Heart of Nowhere

The Heart of Nowhere is an attempt to explicitly acknowledge, explore and encourage the sacred and spiritual aspects, power and potential of Nowhere. By sacred and spiritual aspects we do not refer to any specific creed or organized religion. We refer to the experience of communitas (togetherness), connectedness, and immediacy created between us and between us and our environment by going Nowhere, and the potential and power this has for collective and personal challenge, learning, healing growth and joy.

We refer to our individual and collective experience during Nowhere of touching and shaping, and in turn being touched and shaped by, something bigger than the sum of its parts of beautiful freaks, dust, sweat, sunscreen, lavish latrines, mosquito bites and moments of mayhem and serenity. Something intangible, yet durable beyond the duration of those exasperating and exhilarating days in a dusty field.

The Heart of Nowhere is not spatially fixed but distributed and enacted in and between the hearts of each individual participant.

There are already many qualities of Nowhere – inspired in no small part by the principles of Burningman – that create and nurture community and immediacy, such as the limited duration, the remoteness of the site, the challenging and visually spectacular natural environment, the intensity of work and play, the gifting, the encouragement of both reflection and spectacle, and the invitation to radical self expression and active participation. This is further supported by key pieces of material infrastructure such as the functional and beautiful communal space that is The Middle of Nowhere, the unique and fabulous toilets, and by individual theme camps and art projects.
But there is still definite potential for further exploring and expanding The Heart of Nowhere, both through actively looking for and manifesting it in existing practical and artistic projects, and through creating specific ceremonies that nurture, heal, strengthen and celebrate our collective and individual heart(s).

The Heart of Nowhere is also about recognizing and honoring that when something has great power and potential to touch and nurture and heal, it also has power and potential to wound, to hurt and to harm. Furthermore, experience indicates that any wisdom, growth or healing is often proportionate to the confusion, fear and pain that have preceded it. In the context of Nowhere, this means:

• That each and every person going Nowhere is responsible for being mindful of her/his own power to harm, and for being respectful of other peoples’ openness, sensitivity, and boundaries. It means that in our conversations and interactions with ourselves and each other we should strive to foster communication, trust, honesty, respect, consideration, responsibility, laughter and a sense of humor and of play, love and joy.

• That however much each and every one of us strives for or intends this we will in all likelihood also at some point experience and in some way contribute to misunderstandings or confusion, insecurity, dishonesty, carelessness, cynicism, irresponsibility, tears and a sense of loss, argument, anger and grief.

The Heart of Nowhere beats for creating ritual and ceremonial ways to generate and encourage point A, and to constructively deal with and grow, both as a group and as individuals, from point B. In general we want to encourage and contribute to people feeding the Heart of Nowhere by exploring and realizing the ritual and sacred potential in all practical and artistic projects.

Specifically, for Nowhere 2009 and beyond, we want to honor and celebrate the Heart of Nowhere by creating two communal ceremonies, one at the beginning and one at the end of the festival.

The opening ceremony could be conceived as birthing and naming ceremony – what do you wish for your own heart and for the collective heart in this Nowhere? In what positive ways can you open your heart, mind, soul, eyes, ears…(…legs…J). How could this be communally expressed, affirmed and celebrated at the start of Nowhere? Birthing and naming ceremonies are often about welcoming, good will, hopes, dreams, desires and celebration.

The duration of Nowhere could be conceived of as a life, with all this can contain.

The ending ceremony could be conceived of as a death, a burial/release and re-birth of the heart, in the sense of both participants’ hearts and the collective Heart of Nowhere and its cycle towards next years’ festival. What do individual participants and the community want to let go of or be released from after this “life”, and what do they want to retain and attain in their/our next cycle and journey around the sun? Funerals and re-births are often about closure, catharsis, atonement, forgiveness, letting go, exorcising demons, healing, re-alignment, balance, transformation and once again, celebration.

Or the ceremonial cycle of Nowhere could be something different and much better, if people have brilliant suggestions. We want to create ceremonies that help make the individual and collective Heart(s) of Nowhere strong, brave and joyous. To achieve this, we need the experience, wisdom, creativity, talent and practicality of anyone who is interested in helping to make this happen. Share your experience and imagination. Can you help feed The Heart of Nowhere?