audrey penven

I last wrote on New Year's Eve, in Berlin, before the exploding fireworks reached their climax. To say that Journey to the End of the Year was a success, is certainly an understatement. We started off with 250 manifests, and handed out every single one of them. The crowd listened to the rules, including the precautions that yes, in fact, cars and buses are still real and can still kill you even though you are playing a game. Fin and Valerie took turns with the megaphone, eventually letting the players loose in Berlin. They scattered in all directions, many of them second-guessing their direction, spinning in confusion before bolting off from the base of the tower.

The party ended at C-Base. Midnight came in a fresh wave of explosions. Hackers launched bottle rockets, and anything else that would blow up, over the river. We danced with sparklers. We danced in the snow. Friends and lovers kissed, welcoming the new year. The party persisted all through Berlin, through dawn. As a group of us finally made it home, sometime during daylight. A comment on the quiet was met with something blowing up in the distance. So much for that. White snow had turned into a red paste of explosive debris.

Over the next few days, we gradually said our goodbyes. As with every Congress so far, I've gained more friendships without necessarily knowing which country (or continent) my friends live in. Rubin, Slim and I hopped on a train to Praha after a few days. I've only got a few digital photos from there, and none are yet online. The batteries don't like the cold, which really just turns into an excuse to only shoot film. Rubin has since made his way to Wien, spending some quality internet time at the Metalab, uploading some of his photos taken in Berlin and Praha.


photo by Rubin Abdi

I'm in Amsterdam with Slim as I write this. We arrived yesterday, and spent most of the day hanging out with friends (Alex, Agnes, and their son), talking about art, motorcycles, hacker culture, memetics, performance, and costumes. We shared photos and stories until it was time to sleep, and then of course, continued in the morning. Tonight we're checking OT301 for vegan food and art before meeting up with some more people in that part of town. I have just a few more days before returning to San Francisco. Though I'm loving it here, I'm excited to come home and run with all the ideas in my head - new ones, and refined versions of older ones.

Much more to write. Much more to share with you. But for now, there is more city to run around in.

xoxoxo
- Audrey

The sound of my hands moving across the keys. The glow of my laptop screen. Things are happening. I keep reminding myself of this, even though it's not tangible yet. Email. Talking. Planning.

Another New Year in Berlin. I've completely lost track of how many people we've convinced to join us. A plan formed at sunrise, Tuesday morning at Burning Man, on the top of Thunderdome. Journey to the End of the Night was an amazing way to experience the two cities I've played in - Oakland and San Francisco. An unfamiliar path through a familiar city took me to places I hadn't seen. I found connections I didn't know before. The game redefined what counted as a way out. I wrote about the Oakland game in June, so I won't retell the story here. I craved this experience in other cities. I wanted to play in Berlin, in Wien, in Praha, in every other city I might travel to someday. Once these thoughts spilled from my lips, they were on their way to becoming real. Slim, Valerie, and I in the quiet of dawn, before sleep. I'm not sure which one of us said the words. It had momentum before I had decided for sure to go to Berlin again. So this is what happens now!

Ok, so I've committed to going to Berlin again. That means, of course, going to 26C3. This year, I'm giving a talk. It's called "Photography and the Art of Doing it Wrong." One of my tasks for the next week is finishing the paper for it. If you're coming to Berlin, come listen to my talk! It's happening at 2pm on December 29th, in the big room! I hope to see you there!

Praha, for more than a day and a half. Perhaps the train will not catch fire. And this time, the stories and memories won't just be mine. More photographs of the city at night - some for a sculpture I'm building for Burning Man next year.

Speaking of Praha.... This game, Machinarium was made by the Czech based Amanita Design. It's the most beautiful game I've ever played. From the first screenshots I saw, I remembered walking the streets of Praha in January. The story is told without words. Puzzles are often solved in delightfully janky ways. It is charming and wonderful, and my words are not adequate for what I want to express. Play it. Do it now. You'll be happy you did.

This will be my third winter in Europe. I'm very excited to play a more active role this time, instead of just attending the Congress. I love listening to other people's talks. I love the experiences and games set up by others. But, I'm happiest when I'm creating also. The balance is important here. I'm so excited!

"Our intention is to generate society that connects each individual to his or her creative powers, to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society." - from What is Burning Man?.

It's a great sentiment. But, I'm a photographer, and there's rules against people like me. By attending the event, I must agree to be bound by these rules. Photographs are for personal use only. If I display any photographs taken at the event in a public forum, the Burning Man Organization can claim the copyright. The photographs I create in the desert are not mine.

Before going to Burning Man for the first time in 2007, my friends explained the photography rules to me. I was crushed. I brought a few cameras with me anyway, but I lacked the self-confidence to challenge the rules at all. Asking for permission to use my own photographs seemed really hard. It would really hurt me if they said no. So, I continued to feel like an outsider. They spoke the words of being inclusive and encouraging creativity, but I didn't feel it. I shot a few photos when I was there, but I doubt I even finished one roll of film. I wasted more effort on making sure that no strangers happened to be near my lens than I did composing the damn photos. Feeling the weight of restrictions, my heart just wasn't in it. To this day, very few people have seen the few photos that made it through the editing process. My crap-ass rangefinder is covered in playa and still has a half finished black and white roll in it from that year.

I'll be going again this year, with cameras that I intend to use - for real this time. Art forms are languages. Often I feel that I speak more fluently in the language of photography than spoken English. I have no memory of when I first held a camera, when I took my first photograph. But, there isn't a whole lot I can remember before the age of three or four. Because it feels so natural to me, I used to overlook the value of it - to myself and to my community.

Burning Man's photography rules fed this insecurity, and gave it much more validity than it deserved. Photography was not being seen on the same level as the other art that's out there. Conversations sparked by the EFF vs Burning Man issue emphasized these patterns of thought. People commented about photographers exploiting the participants and artists at Burning Man.

Yes, I understand that some people with the intention of exploitation will be pointing cameras at things. I'm sympathetic to the desires of the Burning Man Org to protect the privacy of its participants. Part of creating a safe space is ensuring that people don't feel vulnerable to possible exploitation - whatever that means. The presence of cameras can make people feel inhibited. They'll feel less free if they think their every move is being recorded. People expressed concerns about commercial uses, about privacy, about misrepresentation.

I don't know what the answer is, but I resent that just because photography is my medium, I'm being grouped with the ones who are Doing It Wrong. Photography is the best way I've found to contribute to my community and culture. It's offensive that my contributions should be looked at differently just because I made them with photons and film. I'm leaving names out of this, but someone was equating the length of time spent on a piece of art to its value. Just one of the lovely things brought out in this discussion. I'm sure *that's* not shaping any of this... Sure, a photograph is created quickly - it has to be (unless it's a really long exposure, but that's not what I'm getting at). It certainly takes less time than building a massive sculpture. But, it's only through years of training and practice that I am able to create a photo in that fraction of a second with the necessary level confidence. In some ways, it's analogous to a dance performance. The routine is developed and practiced ahead of time, but the piece is created in the moment. Every movement is new and belongs to the moment. And we don't see performances being so devalued, just because they happen quickly. The metaphor may have gotten a bit sloppy, but essentially what I'm saying here is that every photograph is the result of an entire life of work. Don't tell me it lacks significance just because photons were only smacking against the film for 1/60th of a second.

Where I am mentally right now, I know that I am not the only one who values my work. And the old tired arguments about photography not really being art are irrelevant - seriously, this conversation happened a hundred years ago. Aren't we done?

I'm not really worried about Burning Man claiming my photographs. If something stupid happens, I'll deal with it when we get there. The real reason I wrote this thing is for my self of two years ago and others like her. If the goal of Burning Man is to encourage participation, they are wrong to have such a heavy-handed restriction on photography. For some of us, the primary mode of participation is through photography. Our voices matter too. And wouldn't it suck if no one took photos at all?

I finally turned off the automatic preview on my digital SLR. It was crippling me, and I didn't realize it. The photos are better now. At least, to my eyes.

I've been photographing on film longer than I've known how to read or write. Expressing myself in English feels so clunky compared to what I can do with a camera. I suppose that's my way of apologizing for the possible sloppiness of the words to follow. I've been using the delete key far too much in this blog post. That relates very much to the concept I'll eventually get to.

I hate certain aspects of digital. Instant gratification is great. The ability to review what was just done and use that information to adapt is wonderful. In theory.

For me, photography has always been about the quickness of the mind, creating an image in a thin slice of time. Once the shutter goes, it's permanent. Sure, I can manipulate the image later, but I can only really refine what was done when the photons hit the film.

The lesson of painting class was that I am not a painter. As long as I could continue fucking with the image, I would do so. It would turn to mud. The turning point happened when I struggled with a still life for weeks. There were points in time when it was good, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. It was imperfect, and maybe, just maybe, if I pushed some more paint around, it would get better. In a fit of frustration, I pulled out my camera, photographed the still life and ran off to the darkroom. I glued the photo onto the canvas, sloppily dripped some paint on it, kicked it around on the floor of the studio, and called it done. My professor responded better to that painting than anything else I'd done that semester.

I know my tendency to get caught up in analyzation. This doesn't work when using film. It doesn't work with anything really, it's just easier to pretend in some other contexts. Film camera in hand, I need to trust that I know what I'm doing, so I do. By the time I can check up on it, that moment is long gone.

And there's the danger with digital. When the LCD screen flashes the photo before I can move the camera away from my face, I look at it. I break my connection with what I'm photographing. I am no longer creating - I've switched into analyzation mode. It may only be for a second, but reestablishing a connection takes longer than that.

At Sand by the Ton, I caught myself compulsively looking at the screen as trapeze dancers performed above my head. What? With something so dynamic, what information could I possibly gain by staring at a little screen? The time for review is later. It's like trying to run while watching your feet. I looked away from the performers for a few moments more. The preview had to die, immediately.

The first few shots after that were kind of scary. What if something was set wrong? What if I could make it better somehow? To comfort the screaming, insecure thing in my head, I grabbed the familiar Contax film SLR that hung by my right hand. Oh right, I do this all the time. Shut up screaming thing.