Future uncertain? Make it up.
The pandemic created so many ongoing and evolving uncertainties and challenges for everyone, to say nothing of all of the essential conversations and shifts being expressed in the world. Many things needed to take a back seat as we all held on and worked through things. Burning Man itself was cancelled twice, and lockdown meant it was difficult to imagine getting together with those outside our pods. Many Burning Man camps decided or had to quit under the stress of ongoing expenses with no regular camp dues or other ways to stay afloat. Happily, throughout 2020-2021 IAMU / HRV members from all over the world were generous and persistent and this allowed us to keep going.
For ten years Blackrock City had been an incredible originating context and container through which we invented and reinvented ourselves, with and for one another. After the second Burning Man cancellation we needed to take a serious look at viability and consider a future independent of our annual journeys to that thing in the desert. Who or what are we if our originating context didn't exist? A lot, maybe, but what?
Ambiguity and uncertainty challenge our sense of agency or control. As we looked at very real challenges and constraints, not knowing what to do about them, something about all this seemed familiar, almost assuring. Why?
Because for a full decade every great thing we ever did or achieved started from literally nothing. Nothing but ourselves, and our evolving and reinvented relationship to starting from nothing. Over ten years 'nothing' shifted from ambiguity and uncertainty to unencumbered clarity. A blank slate. Our favorite place.
This was not a time for existential hand wringing. This was a clearing for reinvention. ReVision.
It's All Made Up anyway.
In May 2021 IAMU / HRV leadership started regularly getting together on ZOOM, reaching out to our global member core and acting our way to a new way of being. With member support and a little bit of a runway, things started taking shape, immediate priorities became more clear. Over the summer of 2021 ReVision has turned into...
In 2021 IAMU began organizing creative build missions as a way to get together more often, create opportunities for experimentation and skill development, and to offer low cost land and space improvements to community oriented destinations and facilities.
IAMU has had a long standing dream of getting all of our gear and infrastructure on wheels. Surprisingly, doing so all at once would save us lots of money, time and effort all at once, and onwards. Learn more about our village fundraiser and member vehicle conversion projects.
We have a fundraiser coming up. If you've helped us so far, thank you, we got you and we will be in touch. If you haven't yet had a chance to help us get to where we are going, you might be pretty happy that you get to.
The truth is we can do lots of things in many kinds of places. Many of our community members have ideas they would like to realize. We all have experience creating new things together in challenging environments and circumstances. And if weren't going to Blackrock City anytime soon, there was only the whole rest of the world we could make an adventure out of.
We did our first test mission in July 2021and took our collaborative home, platform and connecting place on the road. As we spin up again we are considering camp member projects as well as community and space development projects that we can make a mission out of. If you have any ideas, please let us know.
Here's the latest on completed IAMU / HRV creative missions and events...
More. Is less. Is More.
With a little bit of breathing room after a 2021 fundraiser, IAMU / HRV was able to consider options for permanent cost reduction ideas and strategies, especially around storage rentals in Nevada and the DC area. One idea had been to find alternative storage spaces or facilities, such as buying a plot of land or finding other groups to share costs with. Each idea seemed to have varying degrees of ongoing or unknown costs or responsibilities. Or risks.
After asking around, a theme camp organizer and collaborator recommended we look into buying a semi trailer, an idea we had dreamed about for some time. We followed up with someone he had bought several trailers from and were told he had a unique option at a good price. It turned out to be an 48' insulated, intermodal dry box on a chassis, originally custom built for Apple, and then later purchased and maintained by J.B. Hunt, a shipping and logistics company. After KJ and Dino reviewed the photos our contact sent along, we rallied IAMU / HRV leadership and quickly closed the deal, which included a couple of moves for us to transfer gear from our storage space, then onto it's new, much less expensive home.
And so was born the IAMU / HRV 'The Anything Box' (a working title for now), a rolling storage and deployment platform we could customize and theoretically ship anywhere in the world.
After the dust settled on this sudden move, the math kept adding up. Greatly reduced monthly costs, far less labor not having to do several runs between storage spaces and Playa, and not having to rent Uhauls anymore. All this meant more time, space, ease and resources for creating. The whole point.
What remains is planning and executing on a mission to Nevada to set up and transfer our storage spaces to The Anything Box and a fundraising push to cover trailer outfitting, transferring our gear out of storage spaces and connect a path from now to the next time our Blackrock cycle begins.
Here's the latest on the Anything Box and other vehicle and projects...
We will be announcing our upcoming fundraiser in the near future. Watch this space for some some interesting opportunities to support IAMU / HRV.
