Events
Create your own Square Foot Stormwater Garden
Saturday, May 31 from 12 PM – 3 PM
$50 registration fee, $40 for GCC members
In conjunction with the exhibition Combined Overflow on view now at Proteus Gowanus, Greenlab Studio is hosting a build-it-yourself workshop at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy Salt Lot on how to construct a square foot stormwater garden module. Come out and learn how to build these gardens and return home with a module of your own!
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A Water Reading
Friday, May 9, 7-8pm
Many of the words we use to describe our experience as readers and writers come from our much earlier experience of water: flow, reflection, transparency, stream of consciousness. We sink into a book, or become immersed in a story. Poets have used rivers, the sea, rain, storms, as a fortune-teller uses a crystal ball: to read the obscure messages that come from both without and within. Novelists have used water imagery to structure narrative: time as a river, or the passage of lives as waves. Come join us as we continue our yearlong exploration of water and listen to the work of Emily Dickinson, [continue reading…]
Workshops for Artists with Delve & Arts Gowanus
Mondays, March 5, 12 and 19th, 7-9pm
Delve, a service program for artists, is partnering with Arts Gowanus to offer three empowering workshops for area artists. The workshops will take place at Proteus Gowanus on three consecutive Mondays. They will focus on developing three valuable artist tools: the artists statement, how to tell your artist story and your website. For more details and to enroll in the workshops, go to the Delve workshop website page and sign on.
Lost Rivers, the Film, plus Hidden Streams of Gowanus
Saturday, May 3, 4-6pm
$5 admission
Lost Rivers is a documentary film by Caroline Baclé retracing lost urban rivers in cities around the world. In the 19th century, these waterways had grown so polluted, they were hidden underground in sewers to protect the population from diseases like cholera. Now visionary urban thinkers, activists and artists from around the world are seeking to release these rivers from their captivity and ‘daylight’ them above ground.
Gowanus Creek, now better known as the Gowanus Canal, was our own Lost River. After the movie, Eymund Diegel will show some historic maps and answer questions about neighborhood buried stream research. [continue reading…]
Launch party for Proteotypes latest Libellula: Martin Nakell’s A Subset of Chance
Friday, April 25, 6:30 – 8:30pm
Proteotypes’ Libellulæ series brings creaturely new texts to life, and we are very proud to have A Subset of Chance as our latest and fifth. A far-flung, full-frenzy poem, A Subset of Chance dips a web woven of geography and philosophy into the polychromic vat of language. In it Martin Nakell obeys two constraints you might think hard to combine. The first, derived from Chaos Theory, posits that “any arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory will lead to significantly different future composition.” The second is the rigorous Kabbalistic procedure of gematria, whereby letters are given their numerical value. Martin will read, explain, and sign copies.
Please join us this Friday evening to meet Martin and send this new Libellula whirring out into the world! There will be wine and snacks.
Zeuf, Swell & Heart of the Sea: three films on women who surf
Thursday, April 24, 7pm
$5 suggested donation
Join us for an evening with the documentary filmmaker Charlotte Lagarde for a screening of her award-winning trilogy about women surfers. Charlotte’s love of the sea led her to document these women’s lives. The films are Zeuf (4 min), Swell, (23 min) and Heart of the Sea (55 min). A discussion with the filmmaker will follow the screenings.
ZEUF
Zeuf (1994) is a four-minute portrait of Robin “Zeuf” Janizeufski, a 34 year old breast cancer survivor, a surfer and an ICU nurse. Zeuf challenges the ideas that one associates with breast cancer, representing a strong and beautiful image of life. Winner of the Cine Golden Eagle and the Director Award at the Black Maria Film Festival, Zeuf, Lagarde’s first student film at Stanford University, was on Sundance channel and shown in over 30 countries.
SWELL
Swell (1996) is a portrait of inter-generational community of women surfers in Santa Cruz, CA. Winner of a Gold Apple Award and the Isabella Liddell Art Award, Swell became a cult movie in the women surfing community. [continue reading…]
Gowanus Drinks: A Workshop/Walking Tour of Thirsty Plants & People
THIRSTLAB WORKSHOP #3: Gowanus Drinks: A Workshop/Walking Tour of Thirsty Plants and Thirsty People
Saturday, April 5th, 4-7pm
Gowanus is a literal backwater, a tidal swamp that has been channeled and paved over by political, economic, and environmental forces since the first European colonists arrived. Tracing a meandering path through the region’s history–from its early agricultural roots, to the infamous Whisky Wars and Prohibition Era, to Superfund and today’s hydroponic farms, craft liquor distilleries and DIY brewery shops–this workshop culminates in a two hour walking tour that will investigate the dark and bright sides of the Gowanus. We’ll begin by exploring how water quality relates to agricultural methods and industrial processes, and how these issues may help account for the emergence of small-scale urban farming and alcohol production methods. We will bring together scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and DIY enthusiasts to exchange ideas about how pollution, disease, and economic crisis–as well as new industries, culture, and social life– are [continue reading…]
Drawing the Gowanus: a Zone A Workshop
A workshop for parents &/or children (8 – 16 years old)
Instructor: Lado Pochkhua
Saturdays 10 am – 12 pm
(Participants can attend one or more workshops)
An introduction to drawing techniques, including charcoal, graphite, pen and ink and collage. Participants explore the post-industrial landscape and artifacts of the Gowanus Canal. The workshops include a stroll along the Gowanus and a tour of the Hall of the Gowanus, a mini-museum of the canal at Proteus Gowanus.
Price per workshop: Parent and child: $75, Individual (child or adult) $40
Price for four sessions: Parent and child: $250, Individual child or adult: $160
Register: email hidden; JavaScript is required[continue reading…]
ThirstLab Workshop #2: Ripple Effects: The Politics of Fresh Water Flows
Sunday, March 30, 3-5pm
$5 admission
With:
Alex Prud’homme (Author of Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the 21st Century), Peter Walsh (visual/public artist), Michael Cirino (culinary artist and founder of A Razor, A Shiny Knife) and soprano Carter Scott with pianist Leesa Dahl.
“Every time we use water – even for something as mundane as washing our hands, spraying the lawn, or generating power for light – it sets off deep and wide hydrologic ripple effects, with consequences that most of us are unaware of. Now we no longer have the luxury of ignorance.” – Alex Prud’homme
In New York City, we take our access to fresh water for granted, and rarely think twice about its source or what forces shaped its presence in our kitchen sink. And yet the history and current reality of our so-called “local” water is a complex, layered tale, linking the city to specific regions and communities in upstate New York through the famous (and infamous!) Croton Aqueduct. [continue reading…]
