RETROFUTUROLOGY @ the Observatory

RETROFUTUROLOGY:
How the Past Saw the Present // How the Present Sees the Future

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 28, 8 PM

"Observatory is pleased to announce our new exhibition, RETROFUTUROLOGY, a group show of visual art, curated by the Hollow Earth Society (Ethan Gould & Wythe Marschall, Founding Colonels).

About the show: To have an imagined future, you must simultaneously have an imagined present and an imagined past…

A DeLorean decked out in flashing lights and wires: A modest-budget promise that, yes, the technologies of our age can puncture the time barrier! Where to go? A rowdy 1950s? A steampunk 1890s?

Our visions of the future are nested. Our conception of time is hyper-real.

This is the process on which the present runs.

Come see contemporary art that investigates futures-past, futures-possible, and other nestings."

Featuring paintings, sculptures, and other works by many artists, including: Adrian Agredo, Tracey Atkinson, Emi Brady, bunny M, Jon Burgerman, Chiezo, Devon Clapp, Jesse Corinella, Rachel Debuque, Derrick Dent, Matt Duffin, Ethan Gould, Andrea Hendrickson, Richard Herzog, Andy Hunter, Patti Jordan, John Lee, Haydex Li, Benjamin Mayock, Marianne McCarthy, Megan Murtha, George Pfau, Nick Raynolds, Matthew Robinson, Sean Star Wars, Tom Sarmo, Rachel Schragis, Joelle Shallon, Greg Shelnutt, Niko Silvester, Melissa Stern, Lisa Temple-Cox, and Robin Treadwell.
In addition to this show Observatory is constantly hosting all sorts of interesting events with emphasis on the what some might think bizarre (you know taxidermy, skull collecting, Aquatic Ape Theories.. stuff like that)many sell out quickly so try and reserve if you can!

For instance on Friday, February 4th it's "The Secret History of the Ouija Board": A talk and visual presentation by Mitch Horowitz.

Click here for the schedule.

Observatory
543 Union Street at Nevins
Brooklyn, NY 11215
observatoryroom.org
observatoryroom [at] gmail.com

ON VIEW: Friday, January 28 – Friday, March 5, 2011
HOURS: Thursdays & Fridays 3–6 PM, Saturdays & Sundays 12–6 PM

If you go, be sure to check out the Paradise 2 Show in the Proteus Gowanus space while you are there!

Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Memorial Tattoo * Tuesday @ the Observatory (it's a lecture)

"Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer."

The Observatory continues to host unique lectures and events presented by Morbid Anatomy DESPITE the heat...tomorrow night is a lecture about Memorial Tattoos!

The details:

Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo
An Illustrated lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath

"In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, I will add, does death."

Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in spring 2011.

Click here for their full on calendar of equally fascinating and offbeat events.

When: Tuesday, July 20th at 8pm
Where: 543 Union Street at Nevins St.
Enter through Proteus Gowanus gallery, in the alley off Nevins St.
Admission: 5 bucks.

Parisian Erotica, Museum Monsters & Hart Island. Films & Lectures this week at the Observatory!

The Observatory has not stopped for a minute in their curation of truely unique films, talks and events. This is just THIS week! Go to the website to see what is planned for the next few.

This week OBSERVATORY:
Tuesday, April 20th

The Silken Web: The Erotic World of Paris 1920-1946
An illustrated lecture by Professor Mel Gordon, author of Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Wiemar Berlin

Date: Tuesday, April 20 Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

"In tonight’s illustrated lecture, Professor Mel Gordon–author of Voluptious Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin and Grand Guiginol: Theatre of Fear and Terror–will present a graphic look at the brothel worlds of interwar Paris. Each of the 221 registered maisons closes–French for “closed house”–had its own unique attractions for its specialized clientele: theatricalized sex, live music, pornographic entertainments, aphrodisiac restaurants, even American-style playrooms and wife-friendly lounges for the customers’ families and bored mistresses. Tonight, have some wine and partake in authentic French culture and their Greatest Generation, complements of Mel Gordon and Observatory. Mel Gordon is the author of Voluptious Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, Grand Guiginol: Theatre of Fear and Terror, and many other books. Voluptuous Panic was the first in-depth and illustrated book on the topic of erotic Weimar; The lavish tome was praised by academics and inspired the establishment of eight neo-Weimar nightclubs as well as the Dresden Dolls and a Marilyn Manson album. Now, Mel Gordon is completing a companion volume for Feral House Press, entitled The Silken Web: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946. He also teaches directing, acting, and history of theater at University of California at Berkeley."


Thursday, April 22nd

Museums, Monsters, and the Moral Imagination with Stephen Asma

Date: Thursday, April 22
Time: 8:00 PM Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

"In this illustrated lecture, professor Stephen Asma–author of the the definitive study of the natural history museum Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: the Culture and History of Natural History Museums–will draw upon his studies of science museums and monsters to reflect on their often hidden moral aspects. Museums are saying more about values than many people notice, and the same can be said about our cultural fascinations with monsters. The urge to classify, set boundaries, and draw lines between the natural and the unnatural are age-old impulses.

In this lecture, Dr. Asma will try to excavate some of the moral uses and abuses of this impulse. Stephen T. Asma is the author of Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: the Culture and History of Natural History Museums (Oxford) and more recently On Monsters: an Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (Oxford). He is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago and Fellow of the LAS Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture at Columbia. You can find out more about him at his website, www.stephenasma.com. Copies of his books will be available for sale and signing at the event."

Friday, April 23rd

Hart Island: An American Cemetery
Time: 7:30 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Curious Expeditions / Atlas Obscura

"Only a few miles from Manhattan is Hart Island, America’s largest cemetery and the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. Serving as New York Cities potter’s field for over a 100 years, more than 800,000 people are buried here. People unclaimed by relatives, who can not afford a private funeral, and all the John and Jane Doe’s of New York City are buried on Hart Island. In 2005 alone there were 1,419 burials, including “826 adults, 546 infants and stillborn babies, and 47 burials of dismembered body parts.” The graves are dug by Riker’s Island prisoners and the records are managed by the prison. For a very long time being buried on Hart Island was to be forgotten. Melinda Hunt is the director of the Hart Island Project. She is a current recipient of two consecutive (2008-2010) Canada Council for the Arts Awards for Artists and Community Collaboration in Integrated Arts. Melinda published a book Hart Island in 1998 in collaboration with Joel Sternfeld and co-produced a documentary Hart Island: An American Cemetery with Banff New Media Institute and composer Fred Hersch. The Hart Island Project: Buried in Bureaucracy is her current on-line initiative that seeks to make the largest cemetery in America visible and accessible. Toward that end, a digital database of burial records is being assembled by volunteers based on 65,000 records received through Freedom of Information. Currently over 30,000 names have been entered in the database which is free to registered users."

Join Melinda on Friday, April 23rd to hear her talk about Hart Island, her experience working on the Hart Island Project and for a screening of her documentary.

And don't forget to check out the current exhibit!

For more information, see observatoryroom.org

The Observatory is located at Nevins off of Union. Enter through the alley way at Proteus Gowanus.

Congress for Curious People at Coney Island this Weekend

Calling all Coney Lovers and lovers of curious things, check out this fab event out at Coney Island USA this weekend! This event is partially put on by the people at the Observatory over here in Gowanus and also Morbid Anatomy.

Date: Saturday April 17th and Sunday April 18th

"The Congress for Curious People is a 2-day symposium exploring education and spectacle, collectors of curiosities, historical fairground displays and more, in conjunction with The Coney Island Museum. The symposium will feature panels of humanities scholars discussing with the audience the intricacies of collecting, the history of ethnographic display, the interface of spectacle and education, and the politics of bodily display in the amusement parks, museums, and fairs of the Western world. Also on view in the museum will be “The Collector’s Cabinet,” an installation of astounding artifacts held in private collections. In conjunction with the events at the Coney Island Museum, Observatory’s Gallery space will host “The Secret Museum,” an exhibition exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world.

The Congress for Curious People will serve as an academic counterpoint to Coney Island’s Congress of Curious Peoples, which Coney Island USA has convened since 2007 at Sideshows by the Seashore. In the past, the Congress has included performances by artists like Joe Coleman and Harley Newman, feats of strength, and world-record breaking attempts, among others."

I'm bummed I will be out of town at another curious place. The place that spawned John Waters and Edith Massey. Baltimore!!! Can't wait!

Thursday Night Happenings

So much going on this Thursday, here is just a few.

I am sure by now you have all heard that the Gowanus Canal has gotten Superfunded! If you are not sure what this is all about, click on the youtube video at the top right to see community outrage before the desigination and understand why we will all be celebrating tomorrow night after the meeting!!! I have been listening to the Mayor's office whining about how their plan is quicker today and all I can do is laugh. All I have to say is, "Where were you before the Toll Brothers wanted to build?" And to the Toll Brothers."Thanks for pulling out of your project even though there is no stigma here, the canal has ALWAYS been polluted, people know it and live here anyway but in buildings that were built over 100 years ago. The gall that you guys had to dig into the ground and say that it's not that polluted is astounding. For once the truth has prevailed!"

OK so back to Thursday..

1. Thee EPA meeting.
The EPA will meet with the public to discuss "upcoming activity" along the Gowanus.
When: Thursday, March 4, 2010
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: P.S. 58 auditorium
330 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY
(entrance to the school is on Carroll Street)

*Should be a media circus so I advise you to get there early.

2. Melanie Hope Greenberg, illustrator of the fab book >Mermaids on Parade and friend of F.I.B will be at Superfine in Dumbo for the March 2010 Women's History Month Celebration where Brooklyn Honors Local Artists and Literature. Superfine is a at 126 Front Street Dumbo Brooklyn 718.243.9005
Opening Reception March 4, 6-8pm


3.This one sounds positively gothic!“Death Becomes Them”: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious; a reading and lecture at Proteus Gowanus.

Nevins Street and Union (entrance in the alley on Nevins)

Time: 8:00
Admission: $5.00
Read the gory details here

4. Jenna Hunt Astrology readings at Beast Restaurant & Bar in Prospect Heights!
Info here.