PRINTFriendly fire
Building community, destroying the ordinary
Elle Moxley
Daniel “Thoron” Roy, whose hobby is carpentry, designed this year’s television effigy. Although burning the structure is the focal point of the four-day event, it’s over relatively fast. Roy says it’s key to time the burn to last only 15 to 30 minutes because the high-energy dancing and drumming are exhausting.
May 8, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The night is chilly for early May, but the energy is steaming. Dancers, encircled by onlookers who have gathered around a 16-foot effigy of a television, sway rhythmically, even seductively, to the ever-present drumbeat. The steady tempo keeps the contagious zeal of the crowd flowing while fire dancers twirl flaming hoops around their necks and hips. They spin fireballs from chains and spit a combustible concoction into the air to make a fireball rise into the sky. Cries of “Burn it down!” emerge from the crowd, and soon, the tall structure will be reduced to a burning heap of wood.
These aren’t your average arsonists; rather, they’re burners — idealists who use burning events to manifest their beliefs in self-expression and community. Welcome to InterFuse, or as the greeting committee offers to campers as they enter, “Welcome home.”
“Slippy,” who like many burners adopts a different name and identity while at InterFuse and ...
For many burners, nudity is a form of self-expression, not sexuality. Many InterFuse participants ambled ...
Brian Sankowski gazes across the campground, which is also home of a pagan church. High ...
Although SaRee Heydenfeldt began hoop dancing several years ago, she became serious about the activity ...
Gregory Haley began dressing as Tigger last year. His costume reminds him of the love ...
As participants walk from their campsites to the giant television effigy, fellow burners offer them ...
Kindness is in the air. Campers greet their neighbors as if they were old friends. The crowd is eclectic but unwaveringly friendly. The man whose face is painted in a red-and-black demonic style bears a giant grin as he says hello; the man who is adorned with a crown of thorns and is barely draped in fabric offers passersby sips of his wine; the red-and-blue painted women offer to spray-paint the bodies of those wanting to shed their clothes. This is not a place for the gymnophobic, but the spirit of openness and acceptance is what draws many people to InterFuse.
Zay Thompson is the co-founder of this art-based, four-day camping event held annually in Boonville. In 2003, he and a group of friends attended the iconic Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, Nev. The event began in San Francisco in 1986 and moved to the Nevada desert in 1990. For eight days each year, the barren desert is transformed into an experimental community. Tens of thousands of participants escape their everyday lives to become members of a temporary community whose principles are practicing radical inclusion, giving gifts and leaving no trace of these activities behind.
Thompson decided to create a Yahoo group for Midwesterners interested in the events and guiding ideals of Burning Man. Although the group remains independent of the original festival, it was modeled after both it and a similar regional event Thompson had attended in Texas. Thus, the Topeka, Kan.-based Midwest Burners was born in 2003 and achieved nonprofit status in 2004. “We had the experience (in Texas) and wanted to recapture it,” Thompson says. “Midwest artists are spread out, and we wanted to connect and meld them. That’s why we call it InterFuse.”
Today, the Web community is still active; group members even use the online forum to select the event theme. The theme for the May 1-4, 2008 event was Technophilia/Technophobia; television effigy was used to acknowledge the pros and cons of technological advancement.
Midwest Burners held its first community event in October 2003. The following April, the first InterFuse took place with approximately 180 attendees. This year, the group sold nearly 800 tickets. Every year, InterFuse is held at the Ozark Avalon Church of Nature, located 20 miles west of Columbia. This land serves as a congregational church for local pagans who want to worship nature.
Although many members of Ozark Avalon attend the yearly event, InterFuse has no religious affiliation. The connection between the land and its temporary occupants comes from a common nature-based philosophy. In line with a major tenet of both Burning Man and InterFuse, campers are required to leave the site with all their trash.
Only Midwest Burners members and their guests are permitted to attend InterFuse, but membership is free and easily obtained on the group’s Web site. Campers can set up their temporary homes wherever they want on the 160-acre campground. They are encouraged to create their own events, such as a nude relay race and a “ceremonial high tea of milk and cookies,” where the
only rules are to bring your own cup and ask a partner to feed you the cookie. Better yet, have a stranger feed you, and make a new friend. But don’t expect to pay for the sweet treat.
InterFuse is a break from commercialism, which organizers hope forces members to focus only on the human experience. “We found that an increasing amount of our lives relies on commercial activities,” says Thompson. “There is a lot more to us as humans than buying and selling.” There is no vending of any items except ice. After all, the gift-based economy at InterFuse is an exercise in self-reliance and community building.
At InterFuse, self-expression is key. The elaborate outfits — or lack thereof — the music and dancing embody the group spirit. Whether it’s ironic, constant repetitions of Justin Timberlake’s song “SexyBack” playing out of a pickup truck or the symbolic launching of a fax machine from a wooden trebuchet, the energetic sense of community is both tangible and affecting.
“The ideas of Burning Man and leaving no trace behind stay with you,” says lead event ranger Chris Allen. “A lot of the effigy is just so we can burn stuff, but people make their own attributions. Each burn means something different to each person.” A fellow burner agrees, “The fire comes in and just burns inside you.” V
Wonderful! A sensitive and realistic account of the Inter
Fuse experience. You caught me at a time when I was actually working!
Mad Hatter (aka "the Pancake Man") :<)
Posted by Glen Hadley on May 8, 2008 at 8:35 a.m. (Report Comment)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful and accurate description of the event. It's interesting at times how perceptions of any organization or group that bucks the status quo can be skewed.
I wanted to toss out information about the Ten Principles from Burning Man...
Radical Inclusion:
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting:
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification:
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance:
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-expression:
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort:
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility:
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace:
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation:
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy:
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
Kyrka
InterRanger Co-Lead
Posted by Dustin Decker on May 8, 2008 at 9:21 p.m. (Report Comment)