Fire Shelter

I came to the woods of Caldera with the first month of 2010 reaching out, like a blanket of untouched snow, before me. I had every intention of beginning a book project about the Anonymous Artists of America and/or some of the other topics discussed on Red Legacy. I brought a suitcase of books and a few changes of clothes. I stocked up on wine and stoked a fire in my cozy A-frame and let the swirlings of my mind settle, scatter, ignite, glimmer, rest. I wandered through the burnt up forests and through weeks of unscripted time.

I felt adrift, without a shred of interest in research, much less that which focused on goings on of other places and other times. In my confusion, I revisited one of my favorite texts – it wasn’t one that I brought in my suitcase, rather it’s one of those that I keep bookmarked online and refer to with frequency. Hakim Bey, an American anarchist philosopher wrote The Temporary Autonomous Zone in 1985 and ascribed it an anti-copyright status alongside the note: “May be freely pirated & quoted-- the author & publisher, however, would like to be informed…”*The Temporary Autonomous Zone is not an especially well-written text but influenced the Cacophony Society, the makers of Burning Man, and many music and social theorists. Despite its intermittently vague and flamboyant language, it gives me direction too.

The Temporary Autonomous Zone is a potent but rather abstract concept; it is a phenomenon that challenges dominant culture and may be a model for thinking about daily freedom. Bey does not define the Temporary Autonomous Zone, or the TAZ, as he refers to it; rather, he talks circles around the TAZ, assigning characteristics and giving examples of moments that might somehow inform a larger understanding of what he describes as “a suggestion or a poetic fancy.”

Bey talks about the TAZ as a tactic to be used against the State and its all-encompassing spectacle. He also describes the TAZ as being invisible, something that arises spontaneously and then dissolves to reform itself elsewhere, in order to maintain true freedom. The TAZ is constantly happening: everywhere, always, if not forever. Yet it is imperative that we keep intentionally carving out autonomous spaces – cracks in an otherwise planned development – and to do this through acts of self-determination, no matter how small. These actions of are what move culture forward and are the basis for both personal and widespread liberty. This is the revolution of everyday life.

Bey compares the TAZ to pirate crews and dinner parties, rock festivals and spiritual awakenings. He relays the incredible story of the artist Gabriele D’Annunzio who, after WWII, captured the Yugoslavian city of Fiume (see earlier post on Pirate Utopias) and created an artists state. He designated Fiume as an independent nation with music as the highest order. For 18 months – until the money ran out and the Italian army lobbed a few grenades -- he read poetry from the balconies every morning and threw parties complete with fireworks every night. It’s really quite amazing that Fiume stayed soveriegn as long as it did but the longevity of its independence is not the point. For Bey and for me, the tale of the independent artists state is about a sense of possibility that comes from knowing and creating momentary freedom.

I first came across this text a few years ago and the notion of the Temporary Autonomous Zone has since shaped nearly everything I do.

Caldera has been a provocative place to consider the TAZ, for in winter it is wild and empty and the days stretch on without expectations. There, amidst the devastated forests and the wilderness of my mind, the TAZ dashed my original plan to read and write books, forcing a spontaneous reorientation to my environment and to what is possible. The TAZ took on a different dimension entirely and manifested (temporarily) in the form of Fire Shelter.

Fire Shelter is a place I made in the forest. Fire Shelter is something to which I surrendered. It has been a source of investigation, a muse, a practice, and an object. I have built something that will not last long with only my hands and intuition and with materials found along the way.

What is Fire Shelter? Is it a shelter from fire? for fire? of fire? with fire? It’s certainly not a place to live, but it may be a place to weather a storm. It is something to be discovered. It is something that deteriorates. It is somewhat of a secret. It could easily be overlooked or forgotten. It’s a pile of sticks and rock. It’s a way to pass the time. It’s more than a shelter; it’s a shrine.

Just a few years ago 900,000 acres of forest near Caldera burnt down in the B&B fire. Now the forest is a skeleton, a graveyard of corpses. The blackness of this forest is startling, terrifying, horrible. We all know the enlivening process of fire -- that with fire comes new life. But what strikes me about these forests is the present nature of these trees – they are dead but upright, not yet logs or fuel. These trees are stuck in a sort of purgatory, waiting to fall. They have been burnt into irreversible death, yet they must wait for the scars of their desecration to become useful. I want to push these trees down. I want to burn them up more. I want to light a match and with it, all of the blackness and regret that this forest harkens. I want to stop this waiting and move towards new growth, new life. But this is the forest; this is the way that it is, with all its ghosts and memories and terrible blackness.

And so this fort is about the wreckage of fire. It is built from the very waste and want of burning. It is about mistakes, about nature, about the precision of control that differentiates the forest fire from the innards of my wood-burning stove. It is about time and healing and darkness and soot. It is about the unguided act of creation that results from sheer desire.

As a teacher, a writer, a curator, a woman, Fire Shelter is a defiance of my own expectations and also a test of my basic abilities. Can I meet my own needs while evading the assumed plan of action? Can I – through the act of building a fort in the woods – honor the slow, painful, natural, waiting progression of things while still encouraging my life forward? And how can this manifestation of my considerations -- that are physical, philosophical, evolving and hopeful -- eventually become a home for someone else’s dreaming? Finally, can I let my creation disintegrate slowly and quietly, deep in a forest far far away?

Fire Shelter may be a sort of Temporary Autonomous Zone. For me, it was that and much more. As long as it stands and perhaps thereafter, I'd like to think of Fire Shelter as a moment or space in which unscripted things can happen and in which the convergence of human self-determination and natural order might find a fleeting balance.

Bring your boots and hats, your water and a map. Are you ready for a journey into the woods?

*Find the TAZ here: http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html

Barn Raising Revisited

In early American rural life, communities shared the labor involved in erecting large buildings, particularly barns. In sparsely populated areas and on the edge of the frontier, it was not possible to hire carpenters or other tradesmen to build a barn. Many hands were needed to get the work done in a timely fashion.

Barns were raised by might, a strong social framework, and a survivalist interdependence. All able-bodied community members were expected to attend and work hard during barn raisings, yet no one was paid regular wages. Food, camaraderie, a celebration of completion, and a communal labor pool were the main incentives for these events. The barn raisings were a means of getting large buildings constructed, but they were also an important aspect of community life.

Sometimes barn-raisings resulted in disastrous disagreements, like this scene from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty excited about the notion of barn raising as a method and a metaphor. I’ll help you build your dream then you can help build mine, okay?

More (Than) Building

I've been building structures with groups of people and it has been an amazing experience.

Last month I took a group of students from University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) to New Mexico and part of our field trip involved a visit to Project:Unknown on the Taos mesa. Project:Unknown is an off-the-grid artist hideaway-in-the-making. After an involved tour with Steve McFarland, the students were given an assignment: build a shade structure before nightfall. Two sturdy posts had been erected equidistant from a fence line. A pile of discarded lumber lay on the ground. Tools were brought out of the storage container. Total freedom was bestowed upon their design; the only rule being that the work be a collective endeavor. Work began.

The skies darkened as the shelter took form. Storms fumed in the north and south and rainbows appeared against the mountains. At one moment, raindrops fell and gusts blew. "Should we go inside?" the students asked. "Where will we go? There isn't really an 'inside.'" The momentary bluster slowed work, but only for a moment. A collective awareness of time's preciousness and also the desperate need for shelter hoisted beams into place, drill holes into beams, screws into holes. The group worked hurriedly, with only a rough idea of the construction plan.

What happened that afternoon was nothing new; this is how the world has been made, by need and by might. But for us it was extraordinary.

As we stood atop the shade structure that (miraculously supported our weight and) sported a stylish helix curve, a raw, varied edge, and plenty of shade, we felt a sense of awe.

It's incredible what can happen when a group of people work together. Building doesn't have to be a giant project, a long-term plan, an impossible group effort. A weirdly beautiful thing can be built fairly easily in a blustery afternoon.

Just days after being in New Mexico with my students, I went to the Bay Area for a set of events entitled Becoming Commons. The event took place in two parts: first, a discussion and dinner at the Headlands Center for the Arts; then, an experimental retreat/camp-out at a communal house in Bolinas. Jana Blankenship and I collaboratively organized the retreat (which I promise to post about soon) and one of my favorite activities of the weekend involved building an ad hoc structure on the beach. After talking briefly about the unique hand-built history of Bolinas and its legacy of informal communities made from driftwood, we journeyed to the beach to build our own driftwood fort.

The group was not a student group. They were sophisticated adults, renowned artists and curators, famous musicians, superstars, hipsters. I couldn't just tell them to build a structure; it had to come about in a different way. And so I merely started.

I began by dragging logs to a location that was decided appropriate and people slowly started participating. It was fascinating to see the fort evolve. Joseph erected the essential support beam, then walked away. Jana gathered materials continously. Amy crafted a woven roof that supported Stephanie's instrumental plank roof. Once it was started, the momentum carried and a sort of collective intuition (or was it daring, faith, experimentation?) took over and the debris grew into a beautiful shelter.

Olivia and Brook and others began to decorate the structure and that's when the fort transformed into a sort of monument, a veritable sanctuary. And then, at some indescribable moment, it was finished. We backed away from our work with curiosity and pride, fascinated to see what came out of the smallest intention, the littlest effort, the most meager of materials.

I'm reminded of a quote from one of the hard-working folks who helped to build Drop City, the first of the artist communes in the '60s, who said,

“The hardest time in a commune, particularly Drop City, is the time after the building gets done. While everyone is working together on actual construction the energy is centered, there is fantastic high spirit, everyone knows what he is doing all the time. But after the building is done comes a time of dissolution. There’s no focus for the group energy, and most hippies don’t have anything to do with their individual energy.” (Voyd, Bill, “Funk Architecture,” in Paul Oliver, ed., Shelter and Society. New York: Praeger, 1969, p. 158)

It's a different world now and we're not building a Drop City. We aren't building a commune or even functional living structures, but what strikes me about these words in this context is the notion that building can and does mobilize groups of people. Building is an incredibly potent practice. It keeps the world in motion, keeps people in motion. It gives meaning to time and resources. It's a source of agency, collectivity, and functionality.

I continue to learn from these group experiments in building and besides all the esoteric observations, I have fun too. There's nothing that satisfies, fortifies, and unifies quite like the act of building.