About this item
Highlights
- Over 30 years, San Francisco's underground art scene developed techniques to create magical, impossible, life-changing experiences.
- Author(s): Caveat Magister
- 388 Pages
- Art, Public Art
Description
About the Book
Analyzing the work of Burning Man, the SF Institute of Possibility, the Jejune Institute, and other groups, this book is a how-to manual for designing transformative or "psychomagical" experiences.
Book Synopsis
Over 30 years, San Francisco's underground art scene developed techniques to create magical, impossible, life-changing experiences. Today big corporations are trying to figure out how to spend millions of dollars to do what these artists and anti-artists did using nothing but time, space, and imagination. It was "a movement without a manifesto," with people discovering how it worked through trial and error. Very little was written down - until now. Caveat Magister, widely seen as one of the leading voices of Burning Man's philosophy, has written this book to explain what these experiences were, why they worked, and how you can create your own.
You Will Learn:
- What "psychomagical" experiences are, and why they can have such a powerful transformative effect
- Why rag-tag groups of weirdo artists have been so good at peak experience design, and why wealthy corporations filled with equally talented people have done so poorly
- Where "magical art" connects with the work of Jung and the Humanistic psychologists to support personal development and mental health
- How to create experiences that go beyond design and seem impossible - until you experience them yourself
Review Quotes
PRAISE FOR TURN YOUR LIFE INTO ART:
"If you're looking for more magical, peak experiences in your life, this book is a bible on how to find and create them." -Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart
"Somewhere between the wistful and the liminal, some truly enchanted experiences await you. By absorbing the lessons from San Francisco's potent underground scene, this book will reveal how to summon them for yourself and others. Hallelujah!" - Jennifer Raiser, Author, Burning Man: Art on Fire
"There is a problem with reading about the many magic moments crafted by San Francisco's long line of art pranksters, cacophonists, reality hackers, and high weirdos: if you weren't there, you did miss out. Luckily, Caveat Magister was taking notes and stealing blueprints that he now presents in this thoughtful, inspiring DIY guide. The man behind the curtain, you see, is you and your pals."- Erik Davis, Author, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
"Burning Man's philosopher laureate has unearthed the philosopher's stone of transformative experience. Combining a deep understanding of jackassery and play with a scholar's command of psychological alchemy, Caveat has written the essential grimoire of experience design." - Stuart Mangrum, Director, Burning Man Philosophical Center