commerce
Slow Fashion from UNDERWEAR to HATS: Making Everything She Wears!
Saturday, June 27
4:30-6:30 pm
Admission is Free
Some people take do-it-yourself seriously by crafting their own birdhouses, knitting hats or even brewing beer. Brooklyn artist and womens’ wear designer Sarah Kate Beaumont has achieved an entirely different level of self-sufficiency in a significant aspect of her life. Imagine if every item of clothing you wore were unique in the world. For seven years, Beaumont has been designing and making her entire wardrobe, from underwear to hats. In contrast to Fast Fashion, Beaumont makes her hyper-slow clothes stitch by stitch in her studio: Slow Clothes. “What started as a way to economize became a lifestyle of self-reliance and self-expression,” says Beaumont.
Beaumont will present a retrospective of this project with examples from her personal wardrobe. She will discuss her process, inspiration and the zeitgeist of maker-ism. [continue reading…]
The Gleaners and I, a documentary
Thursday, May 14, 7pm
$5 donation
The Gleaners and I is a 2000 French documentary film by Agnès Varda, just recently became the first woman and only fourth director to be awarded an honorary Palme d’Or in Cannes. This film follows gleaners, those people who pick at recently reaped fields for the odd potato, leftover turnip. It has previously won awards around the world. In a 2014 Sight and Sound poll, film critics voted The Gleaners and I the eighth best documentary film of all time.
The film is part of a series at Proteus carrying our explorations of Commerce in new directions. Filmmaker and Proteus collaborator Charlotte Lagarde selected the Commerce films.
Spice Trade Perfumes Workshop
Saturday, May 16, 1 – 4pm
Workshop and Materials Fee: $125
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As part of our Trade Routes exhibition, Proteus Gowanus is pleased to announce a new Zone A Workshop focusing on the Spice Trade of antiquity. Space is limited so register early.
No one benefitted more from the Spice Route than the early perfumers. Prior to the opening of the spice trade, perfumers in Europe were using the materials available to them, mostly herbs and some locally growing flowers, to create the fragrances of the day. The explorations of Africa, India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the West Indies garnered fragrant spices, resins and balsams that created an olfactory palette that would create an industry.
In this workshop we’ll explore the discoveries of the early explorers and learn about resinous frankincense, rich vanilla bean, piquant saffron and voluptuous sandalwood. You’ll gain a basic understanding of the sense of smell, the history of perfume and learn how to blend these precious oils into your own bespoke [continue reading…]
Mobile Vending in the Underground Economy
Friday, April 3, 7pm
$5 admission
The Institute for Mobile Research will host a panel discussion with three prolific proponents of game change in the the mobile industry. Join us as panelists discuss their research and activism in mobile industries ranging from art to commerce to food.
Esther Robinson from ArtHome will discuss ArtBuild Mobile Spaces, a new program she’s spearheading to create affordable mobile artist studios in the vein [continue reading…]
Art and Entrepreneurship in Mobile Vending: A Tale of Hair Salons and Trailer Parks on Wheels
Friday, March 27, 7pm
$5 admission
The Institute of Mobile Research founder Lauren Cannon will moderate a discussion with two innovators in the mobile art and commerce realms. MIT Media Lab Fellow and artist Kim Holleman will discuss her “Trailer Park” project and other artistic initiatives in a mobile art space. Caroline Destefano, owner of the mobile hair salon Studio in Motion, will talk about the entrepreneurial and creative journey that led her to operate her hair salon on wheels. [continue reading…]
Trace: A Civil Rights Journey
Friday, March 20, 7pm
$5 admission
A hybrid event combining photography, video, voice, and word, Trace explores the legacy of writer and activist Tom Dent while retracing parts of his 1990 journey visiting lesser-known sites of the Civil Rights struggle, as documented in his book, Southern Journey: Return to the Civil Rights Movement. Dent worked in connection to a larger cultural and economic diaspora, examining the contemporary effects of colonialism while working with and helping to organize black writers and artists. Presented as part of the Trade Routes exhibition at Proteus Gowanus, Trace follows the networks connecting post-colonial Africa and the Caribbean with New York, the Southern Civil Rights movement and beyond.
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…]
