What Burning Man Has To Teach Blockchain Technology About Unlearning

Not everyone is an Art History PhD but everyone's a fucking curator.

—quote stolen from a dead, white male artist and reinterpreted by the author

I won’t be in Black Rock City this year to watch the man burn on September 3rd. The FOMO is almost tenable, mostly because I’m so busy learning how to dance with Web3. I’ve had the significant privilege of going to Burning Man for long enough. I’m still savoring the countless gifts and chewing on the more subtle teachings. Foremost, the annual Art festival held in the high desert of Nevada has given me the chance to unlearn and fundamentally disbelieve what Western culture has taught us about artists: where they were trained, for how long, as well as which circumstances, credentials and connections were necessary for them to be seen and heard by the establishment, if not to actually have a seat at the table.

At the risk of stating the obvious, gentle reader, it turns out we are all artists! We know this of course, deep in our bones. We’ve merely been made to forget by the dominant culture which decided long ago that our energies were best spent elsewhere. Has anyone ever met a toddler showing no signs of creativity? Exactly. Does anyone have the experience of being an angst ridden teenager harboring a secret desire to be an artist, only knowing better than to articulate her dream out loud? I rest my case.

Burning Man gave me my first experience of decommodified Art: year after year I experienced an abundance of incredibly diverse, large scale Art, which was not for sale, not at any price. And in case large scale connotes physical art, I hasten to add that the Performance Art, the fire dancing, the free Daft Punk show you somehow find yourself at alongside just a few dozen other Burners—these are all equally large scale in their complexity, as well as in sheer oomph!

While one might argue that museum Art is also decommodified in the sense that it is not for sale, the experience couldn’t be more different. Burning Man Art does not exist in the perimeter of a purple velvet rope: the artwork can be climbed and scribbled on with a permanent marker or even a can of spray paint, the Art can be used as a haphazard shelter against the fickle and often merciless elements, a large sculpture might become the locus of a torrid one night love affair with oneself tripping balls, or more mundanely perhaps, with one or more other humans. If the Art in question is performative, there is no fourth wall. The Playa itself is the stage, or the canvas—choose your own analogy—and as in life, there is no dress rehearsal.

All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience.

—Mary Wollstonecraft

The taste of freedom made possible by the experience of attending Burning Man is intoxicating. However, as an annual 7-day social experiment, it doesn’t begin to solve any world problems. In many ways Burning Man presents an unanswerable koan for the ages: why is our world quite so fucked up? At the most fundamental level, Burning Man opens a space where resonance occurs. Plenty has been written about the Art festival at this point, but like the Eleusinian Mysteries, or a breakthrough DMT trip, it points to the ineffable, if not the numinous. Burning Man touches on the profundity of what it means to be human, something which has been largely obfuscated by the roles and the fictions we have found ourselves increasingly caught up in since the dawn of agriculture. There’s a reason we remember the Art more than the technologies of the ancient civilizations which came before us: Art is where the timeless, instantly recognizable Beauty we crave dwells.

All this to say, Art matters. Art matters for its own sake in the same way in which love matters: it’s not negotiable. Art is at once versatile and malleable. It is accessible by all and is experienced in myriad ways: as a creator of almost anything, a collector of the same, and/or a curator. Art might be a large production, it can also be experienced in discreet, profoundly personal ways, with only oneself for an audience. Art is ubiquitous and inescapable, yet it is also fragile: a single word can shatter the artistic experience. There are antiquated forces at play in our NFT world which are—knowingly or unknowingly—contributing to the shattering of dreams and intentions. I see the reflection of this everyday in the self-deprecating comments I read on Twitter when they are not addressed to me directly:

“I’m not really an artist, I don’t have an MFA.”

"This isn't really Art because I used technology x to create it and it's not recognized as valid."

“I’m not a curator because I don’t have enough crypto to put together a decent collection.”

“I’m nobody because I didn’t get in early enough.”

“I don’t have the right connections.”

"It's a young person's game, I'm too old now."

“I’m a woman.”

Sadly these statements are verbatim. While none of them are my own, I've silently thought a version of each and everyone of these heartbreaking apologies. I see now that it is high time I got out of my own way and danced to the beat of my own drum. There will be no further apologizing!

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

I can discard my archaic cynicism because I understand that Art is the most potent gateway drug. Art makes us crave more Art, regardless how we consume it. This might be because Art makes us braver: it makes us trust what we feel rather than what we know, it allows us to feel alive, sometimes after a great deal of numbness.

We know that humans are drawn to self-organizing. I wonder how we can be radically ourselves, while fully owning our biases and also giving permission to each other to engage and to participate: as artists, as collectors, as curators of our own experience, as friends in the shifting TAZ that is Blockchain itself. And in case anyone might believe the Blockchain not to be a TAZ on account of its “immutability”, I remind the gentle reader of the impermanence of our predicament. Moreover, immutability falls apart when we audit the systems we have typically failed to put in place for the purposes of safeguarding our proverbial jpegs and passing them on to our heirs, real or imaginary, in the event any of us get hit by a truck later today.

Before we die, however, let us live fully and with more abandon than in 1999. Let us be kind simply because it feels good. We are still so attached to this deeply ingrained sense that there are winners and losers and for this reason we continuously give credence to the louder, more established voices in any space where we find ourselves. This is an acquired, fear driven belief. Just like the best surfer is the one who is having the most fun, the coolest collector is the one who experiences the most joy. Often that joy costs less than one tezos, never mind what some venture capital inspired Art collecting DAO or some deep pocketed whale, or Heaven forbid, some influencer (all of whom have conflicts of interest) may have to say.

Following the same logic, some of the best artists are those who feel the most deeply and resonate with the tribe in the most visceral way. We are all vibrational beings. The artist is more than a mirror, she is a voice and a cadence and a pitch and a timbre and she emits myriad overtones with which those who step into her field will naturally feel inclined to harmonize.

The artist is also a dreamer and my dream is that we collectively soften around the discourse we continue to hold with regard to titles, wealth, all forms of privilege, including something as banal as early entrant advantage: it’s both shortsighted and misguided. Why go to the effort of smashing old idols only to place new, self-appointed idols on the pedestals of their choosing?

If you are reading this, thank you. Trust that this present moment is your canvas. Please dare to suck now, rather than later! Please listen to your heart and dance naked like no one is watching! Question authority and also give everyone permission to spread their wings and soar. We are all going to die: our only job is to love so deeply, beginning with ourselves, such that we will become finely attuned to the needs of the collective. In the process we can savor the fullness and the aliveness of the beautiful, glorious, tragic, broken moment we are trapped in... together!