Recompression 2009

Friday April 3th to Sunday April 5th

Camp Elphinstone - Sunshine Coast, BC

Recompression is an annual gathering hosted by the Greater Vancouver Interactive Arts Society (GVIAS). We create a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) that we, as participants, share responsibility for building. Our community experience features a Burn celebration, music, art, performance, workshops, theme camps, fire-spinning, ritual, gift-giving, experiential communication and friendship. We celebrate Recompression in an oceanside rain forest setting on British Columbia's beautiful Sunshine Coast. We are an active, friendly and diverse community, and we've always warmly welcomed other like-minded folk from around the world. Include yourself, include others!

Where is it? How d'ya get there?

Camp Elphinstone is surrounded by natural rain forest, quiet creeks and rocky ocean shoreline. It is just outside Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast, very close to the Langdale ferry terminal, less than an hour away from Vancouver via Horseshoe Bay. Elphinstone is a kids camp for Burners! What you are getting is a weekend away in a beautiful and magical coastal rain forest setting, three meals a day, diverse facilities, electricity, running water, an awesome fire pit, and many more surprises! Your survival basics are taken care of so you may participate to your fullest - however the ethos of leave no trace, and full responsibility for your actions are expected.

As a group we follow the 10 principles.

10 Principles

Radical Inclusion

We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting

The event is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification

In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance

The event encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

Radical Self-expression

Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort

Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility

We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace

Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation

Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy

Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.