Posts Tagged ‘Observatory’

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory Travels to Manhattan with 3-Part “Body as Funhouse Mirror” Lecture Series!

Posted on January 23rd, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments


Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory is coming to The Big City (New York City, that is), with 3 lectures to be hosted by the Cornelia Street Café, care of our good buddies (and co-Observatarians) The Hollow Earth Society. The theme of the lecture grouping is “Body as Funhouse Mirror,” and features past favorite Observatory speakers Amy Herzog, Mark Dery and Sharon Shattuck.

Full details on the series can be found below; hope to see you at one or all three of these great encore lectures!

The Pornographic Arcades Project: Adaptation, Automation, and the Evolution of Times Square (1965-1975)
Amy Herzog
Date: Sunday, January 29
Time: 6:00 PM
Admission: $10

Herzog’s talk challenges our notion of what makes a city (sex)—and who constitutes a voyeur: Motion picture “peeping” machines have existed since the birth of cinema, and were often stocked with salacious titles. Public arcades devoted to pornographic peep booths only began to appear in the late 1960s, however, although once established, they proliferated wildly, becoming ubiquitous features in urban landscapes… The Pornographic Arcades Project is a work-in-progress, asking what a study of pornographic peep show arcades might reveal about the cultural imaginary of the late twentieth century.

Amy Herzog is associate professor of media studies and coordinator of the film studies program at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film. She recently curated “Peeps,” an exhibition at The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, on the dialogue between pornographic peep loops and contemporary art practices.
(qc-cuny.academia.edu/AmyHerzog)

Parasites: A User’s Guide
Sharon Shattuck
Date: Sunday, February 26
Time: 6:00 PM
Admission: $10

Parasites challenges the notions of body, friend, inside, and out—and it’s funny! (Not to mention a tad horrific…) The word “parasite” comes with loads of vile connotations, but in nature, nothing is purely good or evil. In the 27-minute experimental documentary Parasites: A User’s Guide, Shattuck embarks on a journey to decode some of the most misunderstood creatures on earth. The dramatic rise in autoimmune diseases, asthma, and allergies since the turn of the last century has confounded scientists, but some researchers think they have uncovered the key to controlling the skyrocketing rates: tiny parasitic worms called helminths… Through the seeming oxymoron of the “helpful parasite,” Sharon questions the nature of our relationship with parasites—and suggests a new paradigm for the future.

Sharon Shattuck is a producer/director/animator with Sweet Fern Productions, the production company she founded. Her previous experience includes work with the Smithsonian Institute, the Field Museum, NPR’s On The Media, and internships with WNYC’s Radiolab, and the BBC World Service/Stakeholder Forum. She has an undergraduate degree in forest ecology and a graduate degree in documentary and broadcast journalism. Her first film, the short Parasites: A User’s Guide (2010), was an official selection of the Traverse City Film Festival, the Camden International Film Festival, the Michigan Film Festival, and the International Science Film Festival. In addition to her work with Sweet Fern, she is a member of the creative team at Wicked Delicate Films.(sweetfernproductions.com / wickedelicate.com)

The Pathological Sublime and The Anatomical Unconscious
Mark Dery
Date: Sunday, April 29
Time: 6:00 PM
Admission: $10

Celebrating the publication of his essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (University of Minnesota Press), cultural critic and cult author Mark Dery will lecture— with unforgettable slides—on the hallucinatory Crypt of the Cappuchin monks in Rome, the uncanny wax mannequins at La Specola in Florence, and the 19th-century Chinese artist Lam Qua’s paintings of patients with eye-poppingly bizarre tumors, which so fascinated Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. that he wrote an article exhorting all “worshipers of morbid anatomy” to see the paintings, a textbook example of what Holmes called “the pathological sublime.” Join Mark for a dark ride through the Pathological Sublime and the Anatomical Unconscious, and pick up a copy of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, the book Boing Boing called “an intellectual journey through our darkest desires and strangest inclinations.”

Mark Dery is a cultural critic. He is best known for his writings on the politics of popular culture in books such as The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, Flame Wars, and Culture Jamming. He has been a professor of journalism at New York University, a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, and a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. His latest book, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, is “a head-spinning intellectual ride through American dreams and American nightmares” and will be available at his Cornelia Street Observatory engagement. (thoughtcatalog.com/author/mark-dery)

If you love Radio Lab, Cabinet magazine, the Surreal, the quirky, and the macabre, you’ll definitely dig Cornelia Street Observatory.

All shows are Sunday at 6 PM, tickets are $10. Please RSVP to 212.989.9319. For more, click here.

Image: from the website for Cornelia Street Café.

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“Lunation: Art on the Moon” Opening Party, Observatory, This Saturday, January 7

Posted on January 5th, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

This Saturday at Observatory we will he hosting the opening party for Lunation, our first group-curated show. Admission is free, and the art will be intriguingly wide-ranging. I have a few pieces in the show, as do many other familiar faces.

Full details follow; hope very much to see you there!

LUNATION
Art on the Moon
Observatory’s first group-curated show • January 7 – February 26, 2012

Opening Party: This Saturday, January 7th, 7–10 PM, FREE
Closing Party/Observatory’s 3rd Anniversary Fundraiser: Saturday, February 18th, 8 PM/$20
Show Viewing Hours: Thursday & Friday 3–6 PM, Saturday & Sunday 12–6 PM

Artists and scientists have always been attracted to the moon…
Our closest celestial neighbor, the earth’s little sister, the moon creates the tides and illuminates the woods at night. For centuries, humanity believed the moon provided a key into the invisible realm: it called out the beast within us, freeing us to act as wolves, to run, to dance, to chant—and sometimes (as in Duncan Jones’ Moon) to split in two, to find our double, our changeling moon-self.

Is the moon home to life? Today we know it isn’t, but even as of 1830, speculation was rampant that the moon was inhabited by Christianized bat-people who worshiped in great ziggurats. (See The Sun and the Moon by Observatory alumnus Matthew Goodman for details.) Still, life comes to the moon. We know the moon contains frozen water, and we dream of using it as our jumping-off point for visiting even more alien vistas.

Down here, despite all the prowess and nuance of our latest telescopes, earthlings still look up naked-eyed with excitement at the full moon. Lovers and children gaze up at its slowly blinking façade in mute wonder. Artists portray the moon as a source of danger and power, and latter-day sorceresses and men of magic call up to that heavenly lamp, seeking to transcend the ordinary night. For them, the old myths have not changed so much: the moon is still a secret mirror, showing in pale light how the familiar contains always an element of the unexpected…

Artists Included

LUNATION Dates to Save:

  • Sat., Jan. 7 – LUNATION opening! Come drink wine with us and celebrate the many phases/faces of the moon—including ones you’ve never seen before
  • Sat., Jan. 22 – Moon Magick ritual workshop presented by Pam Grossman of Phantasmaphile
  • Friday, Feb. 17: The Moon and Its Closest Inhabitants: A 3D Slideshow with 3D Legend Gerald Marks
  • Sat., Feb. 18 – 3rd Anniversary Observatory Fundraiser Party: Help support your favorite interdisciplinarian art, science, & occult event space!

You can find out more about Observatory–including directions–by clicking here.

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Vanitas Drawing Featuring Real Human Skeleton, With Classically Trained Artist Lado Pochkhua: Observatory, 6 Mondays Beginning Jan. 9

Posted on December 30th, 2011 • Filed under Learn • No Comments


We have a new art class beginning on Monday, January 9th that I am very very excited about. Lado Pochkhua, an accomplished classically trained artist from Eastern Europe (see following bio) and artist in residence at our sister space Proteus Gowanus will, using a variety of artifacts drawn from The Morbid Anatomy Library, teach students to create and draw their own “vanitas”–or mortality-themed still life–compositions. The main star of said Vanitas composition will be the genuine human skeleton recently donated to the library, which you can see in the photograph above.

Full details follow; this is sure to be a awfully terrific class. Hope very much to see you there!

Vanitas Drawing Class with Classically Trained Artist Lado Pochkhua
Date: 6 Mondays, January 9th through February 13th
(Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Jan. 30, Feb. 6 & Feb. 13)
Time: 7:30-10:00 PM
Admission: $110 (classes can also be taken individually on a drop-in basis for $20 per class)
*** This class has a 10 person size limit; Please RSVP for full course at morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com
 This class is part of the Morbid Anatomy Art Academy

Vanitas is a genre of still-life painting that flourished in the Netherlands in the early 17th century. A vanitas painting contains collections of objects symbolic of the inevitability of death and the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures, exhorting the viewer to consider mortality and to repent.

This Vanitas course will comprise six drawing lessons in which, using artifacts drawn from The Morbid Anatomy Library, students will learn how to create and draw their own “vanitas” composition. The ultimate goal of the class will be not only the creation of this particular drawing, but also understanding of the principles of classical drawing. The instructor will also share historical images throughout the course.

No previous drawing experience necessary; all levels are welcome!

MATERIALS
Please bring with you to class:

  • One drawing pad at least 18″ X 20″ with a firm back; paper Fabriano or Arches, or Strathmore 400
  • Pencil: HB, 2B, 4B, simple graphite pencils, (no charcoal !!!)
  • Eraser

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Lado Pochkhua was born in Sukhumi, Georgia in 1970. He received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Tbilisi State Art Academy in Georgia in 2001. He currently divides his time between New York and Tbilisi, Georgia.

Selected Exhibitions:

  • 2011 “Works from the Creamer Street Studio,” at the Literature Museum, Tbilisi Georgia (solo show)
  • 2010 “Paradise ” at Proteus Gowanus, New York
  • 2009 “Prague Biennale 4,” Georgian pavilion
  • 2009 “The Art of returning Home,” Arsi Gallery, Tbilisi Georgia (solo show)
  • 2008 Gardens, Ships, and Lessons, K. Petrys Ház Gallery, Budapest, Hungary (solo show) Exhibition of Georgian Artists, Festival OFF EUROPA ditorei Gallerie NBL, Leipzig, Germany
  • 2004 Artists of Georgia, Georgian Embassy, London, UK
  • 2003 Curriculum Vitae: a retrospective of 20th century Georgian art, Caravasla Tbilisi History Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia, Waiting for the Barbarians, Gallery Club 22, Tbilisi, Georgia (solo show)
  • 2001 21 Georgian Artists, UNESCO, Paris, France
  • 1998 Magical Geometry, TMS Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia (solo show)

There is a 10 person limit for this class; you can sign up by sending an email to morbidanatomy [at] gmail.com. This class is one of the newest installments in the series newly termed The Morbid Anatomy Art Academy; to find out more about that–including a full class list thus far–click here.

Images: Top image: Still-Life with a Skull, “Vanitas” by Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674) via Wikimedia; Bottom image: Skeleton from The Morbid Anatomy Library who will be featured in our Vanitas compositions

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Morbid Anatomy and Observatory Holiday Fair, THIS WEEKEND December 17th and 18th

Posted on December 18th, 2011 • Filed under Learn • No Comments


This weekend, why not come by The Morbid Anatomy Library for the second annual Morbid Anatomy and Observatory Second Annual Holiday Fair? Just a few things you will find here: anatomical blocks, macabre drawings, taxidermy, tableaux, ceramic reliquary bat heads, wet specimens, photographs, tons of books, and much, much more! You will also find free beer complements of our sponsor Brooklyn Brewery.

Full details follow; Hope very much to see you there.

2011 Morbid Anatomy and Observatory Holiday Fair
Holiday fair with multiple vendors serving your alternative holiday needs including taxidermy, miniature insect tableaux and more
Dates: Saturday, December 17 & Sunday, December 18
Time: Noon – 6:00 PM
Admission: Free
Free beer courtesy of our sponsor Brooklyn Brewery

Please join us on December 17th and 18th for a holiday fair presented in conjunction with partner spaces Proteus Gowanus and Observatory. Here you will find such covetables as steampunk jewelry, anatomical blocks, macabre drawings, ceramic reliquary bat heads, wet specimens, photographs, and books, books and more books, all to music DJed by Lado Pochkhua and washed down with beer provided by our sponsor Brooklyn Brewery. This will be the perfect place to purchase unique, niche, and off-the-beaten-path gifts for those hard-to-please folks on your shopping list! Hope to see you there.

For directions, click here. To see some press coverage of the fair, click here, here, and here.

Image: Crocheted Skulls by Dewey Decimal Crafts, a featured seller at last year’s fair. More of her work can be found here.

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