September 2011
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Workshop: Broom-making from Gowanus Broomcorn
Saturday, October 15th, 5-7pm
Free
Please join us for an evening of broom-making with a Master Broomsquire from the foothills of the Catskills. David of Catskill Mountain Broomworks, will create two very special brooms fashioned from a locally raised crop of broomcorn grown this summer on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. [continue reading…]
Migration collaboration with Museum Library
Proteus Gowanus is pleased to announce a Migration collaboration with The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives. The Museum has loaned us a facsimile excerpt of an archive manuscript by Wallace Goold Levison, written in the early 20th C. for a book (never completed) on the early history of the Brooklyn Institute, the Museum’s predecessor. The notes recount a fascinating account of the Institute’s role in importing the English sparrow to Brooklyn in the 1850’s, a tale who’s outcome is visible to us every time we go outdoors. To see the bibliographic citation that tells more about the manuscript, click here.
As an off-site collaboration with the Migration year at Proteus, the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives has also created a small Migration library of its own books which is on view in the Brooklyn Museum Library Reading Room. [continue reading…]
Ami Yamasaki and friends: 3 performances
Thursday, September 29, 7pm
Proteus Gowanus and Reanimation Library are pleased to present three performances with Ami Yamasaki. Yamasaki, whose Feather-Music composition is on display as part of the Migration exhibition at Proteus Gowanus, is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo, Japan. The evening will begin with ENERGY, a sound meditation by Yamasaki reflecting on the events of 3/11 and 9/11 (the Tokyo earthquake and the attack on the World Trade Center). The second performance, (bird) bird, will be a collaboration between Yamasaki and Deborah Gladstein, experimental movement artist. And the final performance, sound and movement, will be a collaboration between Yamasaki and Mina Nishimura, a New York-based performance artist from Japan. [continue reading…]
Fixers Collective Rides Again
Thursday, September 22, 7pm
The Fixers Collective, a social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending, is back from summer vacation to resume operations on a new monthly schedule and in our larger main room. On the third Thursday of every month, bring your broken thing and place it on the fixing table for collective consideration. All assembled will share ideas and techniques for repairing, mending, enhancing or repurposing the objects before us. Master Fixers provide support and guidance as needed. The October meeting date is as yet undecided so come back to our News and Events page for an October update. [more]
Rise and Fall: Nautical Art on the Gowanus
Tuesday, September 20, 7pm
Art in Odd Places, in partnership with the Institute for Urban Design and Proteus Gowanus, is pleased to present Rise and Fall: Contemporary Nautical Practice and the Gowanus Canal on the occasion of the first annual Urban Design Week festival (September 15 – 20, 2011).
This panel discussion will center on artists and activists who take the NYC waterways as their creative point of departure, and who have crafted alternative ways to reclaim the water as viable public space. Of particular interest in this dialog is EPA Superfund site, the Gowanus Canal. Some ideas that may be explored in the conversation include: creating alternative economies, re-imagining transportation, sustainability and the waterfront, and the thought of greater autonomy and accessibility for the urban individual. While Urban Design Week is a festival that is looking for creative, yet nonetheless practical solutions to real concerns regarding livability in NYC, this panel seeks to balance the design conversation with artistic projects that allow for a further-reaching imagination into a future of agency.
Panelists: Ludger K. Balan, Dylan Gauthier, Constance Hockaday, Mary Mattingly and Tim Thyzel
Moderator: Jeff Stark
Organized by Juliana Driever [continue reading…]
Wine Reception for Migration
Saturday, September 17, 7pm
Please join us for a wine reception to welcome the artists for our first Migration exhibition of the 2011/12 Migration year and to view the art, artifacts and books on display.
The artists are: Aileen Bassis, Meredith Bergmann, The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, Lola Bunting, Marie Cieri, Viv Corringham, Dillon de Give, Sarah Lederman, Portia Munson, Lance Rutledge, Randall Stoltzfus, Lorena Turner James Walsh and, in partnership with Reanimation Library, Ami Yamasaki.
Yamasaki will perform a short musical work as part of her Feather-Music Installation which travels from Reanimation Library through the Proteus spaces into our main gallery. To see the installation process, click here.
Yamasaki’s feather installation
You are invited to visit Proteus Gowanus from Sept 6-16, from 12-5 pm to observe the installation of the “Voices-Feather Composition” by Ami Yamasaki. This installation is a project of Reanimation Library and Proteus Gowanus, as part of the Migration exhibition.
Ami, a Tokyo artist and musician, is making a music-feather installation at Proteus by pasting millions of feathers made of torn paper to the walls, following a pattern dictated by the acoustical changes she perceives as she sings. Each feather works as a sound reflector or music instrument, changing the acoustics of the space. She sings, pastes, listens and, as she says, “little by little, the space starts to play its own music.”
During the process, Ami “feels herself completely vanished and becomes to the particles like electrons and neutrons for melting into the feathers and the music of the space. She feels both absence and existence, she feels she can travel everywhere.”
Ami needs paper donations to complete the projects. Please bring clear, white paper if you can. Off white and textured paper also welcome.
Study Hall Re-Opens Sept. 6
Summer is ending and it’s time to get back to work. If you are a solitary worker tied to a laptop or a pad of paper, perhaps you would prefer not to work alone at home but rather in quiet community with other writers.
We invite you to join Study Hall for quiet contemplation, study and work. Study Hall turns our galleries into writing rooms so that members can work in a communal setting filled with art, artifacts and books.
For $50 per month, Study Hall is open to members on weekdays from 10am-6pm.
