Join us for an evening of film about forced relocation of populations in Iran and its impact on the music of the region.  George Murer, CUNY PhD Student in ethnomusicology, presents footage he has recorded and collected on the music of Khorasanian Kurds, whose ancestors were relocated to Iran’s Northeastern frontier by a succession of Persian shahs. Next, we will air the documentary Afro-Iranian Lives, by Behnaz Mirzai, exploring the world, rich in music and ritual, of Iranians descended from African slaves.

The program will include approximately one hour of video and 16mm film projection, followed by discussion led by Murer.

Proteus Gowanus and the Museum of Matches invite you to join us for the opening reception of The Berlin Tunnel Project, an installation inspired by a declassified CIA document describing 
a tunnel that was dug from West to East Berlin during the Cold War. The Museum of Matches, a one-room Cold War museum, occasionally invites visitors to respond to Cold War documents, photographs and memorabilia. The Berlin Tunnel Project is a collaborative installation by three artists whose countries of origin comprise the three countries involved in the Berlin Tunnel episode: Tatiana Istomina (Soviet Union), Barbara Westermann (Germany), Sasha Chavchavadze (United States).

The Berlin Tunnel

In 1954, the CIA began to dig a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin for the purposes of tapping into Soviet phone cables. The completed tunnel took a year to construct and was 1,476  feet long. 3,100 tons of soil was removed and the tunnel was lined with 125 tons of steel.  The KGB, however, had been informed of the project from the start by a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) named George Blake. Most likely the KGB did not reveal that they knew about the tunnel to protect their mole. In April 1956 the KGB “discovered” the tunnel and released the information to the world press. American newspapers generally marveled that the CIA was capable of such a remarkable clandestine maneuver.

A declassified, redacted CIA document describing the tunnel can be found on the web. It describes in fascinating detail the history of the project from its inception to its completion, including intelligence derived from the project and articles in the American press after the tunnel was revealed to the public.

Cold War Cocktails will be served.

Museum of Matches is open to the public on Fridays, 3 – 6 p.m. or by appointment.

Join us for wine and conversation with Leslie-Arlette Boyce, lead author of The Glory of Brooklyn’s Gowanus: Legacy, Industry, and Artistry. Boyce will discuss her book, its images and local history from the arrival of the Dutch West India Company to the present day. She will be joined by Chris Matias, founder and director of the Redhawk Native American Arts Council, who will discuss the continuing presence of native americans in the Gowanus area. Join us for wine and conversation.

The Glory Of Brooklyn’s Gowanus begins with the arrival of the Dutch West India Company, encounters with the indigenous population and the land sales made, early slavery in Brooklyn and the Revolutionary War. The text in this section is surrounded by reproductions of early maps and lithographs. The second section of the publication is primarily comprised of archival photographs, and bills of sale from nineteenth century industries along the shores of the Gowanus Canal that had a hand in creating the now infamous pollution. In addition, section two of The Glory of Gowanus takes a look into the lives of the people who called the surrounding area home through the nineteen sixties. The third section focuses on local artists of multiple ethnicities and the work they created that was inspired by the post-Industrial beauty of the Canal. The book was co-authored by local historian Brian Merlis.

Book your travel up to two weeks in advance at the Bureau’s offices, located at Proteus Gowanus.  Offices are open most Saturdays 1-5, as well as irregularly on other days, and always by appointment.

The Bureau of Unknown Destinations is part of a three month artist’s residency by Sal Randolph at Proteus Gowanus, extending through mid-April. Proteus Gowanus is an interdisciplinary gallery and reading room located on the shores of the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn. Their yearlong theme is Migration.

Join us for wine and conversation at the opening of the Object Migration exhibition. This show is a transitory museum of terrestrial transitions with over 50 objects and their migratory stories brought to us by you, our friends and collaborators.  Some objects speak of intensely intimate moments while others tell geologic tales of perfect indifference. 

When we think about migration (as we have been doing all year), we tend to focus on people and creatures, the mobile inhabitants of the planet. But life and motion create products and byproducts: tools, waste, the implements of culture. These are often the things that drive us onward in our migrations. Their stories are ineluctably connected with our own. At the points where our stories intersect with objects, much is revealed, not only about our personal trajectories but also about our precarious relationship with the environment.

We sent out the following message: “Do you have an object whose story you would like to share? An heirloom, an artwork, a toothbrush, a stone? An object which has inspired you, dominated you, educated you, exalted or degraded you? For our second exhibition of the Migration year, we invite you to lend us your object and include with it everything you know about it. We are especially interested in the part of the story that is the object’s alone: it’s history as material, as an economic entity, as waste, or as the impetus for other migratory tales.”

This query brought us over 50 objects which are the jumping off point for a three-month exploration of  Object Migrations.

The objects on display range from a 50 million year old “dinosaur fart” (or gas bubble) to a collection of wild bird’s stomach contents collected in the early 20th C for “scientific” purposes. There are also talismans, mundane objects with secret meanings, things of beauty and much more.

We will view them as independent beings with stories of their own, stories that began before the object’s encounter with its current owner and that will likely continue long after they part. The stories may migrate into the economic, the industrial, the political, the historical, the geologic, the environmental and so on as visitors add to the stories on display with information they may have about the object in question.

Proteus Gowanus and Morbid Anatomy Library will co-host lantern slides of Ellis Island immigrants presented by Barbara Mathe of the American Museum of Natural History along with a screening of Meredith Monk’s short film, ‘Ellis Island’ (1981), performed and filmed in the island’s ruins before the start of renovations for the Ellis Island Museum, which opened in 1990.  Ellis Island was the gateway for the majority of immigrants to the United States, processing over 12 million immigrants from 1892 until 1954.

Part I: The Lantern Slides
The extensive lantern slide collection at the American Museum of Natural History Library includes a small collection of images taken at Ellis Island. Many of the images can be attributed to Augustus Sherman, Chief Clerk at the Immigration Station and many are hand colored.

Barbara Mathé, Museum Archivist at the American Museum of Natural History, will show a number of the original slides and talk about how these images may have been presented and perceived in the early 20th century at the time when, as noted in a 1907 National Geographic article, “No migration in history is comparable to the great hordes that have crossed the Atlantic during the past 20 years to enter our territory.”

How and why these images came to be included in the AMNH’s larger collection is unclear but are believed to be part of an extensive program of illustrated lantern slide lectures that the Museum initiated as a broad educational project.

Barbara Mathé has worked in Special Collections in the American Museum of Natural History Library since 1988.  Her research focus is photographic collections as seen through the historical contexts in which they were created and subsequently viewed.  She was co-curator with Thomas Ross Miller for a major temporary exhibit at the AMNH in 1997, “Drawing Shadows to Stone: Photographing North Pacific Peoples” and they are co-authors of a volume of the same name produced to accompany the exhibit.  She is presently working on a book about the photographs taken by Jessie Tarbox Beals of the ethnographic displays at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

Part II: “Ellis Island”, a 1981 film by Meredith Monk
A film about the experience of immigrants entering America at the turn of the century, Ellis Island was performed and filmed amid the island’s ruins. The film was awarded the CINE Golden Eagle, special jury prize from the Atlanta and San Francisco Film and Video Festivals.

Ellen Fisher and Pablo Vela, performers in the film, will be in attendance at the screening.

Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, choreographer, filmmaker, and creator of new opera and music theater works. During a career spanning five decades, Monk has been acclaimed by audiences and critics as a major creative force in the performing arts. www.meredithmonk.org

We invite you to do your holiday shopping in a certain charming back alley where free beer and music will be served. It’s time for the annual Holiday Shopping Fair at Proteus Gowanus, where the gifts for sale are strange, unusual, hand-made or intellectually stimulating. You will find reasonably priced art, artifacts and books, hand-made crafts and baked goods too. Embroidered pouches and hats and silver jewelry made by artisans from the Republic of Georgia, historical postcards of the Gowanus, handmade dolls, Fixers Collective T-shirts and mended umbrellas, books published by our publishing arm, Proteotypes, unusual new and used books from our yearlong themes, art and artifacts from the Migration exhibition. Come browse, chat and have a drink with us!

Here’s a sampling of items:

Hand-made migration belt buckles
Nail-studded ceramic boxes
Globe of the world
Historical Gowanus postcard sets
Button necklaces
Brooklyn Botanical Notecards
Honey and Honey-products by HiRiseHive
Cheap international dolls
Hat Pins
Jewelry and crafts from the Republic of Georgia
Numerous used books from Proteus yearlong themes
Gowanus note cards
Bio-ephemera specimen jewelery
Lewis & Clark songs

PLUS
Weird Stuff from Morbid Anatomy Library
Books published by Proteotypes including:
The Museum of Matches by Sasha Chavchavadze
My Man and Other Critical Fictions by Wendy Walker

AND SO MUCH MORE!