Cacophony Society
"You may already be a member."
Summary
Founded the Shanghai chapter (Emperor's Tongue) in 2018 and the Christchurch chapter (Daily Daikon, 2020; Horse's Mouth, 2025) a few years later. Three to four events per month for several years across both chapters. Roughly a hundred-plus events total across formats ranging from urban exploration through theatrical productions, lectures, workshops, and underground gatherings.
The Pacific Cacophony Archive at cacaw.info↗ is the newsletter and event archive that documents the chapters. Sister chapter in Haikou (Proctor's Birds of a Feather) also lives in the archive.
Why it matters
The original San Francisco Cacophony Society. The one Burning Man came out of. Was a model for self-organized cultural production at scale, built on a single principle (organize, then disappear) that traveled well. Translating that model across cultures was the experiment: what survives, what doesn't, what new forms emerge when the format meets a different city. The two chapters are the operating record of that experiment.
What was noteworthy
A hundred-plus events at small budgets across formats teaches you the production discipline that everything else in the cultural-production thread relies on. HYDRA only ships because the small Cacophony events shipped first. Whale Whale Whale only works because the production muscle was already there.
Outlinks
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