis -
So, welcome everybody, it's really good that your all hear,
especially because we have this great panel here that are going to talk about
three of the most cutting edge festivals on the planet today. So, I'm really
curious about what they can teach us and how we can all inspire each other to
move onward with our lives and our communities all over the planet and be an
inspirational force. We are going to talk today with Harley DuBois, she is
Black Rock City Manager and co-founder of Burning Man (applause).
Next to her we have Dergesi from Culture Cosmos, this is the
organisation responsible for different events like for instance Fusion
(applause).
Next to Harley is Sarah, she has been involved in the Cultural
Cosmos from the beginning and plays an important role in the production of
Fusion festival, and next to her is the Festival director Eule and he is also
co-founder of the Cultural Cosmos (applause).
And this is Deogo Ruivo, and Deogo is co-founder of Boom festival
(applause).
Along this panel we will talk about where the festivals came
from, where they are at? where are they heading, what are the parallels? And
what are the differences? Before we start about all of this I would like each
and every person on the panel to give a quick introduction of their festival,
how did it all start? When did it start? And where did the inspiration come
from to start a new alternative festival?
Harley -
Thank you, so Burning Man has been around for a little bit of a
while now, it started back in 1986 on a baker beach in San Francisco. In 1990
it moved to the desert and there it really found its home and a place for it to
expand. I developed the infrastructure that makes the city run, so after twenty
plus years I created the way we place all the camps in the city, city planning,
all of our systems for lighting the city, information resources etc etc. And
then at a certain point I got handed all 'Life Safety', like our communications
systems, our fire department, our medical, all of that stuff. So after my
contributions of over twenty some odd years I have given up my roll as city
manager and I am moving on to some other things in the future but thats how it
all started.
Isis-
Yeah Culture Cosmos (Kulturekosmos), how did that start? When
did that start? What is it exactly for the people that don't know this.
Eule -
Well Kulturekosmos started in '97 and even a few
years before we started making parties, mostly little parties, when we found
out in the middle of the 90's that we got a bit bored of one-dimensional parties.
The only people that did open air parties were trance parties, so we started to
look at trance and we get to the point that this couldn't be had there must be
much more we can confront people with, we can involve in our parties. So we
started a project called Uside, which comes from underground side. So we went
to places, really different places mostly with military history, military
places, or places that had a really bad history. We transformed them way for
get really good organising in these years, so we could bring about a thousand
people in about one hour to whatever place we had discovered. We came to a
place where we get permission, this was the place from where
the Kulturekosmos festival is now done. When we came there we found out
that this place has amazing options to enlarge our ideas, to realise, to make
something bigger and more diverse. So we started this wicked idea that we can
do once a year an event here we can involve more of this, more theatre. And
then we created the association Kulturekosmos, which is implemented in the
word Kulturekosmos as well as in the word fusion festival, but it was from the
beginning the goal to make something which is much more diverse than what we
have seen from other people. So this was maybe the beginning of the idea of
kulturekosmos.
Deogo
Ruivo -
So the path actually of boom is quite similar to the path of Fusion, we
also started producing parties in the early nineties, in 91 - 92 in
Portugal, usually open air parties. In 95-96 it became obvious that we needed
to gather, that we wanted to gather more friends from around the world. In
Portugal the conditions are usually great weather, like we have here today, and
so we started kind of calling in the friends, so actually Boom was born in 97
also as Fusion. And we started doing it in the south of Portugal, in the forest
about four hundred kilometers from here now. At that time, the first event we
did was quite a stunning success already, we had something like six thousand
people at the first even we did, the first Boom, which was surprising for us
because at that time we were doing parties with one and a half thousand people,
so we were quite blasted. From then on we kept on doing it every year for two
years until we got to 98, and we thought wow this is growing too fast too soon.
So it was then that we introduced the gap, the bi-annual gap and we stopped in
99, we didn't do it and then we did it again in two thousand and then every two
years until now.
Isis-
Thank you very much.
Isis -
I visited all of your festivals and I really got inspired a lot, all the
new information and the alternative to the ordinary ways of doing and its so
important for us to take all of these things back home and use them in our
everyday lives. Did you all visit each others festivals?
Deogo
Ruivo -
Well yes, many of the production team of Boom have visited both these
festivals that are represented here plus several other ones that exits
around the world. Personally, I went to burning man in the late nineties
early two thousands, and then Fusion I went in two thousand and six if i'm not
wrong now. And from then it was always interesting visiting as research, I
always called burning man as the 'Big Daddy', so it was always 'lets go see
what big daddy is doing'. So it was quite interesting to go there and learn,
especially for me, i'm very connected to systems and logistics and how we can
cater and hold so many people in an event or in a location, and Burning Man has
always been a learning process for me in that sense. Fusion has been for me
kind of a mind opening in its Fusion, in its variety that it holds and
maintains and in a way the crowd that it has, it is extremely varied. In the
beginning, when i started going there in 2005 or so Boom was still very trance
orientated, I mean trance is still the heartbeat of Boom but in the past few
years we have started expanding in new ways, and new kinds of music etc etc.
But Fusion was quite an astonishing experience in that sense.
Isis -
Yeah, I can imagine.
Kulturekosmos
co-founder -
This
is actually our first time at Boom, its great to be here and also that you came
along the last years. I have been one time at Burning Man in 2012, some people
from Burning Man came to Fusion and invited us and so we found the time to
come, and it was great, it was really inspiring. So yeah.
Harley
-
So, this is my first time at Boom and I have not personally been to
Fusion, but our founder Larry Harvey and my colleague Marian Adele have
been to Fusion. We have staff that pretty much travel the world and go to
different festivals and bring the information back and form relationships and
then invite people to come to our events. So, we have a real flow of rapacity
and trying to keep the kindred spirits together on a regular basis.
Isis -
I can imagine that also when you visit each other’s festivals or hear
stories about them you see the parallels and feel that there is a connection. I
see connections between the three festivals on different levels. If you visit
each others festivals do you see something and think 'oh now i'm going to bring
that back and change my own system in that direction' or 'thats a good idea
lets implement it', did you find something you didn't do yourself yet?
Kulturekosmos
co-founder -
When I was at Burning Man the people from logistics and other stuff they
showed us everything how they do it with the ticketing, with different
solutions they had to find for the problems, and it was like 'Ah yeah we do it
in the same way'. It was more of a coincidence that we found alone, similar
solutions to the same problems, if you really think and find your solutions by
yourself that not via business thinking its more via creative thinking. But
still it was inspiring to see it.
Isis -
Harley, you said that you have and example of how you do it, or you
teach people how you work. Is there a way that people can get in touch with
that information?
Harley -
Erm yeah actually, thats a lot of what i'm working on now, we are
developing a whole educational arm for our entity. We started off as a for
profit, and we moved to a non-profit model because we should have always been
there, and with that opportunity we are even able to go further in being able
to give people more things. We are starting a whole educational arm that we are
going to be open-sourcing, we have always been open-source, we have been
giving away our ranger manual and giving away our training on
volunteerism and all that for years and years and years. And now we want to do
it even bigger and better, and as much as anybody wants it we are going to give
it to people. And its fascinating hiring somebody into that position to do that
work, we didn't realise how much we've done, we have so much we have already
done and so much more we want to do. And thats really our cutting edge right
now is really moving into education and into sharing and into learning, how do
we learn and how can we share?
Isis-
Yeah, that’s great.
Eule -
Well we got inspired even though we had not been here before from what
we have heard Boom. Like, now we have come here we have found out that people
are so patient with the environment, nobody is pissing anywhere, well not no
one, but we have to ask ourselves how people are conditioned not to piss
because there is not so many options if you need to go to the toilet. But when
we come here we have found out that is so clean, and its not because there is
always somebody running behind somebody picking up his litter
its because the people themselves are so well conditioned, its
like 'litter goes there'.... (interrupted by clapping).
Remember something, we really wish for Fusion that people got really
more inspired of that and say 'Ok we need to cash ten euros to everybody to
fill a plastic bag and bring it somewhere' to avoid the worst situation like it
was a few years ago where it was a litter field after the festival. So we get
to the point where it is no longer a litter field but we still have forty
people working everyday litter picking six weeks after the festival, and this
goes on until the end of the month, and we would wish these people could go to
other parties rather than litter picking at Fusion site, they have other things
to do and we can train the people to pick the litter themselves. This festival
is run without chemical toilets, we started first time this year to set up a
hundred compost toilets because we got inspired, but it was a good experience,
I will add something later to that but this was also something when we saw ok,
they did it and they do it and they do it well so why shouldn't we start it and
try to go behind them.
Deogo
Ruivo -
An inspiration, I think i mentioned a bit earlier a bit earlier on the
inspiration we got logistically just from observing Burning Man, how its been
organised and sort and divided as a city, which is quite amazing. Also, there
is a very big difference between the American reality and the European reality,
especially the Portuguese reality because I quote this is the begging of
Africa, and its very complicated to get so much logistics and so much material
and equipped and machines that you can get in the USA. So there's a very big
gap, but still we learnt a lot there, how to manage things in a better
way, how to make the space more comfortable for everyone that comes to the
festival. And I think this is one of the points that is very important in
locations like this one which is not as deserty as Burning Man but the
temperatures can also get very very high, and so we really have to pay a lot of
attention to keep everyone here quite stable. Dehydration's are extremely high
at Boom, they are getting less as less as the years go on as the public gets
used to drinking more etc. But also the shades, and all of these things started
coming after. In the beginning we had very few shades in Boom, we learn that a
bit from Burning Man, they don't build much shade themselves but the people
build a lot of shades. So we learned from the public of Burning Man, and that
was quite an interesting point also yeah. From Fusion was this, lets say,
Germanic practicality you know, which for us southerners its really amazing how
efficient it is. I want to give an example from this year, I'm sorry I talk a
lot of logistics but it is one of my main loves, but I went to Fusion and they
had something like fifteen forklifts with one guy or a girl inside with a
walkie-talkie ready to go to do whatever needed whenever needed. And here we
have four now so we are happy for that. So, this kind of German efficiency has
brought us in a bit.
Eule -
Keep it at four, because if you have forty you can’t imagine how it was
when you had four and it worked anyway.
Deogo
Ruivo -
Yeah exactly. So there's many things but I think mainly its the
cultural uplifting that comes from visiting the different
festivals that brings us new ideas. For us it is very important to visit the
other spaces, what other people are doing, whats the new edge. Especially for
Boom as we have this gap year, which is a research year for us. We do a lot of
research in the gap year, and go to all of the different festivals see whats
new, see what Fusion is bringing in new, see what Burning Man is bringing in
new and try and re-adapt it into the Boom reality and make something, make
fusions out of these different things, this is what we try to do mostly.
Isis -
Thank you. So what I basically hear is that you all feel this urge to
change something, to find the new barrier and go across it and lay a new
frontier. But which way are you aiming for? Do you have a mission vision for
your festival that says 'we want to proclaim this or that', we want to other
than the arts and the cultural programming, do you have guidelines to where you’re
heading for content wise?
Eule -
Well this is maybe one of the differences between Boom and Fusion, i
don't know I haven't been to Burning Man but, we have not ambition, we do a
festival that developed out of our years and we are a very focused group who
knows our goals, to create a space where people can have an experience which is
out of their normal way which makes them think about how the world could look
like. It comes to the point when they come to the festival the feel like 'Ok,
so many things are different and so many things I have not witnessed before in
my normal life' and they start thinking about it. But we are with we feel like
we should go around, go outside, spread a message or have a mission. There's
many people who come to Fusion and we prepare a festival which makes them think
and maybe change their thoughts about things. We also don't have speakers or
whatever, when we got invited here and somebody told us you should go and speak
in front of a few hundred people, on Sunday, in English after three days of
partying, we said no way, no way, we will never do this. Now anyway we came
here, and this is a homage to the people who do Boom festival because we found
that it is such a good group, we love them, and (inaudible) says well because
we don't speak so good English and we don't have a mission we don't go there,
but now we are here anyway.
Harley -
Well, first of all there's always something from another festival that
always comes back and changes who we are, and I think what I have noticed here,
in my short time i'm here, is that there is a kindness and generosity of spirit
to all of the staff and to all the people here that I wanna see more of at
Burning Man, just the way the staff treats each other and the way you guys get
along so well, so thank you for that. When we went to Fusion we really loved to
see the variety of music that was curated, and Mr. Larry Harvey who founded
Burning Man is really not into music and he came back all pumped up on the
music, so that was real exciting. We're at the stage now where we defiantly
have a vision and missions that we are working towards not so much at the
event, at the event we really like things to evolve. Like sure, this year we
wanna get more art cars fueled by gases rather than bringing in big gallons of
gasoline that are a fire hazard. So thats one of our goals this year for sure,
but really the reason we have grown successfully is because we look at the
garden and pull out the weeds and we tend to the things that are beautiful and
you never know whats going to be a weed or whats going to be a beautiful thing.
So we kind of like the organicness of it, thats very important. But we
defiantly have a vision towards our future that is connected, its more
connected with other festivals, its more connected with more opportunity with
civic engagement around the world. So we're always working in the back of our
heads during our advance towards how can we execute on that vision, which is
one of the reasons i am here today.
Isis-
Can you say something about not using money at the festival because I
see that as a unique element, I don't know if there has been another festival
like it. So, is that a value you developed throughout the years or did you
start with it immediately and whats the idea.
Harley-
Yeah, we started with it immediately, of course immediately it was fifty
people, then it was two hundred and fifty people and then it was five hundred
people, but it was always there that this is not about money. And i have always
said, people say 'oh well you'll sell out at some point', like I just gave away
my life work to a non-profit because thats the way it should be. I have always
said as soon as money came and started corrupting our values i'm out of here
i'm gone. And so, money is not something that we get very much of or value that
highly, honestly. We really value peoples individual contributions over money,
we value peoples needs wanting to give to the community much higher than money.
So, its always been there, and it was a real struggle for many many many years,
but now we have become a non-profit and now that we have grown to a critical
mass where we are actually hitting CEO's of corporate America, and they are
getting the value of what we are doing. We really hope that the money is going
to flow back, and that we wont have as many money issues, but not because we
did it wrong and sold out but because we held tight and stayed with it. And we
are moving in the right direction, now watch us, if in two or three years we
are not there then were going to tank, Burning Man is not going to happen
anymore, because we're putting it all on the line right now, but thats what
we're going for, we haven't sold out and we don't intend to.
Isis-
One big difference between the festivals, especially if we are looking
at Burning Man where there is all participation but no spectators, only
participators is the sentence right? Or thats basically the idea. Here at Boom
we don't have that crowd source element other than the volunteers, is that
right Deogo?
Deogo-
Also, bringing Fusion also into the question, this is a point that i
fond very very interesting in Fusion, there is kind of a central production
that holds the space to come an build in their things. Boom started a little
bit the other way around, it started as a centre production that builds
everything and brings in the teams that help doing it. and its still very much
running like this, of course every different area that you see now here has a
very independent team with its own budget etc etc. But its still very much centrally
coordinated and the operational side of Boom is still all central. In a way
this has been kept over the years to keep the vision of this festival running,
and also maybe because we didn't learn to do it another way. Probably in the
future it could can be changed, its always open to change the Boom festival
team, they are open to change and to see what can come in the future, new ways,
new collaborations, new patterns of organising and managing a festival and
creating a festival, but at the moment its still very much centrally
coordinated.
Isis-
But you can participate as a volunteer, if I want to work for Boom
there's a possibility to do this?
Deogo-
Yeah, you can and we have a thank you for all the volunteers this year,
they were great and precious (applause). What we have been doing in the last
few years with the volunteers which are growing, the amount
of volunteers ever year is we try as much as we can to place them in
jobs that they will learns something. Either by construction, or by compost
toilet systems and how they run or whatever, this is how we are trying to
slowly bring in volunteers into the organisation.
Isis-
So
you are open for a possible change in the future? your not saying it has to
stay like this it just hasn't happened yet.
Deogo-
Yeah, its definitely open, its definitely open. More and more
we are starting to receive external projects that want to do things here,
that make proposals, that try to fit in and we try to cater for them.
Isis-
It would be nice, maybe an open stage where they can...
Deogo-
Its possible, all possibilities are open.
Isis-
And Eule and Sara, how does it work at Fusion? You have a arbeitsamt
where you can apply for a job, if your at Fusion and you wanna have a job you
go to the arbeitsamt, to the job office, how does that work with you.
Sara-
We have two structures of collaboration. First of all we have one group
who is organising everything, but we work with two hundred groups, seven
thousand people. All the groups work independently, some do stages some do
different stuff like the rubbish collection or the gate manager or the kitchen
and stuff like this, and they are self organised. So there is really like a
network, or a spider web, or an organic structure which I really like and I
think its also special and also makes more like the other seven thousand people
are crew, we don't call them staff. I think it is also because they are self
organised crews and they find their own solutions, and you can see it also if
you got to Fusion and if you go to a space or a floor you see ever body doesn't
really risk their heat and the money they earn from this from the bar aor
whatever they put in their projects, they are like political groups or like
youth groups or they do political stuff or petrol stuff and they don't work for
money and this you can also feel.
Isis-
Harley, we have heard that volunteers can enter Boom and
Fusion festival, in Burning man everyone can do something or build your own
structure, what are the restrictions of contributing to Burning Man if I go
there?
Harley-
Well there's no restrictions on contributing. So we have different tiers
of volunteering first of all when you volunteer at Burning Man it
doesn't mean that you get a free ticket, and we have never compromised on
that because if someone is going to come and volunteer but I know
they are doing it because they want a ticket I will never know
what motivations they have. But if somebody comes and says i'm
willing to do this and i'm going to buy my own ticket I know that I have
somebody, or we have somebody thats motivated to be there for the reasons that
we want to be there. And we do reimburse people for their tickets after they
have worked hard, different teams, there is sixty different teams that make
Burning Man happen and every team has its own variation on what that means. Like
when your working a ranger shift and your kind of in the thick of it with
difficult situations you only have to work four shifts, but if your doing the
greeter shift which is just kind of fun then you have to six shifts, so it
varies. But people can be reimburse and people who are hardcore tight and true
will get their ticket to get in that year, not you work this year and we give
it to you for next year, but to get in that year. So we are pretty hardcore
when it comes to it, but what its done has made it fair across the board for
everybody and everyone kind of knows that everyone is there for the same
reasons, or at least in the same realm of the same reasons. And its
worked well for us, its worked well.
Isis-
But i'm talking about the visitors that not necessarily
want to work on the team, but for instance they want to set up their own area,
thats possible at Burning Man?
Harley-
Oh yeah, thats what makes Burning Man. Burning Man
the infrastructure, the people that make the city just create a vessel,
what we do is create a vessel, and without the people that come to the event
the event would not happen because we don't have stages and booked artists
to perform on the stages, we don't try to get so many performance acts and
so many this act or so many art sculptures, whatever comes comes, and they just
do what they want to do. So its totally self made, its a DIY society
completely. The infrastructure is there, and infrastructure means
porta-potties, roads that are due fined, safety, medical, staff thats
there to help you and support you, but you don't know they are there until you
need them. And everyone makes themselves, shade structures, their own water,
their own coffee, their own fabulous art, their own amazing stages for music
etc.
Isis-
So I can never see the program I just have to experience it?
Harley-
Well yeah you can see the programme, its really long. Its generated by
the people who meet the deadline to get stuff in, and there's so much
stuff that doesn't even get in. So its online, you have like forty eight
hours to get your thing in, you get in and you get into the programme.
Otherwise its on computer, but computers don't really work out there so you
better look before you come because it really is the middle of
nowhere and your cellphones don't work and your computers don't work. So there
is a programme, its self generated. We again host the opportunity for people to
put their stuff up there and we produce the pamphlet to give to people but we
don't control the content.
Isis-
Ok thats interesting, and is there any restrictions to the age of the
visitors at Burning Man?
Harley-
We are a family friendly event, my daughter has been coming since before
she was born because she was in vitro the first year and my
mother comes at eighty four. Its a family reunion for many people now which
spans are vast.
Isis-
And how does it work for Fusion, do you have children there?
Sara-
At Fusion there is also a children's space, well a family space where
people with children can come and camp, and its not so loud there, and there is
also a programme for children. So children with their parents can come, but
children or young people without parents cannot come. So we try to be careful
about it.
Eule-
We have to decide to separate the family area a bit from the
big side, it was also a compromise with the authorities who said 'Ok
you have to take care of childrens health'. When they came and they saw
small children with people out of their heads on the dance floor, and said
well, not only that but we said 'this is not possible, this is not good'. So we
decided children can come on the site with the whole family in the day time,
but when it becomes night the children have to stay in the family
area, because we don't want to have children with us when we get out
of our heads and everything is going like high time party it is not for
children.
Deogo-
Well there is the BimBamBoom here in Boom which is just up here behind
here. Its a marvelous place for all children of all ages. I mean from
the beginning we always had families coming, and the whole thing started
as a family gathering in a way. So the idea of children is part, we don't even
consider it as external it is part completely of the festival, and its growing,
its also growing, every year we have more and more different ages. We kind of
slowly introduced a restriction of age, I don't really know exactly what the
age limit is at the moment but it has to do...
Audience member-
One year!
Deogo-
Ok so there is a mother there. Yeah its one
year because before we had a case where, I think it was 2008 where we
had a baby that was three or four weeks here, and it didn't go to well. The
baby is good and its a healthy child now but things didn't go too well for the
baby, and from that time on we decided ok the child has to be stable to be
here, its a very hardcore environment. So from then on everyone can come, thats
the idea.
Isis-
Yeah I think thats great, i think its also important that all the generations
have the chance to experiences these new experiences together so we
can compare our perception and exchange the ideas that we all learned
throughout our lives. And also I think one of the values I
have recognised in all of your festivals on one or another way is the
environmental aspect. I think now in the world we are going through a change
and that we have, and I see that especially these festivals have a leading role
in changing the ways of using the materials, recycling, food and beverage,
waste control, you don't seem to have put it up as an official mission but I
believe that you do have a special feeling for that.
Deogo-
Yes, our feeling, I speak for Boom in a sense, our feeling came from a
very big question that came to our minds after every festival, and the question
is also still pertinent today and it should be everyone has had this, 'do we
have the right to bring so many people to one location to then completely dump
it after we have a party'. And obviously the answer is defiantly no,
and this came from there the concept that we must change, we must change this
very fast, and we started in the early two thousands to
bring consciousness to the public, to bring consciousness to ourselfs, to
start learning systems because there wasn't really too
many systems of running a festival in a sustainable way. There wasn't
until then. There was few little events in England and two or three in the
United States but there wasn't too many things that were large scale. In this
sense Boom since the middle of the two thousands has really put a lot into
researching, inventing, designing, engineering ways of becoming as sustainable
as it can be, there is still a way to go but it is on its way. I'm also happy
to hear from Eule that for them its nice to see an event that people are
already slightly more conscious of what they can do at an event and keep an
event as clean as boom is now or days. And this was a very long process of
learning and teaching.
Isis-
Yeah because you said that there was a whole pile of mess at
first, how did you educate the visitors? How did you do that?
Deogo-
Subtly. Its a a bit, I mean its you know, you start bringing
in information through the media that you have as an event
organisier, or as the event itself. Then it has a lot to do with work on the
ground, and there is an amazing team that has been working on this area, which
is actually to slowly teach people what to do with there garbage at an event,
where to put to, how to place it. And so for many years we had teams that for
example in the early morning where on the dance floor, and as
soon as they saw someone putting something on the floor they would look at the
person, pick up the thing and put it in the trash, this is enough. And so,
slowly, slowly this came as a memory to people to not do it any more, and
people start feeling that 'yeah I must change my ways'. The next big thing that
we have done is for example the restaurants, actually its very
interesting because as I am speaking we just have a huge meeting with
all the restaurants because of course this festival became slightly bigger
that expected this year. And so all the restaurants have brought just
about enough plates, bio-compostable plates and forks and knives and
plates and cups. But now they are coming to the end of it and they still have
one more day to run, so everyone is begging us 'please can we use plastic
again, because thats what we can buy in the supermarket here near in Castelo
Branco', and we say 'no we will find you a solution'. So we are finding a
solution to that. So in that sense this mind shifting of everything, not just
the people but the organisation itself, the people who come externally to help
build all the restaurants and chi shops etc, they also have to change
there ways. Its from top to bottom and bottom to top the change.
Isis-
Yeah thats really good, i'm glad to hear so.
At burning man it started with leave no trace I assume, or did it come
up when you moved to the desert?
Harley-
Yeah we are the largest city users of leave no trace on the planet that
we know of. It actually happened in nineteen ninety seven, nineteen ninety
seven was a really seminal year, and its interesting to me that both of
your festivals started in nineteen ninety seven. That was the
year that we banned driving in our city, that we created
more infrastructure and made people camp in a certain area so we can
actually find somebody if they get hurt instead of saying, 'oh ambulance go
over there by the red tent and the green truck,' like no 'its on street A at Z'
you know. And that was the year that we were on private land and we had to
cut a road into the environment, and we had to replant it afterward or we were
going to get a really bad rap by the local community, and we would have lost
the opportunity to do our event. So we quickly turned around and started a
group of volunteers and they decided to call themselves the 'earth guardians',
and the first thing we did was reseed that road, and when you drive by that
road today you cant tell its there anymore, so that started an entire movement.
We also started working with the federal government to take these leave no
trace principles, they started training us through leave no trace and now we
train hundreds of people every year on leave no trace principles. We are one of
the best stewards of the Black Rock desert, we are the gold standard from the
federal government on how to clean up after ourselves, we have no garbage
containers at our events we'll never have garbage containers, and we teach
people extensively how to compost things, how to dry out their rinds, how to
make their stinky stuff go away, because they are all driving six to ten
to twelve hours out of our event with their stinky garbage in the back of their
car. So we teach them how to do that better. It's been a long hard fought
battle but its one thats paid us in spades over time, and there is a lot of
information on our website about how we do it, it wasn't easy but it was really
important.
Isis-
And it goes a little bit further at Burning Man, you don't just clean
your own garbage, you also keep every little wire or tiny little piece of
plastic and call it 'Moop', right?
Harley-
Matter Out Of Place - Moop.
Isis-
Yeah, and what happens with the Moop?
Harley-
So we actually have to clean absolutely everything
up because the environment we are in is not organic in any way
shape or form, its alkaline, and if you leave a water mellon pit, or you
clip your fingernails and leave your fingernail, it will blow down the ply and
exist for hundreds of years. So we clean absolutely everything
up. And the interesting thing about that is that people say 'why are you
different than some concert people go to that feel great and
then ten days later they are just back to the way they were before they are no
different'. And its things like this, when you have to be responsible for every
fingernail clipping, and your going to get hassled, this is why you guys are so
nice, we use public embarrassment to teach people to clean up,
we GPS the entire city and marked it green, yellow and red, and when someone
was red the whole community got mad at them for being red. So we are kind of
hardcore that way, but when you learn that lesson you take it with you, and you
bring it home and all of a sudden your neighbor starts doing it, and
then your father starts doing it and then your
other neighbor starts doing it and it kind of sticks with you. When
you have something that feels good like that you start teaching other people
and it starts reinforcing itself. And I think thats one way we have been able
to change our cultures at home based on the simple principles that we use at
Burning Man in the desert.
Isis-
Yep, true.
This panels called 'Global transformation through the arts' and right
now we are here in the 'Liminal Village' which is a speakers area where we have
panels, but not every festival has a space like this, Eule told me your not
doing it at fusion?
Eule-
Well we don't have a speakers area like this but we have two different
places where they do conferences or meetings, there are a lot of political
groups. (speaks to Sara) Oh we, have three different places, maybe one I
haven't discovered already. But anyway there are places and people organising
conferences or meetings. A lot about actual political things and there is also
a big workshop area, between the workshop and the conference area, it could
change there could be a workshop or there could be a meeting, and we call it
the 'Oasis' which is almost run by political groups. It is a small area where
there is all different kinds of exhibitions and meetings, lectures and
whatever.
Isis-
So things happen during the festivals..
Eule-
Yeah, things are happening. But when we see this, we go as far to say
'maybe we should be thinking about developing or doing something like in that
size or in that importance like it is here in the future.
Isis-
Yeah in the content element.
Burning Man gets its programme from the participants, if there is no
participants setting up a space like this, is there a space like this?
Harley-
There's actually a number of spaces like this, a lot of the communities
take it upon themselves to make this kind of space. We are in support of one or
two of them as well, we don't put any money towards them but we help to foster
good activities at them. So i would say there are as many as twelve. We started
doing a little sub-cataloging of anything that was academic or lecture serious,
because its become kind of trendy, we all know TEDx, TED has made it kind of
trendy. So we actually have TEDx at Burning Man, there are about ten other
spaces that do all kinds of programming that are just programming 24/7 full
length of the event, and then there's so many different kinds of lectures that
happen that you would get in that catalog that we print, just people with their
own expertise coming in and sharing it. When I was pregnant at Burning Man I
went tried all this stuff and learnt all this stuff about being a mum, you
know, different phases of my life I have gone to Burning Man and learned a lot
of things that have helped me as I have moved forwards with my personal quests.
Isis-
I just heard we have ten more minutes to have this panel going on and
then afterwards you all get a chance to ask questions if you want to, but
before we finish this I would like to see if there are any possibilities for
these three festivals to collaborate in the future? Or are you already
collaborating and what way are you getting through loopholes?
Harley-
Well just because I have the mic I guess I will just start. So we have
been very interested in collaboration as I said before, I would love to see collaboration,
I will be affected when I go back and we will see change based on my experience
here for sure. But I think its really our duty to go beyond that, and thats my
new role actually with the entity, is to try and formalise Burning Man being a
node for all the activities that are happening globally. We have two hundred
and forty people around the globe that are designated as people working with
us. We have over sixty sanctioned events, they are allowed to use our name
because we know we are aligned with them enough that we are willing to let them
use our name, and there are many more events around the world. From being the
first disaster relief plane to fly medical supplies into Haiti, to doing a
lecture series or other creative events like this one that are already
happening that are connected that identify as being Burning Man. But I believe
we shuold go much further than that, I have started a group in San Francisco
that takes a major museum, a science and art museum, to work with a foundry and
forge and jewelry making facility that is cutting edge that also is working
with the 'Maker Fair' if you guy have heard of maker fair which is kind of
global as of late. We are working together as business entities within the city
because we have a larger voice if we are all working together, we have got our
fire department to pay more attention to us in our city, the city to pay more
attention to us. So I feel it is all our duties to take what we have and share
together, and I look forward to much more connectivity with festivals moving
forward.
Deogo-
Well yes, its definitely a big yes for us. I think we still have a lot
to learn and a lot to evolve and ideas can come together between festivals.
Mainly because we still have a big responsibility here as festivals, I call
them beacons of sanity in the middle of insanity. This is what the festival is
for me now or days, its a place where I can come and temporarily live something
different, and this is something that is very difficult to generate in our
current controlled society. I think all of the festivals represented here at
the moment are quite good lets to say (inaudible) of this, they can create a
lot of this powerful new dimensional place, its for people to experience
different situations and different perspectives in life. Its short, its very
impactful and it really transforms people in a way, whatever way it is, Burning
Man is a way, Fusion is another way Boom is another way, but it creates the
same kind of awakening. I think this is very much where the festivals should
slowly start to get together and say 'ok, we have defined and designed
different equations that come to the same result, how can we bring it together
to make it even more powerful? Because if something we did now or days in this
crazy world its something that makes its transnational, faster and more
powerful and for bigger crowds. In a way this is my perspective and I hope we
can work together more and more and more. Personally, I would like very much to
start because its a closer neighbor to start working a lot more is with Fusion,
and exchanging more and more ideas, and of course with Burning Man also even
through you are on the other side of the Atlantic. But still its great that you
are here and to be in contact and definitely many things will come out of it.
Essentially for us it tends to do with this responsibility that the festivals
that have made it into this lets say non-commercial perspective, which is 99%
of the events now or days in the world. So the festivals that have made it from
a non-commercial perspective and have something more to it, its really a
mission that they should get together as much as they can.
Isis-
Yeah, cooperation is the way forward. And talking about collaboration I
would really like to know where the name Fusion came from, because from what
you are saying it comes from fusing different cultural influences, but also
didn't it also have to do with the different cultural backgrounds of the people
starting it?
Eule-
No, it comes from a background of most of them, it came out of the
sub-cultural context of political movements or whatever. We started getting
more into bringing some hedonism into their life in the early 90's, and we
found out ok there is not only political life that is important in life, you
also need to get something to abstrange your soul and we started making
parties. In the beginning it was difficult because people had fear about
getting involved or other people getting involved in partying because they
found they would lose their consciousness about political issues and political
things which that did not happen, but the fear was there. When we went to
really fundamentalist places, where there was never before a techno party, and
we went there and there was a gay group a bar group there was techno all night
long and people had never seen this before. There was a discussion afterwards
if this could bring the movement forward or if this would stop the political
movement in a way, because if everyone is only making part what happens with
the political fight? Nothing happened, none of these people are involved in
Fusion are part of our network and have found a way of being political on one
side, fighting against whats wrong in this world, and having parties on the
other side and brings both together. Fusions was more like we need to find a
name which brings all the points together in one word and what we want to do
and so it was Fusion.
Isis-
So is there any one on the panel that wants to say something or should
we ask the audience to ask questions to us? What do you recon, anyone, last
message?
Anybody in the room want to contribute?
Audience member one-
So collaboration of community and infrastructure are the main themes i'm
seeing when im listing to you talk about these major gatherings of people, and
i'm wondering as a person thats interested in adding to the event or creating a
space, another cultural space where people are free, am I missing something
here? In my mind when I think of how to start and move forward you need the
community, you need the infrastructure, do you need a legal team thats
defending your right to be together and express?
Isis-
On the outside do you mean? Do you use...
Audience
member one-
Do you need some type of security in order to allow it to grow?
Isis-
Well I think its always a matter of talking to the local authorities and
you need the right people to do so, but maybe you have a team, lawyers how do
you communicate with the local authorities?
Deogo-
I'll pass to big daddy because they are the specialists at that.
Harley-
Well we got away with being totally under the wire and totally renegade
untill 1997. We got away with it in the United States, and every country is
different, until somebody got hurt, and then I felt really really really bad I
wanted to quit, and then the heat came down. That's why we became an LLC
instead of becoming a non-profit because it takes a long time to get a
non-profit together, but you can make a legal entity called an LLC in ten
minutes. So we became one because our event was going to shut down, and thats
why because somebody got hurt we stopped driving and stopped all these other
things. And it changed the whole play of our event and we lost a whole half of
our event because everything was different after that. So we went from being
really anarchistic, anything goes, and it was awesome, it was so fun, to being
responsible and caring about people and being really concerned about peoples
safety, and that was also awesome but it was very different. So I think it kind
of depends on where your living and what you wanna do, and how afraid are you,
like how much risk are you willing to take? Because we are still a really
really risky event, but we don't risk peoples lives now, well I guess we do a
little bit with all the fire, but we don't take the same kind of risks that we
used to. We have a whole legal team, we have in house general council and we
have probably thirty other lawyers that volunteer their time to help us, but we
are big and we live in a very controlling society so we need that, I don't
think everyone does.
Deogo-
Well, lets perspectivate here in time, when we started in ninety
whatever, we did it very much as they did it, it was totally illegal. We just
had a nice van with a great generator and great sound system and we chose a
beautiful location, there's thousands of the in Portugal. And we just called
our friends, lets meet you know Friday night full moon, whatever lets make a
party, and thats how we started. Of course as the groups started growing I
still remember the first time we actually said 'ok this time we great a really
nice sound system, a really good generator so it doesn't crack up five times
during the night, and we maybe going to get a nice DJ from England', and thats
going to give us costs, and then we started bringing tickets in, this was in
93, 94. After that,when we started growing somehow the authorities found us,
and that time they were like 'ok you guys are here, your bringing in like one
to two thousand people to your event, (this is still the parties as I told you
earlier on) we need to do something about this, we want our share of it'. So
then started the licences. The licences in the beginning were all and very soon
this was totally impossible, very soon we had people working with us to help
guide us through the licencing of the event. As this thing kept on growing now
or days we actually have a whole team of lawyers, licence people, politicians
that help us out to actually make this event possible. For any of you to touch
that water, which is there we had to go through this amount of licencing this
year, because that water supposedly can only be used by agricultural people
that use it a kilometers away from here. We are not supposed to touch that water,
legally. So, for us to be swimming in it, using it, pumping it into the gardens
etc etc it is about this big, the licencing process. So of course things get
complicated as you grow, but thats society in general I would say. And I think
Fusion also had a lot of this in the last few years.
Eule-
We had a very
special situation in the nineties after the reunification, and the former GBR
the eastern part of Germany, when we came there the authorities were not
prepared for anything like the big party like that, they were not really
trained, and when we started that they had no idea how to manage it. If we
would have done this south of Hamburg it would have not been possible from the
beginning. In the eastern part it was possible, people have been much more open
minded, they say 'well, lets let them do one and lets look what they do',
and thats what we did the first event, and they say 'what happened we didn't
even hear it or whatever, it was not too loud maybe'. But then they found out
that its not that bad and they say 'well but its for young people, there is
nothing happening here in the middle of nowhere, they do something, they come
they are nice, they are friendly so lets go with them'. They participate from
the beginning in a friendly way and we got to the point where if we found out
there is a problem, and we find out about the problems first of course because
we are there, and we solve the problem before they find out there is a problem.
It has never happened that they have come to us and say 'you have a problem',
we can go there and say 'we have a problem'. We had a big problem with the
overcrowding and it came to the point that we know as soon as they know what
big problem we have they will say 'we cant give you permission for that
anymore'. But because we know we have to solve the problem because they say we
cant give you permission to solve the problem' in a not easy way, but we try to
solve our problems before they get to become to big of a problem.
Isis-
Very good. Something about the kulturalkosmos territory is also
different than your territory because you both use a temporary space and you
have bought the land? How does it work then?
Eule-
We have bought the land in the last tear piece by piece, the last fifty
acres we bought in ninety four, because when we started we obviously bought a
lot of things, we start infrastructure, water, electricity whatever. And we
know it is a question of time until someone will come and want to buy this
land. It was owned by the government, it was a former Russian airport, so after
the Russians had left it went back to the German government and we know if we
will not lose it in a few years we will have to buy it. So, we bought the first
piece, and then piece by piece now we have about a hundred acres. So which is
almost two thirds of what we use for the festival, the rent from the
government. But because it is our own land it gives us some different
conditions, like for example police will not come to the site. We have a really
clear appointment that their area is the streets outside and they don't come,
they would never go and act on or even try to come onto the sit. But its not
that they are angry about that they know its much more peaceful if they respect
it like it is. And never in eighteen years has the question 'why cant we go in
there' been asked, and it was more in the beginning and of course if there is
two thousand people you can say 'there is no need for police', but if there
sixty to seventy thousand people, of course people can ask 'why is there no police
inside'. Its maybe a really unique situation and we are really happy that its
like it is and we want to keep it like it is.
Isis-
Does anybody want to ask another question?
Audience member 2-
Part of green village at Boom is being bare foot, whenever I visit my
family at home in Germany I go and visit Fusion. One thing I have always found
a bit annoying, and a problem that you talked about as well the garbage
collection, is the glass bottles and particularly when they are in a broken
state. Are you considering abolishing glass bottles from the site and making it
a glass free event?
Eule-
Well when I came here and I saw everyone is buying cans, I was wondering
'what the fuck is that?' If you come to German its like a no go, but its funny
to drink beer from cans after you haven't done it in so much time. Cold beer
from cans, well. There is a reason here why they sell cans, and we thought
glass because beer from a glass bottle is much better than beer out of a can.
Yeah. The problem is not the glass bottle, the problem is how people use the
glass bottle. The problem are the people that throw the glass bottle on the
floor, and we have to change the peoples mind that no they should not throw it
on the floor, there is a deposit on the bottle. And this year we started
setting up all this place and every place where people can bring, and the
problem is not the bottle that they buy in the festival, the problem is with
the bottles they bring. There is no boarder between the campsite, there's a
fence there but you can bring whatever you want, and we have to collect
these bottles where nobody gets a deposit. There are a lot of bottle collectors
maybe they can solve part of the problem, but the main solution is to make
people think that broken glass on the ground is bullshit.
Audience member 3-
First of all I would like to say I appreciate very much the solution
that I see here at Boom about how to reduce our impact. I would like to bring
the idea of giving one cup at the gate to everybody here at boom so they can
use the same cup for the whole festival to reduce the number of plastic cups
that we use. Of course we are going to recycle, but if we reduce the amount of
garbage it is even better. I know some festivals are already doing it, and I
think most of the people coming here to Boom would be very happy to receive one
plastic reusable cup, to use it for the whole festival. I want to ask Deogo,
what do you think about this idea, could it be implemented or have you already
thought of it? Thank you.
Deogo-
Yes we did. Ok so the cup situation is like this, the cups we use are
non-plastic, they are potato starch and they are part of our composting system.
All the cups that you have here are going to go straight into the compost
system, the restaurants also make part and the toilets also make part and it is
all transformed back into minerals. The idea of bringing a cup actually it was
from Holland, another festival in Holland Landrell, they did it back in the
nineties and in the north of Europe you can do it because the temperatures are
quite low. Here we cannot risk that in the name of health, we have mainly a few
cups for the support staff that have access to lets say very easy cleaning
systems, they can clean their cups everyday with soap etc, but to have you
know, a few tens of thousands of people hanging around with their cups in the
dust it would create a bit of a mess in the tents of medical sense. So thats
why we have opted not to do it and to go to the potato starch cups.
Isis-
Maybe Harley can add onto this subject-
Harley-
We use the same kind of cups for our staff, and their (inaudible) so
they are all sustainable like that as well. We have a big push which is BYOC,
which is 'Bring Your Own Cup', and we had to fight with our health department
to let them do it because of the health reasons, but because we don't have no
centralised kitchens at all, and everyone is bringing their own. We have never
had to fight the battle with the health department that we are responsible for
someone getting sick because everyone is feeding themselves. So we get away
with it because of that but we had to fight for it.
Audience member 4-
Hi this questions really for Harley, i'm an eight time Burner and first
time Boomer and i'm wondering if there has been any discussion about composting
toilets at Black Rock City?
Harley-
Yes there is lots of discussion about composting toilets almost every
year, and at this point we haven't found a vendor that is able to supply over a
thousand and five hundred toilets for us. The green year, maybe you where there
because I think that is within the eight years the green year, we looked into
it and we had some, they were really hard for us to maintain, we also did
bio-diesel that year with selective camps, it was kind of a nightmare but you
know once you get used to something it gets better. So certain things are just
too hard for us to do right now with the current manufacturers, but our goal is
over time is to find somebody to work with and do that.
Audience member 5-
Can you talk about the influence of drug policy and the perception of
drug use in your respective countries and how it affects the behavior and
safety of the population at each festival and how you view each other in that
respect.
Isis-
Can you repeat it please?
Audience member 5-
Can you talk about drug policy and the public perception in your
perspective countries of drug use and how that affects the behavior, the safety
of the population in your respective festivals.
Isis-
Maybe its nice to talk about the Kosmicare and you have a similar space
at Fusion and I don't know how Burning Man works.
Sara-
I don't know if it answers your question but there is a place named
Eclipse, its like Kosmicare here also where people who are taking drugs and
need help, and if people cannot manage what they have taken or need some good
help they can go there. But I think the question was more...
Eule-
I think the question was more how we the festivals manage it, and how it
affects the public or the public of the festival. When we started with Fusion
there was a lot of fear of the people around, the locals when they see 'well
there is a festival coming this bunch of hippies, what are they bringing they
are bringing drugs, bad attitude whatever, bad influence to our kids.' They
were afraid, they were afraid, so we had to conferences that involved police
and politicians and all kind of society like social workers or whatever to talk
about whether we want to have a repressive drug policy or a preventative drug
policy. And we always said ok 'we don't want a preventive drug policy, we say
ok its peoples own responsibility and what the politics does is repressive,
they can do it outside the festival, they have heavy controls when you come to
the festival and when you leave. You should not leave the festival if you have
not at least been two day clear in your head because otherwise you will lose
your licence. In Germany it is really hard, you will lose your licence easily.
Now or days they have really good chemical tests to see whether you used drugs
two or three days before. So we keep the space open until Wednesday to give
everyone the option to come down, to come clean again and run into the arms of
the police when they are clean.
Deogo-
Well yeah defiantly the country and its policies affect how festivals
manage their drug policy. In Portugal at the moment we've got a law which is
mild lets say, its not totally permissive but its mild. And so we are a bit
more relaxed inside the festival than most of the other countries around Europe
can be for example. For us, the main point is that again, its like garbage its
nothing to do with it but again the question came. If we bring this amount of
people together knowingly because we are not stupid that obviously many of them
will try different substances. It is our responsibility as a community, not
only as a festival and festival producers but as a community, all of us to
actually take care of our own tribe. So it became very clear for us in the late
nineties that if anyone was having a difficult experience while on substances
that we would like to cater for them to take care of them, thats where
Kosmicare was born. And from then on it became much clearer for us we wanna
deal with our own problems, not that a person having a strange trip is a
problem, but it can become a problem, not only for yourself but for all the
community around it and also for the local community around the festival. And
in that sense we try to solve the problem here, we try to bring that person
into a new phase of their experience. Politically speaking, or regarding
authorities at the moment in Portugal as I said its mild, and so the police are
also getting milder. They are still adapting to the law, its a very new law its
only a few years, so the older police are still in the old frame, the newer
police are trying to teach the newer police the new frame. But its working, its
slowly working its slowly becoming more tolerant, and I think you have pretty
much felt it, there is quite a lot of freedom inside this festival.
Harley-
So, the United States is really hard on these kinds of topics so its a
very difficult environment. I really love what Portugal are doing here, trying
that experiment for the rest of the world and I think it is successful and I
would love us, the United States to adopt that perspective on drugs. At the
event our drug statistics are extremely low, and thats because you don't go out
to the middle of nowhere and I mean really the middle of nowhere. Where you
cant wear your shoes because the ground is going to make your feet slice and
get bloody, and when a dust storm comes you really cant see your hand in front
of your face and take drugs stupidly. So we have a pretty informed, pretty
intelligent populous that comes, and our statistics are quite low, but you
would not know that by listening to any of the media, or talking to law
enforcement at our events, and law enforcement at our events do come into our
event whenever they feel like it, and please nobody quote me in the media. I
believe they are there mostly to find traffickers but they have found very few,
they just really kind of bust people. So its really kind of a hostile
environment when it comes to drugs, so people really have to be on their guard.
So its complex, its getting better over time, over time is like we all get
older and have more relationships with them they trust us more, and actually
frankly as we have climbed the ladder we are dealing with Washington DC rather
the local county in our area, we are getting a little more leverage on it, but
it's a very complex subject but one that I don't really talk about that much
because I get upset.
Isis-
Thank you.
Audience member 6-
Yeah hello i'm Popish from Germany, I have got a question for all of
you, how do you make decisions on certain issues, for example glass bottles on
Fusion or not, or Boom is sold out or not. How do you collect the opinions and
what is the process of finding a decision?
Harley-
Just because I have the mic I will go first, we have been strictly
consensus for about twenty years and as of late, now that we have three
non-profits and we really are global we've had to sort of modify that consensus
but its deeply embedded in who we are. So now we have what are called
meta-decision makers, if you walk in the room and your voice is going to be
heard your voice is very very valuable, and you will know when you walk in the
room whether there is going to be a consensus space decision or if there will
be a meta-decision maker. That person will take everyone's decision and then
have the final say, because sometimes we just cant wait that long, but we try
to stay with consensus as much as possible. We have a document exactly by what
we mean by consensus because again true consensus is really difficult to meet
but we have formalised it and we know exactly what we mean when we say it and
we all go by that.
Sara-
That's a good question, its different I would say we are kind of
non-hierarchical but we are hierarchical too,
we are both. We are also a group like the association called Kulturekosmos, its
a non-profit association we are like twenty five people or thirty
people depends, or twenty. We are meeting like once a month all year long and
we take decisions also consensus, more or less. Then some questions also the
crews or the people who work can decide by themselves more or less so not every
question has to be asked in the big group. This man beside me also sometimes
takes decisions on his own. But it is ok, like I said its a hierarchical non-hierarchical structure, so
we discuss about it, we find solutions, we fight we have fun and
its good. Yeah I would say. Oh yeah this is also good, in this group the
association all the two hundred groups that I was talking about before, the
crews they have one person in the association and a smaller group who are
responsible for this crew. So this crew talks to this person and they take
decisions and sometimes the decisions goes back to our group for a discussion,
so yeah.
Deogo-
So until very recently, I would say in two thousand and nine, we had a
very pyramidal system very hierarchical, since then its starting to open
up, its been banged on the top so it is a bit flatter now, there is
much more people at the top trying to decide and take administrative decisions
on how Boom is run. And then there is the pilots of the areas, every area has a
coordinator and this coordinator also has the power of decision. But mainly the
decisions are divided between the arts, structure, administration and
accountancy. These decisions are interweaved by different people, we are not
yet working in fully on consensus, we are planning to go in the future to even
past consensus into new ideas that are popping up now or days in the different
communitarian ways, but it is still a working process. I mean both groups
already have non-profit, Boom finally created a non-profit a few weeks ago. Its
still very young and it will grow in the next few years, and possibly most of
the Boom things will be transferred into the non-profit. We are still working
it out, seeing how it runs, looking for new ideas also.
Isis-
We have time for one more questions, Kiara is going to take the pick i'm sorry.
Yeah he's been up for a while
Audience member 7-
Thank you Isis, I have a question for all of the panel, more for the
Boom guy, how does the organisation deal or think of the current falling down
of the economic system? Especially in Portugal the terrible stories about people
not getting around, in Germany the one euro jobs and in the United States, the
homeless situation, people losing everything. How do you feel, how do you thing
about? I don't know in my limited perspective I see that at Boom festival there
is a lot of rotation in the local people that work here, how does this work?
How do you feel about it as an organisation? Of course in comparison to the big
festivals you give three to four times as much for the same price, so thats
really awesome, but still its something which is happening and how do you deal
with this?
Deogo-
Ok, I mean part of being a beacon of sanity in insanity answers to your
question. We try to be as visionary as possible from an economic perspective
also. Until very recently we didn't work with volunteers at all,
the volunteer program is something very new at Boom. We
were paying staff 100% and the staff at boom now or days is about two
thousand people working, and so staff was always paid. A very big percentage of
that staff is local staff, people from around here. Apart from that this year
we introduced a special ticket price, for what the, I don't know we invented a
fantastic name, but the picked countries got a special price ticket if you
could prove that you live in those countries, Portugal was one of them. It was
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. And we have done that also for many years
now with what we call 'countries in development', we have special ticket tiers
for those countries also that are then sold through the ambassadors in those
different countries. From the point of view of figuring out what to do in the
future and how to counteract these sort of situations, what we are trying to do
is very much through this Liminal Village, we've had many panels on alternate
community, on how you can try and what we can think for the future. Not from
this capitalistic perspective but from something that is much more human based,
thats our vision in a way. Another imapct for example that this so called
crisis is having from the perspective of an event, is that our event became
exceedingly expensive this Boom this year is exceedingly expensive, everything
in Portugal now is very expensive. I for example am quite amazed every time I
go to fusion because there is a very big difference between the prices at the
Fusion to the prices at the Boom, for food for drinks for whatever, being that
Fusion is a lot cheaper than we are here. I was confronted with this by many
people also many German friends they say 'why is a meal at Boom costing seven
or eight when at Fusion it is five', and I found out the reason is Portugal is
now jam locked into a tax deducting country. And we have been affected by that,
food in Portugal is now taxed at twenty three percent, ever thing
is twenty three percent instead of seven percent or six percent like it is
mostly in Germany. So this is a big difference which is just one little speck
of the crisis that is happening in Portugal is creating this. For example this
year we have another big problem in the festival, which is ever foreigner
worker, even if he is Spanish so comunitarian, has to leave here immediately
twenty fiver percent of their earnings. This becomes a problem for artists, all
the DJ's that are playing here this year have to leave here a quarter of
their fee to whatever system that is collapsing. So all of these things happen,
a lot of managing and diplomacy to be delt with, so in that sense the festival
is also doing a lot of work in that area. I think what we really need is more
information, more ideas and new concepts of economics, thats what we need,
definitely.
Eule-
About the food prices, its maybe also a question of regulation, because
we tell the food sellers five euros is the maximum, they have to sell their
food for five euros thats it. Anyway, its more expensive here, there are more
expenses for them so maybe you can tell them six euro. And with the twenty five
percent its the same here in Germany, like foreign artist we have to pay like
twenty percent, we could take it form the artist but if you make an arrangement
with the artist and then you come after and say 'now you have to give me twenty
percent back' they would say 'well the fee was not that big', so we pay it on
top. Anyway, the question of generally if the next economic comes, and it will
come sooner or later, nobody knows how festivals can survive and continue with
this. We have to realize that people here, people at Fusion and as well people
at Burning man are mostly privileged middle class people, and they are not the
first ones that will be affected by the next breakdown. But those ones who will
be affected are maybe the ones that already now have difficulties coming to a
festival like this, because of course the prices are high. And yes I know how
much the Burning Man costs and I feel like ok, if i'm a poor worker I can't go
there, its not only the entrance fee, I need a car I need to bring all the good
I need all the stuff like that. But if we just say its hard to realise a
festival in that size, and there are still money cuts nobody could see, and
even we raised the price this year for twenty euros more. We get to a very
difficult economic situation after the festival, and we have to deal with it
every year. Every year we have to watch how can we finance everything without
losing the opportunity and the goal to do what we want and to do what we think
is important while not cutting the programme or the idealistic things that
people come for, and want to do something special. We have to find out where we
can save something but in the end if you have to pay what you get for. If you
are not supported, like we have no support at all, we run a theater festival
every second year, this year the festival is a huge one, its not like Fusion
its five thousand people, but its like twenty different stages, and officially
its not possible to finance something like this by itself. If I go to the
theater I watch one show the government pays a one hundred euro on top of what
I pay fifty euro. Otherwise its not possible, and to run a festival, a theater
festival we have to support it, we have to support our theater festival. and if
you do think like this at least someone wants to pay for it, the people who
come to Fusion they also support and also pay attention, otherwise it would not
work.
Isis-
Yep.
Harley-
Yep, so the simple answer is we increased our amount of what we call low
income tickets, we doubled it, so the people who don't have means double the
amount of them can get in. And we also cut our profit margin we did not
increase our ticket prices to make more money or throw the costs back on the
participants. Our ticket prices have gone up a little bit but thats due to the
fat that again ever thing costs more to get it. But we actually made less money
so we cut our profit margin. But again, because we crate a vessel and people
come to our event and bring what it is what they wanna bring we have been
through two major downturns now in our cycle, this one is much larger than the
first one. But because we live in silicon valley where the dot com has such a
huge impact on everything that happens at our event. We've seen two cycles now
and I have seen something really really beautiful, and this is very inspiring,
is that people spend less money to bring stuff to make their stuff at Burning
Man, remember we just provide the shell they bring the stuff, they spend less
money to do it but they are more ingenious with it. I think you will see
historically that whenever times are hard creativity increases. People don't
have jobs they have more time to spend making their art projects, and if they
can cut the price down they make really cool shit, So there is a lot of
ingenuity thats come out of both of these downturns and a lot of coming
together of people who wouldn't have time or ability to come together otherwise
to make really beautiful stuff. So its super hard but it also a time of
creative prosperity and we are seeing that at our event.
Isis-
Unfortunately, we have come to the end of this panel discussion, I
though it was great to hear you all talk about you inspiration, all the
chances, the possibilities but also the difficulties in setting up these
cutting edge events that go over the ordinary boarders and you always have to
discover the new territory and what the new challenge is, but thank you for
sharing all that information with us, thank you for coming all. And I would
like a great applause for all the speakers, Harley Dubois from Buring man, Sara
and Eule from Kulturekosmos and Fusion, and of course Deogo Ruivo, Boom.
