Presentation: Radical Faeries

Raven’s Head Communications Presents
The Fairies Gather
Photo copyright 1980 Rita Rose
Calligraphy WM Stewart
An oral history of
The spiritual gathering for Radical Fairies
Colorado, August 11-15, 1980

the Tropical Paradise Gathering:

The Radical fairies are a loosely organized group of gay men, who seek to explore what it means to be and its spiritual components. In accomplishing this, they attend gatherings and go to retreats at sanctuaries. At these places, they experiment with a variety of activities to better understand their qualities as gay men and to examine what is suppressed by living in a largely heterosexual world. This is both in terms of everyday life and of philosophical discussion.

Breitenbrush:

“Through ritual, workshops, socializing, heart circles, hugs, soaking, hiking, performance, sex, song, and solitude, Radical Faeries seek the beauty and passion within each of us, reflect those gifts to each other, and challenge ourselves to share them with the world around us. We go inside to come outside.”

Tropical Paradise Gathering:

“Trips to nearby islands for snorkeling and swimming, Meditation, Exercise, Hiking, Rituals, Workshops , Community Building, Kick Boxing Lessons, Making Music, Drumming, Massage, Talent Show, Fashion Show, Manly Activities, Swimming, Boating, Reading, Poetry, Puppy Piles, Napping, Art Projects and Yoga”

This group consistently performs a heart circle at its gatherings. This is a discussion where the men discuss experiences and opinions and attempt to develop emotional connections between one another as homosexuals. In addition to exploration, this group is oriented towards establishing what is precluded by contemporary social structures, primarily the social and emotional links that are lost between homosexual men.

The group is closely connected to paganism, and frequently meets to celebrate on major holidays. A reconnection with nature and others is a central part of their aims. A major part of radical fairy philosophy is the concept of coming together and briefly forming a community of freely homosexual men. The group explores the spiritual elements of being homosexual, and their festivities are geared towards this inner energy. Many of their collective activities are closely related to their pagan influences; however, these ceremonies are freely adapted regardless of the gender of the participants, thus allowing traditional gender boundaries to be crossed and mixed even in the context of paganism.

Wolf Creek Sanctuary:

“Through our gatherings, circles and in the community at the Sanctuary, we develop and foster our shared ideals having to do with faggot-oriented spirituality, community and collectivity, living in harmony with the Beings around us, and subject-subject consciousness.”

The Radical Fairies have considerable output, including art, collective activities, journal authorship, and the production of philosophy. They contribute to a number of other organizations, including gay wisdom and white crane. They also found sanctuaries for the year-long exploration of what it means to be homosexual, these often host retreats and workshops.

Breitenbrush Sanctuary:

“Breitenbush Hot Springs is located in the Cascade Mountains at the base of Pahtu (Mount Jefferson) near Detroit, approximately 60 miles east of Salem, Oregon. For thousands of years, the land has been a place for healing. On the property are a rustic wooden lodge, rock-lined meadow pools, spiral temperature soaking tubs, a quiet Sanctuary, workshop spaces, a greenhouse, a mineral spring sauna, geothermally heated cabins, labyrinth, and a resident community of workers who’ve welcomed Radical Faeries at least once every year since 1982.”

http://www.radfae.org/breitenbush/

http://www.nomenus.org/aboutrf.html

http://www.asianfaeries.com/

PRESENTATION: Zippies (group of less-limited choice)

An ironic twist to this one, indeed.

Zippies, a group stemming, at least etymologically, but certainly having other “roots” from Yippies, were first brought into mainstream view in 1994 in Wired article about them: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/zippies.html

Like the yippies, the zippies had their hand in politics, working to end the Vietnam War, but their bent is decidedly more technical — a cyborg hippie if you must. An emphasis on happiness and zen with an embrace of free food, culture, books and software may all have lead to a “pirating” of the term by Thomas L. Friedman who later used it to essentially evoke the image of a horde of Indian youths flocking to urban areas seeking to gather up outsourced jobs — a mass of humanity welcoming globalization, as Friedman implies: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02EEDE1F3DF931A15751C0A9629C8B63

PRESENTATION: Yippies (group of limited choice)

See Violeta below, plus:

Where were they then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y0fw2KiaBw

Where are they now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1FSvUBO4eI

What can we say about the “change in form” of protests and activisms?

Radical Goups: Yippie (group of choice)

“The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a highly theatrical and anti-authoritarian political party established in the United States in 1967. An offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s, the Yippies presented a more radically youth-oriented and countercultural alternative to those movements. They employed theatrical gestures — such as advancing a pig (“Pigasus the Immortal”) as a candidate for President in 1968 — to mock the social status quo.They have been described as a highly theatrical youth movement of “symbolic politics.”

Yippie Flag: was frequently seen at anti-war demonstrations.

The term Yippie was thought up by one of the fouders Paul Krassner : “We needed a name to signify the radicalization of hippies, and I came up with Yippie as a label for a phenomenon that already existed”

The Yippie “New Nation” concept called for the creation of alternative, counterculture institutions (food co-ops, underground newspapers, free clinics, etc.). Yippies believed these cooperative institutions and a radicalized hippie culture would spread until they supplanted the existing system.

Bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yippie

http://media.npr.org/politics/politicaljunkie/2005/sep/pig140.jpg

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5472/us7dyipcw8.gif

Radical Groups: Black Panthers

UN Ceeling

A $23 million ceiling painting featuring hundreds of dangling icicle was unveiled Tuesday at the United Nations. Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barcelo used more than 100 tons of paint with pigments from all over the world.