A “WIT-ness” is the holder of both Presence and Perception.

Wit (noun)- /wɪt/

"Wit is an awareness to read, reflect & speak in a way to shifts rooms. It's humor, precision, timing, & truth delivered in a way people can receive."

This work begins where theology meets the people who want to become a community. Let me explain...

My Story

I have spent years building spaces where the sacred and the sensual are not separate, where sound, light, story, and presence come together and do something to people that is hard to name and easy to feel. I have seen what happens when a room is held with intention, when conversation is not rushed, when people are given space to arrive fully and recognize each other beyond the surface.

The question that sits underneath everything I build is simple and not simple at all, "How can community and play rebuild belonging?"

That question did not come from theory. It came from loss. It came from being in spaces where joy and grief sit next to each other, where laughter carries memory, where people find their way back to themselves through being with others. It came from understanding that what we often call celebration is doing deeper work than we give it credit for.

The Invitation

Brews 12 v Uno begins with a simple idea, to build a place where strangers sit down together.

In a world where people move past one another without pause, there is a quiet hunger for spaces that allow us to slow down, to be seen, to be in conversation without performance. In Black Rock City, a place that exists for only one week each year, that question becomes sharper. What does it mean to gather, intentionally, even briefly, and leave changed by it.

Brews 12 v Uno comes out of that understanding.

This piece reinterprets Hebrews 12:1 through the language I know, through Black celebration, through card games, sugary colored flavored drinks, ancestors and laughter as ways of holding memory, as ways of moving through life, as ways of staying connected to something larger than ourselves. They are how people endure, how people gather, how people remember.

What I am building is a structure where play becomes prayer, where memory becomes something you can sit inside of, where the everyday experience of being together is treated with the weight it actually carries.

I approach this work as a creative, a theologian, and a craftsman at the same time, shaping something that is emotionally honest, structurally sound, and culturally accountable. I am not interested in building something that exists for a moment and disappears without impact. I see art as infrastructure, something that has to hold people, travel, and continue to teach even after the first experience is over.

What Is Missing?

We are surrounded by access and still lacking connection. Spaces designed for people to be together often ask for attention, consumption, or spectacle, rarely for presence.

Hospitality has drifted toward transaction. Conversation has been reduced to exchange. Cultural expressions of gathering, especially those rooted in Black traditions of Joy, Dance, and Spiritual Presence, are often experienced without being understood as practices of Care, Memory, and Belonging.

There is a gap between being near and being together.

The Vision

Brews 12 v Uno is a twenty-foot interactive art installation coming to Burning Man 2026, designed as a circle in the middle of the desert where people pause, share stories, and experience the power of gathering.

At the center stands a glowing vessel rising into a luminous cloud of oversized cards. Stained-glass style panels wrap the base, casting color across the ground. Around it, a ring of seating invites people into conversation, often with someone they have never met. And around the seats are the Egungun. They dance and sway to Bless what is needed and correct what no longer belongs.

By day, it stands against the desert sky as a place to pause. By night, it becomes a circle of light where reflection, laughter, and unexpected connection unfold.

This is not simply an object placed on the playa. It is a structure designed to hold human experience.

Why This Work, Why This Artist

I created this work in my full element as a Southern, Black male artist whose practice lives at the intersection of storytelling, hospitality, and cultural gathering. This project draws from traditions where conversation is a religious ritual, laughter is medicine, and immediate presence is a form of Black care.

This work comes from lived experience, from building rooms where people feel seen, from understanding that the most meaningful moments are often unplanned yet intentionally held.

Brews 12 v Uno extends this practice unto the playa, carrying with it a belief that shared presence is sacred play.

The Experience

Burners will approach this structure out of curiosity and stay because of what they feel. Burners will sit in a circle with strangers. Burners will speak, or listen, or simply be still. Burners will laugh without knowing why it feels easy. Burners will share stories they did not expect to tell.

At night, this installation becomes a comfortable living room under the open sky, light moving through stained glass, bodies arranged in quiet conversation, moments unfolding without script, rhyme, or reason. This experience is simple, direct, and human.

The Impact

Thousands of people will step into this circle during Burning Man. Many will sit, share a story, and leave with something that stays with them long after the desert disappears. This project introduces a Black cultural framework of gathering that centers presence over performance, connection over consumption, and community over spectacle.

Supporting this work brings a distinct cultural voice and spiritual imagination into one of the largest temporary art cities in the world, while offering a model for how intentional gathering can be recreated in other spaces, cities, and communities.

Why This Works

The concept is simple and universal, a place to sit and connect, making it immediately accessible to thousands of participants. The design is visually striking, creating a landmark people are naturally drawn toward. The project carries cultural depth, rooted in traditions of community and shared experience. The scale and placement ensure thousands will encounter and engage with the installation.

The Plan

Brews 12 v Uno has already been awarded a 2026 Burning Man Honoraria Grant, affirming the vision and providing early momentum toward realization.

The project will move through a clear build process that includes structural engineering, material fabrication, lighting integration, transportation to Black Rock City, and on-site installation with a dedicated build crew. Each phase is designed to ensure both artistic integrity and environmental durability within the conditions of the playa.

The scale of this work requires more than vision. It requires engineering, materials, fabrication, transportation, a full system that allows it to stand, function, and hold thousands of people over the course of Burning Man. The Honoraria grant moved this forward. It did not complete it.

This is where support comes in.

The Ask

The total fundraising goal is $40,000, and what is raised now directly determines what gets built, how it stands, and whether it holds the experience it is meant to carry. This monetary support ensures the work can be built safely, experienced fully, and shared widely.

Funds will support:

Engineering and structural design
Materials and fabrication
Lighting and electrical systems
Transportation to Black Rock City
On-site installation and build crew

The Honoraria grant provides credibility and early momentum.

How to Help

Choose your giving level.

I’m a WIT-ness ($25)
The Egungun are w/ Us ($75)
Keeper of the cLOUD ($150)
Holder of the Story ($300)
Brews Patron ($750)
Stained-Glass Icon ($2,500)
Beloved Community Connector ($5,000) Each level brings you closer to the work, though all of it builds the same circle.

If giving is not the way you enter, pass this to someone who would recognize it, someone who understands what it means to build spaces where people actually come together.

Volunteers, builders, fabricators, people who know how to move materials, assemble structure, and help bring something from vision into form.

In-kind support such as materials, access to a build studio or workspace, and places to stay for the team during the build process all directly move this forward. If you have access to any of that, it matters.

This work does not happen in isolation. It is built by people who decide to be part of it while it is still becoming. Help raise the vessel, bring light into the cloud, and build the circle.

In Closing...

If you understand what it means for a space to hold you, if you have ever experienced a moment where being in the right room at the right time changed something in you, then you already understand what this is.

Supporting this project is helping build a place where those moments can happen again and again, where people can sit, speak, listen, laugh, and leave carrying something with them that did not exist before they arrived.

A place where strangers sit down together is not a small idea for me, it is a necessary one.

If this resonates, step into it.

Step into the circle. Help bring Brews 12 v Uno to life.

Thank YOU,

Eric E. Brown, Jr.

✌🏾

Brews 12 v UNO: cLOUD OF WITnesses

By The Eric E Brown Jr. Venture

Brews 12 v UNO: cLOUD OF WITnesses

Be a WIT-ness and Contribute to this Art Installation

Team Members