Truthfully, and despite any of the confusion (as detailed further down on this page), this event went better than I could have ever hoped. I was SPOOKED about ticket sales ~2 weeks prior to the event, but people really showed up and came thru, absolutely blowing any expectations I had out of the water. I hope this event has you thinking about the hows and the whys of “doing business”, as well as what it means to simply exist in society. I implore you to imagine a better world, and to educate and empower those around you. This event, through the combined efforts of everyone involved, was an attempt at antagonizing the status-quo in an attempt to provoke people at all levels of our industry, scene and community, to really dig deeper and challenge the way people see themselves, as well as each other. If we want any chance at achieving a more equitable world, we desperately need creatives that can imagine alternatives to what we have.

”'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” - Fredric Jameson/Slavoj Žižek, from the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher.

‘TWAS A GREAT SUCCESS

Me n morgan, rizzing & mogging. Photo by Ethan Klement.

Below, I breakdown, in excrutiating detail, the financials of the event using percentages, because afterall we do live in a society, which consists of competitive capitalist markets, businesses, and individuals. Sharing the exact dollar denominations could mean some artists being taken advantage of in the future—their vulnerability & transparency more-or-less being weaponized against them to gain a competitive edge. That’s the only reason the results are listed in %.

I also tell the story of everything that happened with this event, highlight the pros/cons of this approach, and share the lessons learned and conclusions reached at the end.

You will also find resources and information at the bottom of this page for anyone who is curious about learning more about “leftist” theory, history, and tactics, where I provide books, videos, organizations, and people who are worth reading about and studying.

THE RESULTS

Below are the results of the very first anonymous budget allocation vote, as explained here. One criticism of Direct Democracies is that people often don’t have all of the available information or expertise for voting to even make sense. A solution to this is something called ‘Informed Consent’—basically providing individuals with as much information as possible about what they are voting on so that they can make informed decisions, empowering them with knowledge. To mitigate the fact that some artists on the lineup did not have as much experience with the ins-and-outs of the industry (like what is typical for an artist at a certain “level” to get paid), we had encouraged/recommended (not forced) everyone to voluntarily submit what type of pay would be typical, either for them specifically (if they felt comfortable sharing what they themselves typically get paid), or for “artists at their level” (for those that wanted to help give perspective to those of us with less experience, without outright saying what their typical fee actually is). Below is the result of our first vote.

THE AMENDMENT

Next, because some of those involved (particularily the Photographer) ended up being way under valued when compared to what was typical for himself, I made the executive decision (AUTHORITARIAN!!!1!!1) to amend the results, mostly just taking some of my pay and putting it towards Ethan (Photog). Despite each of us sharing with each other how much $$$ would be typical for each of us individually (prior to the initial vote), Ethan still ended up in a less than ideal position, and he made a great point that he could’ve easily made way more money by charging each artist for photography individually.

We encouraged everyone to consider not only the “pull” that say, an artist would have, when determining the “value” of our peers for this event, but also the amount of labor they are providing leading up to the show, intellectual or otherwise, as well as labor provided during the show. For example, there were only 2 VJs, which meant that each one would be working half of the night, ~2.5-3 hrs each. Another example, the photographer Ethan, was the only photographer for the night, which meant he would essentially be working from 8:15pm - 1:15am (+ he edited all the photos after the fact and sent each artist their photos, which also takes a fair more bit of time and effort). Everyone was encouraged to consider as many factors as possible when it came to the labor of their peers & friends when determining their value. Despite this, Ethan’s payout results that everyone had voted on ended up being less than what he and I were comfortable with. I want homie to feel as appreciated, valued, and taken care of as myself and the next person, so I was more than happy to take a sliver of my pie and send it his way. He deserves to have his labor valued as much as anyone else.

This was a learning experience for everyone involved, myself included. We don’t often consider the value of Vjs or Photographers as being as high or as important as DJs, which I think is a load of malarkey. Both VJs and Photographers play critical roles in making events memorable, and helping sell tickets for future events with the fruits of their respective labor, which helps sustain this industry for all of us and further makes these events possible. It was a valuable opportunity for people like me to check myself when “valuing” myself against my friends & peers. I could have just as easily taken the results from the first vote, and said “Well, the people have spoken! Guess I’m just getting paid more, sorry guys! This is a democracy afterall!” But at the end of the day, I knew this was ultimately “my” brain child, and the whole point was not only to lead by example, and demonstrate that there are alternative ways of doing things—but to also treat my peers, friends & comrades with the same level of dignity, respect and appreciation I would expect for myself, or anyone else. At any point thru out this, I had the power to make executive (* cough * authoritarian) decisions, so amending the results to make things a little bit more just/fair/equitable seemed like the right thing to do.

(Results below)

LIFE HAPPENS

Days before the event, Johann (Omnist) called me to let me know he wouldn’t be able to make the show, as his father is sick, and he needed to be with him. I supported this fully, and would want nothing else than for my friend to be with his loved ones during times of sickness. We all gave Johann our full support in this department. Below are the updated results with his absence.

THE CONFUSION

Around a month or so before the show was announced, my #1 priority was to determine what our total working budget was, since that’s what we would be voting on. There were misunderstandings on my part as to what our total guaranteed budget actually was. This fundamentally had nothing to do with the democratic aspects of this event, and was entirely the result of a miscommunication between me/Cervantes/my agent. A couple weeks before the show, Cervantes had reached out to me about ticket sales being low, expressing some concern over our production costs with where ticket sales were currently at. I was taken aback by this, since I did not even realize we had the potential to possibly lose money, and I was terrified I had made a critical mistake that would potentially cost me thousands of dollars, and leave some of the artists not being paid out in a timely manner as I would have had to work out payment plans with people to do right by the numbers we went over and that I promised.

Picture of the flyer done by the absolutely cracked @Nox.lumina (IG), with screen printing done by @Inkpusherstudios (IG).

Those that turned up, really turned up. It makes me wonder how often shows actually do “well”, and whether it’s really a matter of just making it seem as though an event did really well. If it weren’t for the transparency of this post, and all that you reading this had to go off of was all of the post-show-photos/videos/pictures, I’d bet my left nut the vast majority of you would assume it was a sellout, or close to a sellout. The venue felt reasonably full, but not suffocating. It certainly “felt” like a great success, but hey, people are buying tickets later and later, often not purchasing them ‘til day-of-show, inflation is rising, and people have less and less expendable income. Not to blame the economy for people not turning up to a Keota headline (lol)—Obvi there’s the factor of how much “pull” I have + the rest of the other artists + VJs on the lineup. Skream was also headlining the blackbox that same night, and the Rendezvous @ Suwannee in Florida was also happening the week following this event, which obviously has a significant overlap in fanbase/demographics, so I know a lot of people quite literally couldn’t afford to make it out given their plans for the following week.

There’s also the very high chance that some number of people were simply spooked by the ideological nature of the flyer, which IMO is good anyway. It weeds out the goobers and Elon Musk fans. I’d rather have quality control on my dance floor. Casting the widest net possible is a great way to have 0 sense of community.

Could’ve fooled me that this show wasn’t sold out lol. Photo by Ethan Klement

Thankfully, by the good graces of both Evan and Greg of Cervantes’ Staff, they assured me I had nothing to worry about, and that everyone would be paid what we had initially went over. The long in short of it, months before announced, when going over the budget, I had crunched the numbers, taking the total production costs and dividing them by the average cost of the tickets. The number I had ended up with was ~150 for us to not “be in the red”. As it turned out, and only having discovered this weeks prior to the show (a few months after we had the initial conversations around budget information in the first place), that number was closer to 900-1000. Obviously this was an insane miscalculation and misunderstanding lol, but ultimately it happened because we misunderstood each other. With ticket sales sitting at about 180 only 2 weeks out from the event, I was shaking in my boots. Evan predicted 700 tickets being sold. We only ended up doing about 450 tickets sold, with 120 guest lists on top of that (holy heck—I only had about 15 myself, the rest of the lineup having about 20—the rest was Cervantes givin’ em out) for a total of about 570 people. Wild cause I’m apparently terrible at eyeing the size of a crowd apparently, my guess would’ve been that it was near to selling out based on the energy of the crowd and everyone attending.

Morgan and 2 cute lil piggies, Liz & Mercedes. Photo by Ethan Klement

Both Evan and Greg were my knights in shining armor here (Keisha as well), with everyone seemingly taking some level of what I saw as shared responsibility for the confusion/misunderstanding/miscommunication that I was otherwise ready to take full responsibility for. I had tried to be clear on this months prior, asking in as many ways as I knew how, but alas, the miscommunication still happened. But both Evan and Greg believed in what we were trying to do, and through their combined efforts, understanding and support, not only was everyone able to get paid exactly what was promised, but I got paid based on the numbers from the vote as well (I was fully prepared to either make 0 money on this event, or to lose money, so this was of course excellent news). I have endless respect for Evan, Greg, and Cervantes for this, and will never forget it.

CONCLUSIONS

We are all unique, and have different needs and abilities that should be accounted for and considered before working together towards anything. None of this would be possible as it happened without the shared, combined efforts of everyone involved. I’m beyond grateful to have friends, peers, loved ones, and comrades as supportive and open minded as they are. I owe all of my success to the community that helps prop me up. As I climb the ladder, I will continue to do everything i can to pass it down to the next person, so that I can make things easier for those that come after me.

Left to right: homies Josh & Alex, + me. Photo by Ethan Klement

Having a successful democracy is certainly not an easy feat, especially when compared to the typical Authoritarian way of “you do this, you get that. you don’t do this, you don’t get that.” I think it could be argued that, in the short term, Authoritarianism is “easier”. And side note, Authoritarianism isn’t always bad—there are of course instances where you have a benevolent leader or king, but at its core, whether Authoritarianism is “good” or “bad” is largely based on the luck of the draw (which leader we end up with). It doesn’t have built in, horizontal structures in place to consider the unique needs and abilities of individuals participating in it. Authoritarianism can have its place, but I believe the future is and must be democratic.

‘To each according to their need, from each according to their ability’
- Karl Marx

(I speak only for myself by recommending the material below. I do not speak for Cervantes, or their staff, or anyone involved with this event. There’s also plenty I may or may not disagree with in some of the below material—I do not necessarily condone each and every opinion stated by any of the people whose resources/materials/books/youtube channels/organizations I am providing. Use your own gut, reason and moral compass to determine what you believe is right. Also shoutout Jack Ternion + Matt DMVU for the book recommendations!)

RESOURCES/INFORMATION

BOOKS I AM READING/HAVE READ/WANT TO READ/OWN:

YouTube/Twitch Channels:

ORGANIZATIONS/COMMUNITIES:

From your favorite/least favorite ideologue and producer, with love,

THANK YOU

- Keota