In conjunction with our Battle Ground exhibit, performance artist Paul Benney and author Robert Sullivan (My American Revolution) will join forces in this interdisciplinary meditation on the Continental Army’s not-well-remembered retreat from Brooklyn to Manhattan, from loss to not-loss. In addition to Paul Benney’s ethereal choreography and Robert Sullivan’s words and song, the performance will include quilts by Suzanne Sullivan and music by Louise Sullivan. Time past and present will merge as guests are transported down our alleyway to the performance in a wooden boat.

Robert Sullivan is the author, most recently, of “My American Revolution”, a book about the American Revolution described by Sam Roberts of the NY Times as “a provocative Baedeker for a landscape of loss, Gen. George Washington’s route from Brooklyn to “the very first Middle America” and back…” Other books by Sullivan include “Rats”, “The Meadowlands”, “A Whale Hunt”, “How Not To Get Rich Or Why Being Bad Off Isn’t So Bad”, “Cross Country”, and “The Thoreau You Don’t Know”.  His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, A Public Space, Runner’s World, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Rolling Stone, The Independent of London, The London Times and Vogue. He was born in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn with his family. 

Paul Benney lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. He studied Theater Arts and Dance at U.C. Santa Cruz and co-directed OnSite Dance Company in San Francisco with Jessica Lutes for twelve years before moving to New York in 2002. He was a Movement Research Artist in Resident in 2003, and he continues his performance related work with the performance art group, TRYST. His varied performance experience includes stints with the underground Rock pioneers The Residents, Joe Goode Performance Group, Zaccho Dance Theatre, David Neumann’s Advanced Beginners Group, and The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Paul has also performed on several occasions at Proteus Gowanus. He is a Gym Teacher and Coach at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn.

Please join us for opening reception of Battle Ground, the third and last exhibit of our yearlong Battle theme. Battle Ground will explore the pathos of the Battle of Brooklyn, stimulating our collective memory, evoking parallels between past and present, while focusing on the complexity, moral ambiguity, and devastation of this important Revolutionary confrontation. Historical imagery, rendered meaningless by over-use and political manipulation, will be revived in new forms.

The word “revolution” circles around us, forming the early consciousness of our country. History, also cyclical, repeats itself, and when it is forgotten, it haunts us, lying dormant in our collective memories. In 1776 one such haunting unfolded across a wide swath of what is now Brooklyn. Perhaps the battle is often forgotten (relative to others) because it was, in the words of Walt Whitman, a “resolute defeat.”

The battle-haunting still rages around us at Proteus Gowanus. Its culminating events took place just feet from our gallery location, along what was then the Gowanus Creek. The fields and marshes of 1776 are now a post-industrial urban landscape, and the Gowanus Canal is a hotly contested Federal Superfund and development site.

Maryland Willow, Robert Gould

Battle Ground is curated by Sasha Chavchavadze with help from Robert Gould, Angela Kramer and Eva Melas.

Battle Ground participants include artists, educators, urban planners and writers:

Paul Benney, Peter Bonner, Sasha Chavchavadze, Eymund Diegel, Robert Gould, Katarina Jerinic, Andrew Keating, Christina Kelly, V. Komar & A. Melamid, Angela Kramer, Robyn Love, Eva Melas, Duke Riley, Robert Sullivan.

*Special thanks to the restaurant and bakery, Runner & Stone, which takes its name from tide mills that operated along the Gowanus Creek in the 18th century.