notes toward a theory of games & events, more about burning man

I haven’t fleshed this out well enough to articulate it in clear prose. So here are some notes, a rough sketch.

The structure of games and certain kinds of events (and I’m including artistic production as a kind of game/event) is this: a limited field of participation or spectacle surrounded by a space in which observers or an audience gathers. For example, the field could be a stage, a card table, a football field.

The field can be considered a zone of indeterminacy, a place in which chance “makes its mark” on the content of the game or event. For example, when a piece of music has been improvised, we could say that chance has “made its mark” on the composition.

The zone of indeterminacy is either literally or symbolically alien or inhospitable to human being as such. Players must represent themselves with tokens or game pieces, dress up in uniform or body armor, be trained in the use of certain instruments, assume characters or roles which are not themselves. For example, the football player’s uniform and body armor, a chess piece, the musician’s training on her chosen instrument, the character an actor plays. In addition, rules and limits for the engagement with chance must established (a script, the rules of teams sports, of checkers, the structure of an group improvisation), which serve to simultaneously buffer against chaos but also to focus and transform its power. In this way, the game accomplishes work, acts as a machine that transforms the raw power of chaos into something else (e.g., cultural or social capital, or material artifacts of artistic production).

By subjecting human being to chaos through the mediation of the game/event, something essential is risked. (A sovereign act in Bataille’s sense, if I recall my Bataille/Derrida from years and years ago correctly). The assumption of such a risk generates meaning. The game/event as an meaning-generating engine.

War is also a meaning-generating engine, but does not function as a game/event inasmuch as it attempts to eliminate close off the very possibility of risk once and for all. (When we go to war as aggressors, it’s because we want to secure our selves, our property, our way of life, and so on, absolutely -- not open them up to chance). The game/event as an alternative to war.

This loops back to the Master/Slave dialectic. Slavery isn’t inevitable; it could have gone the other way, toward friendship. Friendship is to game/event as warfare is to slavery.

One problem: games, so long as they remain mere “entertainments”, don’t generate enough meaning to pull the masses away from war. Art, as long as requires technical training and/or cultivated “taste” to appreciate, also can’t draw the masses away from war. Also – games/events which have winners and losers may sometimes generate a kind of meaning which complements rather than replaces the meaning generated by war.

Another thing: religion. Religion, not unlike art, also generates meaning by risking the transformation of the self. But for reasons I don't grasp at this point, religion too often works like competitive games -- the meaning it generates complements the meaning generated by war.

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Now I’m going to do something that probably come across as a bit silly . . . (if this whole discussion isn’t silly already). I’ve been thinking along these line in order to attempt to articulate why I think the Burning Man festival is an important phenomenon, or (less arrogantly) to attempt to articulate what it was that made such an impression on me and that, quite frankly, obsesses me a bit.

To this end, I’m viewing Burning Man as a deliberate attempt to push the confrontation with chance provided by the game/event to a hitherto unprecedented level (at least within my lifetime). It does so in terms of both “quality” – by both reduces the amount of buffering between chaos and event participants -- as well as “quantity” – by incorporating huge numbers of participants (around 35,000 last year).

How does it do this? Imagine the zone of indeterminacy fully dilated – that is, extended to the perimeter of the event itself. This accomplishes two things – it obliterates the distinction between participant/player and observer, as well as makes the engagement with chaos less of a symbolic engagement and more of a matter of the human body enduring in an extreme environment. (Granted, even if you don’t bring enough water and food you won’t go hungry or thirsty (because people tend to be so generous) – and if you, say, impale your foot on a someone’s tent stake in the dark, there are emergency medical facilities on site . . . but there’s also a reason that the back of the ticket reads “you voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death by attending this event”. As anyone who’s ever, say, ventured into the wilderness to camp or hike knows, things really are a little less “controlled” a few hours away from civilization).

The gesture of extending the zone to the perimeter is, however, predicated upon opening another, even more extreme zone – a zone within the zone – which is absolutely inhospitable in a very literal sense. This is the space occupied by the 40-foot tall wooden and neon “Man”, which could be said act like a gigantic game piece representing every player equally and which is, of course, set on fire at the climax of the festival – literally given over to the chaos embodied by the flames.

Taking things to this level - it becomes a lot like religion. Because it's an artful game/event, it can transform the self. But, unlike art and like religion, it can attract and involve masses of people all at once.

So, um, yeah. I guess I’m saying that Burning Man is a significant advance in the “technology” of the game/event. An artful game/event on the scale of a religious event. There's something important in that, something incredibly promising (not to mention more than a little unsettling). It may never bring an end to war and enslavement, but . . . I think it’s one step toward something that could. Yes, I really do. And I realize that I’m probably starting to sound like that 14-year old kid describing his favorite rock band again . . . oh well. If you’ve been there, then maybe you know where I’m coming from . . .