Burning Man Phenomena Past and Present at the Smithsonian: Main Sale Ticket Day!

With Burning Man main sale tickets going on sale today at noon — and sold out soon after —

and with a HUGE important Burning Man Art Exhibit opening this week at the Smithsonian in Washington DC where many Burners and many of my friends are making a pilgrimage for the opening (BUT NOT ME!! seriously bad case of FOMO going on here  — totally kicking myself that I did not go…)

… I figured it was a good time to share this awesome Mermen video from a Burning Man long ago past — 22 years ago in 196 and YES I WAS THERE! For more about Burning Man’s past, check out this Laughing Squid post.  

Read more about my Burning Man experiences over the years:

Read about the early days of Burning Man.
Read about the need for the 10 Principles.
Read about the 10 Principles. 

The exhibition website explains that “Each year in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a city of more than 75,000 people rises out of the dust for a single week. During that time, enormous experimental art installations are erected and many are ritually burned to the ground. The thriving temporary metropolis known as Burning Man is a hotbed of artistic ingenuity, driving innovation through its principles of radical self-expression, decommodification, communal participation, and reverence for the handmade. Both a cultural movement and an annual event, Burning Man remains one of the most influential phenomenons in contemporary American art and culture. No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man brings the large-scale, participatory work from this desert gathering to the nation’s capital for the first time. The exhibition takes over the entire Renwick Gallery building and surrounding neighborhood, bringing alive the maker culture and creative spirit of this cultural movement.”

photo of Center Camp robot by Gwendolyn Alley

While I’ve been out to Black Rock City 18x and experienced so much AMAZING ART, I still wish I was in DC with my friends for the opening of “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.” Hopefully I’ll get a report with photos from my friends who are there!! There’s some great parties this week with Burning Man luminaries prior to the official March 30 opening; the show runs until January 21, 2019 making it possible for many people from across the country and particularly on the east coasts as well as people from around the world to get a taste of the magic that is Burning Man. Organizers say that 

“Since No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man takes over the entire Renwick Gallery building, the exhibition will close in two phases. Works by Candy Chang, Marco Cochrane, Duane Flatmo, Michael Garlington and Natalia Bertotti, Five Ton Crane Arts Collective, Scott Froschauer, Android Jones, and Richard Wilks will be on view through September 16, 2018.  Works by David Best, FoldHaus Art Collective, Aaron Taylor Kuffner, HYBYCOZO (Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu), Christopher Schardt, and Leo Villareal will remain on view through January 21, 2019. No Spectators: Beyond the Renwick will be presented in the surrounding neighborhood through December 2018.

My first Burn was way back in the early 90s when I was a grad student at nearby University of Nevada Reno, and 1996, the year of the video above, was my third Burn. I’ve gone 18x now. Will I go in 2018 for “I, Robot”?? Time will tell!

Good luck getting your Burning Man tickets! If you miss out today, there’s always STEP, a regulated system to make sure there’s no one profiting or scalping because plans change and people can’t always go.