March 2013
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Secret Wars Party with Short Attention Span Theater
Saturday, April 6, 7pm
At 7pm, join us for a final ‘surveillance’ under the watchful eye of spies, cameras and avian informers, present, of course, for your own good and the Homeland’s too. There will also be spy music and wine to loosen lips.*
*We are required to inform you that your words and actions may be documented and used against you. No warrants required.
At 8pm, David Goren, Secret Wars contributor, will present the radio-inflected soundscape, The Short Attention Span Audio Theater, featuring excerpts from Antimatter, a sci-fi noir tale of shortwave radio espionage written by the mysterious C.M. Stanbury.
Spy music mix created by the polymusicologist Friese Undine.
Shipbuilding Workshop: a Battle Pass Project
Saturday, April 6 from 1-4pm
Location: the Waterfront Museum, 290 Conover Street, Pier 44, Red Hook
Free and open to children ages five and up with their families
Led by artist Eva Melas, this workshop explores the important role ships played in the Battle of Brooklyn. In the summer of 1776, Red Hook residents could see the imposing fleet of more than 400 British ships bearing down on Brooklyn. Gen. George Washington later rounded up humble vessels to make his retreat to Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights.
Participants in this family workshop will make their own improvised armada from objects found in Brooklyn today, such as coffee cups and cardboard packaging. Weather permitting, the toy boats will be test launched from the deck of the Waterfront Museum barge. [continue reading…]
The Atomic Priesthood with artist Bryan Wilson
Monday, April 1 at 7pm
Secret Wars artist Bryan M. Wilson will discuss his ongoing, multidisciplinary project, The Atomic Priesthood, and the two attendant installations at the Proteus Gowanus space, The Canticle for Sebeok and Vestments for Ten Millennia. Wilson will address the ecological stewardship, strategies for deep-time communication, and ritual inherent to the project and how an artistic practice can bridge seemingly disparate conditions. The talk will be a survey of The Atomic Priesthood’s genesis, status, and potential future as it expands to collaborate with other potent collectives such as Smudge Studio and The Mildred Complex(ity). [continue reading…]
Secret Wars: Readings
Sunday, March 24, 5pm
The battles fought at night between white and black witches. The battle fought at bedtime between a newly married royal couple. The battle fought in subway stations with poisoned chewing gum. The battle fought with children in a dream. The culture war fought as an emergent species struggles for recognition as a civilized kind. The key battles of such “secret wars” will be the matter read aloud from translations of Czech, Japanese, American, Italian, and Old Irish crypto-military histories. Organized by Wendy Walker, editor of Proteotypes, the publishing arm of Proteus Gowanus.
David Kahn: How Codebreaking Helped Shorten World War II
Thursday, March 14, 7pm
$5 admission
As part of our exploration of Secret Wars, Proteus Gowanus is very pleased to present David Kahn, the world’s leading expert on the history of codes and cryptology. Dr. Kahn will discuss how the frantic race to break enemy codes helped bring about an earlier end to World War II.
Kahn’s monumental 1967 book The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing is the definitive account of secret writing from ancient hieroglyphs through the 20th century. The book was a finalist for the 1968 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, and was republished in a revised edition in 1996. [continue reading…]
