dprogram • Burning Man - Desert Visions


Home > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 Eighties Survivors Larry Harvey The wheel seems to have turned, we feel that way. I have a friend who was interviewed, they said "So you're a 'Sixties Survivor' eh?" and he said "Listen, I lived in the Sixties, I survived the Eighties." The miasmal mists of the 80's seem to be clearing. Everyone's gradually emerging from the Great Cocaine Decade,where everyone took cocaine and turned their hearts into cold lumps of suet and went out and sold real estate and made money. What a terrible experience it was to be filled with lust even as your heart grows cold. The decade of greed is over. I think now that people are beginning to feel it, it might be possible to find ideals which won't betray us. And I think having gone through what we've been through, we may be coming close to earning it and deserving it. The times are very much changing. I see young people now who not only have the idealism of youth but through life experience are equipped to actually implement those ideals. Perhaps the 80's served a purpose after all, in the last decade there were a lot of groups, a lot of artists and creatives who went underground and worked in poverty, worked in obscurity. The fruit of that, the seeds sown in that time are beginning to sprout with a force of the blade of grass that buckles pavements in its progress upwards, there is something stirring. Its probably good that people had to labour away alone. Suddenly all these groups are shooting up above the ground and looking round and finding one another again. But with a difference... The hippies seemed to believe that you could plug your stereo into a redwood tree. It was a time of obscene abundance, food was free, the government gave it to you! Everybody was living off college loans that you didn't have to repay, to be a hippie and form a colony all you had to do was find a woman who got checks from home - and who would do the cooking - Oh those were the days! It wasn't productive of real communalism, it was a fantasy of culture in some ways because it wasn't based on the struggle of really surviving together. It was too easy to survive then. Today, God knows we're all running and struggling to survive but in fact its bringing people together in a way that leads to the real experience. Many of the groups who are joining us today have learned that lesson and as a result I don't think that what we've developed is going to be expropriated and turned into another consumable commodity. We're offering something that can only be experienced personally and with others within the context of a living community. Paganism and Burning Man Does the ritual burning of the man have pagan connotations? John Law We have a large contingent of the pagan community that comes out, and it seems to dovetail with some of their beliefs. Personally, I'm agnostic, so I don't adhere to pagan beliefs any more than I do to my former Catholic roots. But if I were to be religious, I'd say that the general pagan religion is one I'd adhere to - any religion that entails drinking lots of wine and running around naked in the woods can't be all bad! I've been in San Francisco for 20 years doing these underground, weird events and over the past two or three years there seems to have been a real upswell of these kinds of events. They all seem drawn to the desert, for the Burning Man event because it's a completely blank environment - a forty mile long, flat desert playa. People come out the first year and they see what other people are doing, get grand ideas, and come out the second year with a lot of supplies and materials and build their fantasy in the desert. We've ended up with an incredibly diverse group of very strange performances and interactive pieces. The Suicide Club John Law Robert Louis Stevenson is one of my favourite writers. The story of the Suicide Club is about a group of Londoners who got together and put their worldly affairs in order, in order to live each day as if it was their last. That's been a credo that I've tried to live by. The Suicide Club was pretty underground and clandestine, The Cacophony Society is more of an umbrella group. We have a section in our newsletter called Sounds Like Cacophony which lists events that other people are doing that are similar or might have the same spirit. Home > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 email • mail order credits © dprogram 1996>2008
	Originally broadcast on UK television's Channel 4, dprogram is an award winning, mind expanding trip featuring rare and exclusive interviews with leading edge personalities from areas like cyber culture, consciousness research, parapsychology, music and art. Volume 1 includes: • Dan Mapes CEO of San Francisco's leading edge virtual reality design company SynergyLabs on the metaphysics of VR. • Jah Wobble Musician and founder member of Public Image Limited on Cockney mystics, creativity and the inspiration of William Blake. • Dr Sara Parker UC Berkeley scholar on the New Age 'colonisation' of Native American spirituality. • Bishop Joey Head of the First Church of the Last Laugh - the worlds fastest growing snack relgion! • Burning Man A unique four day experience exploring creativity and consciousness in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. • Willis Harman Former president of The Institute of Noetic Sciences on their 'conventional research into unconventional areas'. • Dr Edgar Mitchell Founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and Apollo 14 astronaut on parapsychology experiments in space. • Nick Pope of the British Ministry of Defence on why he had to change his mind about the UFO phenomenom. • Peter Russell Author, on the global brain, spirituality on the net and our part in the evolution of the planet. • Ann & Alexander Shulgin Pioneer researchers into psychedelics and the mind, on the politics of ecstacy. And more... Running time: 70 mins. £19.99 plus Post & Packing. Post & Packing rates: For the UK add £3.00 For Europe add £4.00 For the United States and the Rest of the World add £6.00 ORDER ONLINE Snail Mail Orders: Make a Cheque, Postal Order or International Money Order payable to Digital Media Labs and send to: Digital Media Labs 8 Manson House 16-17 Manson Place London SW7 5LT United Kingdom Customer Service Helpline: +44 (0) 20 7225 0861 Please Note dprogram is only available on VHS PAL. To play this tape in the US you must use a multi-region video machine capable of playing PAL format tapes. We are currently working to provide dprogram on DVD. If you would like to be notified when this becomes available enter your email address below.