Safetycan Manifesto

The Safetycan Manifesto is now available! It's still rough, is missing a few spots, and needs the fat cut away - but it will give you an idea of what I think about collective-building, collaborative art and participatory party culture.

SAFETYCAN

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
- R. Buckminster Fuller

“What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning! ”
- Charlie Chaplin

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
- Hunter S. Thompson

HISTORY

I. “Esther Becomes Queen” and the Theatorium Show
In 1998 I completed a record of songs I had written. The project was called Safetycan and consisted of myself and producer Jeff Oelher working in a studio in the Adirondacks for weeks. I played, sang or programmed pretty much everything on the record. When the product was complete, the question arose of how to turn this production into a live performance. At this point, I was faced with the fact that I found the prospect of finding and rehearsing a band to play my music boring and unappealing. However, I also wasn’t particularly interested in going out and playing solo with prerecorded accompaniments.

The essence of the dilemma was this. I have always been interested in “Bands” in the idealized sense – that is to say, people with similar musical interests coming together organically and doing something that comes to them naturally. At the time, most of the people that I hung out with were not musicians – they were writers, actors, directors, performance artists and other interesting weirdos.

So, I went to a few of these people and said – “What if we were a ‘band’? What would a band that consisted of people with our particular talents do? ” All I knew is that I would bring some songs to the project, and like a band, everyone else would bring their ideas and fragments to the table – and whatever these things ended up being, that would be the output of this “band”. There would be no attempt to make our contributions make sense with each other – the logic would be the logic of our relationships, of our desire to work together – nothing more.

What ended up coming together was a performance art variety show with about 25 performers total called “Safetycan”. The response to our show was overwhelmingly, ecstatically positive. The reason for our success was, quite simply, that we opened a creative space for our friends to play in and have fun. Everyone understood that they were being included because they were One Of Us. They were not being asked to fill some predetermined role, but rather were part of our community of friends. The excitement that was generated by this generous environment was powerful and contagious. When the audience arrived, they were swept away into the fun and we were having. It is now clear that we only scratched the surface of what is possible.

II. BURNING MAN, HIPPOCAMPUS and THE SAO
A few years later, I attended Burning Man for the first time and was introduced to large-scale community-oriented art. It took a few years for me to figure out that Safetycan was really my First Burn. In other words, with out having a name for it or really knowing what we were doing, a bunch of us were participating in a emerging consciousness around art – making art that was generous, encouraged particpation and built community. 

But another thing became evident as well – that a new, unpredictable art form was also emerging – an art form that consists entirely of making art by combining entire works of art with each other. The true art of Burning Man is not installations or art cars, but the event itself. It is a massive living installation that is in the business of juxtaposition and simultaneity. It is a work painted with a brush that spreads people, sound and sculpture into complex, evolving patterns that cannot be predetermined, or ever fully understood. It completely transcends the traditional idea of “content” if burning man has a Message, it may indeed be the Medium, but it might be more accurate to say that The Container Is The Content. 

A few years later, I was one of three people that took the lead in transforming Hippocampus, a loosely organized group of people who had been camping together into a Theme Camp with community projects and a clearly stated mission. The message that I worked very hard to inject into the DNA of the camp was this: the real mission of the camp is to deepen the relationships of the people within it.  That year we embarked on projects that would have been bonding experiences under any circumstances, but my belief has been, and is to this day, that ultimately you contribute to the world by what you are, not by what you do. The art projects are a McGuffin – an interface to the outside workd, or a trick that we use to invite people into the 

DO NOT SUPPORT LIVE MUSIC
The phrase “support live music” suggests that music is a valuable, endangered commodity that requires a certain level of sacrifice from the general public for it’s continued survival. In particular, it also suggests that the experience of hearing live music may not be particularly enjoyable – thus the admonition that you support it. Anyone who has struggled through an evening of overpriced drinks, incoherent booking and lousy sound understands this. 

At Safetycan, we  oppose the supporting of live music because it  suggests that we be complacent and endure the status quo. Tell your friends in bands to stop testing your love for them by playing in crappy unpleasant environments and demand a better experience.

Safety can is  a group of user experience hackers. We are not in the business of asking for your support. Rather, we are in the business of showering you with blessings. We create complete experiences – ones that make you feel better than before you had them, regardless of the content around which the experiences are created. This requires of us great thoughtfulness and a willingness to analyze and learn from our mistakes.

SAFETYCAN IS PARTICULAR TO NEW YORK CITY
The real trick is to do this in New York City. Everyone, everywhere can benefit from the expression-positive creative spaces, but nowhere can more people benefit more than the in the uber-competitive, supercompressed, action and product oriented world of NYC.

WE WANT YOUR FRAGMENTS
Often our best work is our fragments. Many of these ideas do not survive the transition into a narrative or a complete work of any sort. Certainly some do, but most of us have more fragments than we will ever be able to develop into completed works. Sometimes the struggle to complete things causes us to insert meaning or to force the idea into a conventional form when it might be better served by being left as a fragment. As an interdisciplinary supergroup, Safetycan is in the business of aggregating fragments into giddy, generous works that survive on an internal logic grown out of our relationships and our shared point of view.

MAKE A LARGE SALAD
In the original Safetycan show, a large salad was prepared. First, there was a procession in which the vegetables were displayed and then deposited into a gigantic tub. Next, the ingredients were combined with the assistance of a weed whacker. Finally, oil and vinegar wrere applied with two “super soaker” water guns.

As far as our conscious intentions were concerned, this signified nothing. Now with the benefit of hindsight we can appropriate this as a metaphor for an approach to collaboration.

A garden salad, as we all know, is a wonderfully simple dish. The ingredients are combined in the simplest way possible, the only preparation being chopping. One would never underestimate the value of chopping the ingredients into small pieces, even though it has a minimal effect on their flavor or consistency – without it you can’t combine the vegetables in any meaningful way. We make a salad of art and artists, performers and performances. By chopping art into bite size pieces we can create an experience that is not only more palatable than consuming the individual ingredients in large quantities, we can create new forms through combination and juxtaposition.

For example, an event where you see a rock band, a puppet show, a burlesque act, a dance performance and a DJ, each perform a 20-60 set, you are being asked toyou’re your salad one vegetable at a time: a bowl of lettuce followed by several tomatoes, a carrot, and a mouthful of sprouts. Seeing each act for 5-10 minutes, several times over however keeps the flavors fresh and interesting while also creating and entirely new experience than seeing each act serially.

There is currently no metaphorical explanation for the dressing. 

SAFETYCAN IS BETTER THAN BURNING MAN
During a conversation with Maid Marian of the Burning Man organization, she spoke of her perennial fear that every year would be the event’s last. I replied, somewhat astonished by my own optimism and confidence, that the only reason that Burning Man would cease to exist would be that we were ready for something better.

Here at Safetycan, we believe that it is time to get started working on something better, and the area of improvement to focus on is obvious. Burning Man is only a week long and we don’t want to go there for a week. We want to live there. To live there, we have to bring it here - and bringing it here does not mean creating ersatz burning man festivals in the region we live in. It means identifying the most potent and meaningful aspects of the culture and installing it in our lives with unflinching determination and passionate revelry. 

Safetycan lives here, and it is Gentle Enough To Use Every Day.

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
There is a lot of wonderful art that is both complex and difficult to appreciate. Unfortunately, much of this art is part of a world that is entirely focused on itself and will never enjoy wider appreciation. Much of this art simply asks too much of people who are not, and will never be highly educated in the specialty of the artist.

Raging impotently at the ignorance of the public is stupid. Instead, artists should be in the business of reaching out to their entire potential audience with generosity, respect, and a spoonful of sugar. The theoretical performance mentioned in the salad metaphor above references a number of forms that are all common on New Yorks art party scene. Ideally, the lineup should also contain a 12-tone string quartet and an experimental film.

Not only do we offer a spoonful of sugar by juxtaposing so-called high art and popular art, but we do so by smashing ivory-tower professionalism against well-intentioned amateurism. Therefore, the ideal dj in our theoretical lineup is a filmmaker who loves music and our burlesque performer is a brave but slightly shy first timer.

THE CULT OF ACTION AND THE TYRANNY OF THE OBJECT
In collaborative art and creative communities in general there is a common phenomenon where the most motivated person with the loudest voice sets the agenda and wins creative disputes. There is a good reason for this – highly motivated, articulate leaders are a necessity when a group of people are trying to reach a common goal. Members of collectives also occasionally suffer from a delusion that the collective is an “It” rather than an “Us”, and make suggestions that they are unwilling or unable to follow up with action. This is irritating at best, distracting and counter-productive at worst. However, it is equally misguided to suppose that the most motivated and capable members of the herd should always carry the day.

The inexperienced and the shy have their share of brilliance too. We protect their ability to contribute by challenging the cult of action and they tyrrany of the object. By putting community first and projects second, we embrace our greatest fear – that we may not accomplish great things, that we may just be a bunch of people hanging out and enjoying each others company. Challenging the cult of action does not mean that we hold loafing and theorizing to be superior to accomplishment, it simply means that we hold our state of being to be a higher priority than our record of doing. This means a commitment to taking our time, and drinking from whatever well will give us the greatest inspiration and clarity as often as necessary.

Anyone who has worked on large collaborative projects has probably experienced the Object of the collaboration to be at times a benevolent force and at others tyrannical oppressor – benevolent when the project brings out the best in people and nurtures the relationships between the collaborators, tyrannical when it absorbs the people into a slavish grind of bringing the object into being without love or enjoyment. At Safetycan, we approach the Object with care and respect, as well as with a certain wariness and ambivalence. We take it as a given that we will have great ideas and create not one, but many brilliant objects/projects/events. So, we focus instead on creating a creative society, a cast of supporting players ready to jump to action when the right project arises.

YOUTUBE IS NOT INNOVATIVE
The current wave of technological innovations around creative media is for the most part not innovative in terms of form or experience. Rather, they are innovations in methods of distribution. When the ability to record sounds and images first came into existence, the level of innovation in terms of experience was obviously staggering. To be able to take a piece of music and hear the exact performance of it anywhere in the world without having to physically move the performers to that place changed everything.

The only difference now is that it is incredibly fast and really, really cheap. While this is having dramatic impacts in terms of business models for selling media and launching careers in the arts, it’s not really giving us anything new – except to the extent that it is giving us more.

As infinitely replicable digital media becomes ubiquitous and increasingly commodified, the value of that which is impossible to replicate skyrockets in value: The personal experience, the live show, the intimate moment.  At Safetycan, this is what we prize most highly – even when making our YouTube videos. Every collaboration is an opportunity for a unique and intimate experience. Our one of a kind events chop performers and artists of all stripe into marvelous salads that need to be consumed on premises to be appreciated.   

INTIMACY IS THE GREATEST DANGER TO SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT
The thing we really want is to know each other better. Some of us already know each other pretty well, but I’m willing to bet we want even more – or want to have it with more people. The culture of collaboration skews intimate, the culture of competition skews alienating. This is not to say that competition is an evil to be avoided, it means that we should embrace competition as an ingredient in our process, but reject it as a cultural guideline.

Collaboration and being truly supportive to one another is an intimate experience with an almost unlimited capacity for making us uncomfortable. And you can’t just conjure it up by wishing it true. It’s a process that along the way can stimulate upset, misunderstanding and  anger that we can only move through by an intention to see our dreams and desires through the eyes of another. At the outset,a culture of competition is safer emotionally but over the long term it becomes corrosive. 

Even within a culture of collaboration, we must also remember the power of even the most benevolent Object to hypnotize us into a semi-alienated state where our gaze sees only on the Object itself and avoids the eyes of our collaborators.

WE DJ DJs
Anyone who thinks DJs don’t really do anything doesn’t understand how many records there are. The truth is that we have long past the point where there is any real need to create new content at all. The real art forms today are curation and editing. In fact, there are so many DJs already, that it may be time to focus on stepping away from content even further and focus on picking DJs.

Or more practically, the most way to look at making art in this post-post-post modern era is to concentrate on making art with other people’s art. Or more specifically, to form an interdisciplinary supergroup where each member appreciates the opportunity to create works utilizing art of her bandmates and combining it with her own. Or more abstractly, to become a painter who paints with people, a collage artists who assembles other people’s skills, a DJ who spins DJs.

Consider the following examples:

1)    Two laptop DJs are set up on adjacent tables, with a large mixing console in between the two. Each of them output 8 separate channels of audio  into 8 separate channels on the large mixer– beats, basslines, chords, sound fx, etc.

In between the two DJs is a third meta-DJ who mans the large mixing console. He creates a mix of whatever channels he chooses from the two 8-channel DJ sets that he is being fed. This mix is played through the sound system while the two DJs use headphones so they can keep track of their individual sets.

The individual sets of the two DJs are fed into side rooms at the same event so the DJs individual vision is available as well.    

2)    A party is taking place in a large loft space. There are three stages set up against the walls, facing towards each other. There is continuous entertainment for two hours, however there is never more than 10 minutes of any particular act at a time.

How does one best keep this interesting and fun? Do you want to scare people by having the Japanese noise band begin a set as the audience’s attention is focused in the wrong direction enjoying the end of  folk singer’s set – or do you build things gently and consistently to a climax? Do you want to put on the dance troup at the same time as the minimal techno duo? Even though they’ve never heard the music before? Maybe you have two noise bands and they play half of their sets simultaneously. Or maybe people will need 10 minutes of house music to get their heads back together after the 12-tone string quartet…a daunting task conceptually and logistically, but perhaps the most fun you can have with your clothes or - or off, provided you’re in the cast of the 10 minute oh! Calcutta revival.

SAFETYCAN IS A BAND
A great band’s “sound” is the soundtrack to the relationships in the group. A great band is always a cultural event first, a musical event second. So, the lesson we learn from the Beatles is as follows: be from Liverpool, get similar haircuts, all you need is love. We don’t need to worry about writing the greatest catalog of popular songs in history – thankfully, they have already handled it for us.

If you can make the mental leap to think of the Beatles primarily as a phenomenon of culture, collaboration and context then there’s no reason you can’t aspire to the same level of achievement. You just can’t aspire to do it with a rock band, or probably with music at all. You need to do it with a form that hasn’t already been defined.

SAFETYCAN IS A COLLECTIVE FOR ARTISTS WHO ARE MORE INTERESTED IN MAKING CULTURE THAN MAKING ART
It has taken me a long time to understand why my interests within music have wandered so much, and why I have often found commercial success to be so elusive. What I think I have finally come to understand is that I do not have a passion for music in and of itself.

What I do have a passion for is this: communication, culture and context. In other words, I care more about the process of making the music (communication), the experience people will have listening to the music (context), and the effect that experiencing the music will have on their relationships and their lives (culture). The three Cs.

So for me, music is a means to an end. It just happens to be my specialty, and I don’t apply any particular significance to it. If you relate to what I am saying, then Safetycan might be a perfect place for you. Maybe you think your creations will be more readily digested as a salad ingredient than a main course. Maybe you don’t want the pressure of always being the center of attention. Maybe you really believe that we are more powerful and interesting as a group than we can be individually. Maybe you think the cult of the creative individual, the lone visionary, is a bit old-fashioned. Or maybe you just think it might be more fun to create a family of choice with other like minded weirdoes than doggedly going it alone.

SCALE IS IRRELEVANT 
Our goal is to invite people into the spaces that we create and share with them our outlook, our creations, our collaborative process. However, we commit to doing this only at a scale with which we can fully succeed. Therefore, we do not start by holding large public events, we start with small intimate gatherings in which our goal is to establish collaborative relationships, build group conciousness and have fun. Ultimately our goal is the same for public events, but we recognize that this goal is only attainable by starting at a small scale and then expanding to a larger scale – but only to the extent that we find it manageable.

More specifically, we will honestly endeavor never to ignore any important details of participant experience. That is to say if we decide that it is essential that every participant receive an order of chocolate pancakes, and we can only make 100 orders than that is the largest the event can be. Substance over scale, always.

SAFETYCAN IS A BUSINESS
Safetycan needs to be a self-supporting entity capable of turning a profit on our creations and intelligently sharing revenue with amongst the collaborators.

We will build a large repository of shared assets that are covered by a licencing agreement based on the Creative Commons model that allows members to share some or all of the rights to their creations to be combined with other artists work to make new creations. As a first step, I will license my entire music catalog to Safetycan. Obviously, there are additional details to be worked out here, but initially the only caveat will be that any music used under this licence must bear the Safetycan brand.

SAFETYCAN IS A CAN
Safety Can also the name of a product that has been around rather a long time. It is a reinforced steel can with a spring-loaded lid, specifically designed for containing the vapors of flammable liquids and preventing spillage. The name was adopted with no knowledge of this, in a purely intuitive fashion. (the name was still appropriated however – it was also the name of a sold-on-tv can opener, that purported to eliminate sharp edges from removed can tops).

However, as with all things safetycan, the meaning became apparent over time. To the outside world, Safetycan is an entity that safely delivers highly volatile creative energies, containing them when necessary, releasing them with intention and caution. To the members of the group, the Safety Can gives us a reassuring steel playground with a tight lid and allows us to unleash our riskiest selves without fear of undesired explosions. 

It is interesting to note that as of the time of Safetycan’s second emergence, a well known collective in new York has recently renamed itself The Danger. While we commend them for their work, it is our belief that perhaps the more radical philosophy is to provide people with a safe place for self expression, while declaring ourselves to be doing exactly that – rather than promising them Danger and celebrating an outside-the-law vision of reckless abandon. It should be clear at this point that our vision of safety is not one of complacency, staying within your comfort zone and submitting to absurd laws promising to protects us from the most dangerous aspects of ourselves. 

DO WHATCHA LIKE
It is impossible to participate in Safetycan without endeavoring to understand yourself. The vision of Safetycan relies entirely on people selecting themselves into roles that they find truly fulfilling. For all of us this is, of course, a work in progress, but therefore it is essential that we look out for one another and keep challenging each other with the question “is this what you want to be doing?”

We all have powerful habits that propel us into roles we have occupied before. This is not necessarily as long as these roles are ones that we inhabit joyfully. What we want to avoid is taking on tasks that make us feel like we are owed something in return for them. In an undertaking such as this, if the journey isn’t the reward then we are truly and utterly screwed. Its also important that when we do find ourselves in roles that make us feel resentful that we can be honest about it, without placing blame. We’re all going to feel resentful from time to time. By telling the truth we can move beyond it and make necessary adjustments. 

Operating from this belief – that there is a perfect role for everyone, and group collaborations can be a victory for all involved requires serious commitment. Just as we believe that scale is irrelevant and commit to sizing our events to fit our intentions, we also believe that form is irrelevant. If noone wants to fulfill a particular role in a proposed outcome, then either the specifications of the outcome need to be revised, or the role needs to be modified - for example, changing the role of “bartender” to “exchanges drinks for backrubs or poetry-er” .

YOU ARE INVITED TO CONTRIBUTE!
Safetycan is an invitation to contribute, never a requirement. By requiring or pressuring people to contribute we are creating more stress in an already stressful city. We may, however, face the prospect of hangers on and spectators and diluting our energy. The best way to address this is to grow slowly and set a good example. You are never going to have a 100% participation rate with larger public events, although you may approach it with smaller ones with hand-picked guests. By forming a passionate core of participants through smaller events, and growing at a controlled rate you can ensure that at any given time you have a critical mass of fully engaged people. At this point, not only do your spectators not particularly damage the experience, but you also have an opportunity to help them advance to the next level of participation by showing them how its done, rather than telling them through rules and reglations.

PLEASE BRING FLOWERS
There has been some inquiry as to the meaning and intention behind the request “Please Bring Flowers.” As with many things Safetycan, this request was received through pure intuition. However, upon seeing the room full of flowers, the following meaning became apparent:

If everyone brings flowers, than you have a hell of a lot of flowers.

Individuals unsatisfied with this explanation may not be well suited to Safetycan.   

Comments

[arsmoriende]

You have written words not just to live and create by, but to embody and become! I rise to the challenge of spreading this gospel and bringing it to Safety Can Sister Cities. (Safety Canisters, perhaps) for those of us in rural Amerika who full on agree with and rise to what you've expressed above and want to make it happen everywhere!

[dta]

Um, wow.

-dta

[harley]

did you get me email?
I'm ready to follow....

thank you jon for this and everything.