dprogram • Burning Man - Desert Visions


Home > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 The Cacophony Society John Law The Cacophony Society is a very loosely formed group of individuals. There was an earlier group called The Suicide Club which we actually started in '77 in San Francisco and that was a group of urban adventurers. We ran a monthly newsletter and anyone could list an event and that could range from people going to see a movie they liked with other people and talking about it afterwards to elaborate costume pranks downtown, to infiltrating cults, which we did quite a bit of - we stayed with The Moonies for three days and did a little dissection of that later - to climbing buildings, rigging sections of abandoned skyscrapers, that sort of thing. And then that group sort of imploded in the early 80's, due I think to the fact that the Reagan administration had come in and we were all depressed and drinking heavily. But then we got over that and formed Cacophony back in 1986 and it was a similar format, monthly newsletter, no restrictions on events. The only thing we dissuade in the group is commercialism - you don't charge for events except to pay for your costs of putting the event on. It's not a commercial endeavour at all. This is one of the reasons that Cacophony coincided so well with Burning Man - it was a participatory experience. I mean when we first saw the Burning Man on the beach, the entire group of people there were participating, they were raising the man by pulling on a large pull-rope, dozens of people had worked on the construction. Larry's concept was one that developed into a real community of activists. That's the reason why its still going, with no commercial support. We now have 4 chapters in cities on the West Coast - Portland, Seattle, they all have their own flavour. The LA chapter is decidedly more theatrical, being in Los Angeles. They do a lot more street pranking than we've done up here. One of my favourites was infiltrating a GI Joe convention in Pasadena with a small diorama in plywood with GI Joe dolls and Barbi dolls in various states of disarray and disembowelment doing nefarious things to each other. They brought it in covered, got it into the convention and then were thrown out by real GI Joe collectors, who were sort of offended. They preferred GI Joe's with Flags and Iwo Jima types of things. We interact with various other groups like the Art Car contingent which is a fast growing movement in the States right now where people hand modify their vehicles and drive round. We also interacted with the burgeoning Mechanical Art underground in San Francisco. Many of them come out to Burning Man to do performances, or on-going machine debacles in the desert. Counter Culture and the Mainstream Is this kind of activity a political statement in opposition to the mainstream? John Law Personally I stand in opposition to nothing. I merely create what I'm able to create, here. If people want to interpret what we're doing as opposition to a particular political stance then it's up to them to draw those parallels and those conclusions. It's too difficult, if you start fighting 'The Beast' you're doomed to failure. By definition counter-culture, in my opinion needs not to be aligned with the larger culture. As soon as it becomes too aligned with the larger culture it becomes the popular culture. Everything of interest in American history has eventually been consumed by that. No doubt we will too, eventually and then we can go and do something else. I think putting a big constraint or an ideological structure around any kind of creative endeavour is a mistake in the long run. Because it doesn't really mean anything. I mean there was stuff happening in the 1960's and later in the punk movement in the seventies that were all eventually consumed by popular culture and spat back out as a commodity - that's just what happens. I think young people, nowadays, are very well aware of that process and they don't like it, being more aware of it than their predecessors in the Sixties or the Seventies. Punk kids in the '70's, I was part of that scene, they were aware of it too, they knew that things were going to be chopped up and re-sold, and they have been. But the people who were really creative in that group are still doing things now. Also there are still a couple of old hippies around that still have something to say. Rock is a commodity - its dead in my opinion. 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.