Please join us for our 2011 Benefit Party and Performance. This year we present Paradise Bizarre, a Fairground of Acts, Exhortations and Seductions, a carnival-bazaar designed to save your soul or make you forget you ever wanted to. Free booze and food thanks to our friends at Aliseo on Vanderbilt Ave, Cotta Bene on 3rd Ave, Joya Thai on Court St, Marquet Patisserie on Court St, Stinky Brooklyn on Smith St. and Brooklyn Fare on Schermerhorn.Tickets are available online now through Paypal. You can also pay by sending a check to us at 543 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Or you can pay at the door.

Ticket Prices:
$60 for one
$100 for two
$120 for a family of four
$200 for four
$500 for four includes the opportunity to return for a private curator-led history tour of the Gowanus Canal for up to 16

True believers, heathens, skeptics, pagans, atheists and heretics all welcome!

Paradise Bizarre is the culmination of our yearlong exploration of Paradise through art, artifacts, books, performances and events, bringing together old and new Protean collaborators. For details of the many performances, special guests, and collaborating angels, click here.

Proteus Gowanus is a non-profit organization under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)3. Your donation is tax deductible.

In Here Is Where We Meet, artist Madhu Kaza will travel to individual participant’s homes by appointment to read to them at bedtime. This project is part of the artist’s ongoing Hospitality series, which includes projects that explore social conventions, rituals of domestic and daily life, relations between strangers, hosts and guests, and boundaries of public and intimate space. Here is Where We Meet is particularly concerned with the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (including the drift from the world of stories to the world of dreams), a re-engagement of voice in our experience of texts, and the possibility of trust.

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• This project is not about reading to children. I am happy, however, to read to adults of all ages, single people, partnered people, parents etc.
• This project is meant to be conducted on a one to one scale; that is I will be reading to one person at a time. It’s fine if you share a household with others. If you have a bedmate, please schedule an appointment only if you can make arrangements to be alone during the reading.
• I will ask you to select and provide a book for me to read to you. I will also bring a few options, which may include John Berger’s novel, Here is Where We Meet.
• I will be making audio recordings of the readings.
• I will need to be able to let myself out of your home and lock the door behind me (ideally without a key).
• Due to the nature of this project – particularly its time intensiveness and the logistical issues of late night travel– there are a limited number of appointments available. My apologies if we are unable to schedule an appointment. However, I would invite anyone to extend the gesture of the project on their own, by reading aloud to friends, neighbors, loved ones.

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Name:

Address (please include mailing address as well as cross streets):

Nearest public transportation:

Phone:

Please list the members of your household and their relation to you (including pets):

What time do you go to sleep?

What days and/or dates you are available for an appointment?

Please describe your bedtime rituals:

Please list a few books that you love:

How did you hear about this project?

What most interests you about participating in this project?

For our last exhibition of the Paradise year, we focus on Bedevilment, in collaboration with our friends at Curious Matter, who will install an exhibit within the exhibit entitled The Naming of the Animals.

Myth says that naming the animals is an obligation assigned to humankind at the creation and it is one that has never ceased to demand attention: the task of naming, ordering, cataloging, dividing, pairing, discerning, describing, speaking…. Indeed, Paradise itself, where naming first began, was a place divided and separated, which is why its beatific presence bedevils us. As the exhibitions at Proteus Gowanus and Curious Matter attest, these paradisiacal topics are vexing.

We are bedeviled by threatened harmony, endless desiring,  dangerous magic and unhinged innocence, all on view in the works of 19  artists, writers , designers and collectives. Also in store is the Spring line-up of evening events with musicians, scholars, priests, dancers, filmmakers, historians and writers.

The exhibit at Proteus opens this Saturday and will run through July 16. The show at Curious Matter opened on April 3 and closes May 15. For details on Naming the Animals and directions to Curious Matter, click here.

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In addition, we are pleased to host this spring two Paradise projects-in-residence. In the work of Madhu Kaza’s Here Is Where We Meet and Clarinda Mac Lowe’s Cyborg Nation, we examine the relationship between intimacy and service, domestic ritual and public space, and between our human selves and the smart machines which serve and guide us.

Cyborg Nation extends our recent inquiries into future utopias,  offering Teknotherapy for all who need help coping with their increasing dependence upon electronic gadgets. Have you fully accepted your cyborg nature? With Teknotherapy, a Cyborg interlocutor (or “teknotherapist”) leads group and individual sessions during April and May for those of us grappling with our machinic selves, helping us to come to terms with our relationships with our electronic extensions. For more details or to make an appointment, click here.

For our second project, Here is Where We Meet, Madhu Kaza will travel to individual participant’s homes by appointment to read them to sleep at bedtime. Here is Where We Meet is part of the artist’s ongoing Hospitality series, projects that examine social conventions, rituals of domestic and daily life, relations between strangers, hosts and guests, and boundaries of public and intimate space. Here is Where We Meet is particularly concerned with the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, the drift from the world of stories to the world of dreams, and a re-engagement of the pleasure of voice in our experience of texts. More details will be available soon.

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What Happened