John Law (born November 17, 1958) [1] is an American artist, culture-jammer, and a primary member of the Cacophony Society and a member of the Suicide Club. He is also a co-founder of Burning Man (a.k.a. Zone Trip #4, a.k.a. Black Rock City) which evolved out of the spirit of the Cacophony Society [2] when a precursor solstice party was banned from San Francisco's Baker Beach and merged with another Cacophony event on the Black Rock desert in Nevada. Originally from Michigan, Law has lived in San Francisco, California since 1976. [3]
Law has worked for many years as a commercial neon contractor. His neon artistic projects have included re-configuring the neon of a Camel cigarette billboard to say "Am I dead yet" as part of the Billboard Liberation Front, [4] underwater neon art as part of Desert Siteworks at Trego Hot Springs in the Black Rock Desert, [5] neon illumination of the man at Burning Man through 1996. [6] He has also been responsible for maintaining the neon of the Tribune Tower in Oakland, CA. [4]
Law owns and maintains three of the 12 [7] remaining Doggie Diner heads, which were located above the restaurants of a small fast food chain in San Francisco and Oakland. The dog heads were featured in a 2003 movie called "Head Trip" that featured a cross-country trip with the Doggie Diner heads, ending in a show by Cyclecide at CBGB in New York City. [8] [9]
Law has participated in urban exploration for over three decades, starting with the Suicide Club (1977–1982). [10] He has climbed the Golden Gate Bridge many times [11] and explored underground bunkers. [12] [13] [14] [15]
John Law is one of the early members of the Cacophony Society, a Culture jamming group with open membership, inspired in part by his earlier participation in the Suicide Club, which was in turn influenced by dadaists and situationists. Cacophony Society began in San Francisco, California, but eventually spread to most major cities in the United States and some outside the US. Claims have been made that Cacophony Society no longer exists, although some chapters are still active.
In 2013 John Law, along with Kevin Evans and Carrie Galbraith, co-authored "Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society", [16] a book published by Last Gasp documenting the San Francisco Cacophony Society.
Burning Man began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco [17] and burned an 8 feet (2.4 m) tall wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog.
In 1990, a separate event was planned by Kevin Evans and John Law on the remote and largely unknown dry lake known as Black Rock Desert, about 110 miles north of Reno, Nevada. [18] Evans conceived it as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. He asked John Law, who also had experience on the dry lake and was a defining founder of Cacophony Society, to take on central organizing functions. In the Cacophony Society's newsletter, it was announced as Zone No. 4, A Bad Day at Black Rock (inspired by the 1955 film of the same name).
Meanwhile, the beach burn was interrupted by the park police for not having a permit. After striking a deal to raise the Man but not to burn it, event organizers disassembled the effigy and returned it to the vacant lot where it had been built. Shortly thereafter, the legs and torso of the Man were chain-sawed and the pieces removed when the lot was unexpectedly leased as a parking lot. The effigy was reconstructed, led by Dan Miller, Harvey's then-housemate of many years, just in time to take it to Zone Trip No. 4. [19]
Michael Mikel, another active Cacophonist, realized that a group unfamiliar with the environment of the dry lake would be helped by knowledgeable persons to ensure they did not get lost in the deep dry lake and risk dehydration and death. He took the name Danger Ranger and created the Black Rock Rangers. Thus the seed of Black Rock City was germinated, as a fellowship, organized by Law and Mikel, based on Evans' idea, along with Harvey and James' symbolic man.
The three most well-known founders and present partners in ownership of its name and trademark (Law, Michael Mikel, and Larry Harvey) [20] were known as "The Temple of the Three Guys". [21]
Law, a neon sculptor and artist, originated the concept and design of installing neon on the Man at Burning Man [6] , an act which at once created an invaluable navigation aid and an indelible, omnipresent symbol. At that time[ when? ], Burning Man had no streets, street signs, fences, or any other artificially imposed boundaries, and it took place in the virtually featureless deep playa (on which it may be easy to lose one's bearings or misjudge distances and wind up stranded alone in the desert). The decision to implement neon into the Man may have added to the safety of the event.
The early years of the festival allowed driving throughout the city but eventually curbed the practice back to only art cars. The symbol of the Burning Man, which had been added to the desert event later and was not part of its initial inception, became more and more identified with the event, in part because with the addition of the neon it was always universally visible, becoming the single unchanging reference point psychologically as well as physically.
The last year John Law attended Burning Man was in 1996 when his friend, Michael Furey died in a motorcycle crash [21] while setting up the event and a couple were run over in a tent by an inattentive driver attempting to get to the distant rave camp. [22] [23] After Law and Larry Harvey had fierce disagreements about these incidents and other issues, he left in disgust proclaiming that the event should not continue.
In 2007, the three partners were engaged in a legal struggle over control of the name and symbol of Burning Man. [24] Law's response to this struggle was to take legal action to dissolve the controlling partnership and release the name and symbol into the public domain. [25] The final outcome was settled out of court in 2008 [26] with Law's interest being bought out by the current organizers which also ended the "Temple of the Three Guys" partnership.
T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone is a book by the anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey published in 1991 by Autonomedia and in 2011 by Pacific Publishing Studio (ISBN 978-1-4609-0177-9). It is composed of three sections, "Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism", "Communiques of the Association for Ontological Anarchy" and "The Temporary Autonomous Zone".
Burning Man is an event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night of Burning Man, which is the Saturday evening before Labor Day. The event has been located since 1991 at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. As outlined by Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, the event is guided by ten principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.
The Cacophony Society is "a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society." It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now defunct Suicide Club of San Francisco.
Gerlach, Nevada is a census-designated place (CDP) in Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The population was 107 at the 2018 American Community Survey. It is part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area. Prior to 2010, Gerlach was part of the Gerlach–Empire census-designated place. The town of Empire is now a separate CDP. The next nearest town, Nixon, is 60 miles (100 km) to the south on a reservation owned by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. The Fly Geyser is located near Gerlach.
Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) is an American performance art group that pioneered the genre of large-scale machine performance. Founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline, the group is known in particular for their performances where custom-built machines, often robotic, compete to destroy each other. The performances, described by one critic as "noisy, violent and destructive", are noted for the visual and aural cacophony created by the often dangerous interactions of the machinery.
Larry Harvey was an American artist, philanthropist and activist. He was the main co-founder of the Burning Man event, along with his friend Jerry James.
The Suicide Club was a secret society in San Francisco, which lasted from 1977–82. It is credited as the first modern extreme urban exploration society, and also known for anarchic group pranks. Despite its name, the club was not actually about suicide. Rather the club focused on people facing their fears and engaging in daring experiences.
Baker Beach is a public beach on the peninsula of San Francisco, California, U.S. The beach lies on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in the northwest of the city. It is roughly a 0.5 mi (800 m) long, beginning just south of Golden Gate Point, extending southward toward the Seacliff peninsula, the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Sutro Baths. The northern section of Baker Beach is "frequented by clothing-optional sunbathers," and as such it is considered a nude beach.
Pink Mammoth is a San Francisco-based non-profit artist collective, founded by Ryel Kestano and Derek Hena in August, 2003. It is based partially on the philosophy of Burning Man, a radically expressive temporary city held annually in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and dedicated to unconditional self-support and free expression. It also is influenced by the Buddhist concept of the Boddhisattva, a being dedicated to enabling, supporting, and encouraging others to reach their ultimate state of enlightenment.
The Burning Man Project is the organization that annually plans, manages, and builds Burning Man on the dry lake of the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. The company coordinates the year-round, behind-the-scenes work needed to build and remove a temporary city of 80,000 people.
Barbara Traub is an American photographer, who was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Several years after graduating from Johns Hopkins University, she went on an exchange program to an art school in Florence, Italy, for a semester with the intention of doing painting and drawing but at the last minute was handed a camera, thus establishing her future direction.
Mark Nichols is an American playwright, composer, and lyricist, best known for his musicals Little Boy Goes to Hell (1988), Joe Bean (2003), and How to Survive the Apocalypse (2009). He is also known in the northwestern United States for his work with Fred Jamison for whom he arranged 20 Northwest Coast Native songs for orchestra, girl choir, and rock band, performed by the Seattle Symphony in 1996.
Doggie Diner was a small fast food restaurant chain serving hot dogs and hamburgers in San Francisco and Oakland, California that operated from 1948 to 1986, owned by Al Ross.
Pepe Ozan (1939–2013) was an Argentine sculptor, artistic director and filmmaker.
Mark Grieve is an American contemporary artist. He practices in a variety of media including found objects and large metal sculpture as well as site-specific installations, performance, and public art.
Scott Beale is a New York City based cultural curator, photographer, documentarian and social media expert who founded Laughing Squid, a blog about art, culture and technology and a web hosting company.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of San Francisco, California, United States.
Trego Hot Springs is located in the Black Rock Desert at the location of Trego, Nevada, a former station on the Western Pacific Railroad. The name "Trego" dates from the 1910s, just after the railroad was built. Previously, the springs had names like Hot Springs, Kyles Hot Springs (1864), Butte Spring, and Butte Hot Spring.
Desert Siteworks was an event held on the Black Rock Desert for three years (1992-1994). Participants built art and participated in self-directed performances.