NYAB Event - "A. Object Migration" Exhibition

"A. Object Migration" Exhibition

Proteus Gowanus

This event has ended.

When we think about migration, 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. We asked our community of friends and collaborators and all others to contribute objects with migratory stories for this show. With over 50 contributors, 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 these objects 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.

B. The Bureau of Unknown Destinations
As part of Object Migrations, we introduce The Bureau of Unknown Destinations, offering temporary displacements to members of the public seeking to experiment with their migratory impulses.

Make a booking for a day’s journey, and you’ll be presented with a free round trip ticket for a train adventure (along with a notebook and a small, somewhat absurd, task). Begin your day by tearing open a sealed envelope and revealing the mystery of where you will find yourself by noon. Set forth, free of decisions, into the great (or perhaps, in this case, the small) unknown. Test your sense of destiny. Have lunch someplace new.

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.

Object Migrations is presented by Proteus Gowanus with curatorial assistance from the artist Sal Randolph, creator of the Free Biennale, Free Manifesta, Free Words and Manifesta, and from Smudge Studio, creator of the book Geologic City: A Field Guide to the GeoArchitecture of New York, exploring the convergence of the geologic and the human, and of Friends of the Pleistocene. Sal will also be our Artist-In-Residence for the duration of the Objects Show. We also wish to thank Twig Terraria, on 4th Ave and President, for assisting us with our display by providing glass terraria.