Burning desire for politicsMany skip Nev. counterculture fest to protest GOP convention.By Don Thompson
Associated PressBLACK
ROCK DESERT, Nev. -- Some of the nation's most avant-garde performance
artists are skipping this year's Burning Man gathering in the remote
Black Rock Desert, a wild counterculture festival they usually relish
for its celebration of the unorthodox.
They're a continent away in New York City for this week's Republican
National Convention instead, seeking a national audience for an
increasingly political message growing out of what had been a
determinedly apolitical cross-pollination of artists and techno-wizards.
One of the most publicized protest groups, Greene Dragon, grew out of
last year's event a weeklong celebration involving eclectic artwork,
music and games.
Jonny America, a 29-year-old Brooklyn resident who goes by his Burning
Man nickname year-round, was watching a woman with pink hair
roller-skating through the desert as parachutists drifted down through
the smoke from a fire sculpture behind her.
"I just thought, wow, this is human potential right here,"
America said by telephone from New York City. He went home and founded
Greene Dragon as a more positive, creative way of registering dissent,
while showing that protesters are patriots, too.
The troupe wears costumes America describes as "Burner meets colonial,"
including tri-cornered hats wired for special effects. Members rode
"horse-cycles' down Lexington Avenue last week warning that "The
Republicans are coming!" They re-enacted Gen. George Washington's
historic crossing of the Delaware River, posing like the famous
painting on the Staten Island Ferry crossing New York Harbor.
"We are a Burning Man theme camp running year-round in the political
world," America said, referring to the extravagantly engineered desert
oases that bloom for a week before Black Rock City returns to ashes and
dust in one of the nation's strangest annual rituals.
Burners have been torn about adding politics to the stone soup that
bubbles every year when more than 30,000 bizarrely or barely dressed
participants bring their wildest imaginations to an area where there
are, by design, few rules or inhibitions.
Some view their week in the otherworldly location as a sacred break
from civilization and the politics and problems that go with it. But
many are, not surprisingly, of a liberal, free-spirited bent, and
oppose President Bush's re-election.
The unofficial shift came only last year when New York City's Bill
Talen donned his guise as the Rev. Billy and led his Church of Stop
Shopping in nightly shows featuring satirical songs and sermons
denouncing Americans' rampant consumerism, the nation's energy policy,
and Bush administration policies in general.
Burning Man organizers gave the Rev. Billy and his choir a grant this
year to tour California in opposition to a planned influx of Wal-Mart
superstores.
That's the model for how Burning Man founder Larry Harvey would like to
see his creation's impact spread from the self-imposed isolation of the
desert 120 miles north of Reno into the rest of society.
The Rev. Billy hit a chord with local Wal-Mart opponents of all political stripes, Harvey said.
"I'm not talking about lefties. I'm talking about someone who runs a
local store and sees their doom spelled out' by Wal-Mart's competition,
Harvey said. "You get this unlikely assortment of types coming together
where they probably wouldn't usually give each other the time of day
all bound together by what we call 'radical participation."
That is manifesting itself at the GOP convention, Harvey said.
"You will see theater and politics combined in the streets, and I think that's good for democracy."
Harvey, 56, was an artist who burned an eight-foot wooden figure on a
San Francisco beach in 1986. The idea caught on as an annual ritual of
renewal, moving in 1990 to the blank canvas of the desert north of
Gerlach. It has grown larger every year since, as has the increasingly
elaborate Burning Man figure that will be torched Saturday night.
He's trying to keep the politics fairly bipartisan at this year's
event, reflecting the debate over how much of the outside world should
invade a make-believe city.
Toni Wallace and Cory Mervis are bringing their school bus painted like
an American flag to the desert as part of a 10,000-mile venture to
spell the word "Vote' on a continentwide scale. The nonpartisan "Voter
Drive' project started in New York on July 22 and plans to wind up in
San Francisco later this month.
On the Net
www.burningman.com
www.greenedra gon.org
www.voterdrive.com
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