This social dimension emerges from the creative incubator of Burning Man an art event held annually near the town of Gerlach, Nevada and uses a dried up lake bed as its canvas to build a city in a flash flood of 50,000 citizens and then in the desert heat it evaporates away leaving nothing more than a creative wake that can be seen across the world in music, photos, public works and the founding fabric of a sustainable 21st century culture.
What makes the Sober Free Society unique is their ability to work together as a community. This mix of Millennials is breaking down, refining and rebuilding the art and social paradigm with a simple belief that creativity and self expression is a required evolutionary step forward and like the flame that creates the candy coating on a crème brulee the Sober Free Society is today’s cultural coating of community optimism.
This year Burning Man awarded them their second consecutive honorarium grant to build MANT FARM a human scale working vivarium – a “place of life” – that serves both as an interactive community playground and a laboratory in the desert to observe and study critical ideas in community. In 2009 they built a piece called ‘Evo-Wall’ that was pre-installed in Pioneer Square during art walk and invited the neighborhood to sign their names to the wall.
The MANT FARM will be a place to study the intelligence of the ‘Mants’ as they build bridges, dig subways, move mountains and a place to consider the ideas of citizenship. Does the ‘Mant Farm’ require a government to be organized? Do its participants become citizens? Do they need laws, customs, and civic systems? Watch them mature from individuals into families and into communities.
As one team member likes to declare. ‘It is complete boredom that leads one to the brink of genius.’ And it would appear that Burning Man is there playground and they are building the largest toy for everyone to play on.
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