“THE DEED creates the doer almost as an afterthought.”

I’ve been pondering this Nietzsche quote the last few days, as the clock ticked over to the year of the Apocalypse. It makes me think of how I will choose to represent the year of 2011, crystalized from thousands of photos, millions of moments, and in fact, what is time when you have a growing archive of everything you’ve ever done?

On the eve of the age, it’s fitting that Facebook just released their Timeline feature – essentially allowing access to a memory once reserved for omniscient beings alone. My past years are now only a click away (2008, 2009, 2010) and now 2011.

January – Sean and I had our first major screening of the One Week Job film, to a sold out crowd. I remember saying to Sean, with nerves slightly buzzed: “You know… it’s always easier not to do things.”

February – Before getting to the cross-country One Week Job Canadian tour, I wanted to include a picture of my dog Tobi.

And now back to the tour. The funniest part about the journey was how little prepared we were for the Canadian winter. Having grown up in Vancouver, where the temperature rarely goes below zero, it was almost bizarre to have to plug your car in to keep it warm during the night. And to have more than fingerless gloves.

In late Feb, I flew to Washington, DC, (my first time), and am not embarrassed to say I felt a tinge of romantic nationalism for the ideals embodied in the Lincoln Memorial and the various other monuments.

I was actually there to shoot insightful interviews with the staff of National Geographic Traveler.

March – Breaking Free, a web-series about expats living abroad, was picked up and I hit the road with a motley crew to film in Central America.

In Nicaragua, I experienced my first “gallop on a beach,” which I might add, is extremely enjoyable. I ended up writing one of my favourite essays “Travel and the Art of Flow.”

April – Upon returning from the beach, I assisted the Vancouver crew for Playatime, part of the regional art projects to appear at Burning Man that year. My help came in the form of a video, which helped them raise funds through Kickstarter.

A few weeks later, I left for Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Shanghai, as the final leg of the Breaking Free shoot.

May – The eventual teaser turned out pretty sexy (thanks to the crew at The Werehaus).

June – I joined a solidarity fast for the two remaining hikers that were detained in Iran. I’m happy to report that they were eventually released in late Sept, proving that good things to actually happen.

Unfortunately, late June saw a repeat of the 94 Canuck riots, this time amped up on social media and hollow consumerism. I commented on the scene with Empty’s Theme Park: Reflections on the Vancouver Riot.

July – I shared the joyous wedding of my friends Robin & Ana, who are more than a little gonzo for each other.

August – Sean turned 30. So we decided to party like it was 1981.

September – Back to the playa of Burning Man, my third year and most transformative (if that’s even possible). I believe I found a costume for my alter-ego: Vision Weaver:

As well, as a gift back to the Burner community for the mind-blowing, heart-exploding Temple of Transition, I crafted a video love letter.

Sept 15 also marked the eruption of the Occupy Movement…but more on that later.

October – Karen and I headed underground for Notes from a Modern Cave Man, on Vancouver Island.

Upon our return, a fortuitous opportunity arose to film Robert Redford for the New York Times.

In late October, after having read ‘Sacred Economics’ by Charles Eisenstein, I decided to fly out to New England to stay with him for a week. The plan was to shoot a short film to share his crucial ideas at this critical juncture of humanity’s evolution. The result was “The Revolution Is Love” – currently seen by almost 200K people.

November – Let’s say… I became Occupied. I continued filming the movement here in Vancouver, sharing various perspectives via short films (as part of the upcoming Occupy Love).

And I wrote my manifesto: If We Get Occupy Right, We Get Everything Right.

December – While the physical Occupy Vancouver camp had been disbanded, the movement continues to evolve and grow behind the scenes.

As the year closes behind me, and the new, auspicious 2012 begins to unfold, I now ponder what it means to “occupy.” I believe it’s about reclaiming our presence once again. Reclaiming our lives. Reclaiming this moment.

If the deed creates the doer, than the r(e)volution will be the afterthought.

When we begin to live another world, today, we will soon discover that new world reflected all around us. As more and more of us choose an uncompromising life, a life that is truly lived, a life beyond sleep walking, avoidance or the numbing anaesthesia of fear, the more attainable that world is for everyone else. ~ Velcrow Ripper

Just released a new video update I shot back in February this year, with director Velcrow Ripper on his new film Evolve Love. (I’m Associate Producer). Damien Bouchard did a nice job editing the piece.

I shot the dance video below with the nifty GoPro camera, which is actually meant for extreme sports. But it works just fine for sunset boat parties.

Full Transcript & Slides:

Hello and thanks for coming. Tonight, I want to talk to you about a massive shift that is currently happening to the way art is created. This includes music, photography, literature, and for myself, film. This shift is called crowd funding and it has evolved from a variety of factors that I will outline tonight.

But first, I would like to share with you a story about Sean Aiken. In 2007, Sean graduated from college and realized he had no idea what to do with his life. So… he decided to find his passion.

He launched The One-Week Job Project he would work any job, anywhere in North America. After one week he’d move on. If that sounds impossible…well…he actually did it.

Sean successfully worked 52 jobs over the course of the year. Everything from a Florist, a Bungee Jumping Instructor, a cowboy, a Fashion Buyer, and more. I joined Sean halfway through his journey and began filming the project.

Now, I don’t have time to share the entire journey tonight – suffice to say were able to complete the project, and we did it with spending very little money.

Turns out, complete strangers would offer us rides in their car, employers would let us sleep in their homes, even feed us. It was incredible. We were tapping into what I call latent wealth.

Latent wealth is that little bit of riches that each of us has to offer. On our own, it may not look like much. But if everyone offers something, suddenly great things are able to happen… like allowing a guy to work 52 jobs in 52 weeks.

After the project was complete, we decided to make a documentary. I was just a hobby filmmaker at the time, and it would have been very difficult for me to get funding from traditional channels like broadcasters, or government grants. And even if I was an experienced filmmaker, it still would have been difficult. That’s because massive changes are currently going on in the creative industry.

Credit: Stuck in Customs

I’ll quickly explain how the media landscape is structured. A few large corporations control the vast majority of what type of media is created. Companies like FOX, NBC, Disney, and more that decide what films should be popular, what music we should hear, and what stories should be told. Here in Canada we have big companies like Bell Media, Rogers and Shaw.

The gatekeepers sit at the top of these companies, deciding where to invest their money. Artistic creators like musicians and filmmakers basically rely on these big companies to finance their projects – which often means giving up control. Then, after the film or album is complete, it is sold to the masses. This model that worked for 75 or so years. But this model is now changing.

Perhaps you’ve heard the internet is responsible for what they call illegal downloading.This has cut into the profits of these big corporations. First the music industry, then the film industry, and more recently the book industry are caught in a download spiral. As the cost of sharing something is essentially free, it’s difficult to make strangers pay for it.

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Yet at its core, the internet is a way of fostering communication. That’s particularly true with tools like Facebook and Twitter. There’s a reason they call it social networking. That’s because you’re able to create relationships with people you may have never met, or will never meet. Yet with the new connection, it’s now possible for them to help you out.

This is Steven Harper. No, I do not have Steven Harper as my Facebook friend. You may remember the Harper government brought in massive arts cuts, while broadcasters are increasingly not buying docs, and theaters are only interesting in showing films that rhyme with Mirates of the Paribbean. So to finance the One Week Job film, we decided to use the emerging phenomenon known as crowd funding.

Here’s how it works: you create a project on a crowd funding like Kickstarter.com. This site was launched 2 years ago built on the idea that if everyone chipped in a bit, you would have enough to actually create something. While this sounds like simply 田ollecting donations the internet has amplified this model exponentially.

So I went ahead and created our crowd-funding campaign, and spread the word out to our family, friends, and anyone else that was a fan of the One Week Job project. From 2 separate campaigns, we raised over $6000 dollars, which was certainly not enough to complete an entire documentary, but it allowed us to further the project, until eventually, we completed it.

The film is now available off our website, and it actually aired on CBC this past January. Sean and I have also completed a huge spring tour across Canada, speaking at colleges and universities, sharing his story and the lessons learned along the way. We were able to visit over 42 campuses. So all in all, a huge success.

After One Week Job, I joined another director for his new film. The director, Velcrow Ripper, is well known in the Canadian scene for his award winning films like Scared Sacred about visiting the ground zeros of the world, and Fierce Light, when spirit meets action. The third film in his trilogy, currently in production, is called Evolve Love asking “how can the climate crisis become a great love story?”

Here’s a filmmaker that has numerous award winning films under his belt, yet he so far has been unable to get traditional funding. Instead decided to try a Kickstarter campaign. Our goal was to raise $25K, enough money to film at the Cancun Climate summit last November, and further shoots around the world. We gave ourselves only 3 weeks. With Kickstarter, you need to raise the full amount of money, or you get nothing. This prevents projects from going forward that don’t have enough money to actually complete.

After a huge social media push to our families, friends, and fans – we actually made more than the entire amount $27K – which makes it the most successful Canadian crowd-funding campaign ever. It was an amazing 3 weeks that really showed us that people want to have this film in the world. Which brings me back to the model I showed you before the hierarchical model of the traditional media system.

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Crowd-funding is one example of a new horizontal co-creative model that allows an artist to connect directly with their audience. Whereas before you would pay for a product after it is produced, now by investing early, you can actually participate in its creation. The people decide what projects they want to see funded, not large corporations.

To give you further examples of successful projects… Carbon City is a new book that aims to show what a carbon neutral city actually looks like. La Source is a film about a Haitian who lives in the US, who goes back to his village build a secure water system. And third, Disaspora is an open-source alternative to Facebook. That project raised over $200K.

All in all, in just two years, here’s the stats for Kickstarter. Over 20K projects have been proposed, and 43% funded. That is huge. They have had over 53 million pledged, from a total number of 591K project funders.

Consider: this model is still in its infancy. When it becomes the norm for fans to invest before a creative project is started, I think these numbers will rise exponentially.

Credit: Austin Leon

In closing, I believe it’s important to understand that this transformation is just one piece of a much larger shift toward sharing our latent wealth. Crowd-funding is one way power and economics are shifting because of youth and technology.

But there’s many other examples: such as sharing our knowledge, sharing our backyard gardens, sharing rides, and sharing our homes.

As the poet Drew Dellinger says, “the future belongs to the most compelling story.” So I thank you for listening to mine.

During the fast, I was finally able to write a poem that had been rattling around my head for at least a year. (The sketch is a mask that is hanging on the wall of the room).

To read the poem, you start at the left side of the lips, and continue in a circular pattern, wrapping around the head.

So without further ado:

January – I don’t actually remember much of what happened. I barely have any photos either, except for the One Week Job promo shoot we did with Nordica Photography.

In a twist of post-modern-ism-ism, I reverse recorded them as they photographed us.

February – Sean, Danna, Karen and I attended our first ever circus school. I had a bit of a hard time with the silks, but you can see Karen quickly adapted. (View Flicker set)

February was also the massive gong-show known as the Olympics. I was fairly conflicted on the event. The price tag alone was staggering, and the true benefit to the city questionable. (View Flicker set)

It wasn’t until the gold medal hockey game between Canada and the US, (which was also my 29th birthday) when the tension gave away to excitement and global high-fives. (View Flicker set)

Sean and I also managed a quick work jaunt down to San Francisco, and John Muir park just outside the city. (View Flicker set)

March – Pretty quiet month, though Karen and I did manage to attend the season opening weekend for the Salt Spring Yoga Center.

April – What do you do when it’s one of your best friend’s stag parties? You dress him in a Nacho Libre costume and take him to Tofino.

April was also the month I was introduced to the work of Charles Eisenstein, at a moment when I began questioning the credibility of the mainstream “green” movement.

May – The official release of the One Week Job book and film was a family and friends affair, in our hometown of Port Moody.

After the screening, I felt compelled to share a few words on what the film meant to me:

Later in the month I was privileged to attend Media That Matters, a yearly gathering of creative media makers who want to change the world for the better.

Photo: Tav Rayne

Finally, the month ended with a trip down to Mexico for Ben’s wedding. (View Flickr set)

While the event was a memorable experience with friends and family, I couldn’t help but sink into a bit of a depression while reading Eisenstein’s ‘The Ascent of Humanity.’ The emotion culminated in A Lament for Childhood. As I look back, I realize how important this was for my ability to look into society’s shadow (and my own) and still push forward.

June – Another wedding, another Latin American country. I spent the first week before the wedding traveling Cuba alone. (View Flickr set)

Almost immediately after the wedding, I set out for two weeks in Costa Rica and Panama, directing a pilot for the web series “Breaking Free” following American expats living abroad. Robin (left) and myself took freedom to new levels.

July – For my wife’s 33 birthday, I took her to the Pan Pacific in downtown Vancouver. It was a night of luxury, wine, and sunsets at English Bay. My follow up post on the Pan’s blog 6 Ways To Be a Tourist (Even If You’re A Vancouver Local)

August – One Week Job Program participant Amanda Lowe arrived in Vancouver and helped put together a “pop-up” event on One Week Job.

Also, after a few months of Skype tag, I came onboard with filmmaker Velcrow Ripper, helping out on his new film “Evolve Love: Love In A Time of Climate Crisis”.

Our first field shoot was the tar sands in Alberta. We followed an indigenous peace walk around the refineries. (View Flickr set). The sheer scope of the project, and the environmental destruction was staggering.

In late August, prior to Burning Man, I stayed at a friend’s cabin in Echo Lake, (near Lake Tahoe). Christine (former editor of Brave New Traveler) is captured here on our hike into the stunning Desolation Sound.

Sept – Next stop, Burning Man, the 50,000+ art and community festival in the desert of Nevada. (View Flickr set) I attempted to distill my second visit with Burning Man: The Prophecy of Shambhala.

In late Sept, One Week Job had its first festival premiere at HatchFest in Bozeman, Montana. (View Flickr set)

October – After a relatively quiet month, I ended with the raucous Work Less Party Party for Halloween. You can see my costume choice was … “enlightened.”

November – As part of an experiment I’d wanted to try for a while, my wife and I decided to decline booze for 30 days, calling it “No Booze November.” We also kicked off a month long yoga intensive studying the yoga sutras of Patañjali with Clara Roberts.

Late month, Sean and I took a detour down to LA for some One Week Job meetings, where we also met up with red paperclip trader Kyle MacDonald. We shot some great footage for a new pilot based on Kyle’s project “Who Are These Guys?“

Lastly, we shot another pilot for the series “Wingmen” with Devon and Jordan. Their company Social Fluency teaches “the art of attraction.”

December – I flew back to Mexico to cover the Climate Summit (COP16) for Velcrow’s film Evolve Love. My beat was “La Via Campesina” – the peasant’s camp, who marched to show their support for food sovereignty and real solutions to climate change. (View Flickr set)

350.org staged a climate action during the conference, holding a mock press conference while the waves continue to rise. I shot and editing this quick piece that afternoon:

Finally, the holidays. Another year, another cute photo of our dog Tobi.

Looking forward now to 2011…

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Well, my wife and I are 12 days into our experiment, (abstaining from alcohol for the entire month of November), and I think it’s just enough time to offer some first observations.

In the interest of brevity, and because these aren’t fully formed theories (yet), I’ll offer them as list:

1. After some initial raised eyebrows and declarations of “you’re crazy!” our friends have been supportive. Though that hasn’t stopped some of them from expressing loudly just how delicious their beer tastes.
2. Attending a party where you’re sober is a challenge. Everyone else gets louder and you just get tired. In fact, a whole evening seems like eternity. I never realized (with booze) how much time you spend at social events just…standing around talking.
3. At the same time, I find you can concentrate more on the person you’re speaking with. Conversations are more efficient, and involve less drunken rambling (which is favourable or not, depending on your opinion).
4. I have not craved booze unless around others who are drinking (no surprise). What I did find surprising was the feeling came from “wanting to fit in” rather than my tastebuds or the anticipated alcohol. When tipsy, it’s easier to get along with others under the same effects.
5. When they know you’re not drinking, your host may get more creative! One night, a friend sourced 5 different types of root beer specifically for me to taste test. Whatta gal!
6. It is AMAZING getting up in the morning (on the weekends) with no lingering dehydration or headache. Instead… you just feel good.

That’s all I have so far… later this month I fly to Los Angeles, a city not known for its sobriety. We’ll see if I can stay the course.

I envy people who drink— at least they know what to blame everything on. ~ Oscar Levant

A few months ago, I woke up one morning (not hungover) with the realization: I can’t remember the last time I went more than 30 days without having a drink.

I am far from a binge drinker, but I suppose you could say I drink a little…often. I tend to have a glass of wine or two during the week, with an occasional pint at the pub for a social evening. Then on the weekends, both nights are generally accompanied with a few beers, or the occasional gin and tonic.

Nothing that leaves a mark the morning after. Unless, it’s a birthday party, or an engagement, or a Burning Man Decompression, or… you get the idea. My wife is in a similar mode…though with less beer and more wine.

So we decided to pick a month and go booze free. Why? I’m actually curious what would happen. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something. Will I feel more mentally clear? Physically healthier? Or will I just be more boring at parties?

Only time will tell.

For those out there who are already non-drinkers, feel free to roll your eyes. But to others who have habitually participated in this social norm, it can be countering significant inertia to say ‘no thanks.’

So 30 days it is. There’s no prize at the end of the tunnel. No high-five from the divine. Hopefully just the satisfaction of exercising the ability to “unlearn” if only temporarily.

I’ll check in through the process and let you know what I discover.

Soberly yours,
- Ian

I’ve had tremendous respect for him and his work ever since watching his first film Scared Sacred (2004), about visiting the “ground zeroes” of the world.

He followed up with Fierce Light (2009), a film about what happens when “spirit meets action.”

It wasn’t until earlier this year when I heard of his new film Evolve Love, and discovered Velcrow was starting development. I also realized both earlier films were part of a trilogy, documenting what he believes is the global evolution of consciousness.

The third film will ask: how can the climate crisis be seen as the greatest love story of all time?

You know… the usual.

I felt compelled to offer my services. After none too few emails, we finally connected and I came on board. I’ll be leading a restructuring and design of the Evolve Love website, as well as joining Velcrow in the field when needed.

In fact, last weekend, I accompanied him to shoot a First Nations healing walk near Fort McMurray, Alberta in the tar sands. (Check out the full photo set)

You can’t tell from the photo, but I lost a bit of my breakfast after shooting tar sands aerials in the plane.

With the impending release of the One Week Job book and doc, we felt it necessary to get professional photos done for journalists and bloggers to write about our story. (The previous photos are almost 2 years out of date now).

In a mind-bending bit of post-modern filmmaking, I shot the photographers as they shot us:

Also, the past week I inadvertently managed to appear in a variety of other news stories: from my Survivor mention in TV Week, to my thoughts on high-tech stress in The Province.

And finally, myself (or more accurately, my beard) were featured in a hilarious post for SoSauce ‘Adventures of Bearded Travelers.”