Migration

Worldwide, human migration is accelerating at a pace that makes the migratory patterns of the industrial revolution look trivial. These changes of course affect the migratory creatures with whom we share the planet: birds and beasts, microorganisms and the ideas or memes that travel like lightening across continents and, like live creatures, require care and feeding. All this movement drives and is driven by the movement of stuff, the products and things that are consumed, discarded, recycled, dumped and consumed again.

There is crisis and calamity aplenty to consider in these topics but there is also exponential knowledge growth, increasing porosity of boundaries and borders, more and better communication of ideas, greater empathy and interaction. For the next nine months, Proteus Gowanus will consider Migration and the usually unanticipated effects that flow from it using art, artifacts, books and events as the tools of our investigation. Our first exhibition opens in September, second in January and third in April.

And because Proteus too is constantly moving and changing, we introduce two new projects in this Migration year. We are inaugurating an Artists-In-Residence program, inviting a new artist for each of the year’s three Migration exhibitions to work at Proteus, opening their process to viewers to observe, engage with and even participate in. Our artists will be, in order of their residency, Lado Pochkhua of the Republic of Georgia, Sal Randolph of the U.S. and Bundith Phunsombatlert of Thailand.

We are also introducing a blog for the Migration year, named Proteoscope. Krista Dragomer, artist, writer, and graphic essayist, will be Proteoscope’s Editor-in-Chief, collecting, reporting, editing and musing on the art, artifacts, books and events presented during our Migration year. We hope you will add our Proteoscope RSS feed to your feedbox and join in the conversation.

Finally, we welcome as Migration Correspondents, the following distinguished individuals: Carol Becker (Dean of Columbia School of the Arts); Svetlana Boym (Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University and a Faculty Associate of the Graduate School of Design); and Sean Hanley, filmmaker. Our Migration interns are Allison Klion and Ryan Jones.

Migration 1

Fall, 2011 (Sept 17-Jan 7)

Migration 2: Object Migration

Winter, 2012 (Jan 12-April 7)

A. Object Migration

When we think about migration, we tend to focus on people and creatures, the mobile inhabitants of the planet. But life and motion create products and byproducts: tools, waste, the material manifestations of culture. These things are often what drive us onward in our migrations. We asked our community of friends and collaborators and all others to contribute objects with migratory stories for this show. With over 50 contributors, objects on display range from a 50 million year old “dinosaur fart” (or gas bubble) to a collection of wild bird’s stomach contents collected in the early 20th C for “scientific” purposes. There are also talismans, mundane objects with secret meanings, things of beauty and much more.

We will view these objects as independent beings with stories of their own, stories that began before the object’s encounter with its current owner and that will likely continue long after they part. The stories may migrate into the economic, the industrial, the political, the historical, the geologic, the environmental and so on as visitors add to the stories on display with information they may have about the object in question.

B. The Bureau of Unknown Destinations

As part of Object Migrations, we introduce The Bureau of Unknown Destinations, offering temporary displacements to members of the public seeking to experiment with their migratory impulses.

Make a booking for a day’s journey, and you’ll be presented with a free round trip ticket for a train adventure (along with a notebook and a small, somewhat absurd, task). Begin your day by tearing open a sealed envelope and revealing the mystery of where you will find yourself by noon. Set forth, free of decisions, into the great (or perhaps, in this case, the small) unknown. Test your sense of destiny. Have lunch someplace new.

Book your travel up to two weeks in advance at the Bureau’s offices, located at Proteus Gowanus. Offices are open most Saturdays 1-5, as well as irregularly on other days, and always by appointment.

C. The Berlin Tunnel Project
(Jan 28-Feb 25)

In 1954, the CIA began to dig a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin for the purposes of tapping into Soviet phone cables. The tunnel’s construction took a year and, unbeknownst to the CIA was monitored throughout by the KGB. In April 1956, the KGB “discovered” the tunnel and released the information to the world press. American newspapers generally marveled that the CIA was capable of such a remarkable clandestine maneuver.

Migration 3:  Future Migration

Spring, 2012 (Apr 14 – Jul 1)

Our spring Migration show will focus on the future. Where are we  migrating to: post-history, outer space, digital utopias? Stay tuned. To submit ideas or works, click here for information.