Festive gatherings have always provided a venue for people to learn and communicate. For traditional cultures, festivals mark the change of seasons, offer spiritual tribute and provide an occasion to share wisdom and ceremony. Gatherings can be much more than simply an orgy of over-indulgence and spectacle (as many large commercial festivals can be). At their best, festivals provide genuine community connections and a focus for practical, as well as creative and spiritual energies.
In the mid 1960s and ’70s, hippies invoked the traditions of pagans, First Nations and eastern cultures and experimented with literature, art, clothing, happenings, marijuana and LSD. The rave culture of the late 1980s and ’90s leapt into the technological future with renegade all-night electronic dance parties fueled by DJs, elaborate lighting, projections and MDMA (Ecstasy). Hippie values changed the face of popular culture and revolutionized the social mores of the Western world. Raver culture ushered in the digital age. Both movements encouraged people to change the world by making parties better, and their traditions are intertwined and continue to evolve in contemporary festival culture.
Participatory culture promotes the idea that co-creation is richer than mere spectating and interaction is more rewarding than conspicuous consumption. The quintessential example of this is the Burning Man Festival held in the Nevada Desert. The five-day event features all manner of wildly imaginative and outlandish artworks and offers no scheduled entertainment lineup and no money economy. Instead, Burning Man invites participants to interact in a Temporary Autonomous Zone (From the title of the 1991 book by anarchist writer Hakim Bey), which is dedicated to community, art, self-expression and self-reliance.
Inspired by Burning Man, hippies and ravers, the tribal dance culture in western Canada and the US emerged in the late 1990s as a reaction to the restrictive confines of cities. Within these circles people practice and explore permaculture, communal living, localized economics, alternative healing and co-creation through art, music and dance.
Photographer Kyer Wiltshire has attended many festivals and documents them in his book, Tribal Revival, which offers a window into this scene. In the words of artist Alex Grey, “Kyer Wiltshire’s camera exposes the painted, masked and costumed character of each festival, as his panoramic views document the dramatic spectacle.” tribalrevivalbook.com
Festival Greening
Katrina Zavalney has been an event planner, organizer and community-builder since 1996. In 2005, she worked on the greening of Burning Man, “and that just led to greening everything!” Of her work at Burning Man, Zavalney said, “Education was huge because there are a lot of different definitions of what green means.”
Large multi-day gatherings are like temporary villages. Camped together, people’s eating, playing and living habits are out in the open to be seen and shared, and it’s a great way to witness the waste we create over several days. This is not always a pleasant experience: sometimes it’s an awakening to the ills of our society.
When Zavalney started going to events, she said she “realized how much waste there was. It really drove me crazy. When I went to Coachella, it was a huge festival where there were a lot of people and a lot of stuff accumulated: swag from the vendors, plastic bottles and stuff just littered on the ground. Two things really hit me: people were not thinking about the waste they were producing and there was a whole crew that came and cleaned up litter, so there was no accountability. I was there in the middle of the night and these huge machines were vacuuming up thousands of plastic water bottles littering one of the main concert fields, and I was like ‘wow, this is what people do’.”
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