February 2015
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The Past Is the Future: Economic Alternatives from Contemporary Maya
Sunday, March 15, 6pm
$5 admission
What is wealth? Can there be a definition that moves beyond the superficiality of cash accumulation? Who is embracing a new definition? Using data collected form ethnographic work conducted in Maya villages in the lowland rainforests of Belize, social anthropologist Kristina Baines presents thoughts on the movement between a traditional reciprocal labor system to a cash economy, and back again. Outlining the details of the Maya reciprocal labor system, which uses a day’s work as currency to trade for a day’s work of another community member, Kristina discusses what it means in terms of health, heritage and future to use a cash-less system. As part of Proteus’ ongoing exploration of COMMERCE, Kristina questions our understandings of poverty and wealth, the linear perception of “development” and how we put alternatives to capital into “communal” or “fringe” boxes. What lessons can these traditional systems teach us about commerce in our communities when we recast ideas about heritage in the present? [continue reading…]
In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee: a documentary
Thursday, March 12, 7pm
$5 admission
In conjunction with the Trade Routes exhibition, this documentary film explores a troubling side of the international adoption trade involving a Korean child. Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for this Korean adoptee who came to the US in 1966. Told to keep her true identity a secret from her new American family, this eight-year-old girl quickly forgot she was ever anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? This documentary is the search to find the answers about this troubling aspect of the international adoption trade. It follows acclaimed filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem as she returns to her native Korea to find her “double,” the mysterious girl whose place she took in America.
Trailer and more info: http://www.mufilms.org/
Opening Reception for Trade Routes
Saturday, February 28, 6-8pm
Please join us for wine and conversation at the opening reception for Trade Routes, the third exhibition of our COMMERCE year. Trade Routes focuses on the infrastructures and pathways of commerce, from the winds and tides that were the first determinants of inter-cultural trade to the technological breakthroughs that fuel global trade today. Sociologist-artist team David Schleifer and Tracy Gilman explore Navajo trading rug styles using weather-resistant electric cables. The works of Shari Mendelson and Venetia Dale address the impact of product innovation, specifically the invention of plastic, on the movement of objects and commodities from their countries of origin to their point of consumption. [continue reading…]
Zapatista Coffee, Portraits and Advice for the Alienated
Saturday, February 21, 3-6pm
As part of our yearlong engagement with the elements of Commerce, we present a gathering of projects creating alternative paths within our current economic system. The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op will sell Autonomous Zapatista Coffee with the goal of building a partnership between ‘Brooklyn Torches’, a Brooklyn alternative currency that builds community and another alternative currency, Digital Material Sunflower. Mary Jeys will be selling Brooklyn Torches. In addition, the Coffee Co-op’s artist-in-residence Gabriela Ceja will draw portraits of visitors while offering coffee and conversation about work and alienation as part of her Workers Utopia project. Lastly, the Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Working Group will make available its 2015 edition of the NYC Alternative Resource Guide listing alternatives for education, housing, childcare and more. Join us for an afternoon of radical fun, radical coffee and radical ideas! [continue reading…]
