Us
Alma is a new project, based in Los Angeles, led by Travis Lea and Eva Vega. Alma is the evolution of an enterprise these two started in September 2000, called BURN Productions.
The inspiration came shortly after returning to Buenos Aires from Burning Man. The massive arts festival and experiment in community seemed to set its participants free from the confines of daily life, and encourage radical self expression and self reliance.
This temporary city in the Black Rock desert of Nevada provided the ingredients for a truly new concept of community, allowing all its participants to rewrite the rules themselves. But it would always suffer one drawback: it only lasts a week out of the year.
With the founding of BURN, the aim was to bring the wonderful and inspirational experiences in community out of the desert and to the rest of the world, as often as possible.
A true community is a place where you can live, work, subsist and socialize in a sustainable way with your neighbors. Of course, it will take some time to make the transition to full time communities more like the one we create in the Black Rock desert, but we can take some initial steps in that direction. Slowly we can change the world, one marginal, progressive community at a time!
Travis and Eva were already professional party organizers and DJs living in Argentina when then founded BURN.
Naturally, they chose to continue work in that arena as they developed a creative, participatory, Burning Man spirit.
Our aim is to organize dance parties with a new aesthetic and more creative, participatory model. That includes embracing the principle that everyone is part of the show, and no one should be a mere spectator; people at our events are asked to wear costumes and make up and do spontaneous performance.
We give gifts to party goers, setting a precedent for giving without receiving: the gift economy. It means we leave no trace, in respect for our natural environment. It means we go over the top in decorations, installations and we rock the house!
Through our work organizing events as BURN, we feel we are members of a community of people which is more real than any other community we’ve ever been a part of, and we want more of it! We also want to give people who have never felt that, or been to a major participatory, artistic event, the chance to have a taste of something different, more ambitious and inclusive.
We want to help create the kind of environment where we are free to be ourselves and embrace each other with renewed humanity. Dance and festivities is a great way to start. BURN’s founders and supporters have discovered that through dance, we can unite with others, and share in a near ritualistic experience of celebration and renewal.
In its first year, BURN organized a dozen events in Buenos Aires, mostly outdoor, Sunday daytime dance parties. In 2001,Travis and Eva moved to Mexico City where they collaborated with many talented artists, DJs and producers, local, indigenous and international.
BURN organized another 15 events both indoor in nightclubs and spaces, and outdoor parties in spectacular locations in the Mexican countryside. There, BURN added a community service element, and raised funds for major Mexican environmental and human rights organizations, as well as the Otomí people.
That element continues today, as Alma looks to supporting the fight against homelessness and poverty in the US and abroad.
In mid 2003, Travis and Eva moved to Los Angeles, to discover a new city ripe with opportunity for creative party events, and to be closer to their desert community Diaspora.
With new plans and new alliances, Project Alma was born in early 2004. We seek to create a new model for parties, embracing this new conscious electronic community with themed artistic events in California and beyond.
