Burning Man Goes Not For Profit

TENS of thousands of volunteers are gathering to build a city in a Nevada desert that is notorious for triple-digit temperatures, high winds and blinding plumes of dust.

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• Times Topic: Burning Man Festival

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Heidi Schumann for The New York Times

At the festival in 2006, “giraffes” from South Africa met a giant “cat.”

Their organizer is a for-profit company that has collected millions in revenue over the last decade, largely because of this donated labor. At a distance, it’s easy to wonder: why are these people working so hard — in the blazing heat, no less — for a company they don’t own?

Scott Sady/Associated Press, Reno Gazette-Journal

That’s one of the paradoxes of Burning Man, the annual arts festival whose attractions include colossal art installations, all-night dance parties, marathon kite-flying sessions, off-kilter fashion shows, and classes where revelers can learn things that range from Hula Hooping to playing the ukulele to making absinthe.

If you think about it...

...you can't put a price on a human life. People are our greatest asset so why is it we fail to invest in them? Is it because we cannot give them a specific value? Given that any life is priceless does this mean that because it has no price it is without value? If life has no value one cannot come up with a reasonable notion of how much to invest in education, work programs, the environment because these are all ill defined in monetary terms. Being financially dyslexic is a good thing. Instead of seeing life in strictly financial terms we give it another value that is defined by the fuzziest math imaginable. There are no financial returns. Frankly nobody really seems able to put a price on money these days anyway so I see no problem with that. What is my dollar worth? Today eight blueberries, tomorrow ten, the next day, three. Financial constants are no more. What remains constant is the value of life—it is consistently priceless— but unfortunately many who have the where-with-all to invest in progressive and enlightened projects will fail to do so until someone can show them where the money is. I say invest in Gold! I don't mean the mineral, the metal. I mean the gold that glows internally, warms your insides. Throw your money at creative projects and look for the return on your investment in how good you feel.  Money comes and goes, wilts and flows, evaporates and materializes but education and jobs open up and flower and create and grow and sow and sow and sow.  Don't invest in the material. Invest in the abstract. Throw your money at projects that nurture the imagination and encourage creative thinking, and look forward to the returns on your investment. They might surprise you.

Art as ATM

Neutron Loans, Zombie Banks, What on Earth?

This is the first time I have heard the term "neutron Loan":

A neutron loan explodes, destroying the people but leaving the buildings intact. When I was a kid there was a lot of talk about atom and neutron bombs. I made a cartoon about an evil English school boy genius who created a bomb that destroyed buildings but left the people intact. Not as evil as neutron loans...or ninja loans wherein the borrower has no income, no assets and no job!!

Oh, and Zombie Banks are back according to Larry Elliott, financial analyst at Guardian Weekly

Letter to the Bank #70 (Who Consumes the Consumer?)

Dear Mr. Banker,

Who consumes the consumer? I don't enjoy being called a consumer. We are all consumers on some level. THE consumer, the biggest consumer of all is you. You are consuming us little consumers at a massive rate. What will you do when all the plankton has gone? You are way too lazy to create wealth so once you have consumed all the wealth that is already available what will you do then? Do big banks only fail when there is nothing more to suck on?

Just a quick note. Had the thought. Wrote it down. Sent it to you. Doubt you'll give it the time of day. Oh well.


Sincerely, 

the flea in your ear

Brian McFadden in the New York Times Sunday Review

Letter to the Bank #69 (Culture or Policy to Blame?)

SWORDS INTO BROOMSTICKS    Londoners walk with brooms en route to help clean up after rioting that took place the previous night outside Clapham Junction railway station in Battersea, London, Tuesday, Aug. 9.  (Photo: Matt Dunham / AP via MSNBC.com)

Dear BM,

Short of face time, these notes are the best I can do to be in your face. I’m upfront and don’t come at you from behind. That’s good right? You don’t have to watch your back at night. I’m all about verbal confrontation, or more precisely, nuanced debate albeit a one sided debate because you have bigger fish to fry. I’m honorable. If I came to you with duelling pistols I’d walk the requisite ten paces. Would you? This is the crux of our problem. I’m not interested in putting your back up and so ending all communication. I want to keep those lines, channels open. I am slightly interested in putting your nose out of joint, getting you out of your comfort zone. I live in a permanent discomfort zone. I’m already there and want you to join me on the other side. This is all about showing you how the other half lives...again and again and again until it sinks in, if only on a subliminal level, and eventually effects policy in such a way as to improve the lives of those who have nothing by making it possible for them to at the very least keep what they have and perhaps even take the little seeds of their lives and make them grow. Is that too much to ask?

The prime minister, David Cameron, described the rioting there as being the result of the culture not the policy. One nasty racial/bias incident all too quickly diverts everyone’s attention away from the fat bank accounts and unsocially considerate policies of the wealthy by again turning the frustrations of the poor and disenfranchised against itself where it will continue to fester, confused, depressed, unsatisfied, or will errupt in more arson, looting and mayhem. If only the powers that be would get creative—don’t blame the culture —support it, fix it, prop it up with education reform, job creation and revive hope. What a thought. For some reason Tom Brown and Biggles, Flashman and Billy Bunter all come to mind. If none of those names mean anything to you that is fine. You’ll have to do some work of your own. Call it rhetorical thinking, thinking out loud. When you think “honorable” what comes to mind, what do you picture? This assumes you are able to visualize anything at all—because let’s face it you have a lazy imagination and vision is not your forte. Do you see people playing polo, buying the first round, picking up a lady’s handkerchief? I suppose it is a start. We’ll try and work with that. Now lie down. You must be exhausted.


Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

Letter to the Bank #67 (What Art Can Do For You?)

Dear Manager of my Accounts, Bank Advisor, Financial Oracle of Yore,

After some serious thought I’ve decided to downgrade you. I stared into my iced coffee for a good few minutes before making this drastic decision and can only give you an F.

1. You stood idly by and let the madmen vote in your favor thus proving you cannot think counter-intuitively.
2. You revelled in the fact that interns in Congress cheerfully did your bidding (so saving you astronomical lobbyist fees) and thus revealed your culturally boorish nature.
3. You have, as usual, failed to stand up for anything except your own bottom line...so now you must fall.

Your thick skin resists. My penetration quotient disappoints. You still don’t get it. I haven’t gained access. The disappointment is so great I’m once more inclined to stop writing these letters. In them I’ve always grappled with describing the emotions of financial distress and have failed to seek out or find effective coping mechanisms. I do make Art and whilst it is, as I've said before, worth way more than money, it still fails to bring in the bread and butter. I always was more interested in expression than practicalities. Still I persist in wanting to get through to the mutable you, that figment of my imagination who runs in the unfeeling world of acquisition that is Hedge Fund Land, the Financial Sector, the Marketplace. The wistful hope remains that I might show you to that deep, dark place where your emotions reside, shivering, scared and neglected, help you connect, warm you up to real gut feeling, and then get you out into the sunlight, guide you out of the darkness that hovers over us all. But these letters seem trite in face of the hugeness of the problems we all are facing. I cannot explain the Economy nor would I presume to do so though my understanding of the economy may be just as water tight as yours or anybody else’s—trouble is that isn’t saying much and gets us nowhere. These feeble missives hardly aid the jobless or the homeless. Some understanding of the human side of what happens in markets sinks in but in the face of astronomical greed I remain as ever gob-smacked and stunned in the focused, narrow beam of your cold headlights, a wounded little pocket pet grown conscious of why you’ll never take me to the vet. You’ll pat me on the head, stroke me, watch me on my treadmill, and then flush me down the toilet when inside-out bowel syndrome strikes—so much for me putting you on notice with a downgrade.

Thankfully the madness, the impotence, the inaction, the hopelessness is now being captured and cornered daily by courageous writers in so many parts of the media universe that the insane and unreasonable voices, loud and obnoxious as they are, must eventually be drowned out by common sense.

Meanwhile what can Art do to help? What has he to offer in these surreally difficult times? He can slither though cracks, cross borders without a passport, pen cartoons that dissect with precision and send—get this—electronically! He can look through holes in the fabric of fraying societies the world over and report back on what he sees. He must see and hear and smell and feel harder, and do so outside the box, seen only by choice, revealed on his own terms, not telling the obvious stories but those stories that blow open the conventions that hold us all down. He stencils the walls of your institutions, sings in the library, upends convention, turns your golf game inside out and so changes your perceptions, gives you alternative perspectives, and permission to re-envision this whole experiment called Life on Earth. He even gives you permission to doubt yourself, change your mind, admit failure and be silent once in a while.

Whilst Art works at his modest goals you might consider looking at what you do from a different angle yourself. Write that check whilst standing on your head. Sell those bundled mortgages whilst intoning a story from Edgar Allen Poe, but always have a mind to the hurt you might cause if you allow your hubris to undermine due diligence.

This humble life lesson offered sincerely by yours truly,

Kristian A. Witherkay

Letter to the Bank #66

Dear BM,

Even as I play my own role in The Great Cover Up, a wonderful play than not only seeks to convince you that everything is fine but almost succeeds—its that good—the veil is lifted. I’m outside on a hot day gardening, sprucing up the yard. I’m actually...edging the driveway, and in the process no doubt pleasing those neighbors of mine who have lawn services and irritating those who don’t and who will now feel obliged to go out and do same:

Edging—
1. anything placed along an edge to finish it, especially as an ornament, fringe, or border on clothing or along a path in a garden
the act of making an edge, in gardening and/or sowing, or metalwork and crafts

I’m a homeowner and homeowners with gardens and driveways are forced, once in a while, to edge.

So here I am with my sharp, flat edged shovel, acting the part of homeowner/gardener, cleaning up my own backyard, making things look as if they are in order, hoping people will observe the fine garden and not the peeling paint on the side of the house, hoping I can convince myself that everything is right with the world, overly protecting the family, hoping against hope I can turn my face away from the all too obvious fact that society is fraying, breaking down, falling apart at the seams. Then, sowing needle and thread in hand, I look down to see, in the weeds, a dime bag, this one nicely emblazoned with black spades. For me in my little MC Northern New Jersey enclave these things are more easily evaded. Naturally if you live in Anacosta, half a mile from the White House with 28% unemployment, they are more prevalent than weeds. In Bohemian Williamsburg, before the Time of the Trust Fund Kids, they were everywhere as the Dominicans, the Poles, resisted the influx of artists and other alternative bottom-rungers, even as they uneasily co-existed with their neighbors the Hassids. Friends made artworks out of them or talked about doing so. They are signifiers of hurt and pain, of the disenfranchised and the dark side in ourselves that allows that, the part of us that does not want to get angry and just wants to lead a blameless life. If you get angry you have to get involved. If you get involved you might have to make commitments, follow through on promises, volunteer for stuff, and that takes time and money, both of which are in short supply.

So I sit and stare at this dirty little dimebag with the sun shining through it, my soil on it, or the Bank’s—because they own my mortgage —and wonder why a country that had so much would watch it vanish as countries the world over seek to attain what they thought we had. 

I hear the kids upstairs, laughing as they master more card tricks, card tricks that might put them in better stead than a college education.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

A.K.A Art O’Conner

Known to some as RC, ever restless in his own skin

In response to Joe Nocera OP-ED piece today in the New York Times

Joe Nocera apologized in the Times today for name calling. As one who is interested in how to be politely rude to those you want to be rude to without name calling (which only provokes more of the same) I proffered the following...

Dear Mr. Nocera,

I’ve been writing a blog these past few years that was begun in response to the financial meltdown, and motivated by the indignation I felt. Despite efforts to clamp down on personal debt one encountered new fee structures and or/rules that constantly cancelled out any gains one had made in knocking it down. This prompted me to write a series of letters to The Bouncy Banker, a fictional bank manager, sometimes also referred to as Mr. Bullrider, or the BM. I honestly felt I was being “Screwed” on every front by the financial institutions I dealt with, but when I say “screwed” that really is as rude as this letter gets. The letters had rules: I emphasized finding the place where I could be as rude as possible, as mad, sarcastic, satirical and naive as I wished. These were my letters but I wouldn’t call anybody names. I wanted them to amuse as much as they infuriated. Deep down I hoped bankers would actually read them and feel...something akin to scruples. As an artist I was already creating a series of paintings that addressed the madness—remorseful bankers, ATMs in overgrown potato fields, men who have lost their shirts and so forth. I tried to keep art and humor in the letters but did not always succeed because the anger was/is so ripe. I once even referred to the sad predicament of the great satirist Tom Lehrer. Interviewed on radio he was asked why he was not still writing his songs and, to paraphrase poorly he replied that it wasn’t funny anymore.

I was prompted to write this letter to you in response to your OPED column today wherein you apologized for name calling. There has to be a way of bringing up short those who do in effect hold a country hostage because of their entrenched ideals. Perhaps instead of calling them terrorists we need to refer to their actions as, I don’t know—terroristic? Give a name to their actions not to them as individuals.

On a further note thank you for your column that begins to fill a hole that was left by the great Frank Rich.

Sincerely,

Russell Christian

Innumerate artist and blogger

http://thebouncybanker,blogspot.com

The Art of Money

 I've just cottoned on to this series from American Public Media's Marketplace thanks to an email from my good friend, Kevin.

One project, by photographer Jonathan Blaustein, especially caught my interest though they are all pretty great.