Burning Man LIVE

If you found a “hippie-proof” story-cube at a festival or in a war-zone, would you share your story with it?

Stuart and Andie talk with Finnish scholar Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä, about the Burning Stories project, the qualitative research of hope and anger, the innovation at Burning Man Regional events in Europe, and teaching entrepreneurialism in Lebanon and North Korea. 

What more can we learn about Burning Man culture by studying it academically? 

How do randomly assembled project teams knit themselves into longer-term collaborative and creative relationships? Why does it matter?

In a world with an unpredictable future, what more can we learn about participatory culture, psychological safety, and communal resilience?

www.jukkapekka.com

https://burning-stories.org/

https://forum.burning-stories.org/

Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä, Ph.D

Aalto University & Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellow

Stanford & Harvard University Visiting Scholar

The Royal Society & British Academy Newton Fellow

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Yomi is an impassioned and jovial part of the small team doing big things in the nonprofit arts organization “We Are From Dust.” The all-Burner team is dedicated to proliferating interactive, participatory artwork in public spaces that transforms the way people engage with art, and changes how they consider their daily lives.

In this time of dramatic changes for in-person experiences, We Are From Dust persists to support artists in our community, find new avenues for sharing participatory art around the globe, and support Black Lives Matter beyond first-world applications.

Remember when “Press Here” became “Media Mecca” in Black Rock City 1998? Yomi and Andie do, and they tell some tales and laugh some laughs.

Yomi is an award-winning Transmedia storyteller, film producer, and digital strategist, as well as an author, artist, record producer, and event organizer. In 2009, Breathe, Yomi’s first interactive feature film launched at the London International Film Festival, and recently he produced three large-scale installations for the Royal Observatory in London.

https://www.wearefromdust.org/

http://yomster.com/

https://artwithme.org/

https://www.artspacelifespace.com/current-projects/arts-mansion/

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Logan and Andie talk with Matthew “Chef” Kwatinetz about Black Rock Power, an ambitious new sustainable energy initiative rooted in the Burning Man community, and how Black Rock City is the ideal laboratory for prototyping and iterating solutions for the larger world. No pressure. 

They discuss Burning Man’s 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap and how the struggles of 2020 have affected everyone’s plans, for the worse and for the better. 

Chef brings his immense economic development experience to his work in Black Rock Power and his service on the Burning Man Project Board. An avid Burning Man participant  for a decade, he has cooked meals for the Temple Kitchen, “Feed the Artist” programs, and sunset dinner cruises on the “Sacred Cow” mutant vehicle - and now he’s advising the Project on economics, city planning, and innovative approaches to sustainable power for Black Rock City and its neighboring Northern Nevada townships. 

Sponsor: The Leaving No Trace Workout Program

Matthew “Chef” Kwantinetz

https://burningman.org/network/about-us/people/board-of-directors/#MatthewChefKwatinetz

Burning Man Project’s 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap

https://medium.com/@burningman/burning-man-project-2030-environmental-sustainability-roadmap-c79657e18146

and

https://journal.burningman.org/2020/07/global-network/burners-without-borders/bmp-sustainability-roadmap-update/

Special thanks to Dario Russo and David Ashby for letting us use their music for the closing credits:

https://dariorusso.bandcamp.com/track/mission-accomplished

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

In Black Rock City, Burn Week is when everything is happening and everyone is there, just like in this episode, where comedians and philosophers Duncan Trussell and Nick Kroll take over the podcast, and Stuart, Andie, Logan, and Vav are the guests.

We discuss everything from permission engines to economic models, everything from Judaism to fuckoism, from artificial intelligence to the unintelligible. It’s funny. It’s deep. It’s insightful. It’s vulgar. Thank you for listening, and we’re sorry.

http://www.duncantrussell.com/

https://www.nickkroll.com/

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

What does it mean to be (or not be) a festival? 

Andie and Stuart speak with Eamon Armstrong, host of the Life is a Festival podcast about working Burning Man, Fest300, and the Psychedelic Therapy Podcast, as well as the future (if any) of festivals in a post-pandemic world, the nature of transformative experience, and his quest to achieve metamodern manliness without all the toxic masculinity.

Eamon Armstrong is the creator of Life is a Festival, promoting a lifestyle of adventure and personal development through the lens of festival culture. He is the former Creative Director and public face of the industry-leading online festival guide and community Fest300. His belief in the transformational power of psychedelics led him to take part in a traditional Bwiti initiation in Gabon, and to become a trained Sitter with MAP’s Zendo Project.

Sponsor: Dr. Yes’s Forever Home for Jaded Burners

https://www.eamonarmstrong.com/lifeisafestival

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

A whole generation of kids has grown up with Black Rock City as their second address. And they’re amazing. Andie and Stuart talk with Burner kids and Burner parents about the challenges and rewards of going to BRC instead of summer camp. Nine-year-old Charlie (C.Bear) and sixteen-year-old Ava (Dust Storm) share what it’s like for them, and we hear from Lulu and her mother Molly, who’ve been going together for most of 25 years.

And we discuss our invisible friends from childhood…

And we share a clip of Larry Harvey waxing poetic about kids, community, and commodification from a Profiles in Dust documentary. 

https://www.profilesindust.net/

TEDx Talk from Julia Wolfe

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

We keep talking about the Multiverse. What does that even mean? Is it actually a thing? Why is sad Stuart sad? It is because of his dead cat? Which human should we put in a supercollider, and why? Are Stuart’s dreams actually interdimensional travel, or just crazy talk? 

What is reality? 

All these questions and more are answered with even more questions by a theoretical physicist who also happens to be a Burner, Adam Brown.

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

In a time and space without a Black Rock City event in Nevada, volunteer crews are using computer code instead of power tools to create a host of digital Burn experiences. What exactly are the “8 Recognized Universes of the Burning Man Multiverse?” What can you do in these online worlds, and will Daft Punk play at the virtual trash fence? Logan and Stuart go looking for answers with the organizers. 

The through-line for these online offerings is that they will all be celebrating Burning Man culture - from virtual reality worlds to curated Zoom experiences, from web browser adventures to a global streaming burn night. Burning Man Project’s Kye Horton and Gloria Beck help us figure it all out, along with a few of the Universe creators themselves.

Read more in the Burning Man journal: 

Pack Your Virtual Playa Gear and Get Ready to Burn in the Multiverse

Visit the Universes via Kindling: https://kindling.burningman.org/multiverse/

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

We like to say that Burning Man is made of a million stories. 

Catherine Burns is the artistic director of The Moth. It’s a wildly popular, Peabody-award winning storytelling series now celebrating its 20th year.

Burning Man stories have been told many times on the Moth stage. As it turns out, Catherine has a few Burning Man stories of her own. 

Stuart and Andie talk with her about loving, grieving, and celebrating as a participant at Black Rock City, and just why storytelling inspired her to devote her life to helping other people tell stories of their own.

Michael Vav shares about the Metric Time Trainer that works with Alexa and Siri, but not “Mike” the smart microwave that burned Vav’s toaster pastry. 

https://themoth.org/

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG

Stuart talks about Burning Man art, making art, and making art about the art, with Jennifer Raiser, author of the book “Art on Fire,” Sophia Swire, producer of the new film of the same name, and Andrew Johnstone, one of the artists profiled in the film.

Burning Man art has become a movement in the mainstream art world and in popular culture, and spawning museum shows, books, and films. In what ways does this radically participatory, highly interactive form of expression translate from its desert home to these more traditional channels? 

Jennifer Raiser is a member of the board of directors of Burning Man Project and the author of books including The Art of Being Bill: Bill Murray and the Many Faces of Awesome, In the Spirit of Napa Valley, and Burning Man: Art on Fire. She’s also a Black Rock Ranger and answers to the playa name “Coco Cabana.”  

Joining us today from London is Sophia Swire, an entrepreneur, activist, author and film-maker. She’s produced documentaries for BBC Channel 4 and her latest film, Art on Fire, will be premiered online, on Burning Man’s Kindling channel, on August 15th.

Andrew Johnstone is an Oakland based artist, painter, muralist, and longtime Burning Man contributor. For close to 20 years he worked with Burning Man founder Larry Harvey to design one of the most ambitious works of interactive art in Black Rock City, the Man base or pavilion, which changes every year according to the annual art theme and forms the centerpiece of the city.  

https://www.kindling.burningman.org/art-on-fire

http://www.sophiaswire.com/

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LIVE.BURNINGMAN.ORG