Much could be written about Carnival, but I would like to point out the main thing: Carnival is always a direct action that allows us to experiment with reshaping symbolic social orders and taking an instant part in creating another world.
Carnival is art and more than art. Carnival combines all the arts – theater, music, dance, painting, and much more – that which we do not yet know, and that which will show up in an incredible way during your carnival.
Carnival creates a social fabric, binding the players into a single carnivalesque body, destroying the rules of the past world and establishing the rules of the world to come.
This world is not divided by borders and identities. It does not care about race, nationality, age, or class, because in the carnival world, one can put on any mask and always change it.
This is our freedom and concern for ourselves and for others: everyone can and should become whatever he, she, or they might wish.
And we must live in this moment of universal liberation. To live, feel, and remember the experience in order to reproduce it again and again.
Here are the rules of how to join #Carnival4David:
- Take a look at the map and join someone in your area. For example, NYC, London and St. Petersburg have lots of events.
- If nothing is going on in your area (e.g. in Kazakhstan, Iceland, and Taiwan), send us your name. Maybe someone wants to join you?
If you are willing to organize public events (like conferences, theatrical marches, concerts, or simply read David’s texts online), please fill in this form. You can put yourself on the map as an organizer!
Our rules at each Carnival will follow the same principles:
- Everything is free. Everyone is welcome
- The David Graeber Institute and the Museum of Care will try to find ways to maintain a shared Carnival infrastructure to help participants in different countries work together, get to know each other, and make friends
- We remove money from the equation as much as possible
- Everyone seeks their own funds to implement as crazy and large-scale a Carnival as possible
- Everyone remembers that scale is neither a guarantee of success nor a guarantee of sense-making. The young Iranian woman Sevda, who read David’s book in her room in Tehran during #Carnival4David, was a meaningful and important participant.
We plan to share new tools for running Carnivals, especially how to make them universal by connecting one to another in one great, worldwide celebration!
As before, with artist friends and activists, we will make posters and costumes, and we will create theatrical scenarios, magic rituals, and salutary readings.
Come back here and check it out!