Danger Man
by Josie Luciano
Michael Mikel, a.k.a. Danger Ranger, has been involved with
Burning Man since 1988
art at this year’s Burning Man.
Photo/eric Marks
M
ichael Mikel, a.k.a. Danger Ranger, founded the Black Rock Rangers, edited Burning Man’s first on-site newspaper, and currently serves on the organization’s board of directors. Since 1988, he’s been centrally involved with Burning Man, the annual arts festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that now attracts 70,000 people from all around the world. We caught up with him in conjunction with this year’s festival as well as the City of Dust retrospective exhibition currently on display at the Nevada Museum of Art.
Photo/Josie Luciano
Is it Michael Mikel or Danger Ranger? It’s Michael Mikel, but Danger Ranger is my playa name. What did you think when you were first approached to do this exhibit? Well that was two years ago. And David [Walker, executive director of the Nevada Museum of Art], who’s also on the board of directors of the Burning Man nonprofit, he introduced me to Bill Fox who managed the Art + Environment section of the museum. They
approached me about the possibility of having an archive of Burning Man materials. And I’ve saved pretty much everything in my history of Burning Man. And this will be my 30th year of attending Burning Man. I’ve burned on the beach in San Francisco with a handful of people, and it’s amazing now we have 70,000 people. And I had an attic full of materials and objects and papers that I’ve saved through the years and was very happy to donate it to the archives so they could be preserved and taken care of, and there’s actually a wealth of research materials [for those] who might be studying Burning Man. So I think it’s very important to have this work up. And now they’ve mounted this exhibit which is really incredible, and it’s going to be at the Smithsonian next year—even larger. Will it be called City of Dust as well? They’ve titled their exhibit No Spectators. And they’re going to have an expanded exhibit with lots more Burning Man art. They’ve got a lot more room there, and it’s going to be an incredible exhibit there at the Smithsonian.
“DangeR Man”
continued on page 12
09.07.17
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