News

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art at The Chelsea Hotel Presents: Mikael Kennedy · Shoot The Moon · 500 Polaroids.

The Artist's Reception is TODAY Wednesday, 14 April, 6 - 8 PM at the legendary Chelsea Hotel - 222 West 23rd Street, Suite 524.

On view through 2 May. Mondays - Saturdays, 12 noon - 8 pm; Sundays, 12 noon - 6 pm

"In 2002 I was twenty-three years old. David Lamb and I were leaving the blood bank in Seattle where we went twice a week to make 45 dollars selling our blood...I sold my blood to buy expired Polaroid film where I could find it, and when that didn't work I would steal it... We had no jobs, we had no plan...I told David that this was to be the plan: No plan. I said we'd 'Shoot The Moon.' Like in the game of Hearts, you collect all the bad cards you win, you get almost all of them but not all, you lose. So I started collecting my cards in the frame of a Polaroid." - Mikael Kennedy

Shoot the Moon consists of 500 Polaroids taken between 1999 and 2009. As he moved about - living and traveling in New England, driving from Massachusetts to Washington, hanging around Portland, Oregon, even flying off to Serbia, and then coming to New York - Kennedy photographed with an obsessive intensity. This exhibition represents a selection from the thousands of pictures he took during his wanderings. His passion for photographing his friends and family, the places he encountered, is matched and enabled by his love affair with the Polaroid process itself.

Also happening today: “Hello World!” by Christopher Baker, On view at Visual Studies Workshop: April 16–May 23, 2010.

Artist lecture is today, April 14th, at 7pm at VSW in Rochester, New York.

Visual Studies Workshop will exhibit digital artworks by Christopher Baker that use our online identities and social networks as materials in the work. Baker will exhibit three pieces, “Hello World!: Or How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise,” an immersive multi-channel video installation made from around 5,000 video diaries found online by the artist; “Murmur Study,” an installation featuring a computer program to scan for Tweets and Facebook status updates in real time that print out and pile up in the exhibit;  and “My Map,” a self-portrait of Baker’s social network made with custom software from his 60,000 plus archived e-mails.

There was just recently some very exciting Breaking News out of New Haven: that an agreement has been made between Lee Friedlander and the Yale University Art Gallery/Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to permanently house the photographer’s archives. This includes his negatives, letters and some 40, 000 contact sheets of his life’s work, plus a selection of 2,000 images from the most recent bodies of work from the last twenty years. We’re talking master prints of every image in every book he’s published since 1996. For the prolific Mr. Lee, that’s a lot of books. Some interesting, leser-known stuff coming our way are pictures he made in the offices of Dreyfus Investments and also wild pictures made at Fashion Week 2006, which appeared in the NY Times, slide show still online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/magazine/15style.html?_r=1 . The pictures contain a lot of tangled blonde hair strands, flash cords and long, long limbs.

The work and archives will be accessible to students and faculty, as well as to scholars. One of the things that is especially interesting about our being able to poke around his materials, is that we’ll be able to see first-hand his rigorous editing process. As I understand it, he takes copy photos of his best images from any given roll (or project?), so that this new roll of film will be contacted to represent an edit of just the best images. The “new” contacts are cataloged and filed and represent just the most successful frames, so he doesn’t have to search through all the “junk.” As far as I know, this working process is pretty special, but it makes sense, if you think about it.

The archive purchase has come during this recession, which is a miracle, really, since some institutions are having to divest artwork in order to just cover operating expenses. I think a great deal of credit for the constant forward motion at YUAG goes to the efforts of the museum’s Director, Jock Reynolds, and his commitment to photography as art, as well as to the tirelessness of his curatorial staff, like curator Joshua Chuang. I know it may seem like the photo-is-art argument is long over, but I don’t think it really is when it comes to that “old school,” “New Documents” photography - that work made out-in-the-world, and not conceived of and created in a studio or via collage. Friedlander’s work is most often associated with the phrase, “The Social Landscape,” and is entirely made out of the stuff of our culture, so utterly American.

This new collection follows in the footsteps of the gallery’s less recent acquisition of the life’s work of Robert Adams. That collection has led to reissues of Adams’ most important books, as well as an upcoming, traveling retrospective show. (As we all know, Moma already did the major Friedlander show and that chunky catalog.) And yes, there will be future Friedlander books coming out of this.

As a teacher, I have been honored and excited to introduce my undergraduate students to an artist’s work in person, not behind glass, and not on a wall. Sure, they still can’t touch it or chew gum over it, but there is nothing but air separating us from the print, from the object the photographer conceived of and made, most likely printed, touched and signed. I think it changes the way an 18-year-old understands photography when he/she gets to see something like that, and to not have to solely rely on 72 dpi projections or dusty slides. During a class visit to the Beinecke, one of my students, a poet, damn near had a conniption when we came across an actual, physical note Diane Arbus had written to Stieglitz. Maybe they’re spoiled, but I say, keep the spoils coming.

For more details, and to see a recent photo of Friedlander in his jam-packed studio, visit: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/art-news/2010/04/02/art-gallery-nets-famed-photo-archive/

And one of my favorite blogs (besides Daylight!) that you should pore over is the Beinecke’s Blog, a veritable cabinet of online curiosities:

http://beinecke.wordpress.com/

Inge Morath (1923–2002) was born in Graz, Austria. She studied languages in Berlin, and after the Second World War became a translator and journalist.

Traveling alone most of the time and wearing the traditional chador, Inge Morath went on assignment in the Middle East in 1956 for Holiday magazine. Her photographs of Iran, many never before published, have been collected in a new book, Inge Morath: Iran Featuring 320 tritone plates organized chronologically to depict the full range of Morath’s travels, Iran includes essays by Azar Nafisi and Monika Faber.

Morath’s subjects range from politics to religion and from work to commerce; from the Shah’s palace to the nomad’s tent to the Zoroaster’s sacred shrine. She entered deeply into the culture of Iran and the lives of the people she photographed in order to document, as she noted, “the continuity - or lack of it - between past and present.” John P. Jacob, director of the Inge Morath Foundation, writes in the book’s preface that her photographs convey “the richly layered history - sometimes conflicting and sometimes harmonious - of an ancient culture in transition.”

Morath’s photographs provide readers with a glimpse into a country that has been profoundly transformed since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and Iran is window into the past which provides a unique perspective on Iran in the present. As Azar Nafisi writes in the afterword, “What gives these pictures value is not the fact that we see something that still exists, but that they still reveal something significant, something essential that goes beyond the boundaries of time. . . . The moments she has recorded are enduring not just because they’re showing the 1950s, but because there’s a trace of the 1950s in the present. That is the magic of it.”

Iran by Inge Morath, published by Steidl / www.steidlville.com

I had the pleasure of meeting Joerg Colberg (of the venerable Conscientious blog) in person during the portfolio reviews at FotoFest last week. We enjoyed discussing photography together and decided to keep the conversation going via email. Every other week we will co-host a ping-pong discussion on our blogs. In this first edition one we discuss the portfolio reviews themselves and touch on a number of other photo related issues:

JC: We both attended the Houston Fotofest portfolio reviews, and there are a couple things I thought I want to talk to you about, to see what you think about it. First, you've done the reviews more often than me - I was a total newbie - so your experience might be different from mine. Even though I enjoyed talking to the photographers and seeing a lot of good new work, I was a bit put off by the general atmosphere, which reminded me of, well, a meat market, almost like the reverse of events like the Armory Show, where the actual art in question is relegated to be something secondary. I'm curious about your impression.

The second thing is that someone said - I forgot who it was – that there simply are too many photographers (I think he said "too many cameras," but that's just the same), and I remember when I heard that I thought "No, there aren't." I know given I didn't like the meat-market aspect of the reviews I should just agree, but then even though there are many photographers, maybe dealing with it in this kind of fashion isn't necessarily the best idea any longer. Are there too many photographers?

 MI: Yes it is funny to be put in the position of sitting at a table for eight hours as photographers approach one after another. I think i did over 65 twenty minute sessions over the four days... The overall experience of talking with so many photographers is fantastic especially when I find some work to get excited about. Among many others I enjoyed seeing the work of Robert Knoth, Susan Dobson, Phillip Toledano, Mike Osborne, and Eamon Macmahon. There were quite a few other projects that showed promise as well. Having the opportunity to speak with the photographers one by one was enriching and I also enjoyed hanging out with all of the other reviewers. With a photo event as epic as Fotofest its ironic when the work sometimes feels secondary to the experience. My hunch is that it's more intense for us reviewers who fly in, work hard for four days and then fly out. Those that stay longer and the lucky folks in Houston can make there way through all of the exhibitions and events with less urgency.

As to your next question are there too many photographers or, perhaps, too many photos being taken? It does seem as if more and more people are perpetually snapping photographs, looking through a lens of one sort or another. We are awash with representation and the images we make speak a type of language. For me looking at photographs is a type of reading, a visual experience of communication and idea sharing. Photographers, and other image makers, have the ability to participate in the global visual dialogue and collectively serve as a way to speak back to the aesthetics of advertising and other vested interests.

The increasing number of events worldwide that center around the exhibition of photographs, and the portfolio reviews that often complement them, speak to the growing interest of people to engage with photo-based media. Overall I feel lucky to be involved with these events where I have an opportunity to see what is being made, how people are using the language of photography to tell stories.

I noticed that you now offer private consultations to photographers who want focused critical feedback, how do these reviews compare to an experience like FotoFest?

JC: Those reviews are very different because everything is (currently) done in written form. I decided to offer these kinds of reviews when I noted that there was actually some demand for it; and I thought that for the kind of portfolio review that I like you don't necessarily have to sit opposite each other. The way this works is that I ask the photographer to send me a portfolio of images, a statement, plus a set of questions that they want to get answered. I then take everything and react to it, in writing. When I send what I produced back to the photographer I tell him or her that I'm available for follow-up questions. So you essentially don't have to travel, and if you got more time to think – and that's true for both the photographer and me.

Needless to say, this only works well for a photographer who wants some sort of critical feedback; but I do think it has its advantages. There's no arbitrary twenty-minute limit, and you can really ask almost as much as you want (there's a ten question limit, but usually people send less). And crucially, I think there's something to be gained from having a response in writing, since you can go back to it after the initial “impact”.

I do think that this kind of process might constitute a good addition to events such as Fotofest, especially since more and more people want to have somebody comment on their work. But of course I might be deluding myself?

Let me come back to where you said that more and more people are snapping photographs. I don't know whether that's true. It might be. Maybe the simple fact that snapping a digital photo is more convenient than taking one on film is the reason. But have things really changed on a fundamental level? I actually don't think they have. I chatted to a friend of mine the other day – he teaches photography in Pittsburgh – and we ended up talking about old slides, which you can now buy very cheaply on Ebay (which is what I do), or you can find them (often for free) on Craig's List. I don't know whether those old slides are so different from what people do now: People taking lots and lots of photographs, and eventually, they are to be discarded. And I still need to be convinced that the increase in quantity really changes anything. Replace digital files that nobody looks at with slides in a box that nobody looks at, and we're still in the same situation.

In that sense, Flickr really is just a shared repository for your digital slides. And you can go a step further and go to the times when everybody got prints made, to be stored in shoe boxes. If you feel bold, you can even look at the boxes of tintypes people used to have. It seems that people have always been hoarding photographs – and they have always not looked at the vast majority of them more than once.

But maybe I'm wrong, and there is some change. I'm just curious what the change is.

MI: Well the most obvious difference would be that the physical limitations of these stored photos, rotting in shoe boxes, under beds and in closets have been relegated into the living archive of the internet where they are publicly accessible.

Its true that people have been shooting snapshots for years of travel, family, lovers - typical stuff. However I think as the technology has become more accessible making images has become more and more inseparable from everyday experience. Kodak's familiar marketing campaign 'Push the Button and We Will Do the Rest' helped to democratize the technology of image making and leaned away from technical proficiency and toward the freely expressive, or reactionary, snapshot. I think what you have now is this same idea magnified by the increased proliferation of imaging technologies. Perhaps more interesting is the near instant ability of image makers to store and share these photographs online. Flickr is one example of a truly amazing social phenomenon with amazing potential import. I am most excited about the potential of these communication technologies to circumvent censorship and remain free of the apparatus of state control. When the snap-happy citizen ends up making a historical document, whether its of a Tube bombing in London or a protest in Iran, humanity is richer for it. So, for me its the political potential, ultimately, of these practices that most concern me.

What are your thoughts on 'Citizen Journalism' and, in general, of the place of the amateur or professional photographer? These public review events often provide an "interesting" mix of the layperson, the second career newbie and the seasoned pro. I remember you saying during breakfast on day two, "Its an interesting selection of work, I guess they don't screen" which struck me as hilariously understated...

JC: Not that I want to spend too much time on the technological aspect here, but digital photography has resulted in an ironic change. Photographs in shoe boxes you can look at any time. Photographs on storage media that have become obsolete you can't see any longer. I have some photos on a couple of "floppy disks" (remember those?), and I have no idea how I'll be able to retrieve those.

As for the internet, we're now in the curious situation where essentially the vast majority of images will never be seen again, not because they're inaccessible, but ironically because they are accessible. There are billions of photos online, and who can look at those? Who can sift through those?

I'm also unconvinced that "social media" are really such a big change as far as photography is concerned. It is true, you can share your images with other people very easily - but we're talking about ease here. There's no fundamental change here.

MI:Haha touche! Digital media can become even more inaccessible and obsolete as physical objects. I also have a bunch of floppies and even Zip disks (the eight-track of computer storage) with random stuff on it. Periodically I have the urge to salvage this info in the hopes of stumbling on some fantastic image or piece of writing...

You may be right that fundamentally there has been no paradigm shift just a shift of speed and scale. That is, photographers are still making images and distributing them albeit more and faster. Thanks to keywording and intuitive search there is something to be said for having an image online vs in a shoebox. As long as it is traceable in some fashion there is the chance it will be viewed. The Library of Congress and George Eastman House for example, have been systematically making their archives available on Flickr.

 Im actually really interested in artists who are using the internet as the locus of their work, either for research or as a way to expand the scope of the project: Penelope Umbrico's Flickr mining, Hans Witschi, Susan Meiselas's AKA Kurdistan, Glenn Ligon etc. I think there is something compelling about the constant flood of photos and video responses that seem to represent a vital call-and-response, a participatory model of creative social engagement. Fodder or folly?

JC: Unfortunately, I messed up slightly by hopping on the bus, thinking I'll continue what I started writing later. So let me try to add some things, and then I'll get back to some stuff that I think I might even have changed my mind slightly about (oh, the joy of a bus ride!). First of, the supreme irony of the floppy-disk situation is that these disks contains scans of actual photographs on paper. If I had taken the photos themselves, instead of just scanning them, I wouldn't be in the situation I'm in right now.

You're certainly right about the internet as an archive, and I find that very appealing, given that I spent a lot of time thinking about "data mining" back when I was working in the software industry. But here's my real concern. I'm actually very interested in seeing what you can do with digital media, but I'm not so interested in seeing them do something that could be done before. Sharing your photos online is not that different from sending people prints.

What I'm interested in is how one can use the medium to create something fundamentally new. I have this same problem with "social media:" Most photographers use Facebook basically as a gigantic PR tool. Well, that's great, but when I get the same announcements in an email and see them on their blog, why would I be a Facebook "friend" to see it yet another time? I mean it's great that you can do all that PR easily, but I'm wondering what else you could do.

If you think back to how photographers initially used blogging, they used to post images in almost real time (or maybe once a day). That was fundamentally different from working for some period of time and then producing an edit. In a way, this is the same problem we see with multimedia. Many multimedia productions are essentially just slide shows with audio (often goofy music). That's all nice, but there's got to be more! What is that more? I don't know.

But I'd love to see some fundamental changes. One thing that I can think of which might be a change in a new direction is people having Twitter chats about some topic. Of course, with the 140 character limit, those can be hard to read, but there's something fundamentally new (I know, you could argue it's not, but I think people are onto something).

I mean, this complex is something you seem to be exploring with Daylight Magazine now, where you combine print with a blog and multimedia etc. So you must have some ideas about this?!

I still owe you an answer about the "citizen journalism" idea. I think seeing images that we haven't been able to see before potentially is great, but there are lots of problems here. First of all, providing an image is not journalism. A journalist doesn't just collect images. There needs to be context, and I'm worried that context is becoming ever more marginalized, especially since media organizations are cutting back their budgets (I'm happy to argue in part because they stopped providing context and, instead, tried to cater to people's desire to see entertainment - who needs a newspaper when it's really just a paper copy of some superficial TV news program? In Houston, I got a complimentary copy of "USA Today," and even though I know how bad it is I was still shocked). And then you could ask whether we really need to see photos for everything. I don't know. I think some things we need to see, but some other things we really don't need to see.

I suppose this goes back a little to the social engagement you mentioned earlier. I'm all for social engagement. But social engagement for me is a bit more than sending around links or making "friends" on Facebook (prior to deleting my Facebook account I looked at my list of "friends," and I had literally no idea who some of them were). Like I said doing Twitter chats is something that goes beyond just following someone's Twitter feed. You actively engage, and you really move things away from where you were.  I think that's great. And I think we yet have to see where this all is really going, because right now, the debate is mostly dominated by hype.

So I suppose once I see photographers do something very new somewhere online, for example maybe involving other people in the image-making (in whatever way), then I'd be happy to say that, yes, social networking is finally changing something. I don't think we're there, yet. Of course, with sites like Facebook being abusive corporations, where you sign away your rights, I don't expect a photographer to do anything on Facebook. But there are other ways. What do you think, can you imagine a more interactive Daylight Magazine? Or maybe an issue that's a collaboration - however that might be set up - between hundreds of people?

MI: I guess my initial response would be to look to JPG Magazine (now defunct) which mined readers photos from the web and presented a curated selection. At Daylight we have made a real effort to complement our print edition with increased online content including a daily blog and monthly multimedia releases. We have been more or less successful on both fronts building our web traffic and cultivating an audience of repeat readers that, in turn, help to drive sales.

In terms of innovating within the confines of the medium itself I find this to be very engaging and difficult question. What are the strengths and limitations of blogging? Of multimedia? These are certainly questions Taj Forer (Daylights other founding editor) and myself chew on all of the time. Considering the fundamental shifts in the actual technological interface with these mediums (with the iPhone and now the iPad) I think the doors have only really just opened on these new 'content delivery systems'.

I agree with you that FB promotion is a tired use of the social network. One thing that occured to me recently is that many folks speak of digital communication as antithetical to real, personal contact but perhaps the best thing about FB and Craigslist is that it actually leads, full circle, to more physical encounters. I am not really speaking about the famed Craigslist 'personals' so much as the fact that on FB much of the promo is geared towards opening receptions - that is, promoting an event where you can go, drink some wine and chat with the artist in person. On Craigslist my search for a cheap mountain bike got me an $80 Trek AND a local drinking buddy...

Ultimately I like to think of my work as a publisher of images and ideas as a providing a catalyst for dialogue. We do allow readers to comment on the site and have considered how to work 'live' events into the blog etc. I think Andy Adams and Miki Johnson led an interesting e-conversation on photo-books recently. I also came across a truly immersive multimedia experience on coal mining in China but I can't find it again. In it the viewer followed a map and made decisions in the manner of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Did you ever see it?

And that brings me to the limits of narrative itself, or perhaps, of digital technologies to convey it. We write left-to-right and the web experience is oriented around the reception of the word with the image secondary. Similarly when viewing a web portfolio or even watching a multimedia presentation we expect to have a concrete way to understand it - a beginning, middle and end. I think the interactivity of future computing tools will make the 'hyperlink' and 'hypertext' experience part and parcel with the way we create and imbibe visual information. That is we could click on a basketball for a list of options: NBA Playoff scores, Spaulding stores, Paul Pfieffer video etc. Talk about the danger of de-contextualization. This from an article in Harper's

“If I think of what many of my friends and I read these days, it is still a newspaper, but it is clipped and forwarded in bits and pieces on email—a story from the New York Times, a piece from Salon, a blog from the Huffington Post, something from the Times of India, from YouTube. It is like a giant newspaper being assembled at all hours, from every corner of the world, still with news but no roots in a place. Perhaps we do not need a sense of place anymore.”

JC: You're definitely right about the issue of translating our way of reading or of narratives onto the screen. But maybe we need to move away from our idea that someone imposes an order and consider thinking about ways to present something in a way that the user can decide where to go and how to go about it? This would probably lead to general despair of editors - or maybe of editors used to linear narratives - but would it be so far-fetched to imagine that some websites would work really just like "adventure" video games as you just said - where you basically have to decide where to go to discover something. With photography, I could see this work very well. After all, the problem with many stories is that they are presenting things in a linear fashion that might not actually be that linear to begin with. Some stories don't have a simple cause and effect. Just imagine what this could do for photo books, where often the linear aspect can be such a big problem!

And if you think about it this is how many people use Flickr, except that the way to discover work on Flickr is immensely tedious. I could imagine that at some stage, they'll stand back and realize they have this huge database of images, and then they'll realize that they can provide smarter tools for people to discover something.

Coming back to how we started, I could imagine portfolio reviews being done in completely different ways, because with the internet there is no real need to have hundreds of people travel to the same crappy chain hotel, to look at oversized prints under bad lighting. Mind you, doing it in different ways might take away some of the stuff that people right now like very much, but it might also add something that currently simply isn't there.

But for all of this to happen, I think we need to realize that the web is currently driven almost entirely by commercial considerations. Just take the iPad - it's really all about selling stuff. Or look at iPhone commercials. I saw one yesterday, where someone "discovers" some music, to then buy it (at Apple's store, of course), and then the person went to look for a concert ticket. And that really bothers me. If such aspects of commercialism are always first - and anything else simply follows (or not, because people don't even try) - then we reduce what we could have to a glorified consumption machine. Or just be honest, and say it's all about selling stuff, but stop pretending there's a fundamental change - just because it's way more convenient for people to sell stuff. The iPad might be a great tool - but I'm not interested in any of the applications people sell right now, because why would I spend hundreds of dollars to then be able to buy an electronic magazine?

Of course, this could be in part because I have been using the internet for a long time, and I definitely remember a time when it wasn't nearly as commercialized as it is now. And if the new "Net Neutrality" court ruling holds - which does away with net neutrality - we'll be in real trouble.

I think this is why people lack that sense of place that you mentioned, because many of the social aspects of the new media are... well, I don't want to say fake, but they're certainly unbelievably shallow. And as you said you then use digital tools as a short cut to meet people in real life. Not that there's anything wrong with that; but I just would love to see more than that.

What do you think?

MI: Hmm you raise a number of incisive points. Central to them perhaps is the driving force of consumer culture in the rise of new media. TV and newspapers themselves evolved independently of commercial considerations but quickly became subsumed and dependent upon advertising revenue streams. It's no different, of course, with Apple, a savvy marketer if ever there was one, whose emphasis on intuitively designed hardware has led (somehow) into the creation of a cultural behemoth. Personally I depend on my iphone to stay connected on the go and as a gateway to some of the amazing free content (podcasts) that I enjoy. If it wasn't for the exorbitant and prohibitive monthly fees I would say its a win-win all the way.

The recent net-neutrality ruling is as disturbing in its corporate empowerment as the awarding of political lobbying rights to the same companies. Is there an inherent ideological conflict between open-source information and the creation/control of the information? Can the interwebs provide us a middle ground between free stuff and paid services? Apple and many others are banking on it. News outlets are hustling to reinvent themselves and, theoretically, the ad money not currently invested in Cable or dwindling print outlets is just waiting to sink itself into a sexy new platform the iPad purports to be...

But I agree the driving force of consumerism and its seemingly central role in our free democratic way of life needs to end.  It is fundamentally unsustainable and when folks realize that the endless acquirement of acoutrements is not, in fact, an end in itself then we will be getting somewhere. Adam Curtis's Century of the Self lays out a devastatingly cogent connection between psychoanalysis and marketing. But the iCraze is hopefully not just another gadget but a way to interface with information more seamlessly.... Personally I am looking forward to the de-materialization of these technologies, or at least the nano-tech revolution. Surely that will waste less resources?

It also might be valuable to address two conflicting ideas you raised: the shallow social aspect of the internet and social media and your concurrent desire to free the portfolio review experience from the in-person face-to-face. For me the most valuable part of the portfolio review is the ability to engage in real-time dialogue and meet new people. Indeed, you and I had communicated lightly before meeting at FotoFest but, having the opportunity to hang out with you in person, I now consider you a friend!

(image by Michael Itkoff, ruff treatment by Jörg Colberg)

Finally, a conference I can get exited about: A Congress of Curious Peoples:

April 9-18, 2010
at Sideshows By The SeaShore
AND
tHE coNEY iSLAND mUSEUM
1208 Surf AVE.

A Congress of Curious Peoples:
An Amazing Collection of Human Marvels

TICKETS FOR EACH EVENT ARE INDIVIDUALLY PRICED (SEE BELOW).
SPECIAL! gET A CONGRESSIONAL PASS GOOD FOR ADMISSION TO ALL EVENTS FOR ONLY $50!

Since the 1860's, Coney Island has been a beacon for strange and interesting people. For generations, it has attracted the curious and the enlightened, the onlooker and the performer. Every spring Coney Island USA convenes The Congress of Curious Peoples, a 10-day gathering of unique individuals at Sideshows by the Seashore and the Coney Island Museum, celebrating Coney Island's subversive and exciting power and exploring its political, artistic, and spectacular possibilities through performances, exhibitions, and films by important artists in the world of the 21st century sideshows.

Adding to the madness, this year, in conjunction with Observatory and the Morbid Anatomy Library, Coney Island USA introduces the Congress for Curious People. Consisting of a 2-day symposium and 5-day lecture series, this additional congress will take a scholarly yet popular approach to the curiosities and wonders of Coney Island and seek to investigate--via lectures and and a scholarly conference--the relationship between education and spectacle in American amusements, the collection of curiosities from the renaissance to the present, and the display of "freaks" and "primitive peoples" in fairgrounds and worlds fair settings. The series will celebrate the interdisciplinarity of Dime Museums while calling into question both popular and scholarly assumptions about the importance of Coney Island's legacy, its sordid past, and its titillating present.

HOW DO I MAKE SENSE OF THIS OVERWHELMING BUT EXCITING SPECTACLE!?
SCHEDULE:
1) Opening Weekend
The 10-day spectacular begins with the opening night party in Coney Island's Freak Bar and the induction of new members into the Sideshow Hall of Fame. Opening weekend features an exhibition at Observatory (off-site in Gowanus), and two days of performances by some of Coney Island's best-loved performers on stage at Sideshows by the Seashore.

2) 5 nights of Thrilling Lectures and Esoteric and Bizarre Performances
Opening weekend is followed by 5 nights of lectures and performances by international acts and scholars appearing on stage in the Coney Island Museum and Sideshows by the Seashore.

3) Super Freak Weekend and the Congress for Curious People
The climax of this star-studded wonderfest is "Super-Freak Weekend" - which includes performances by some of the world's most important natural-born freaks- individuals whose performance is their physicality itself - and a scholarly conference, called the Congress for Curious People, in the Coney Island Museum.

CLICK ON EACH DATE FOR FURTHER INFO AND TO PURCHASE ADVANCE TICKETS

OPENING NIGHT, FRIDAY, APRIL 9th
MUSEUM, FILM SCREENING, 6:30 PM - $5
Chained for Life (1951), a film by Harry L. Fraser. Starring the World Famous Siamese Twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton.

SIDESHOW, 8:00 pm  -  $10
OPENING NIGHT PARTY with Cheap Beer and Drinking Game. You come, you vote.
"The Cosmic Bicycle Theatre PRESENTS; A Puppet FreakShow"
plus Freak Hall of Fame Nominations with Drinking Game
The nominees are:
Working Acts: Brooklyn Strongmen Mighty Atom vs. Joe Rollino
Attractions: Blade Box vs. Electric Chair
Self Inflicted: Jolly Irene vs. Mortado
Born Different: Prince Randi vs. Otis Jordan
Show Folk: David Rosen vs. Fred Sindel
Hosted by Dick Zigun
Please join us to select five inductees in a drunken celebration of Coney Island madness.

SATURDAY APRIL, 10TH
SIDESHOW, 1PM - 8:00 PM, CONTINUOUS ADMISSION   -  $10
Alumni Weekend featuring The Great Fredini, Eak the Geek, more TBA

OFFSITE (Observatory), 7PM - 10:00 PM  - FREE!
THE SECRET MUSEUM EXHIBITION OPENING PARTY!
The Secret Museum--an exhibition on view at sister-institution Observatory's Gowanus-based gallery--will host a free opening party on Saturday, April 10th. The exhibiton explores the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world and features photographs from Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy and Observatory's travels to collections private, public, and backstage. More on the opening and exhibition, including directions to Observatory, here. Observatory : 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215

SUNDAY, APRIL 11TH
SIDESHOW 1PM - 8PM. CONTINUOUS ADMISSION $10
ALUMNI WEEKEND featuring The Great Fredini, Eak The Geek, more TBA

MONDAY, APRIL 12TH
MUSEUM, 7:00 PM - $5
Evan Michelson on "The Saddest Object in the World"

SIDESHOW, 8:00 PM  -  $10
Chris McDaniel Wild West comes to Coney Island. The undisputed master of Whip Wielding, World Record Rope Tricks, Gun-Twirling and more!
"THIS is something!" - David Letterman, The Late Show

TUESDAY, APRIL 13TH
MUSEUM, 7:00 PM - $5
Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists on Taxidermy in the Fine Arts

SIDESHOW, 8:00 PM  -  $10
Eak The Geek reads from his two decades of Coney Island Journals

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14TH
MUSEUM, 7:00 PM - $5
Mike Zohn on Automata, past and present

SIDESHOW, 8:00 PM  -  $10
The Great Throwdini hosts a record holders event: Live, on stage, performers may attempt to set or break a world record. Adjudicators will be on-site for the event.

THURSDAY, APRIL 15TH
MUSEUM, 7:00 PM - $5
Pat Morris on the taxidermy of Walter Potter

SIDESHOW, 8:00 PM  -  $10
Penguin Boy vs. Sealboy moderated by Jelly Boy

  FRIDAY, APRIL 16TH
MUSEUM, 7:00 PM - $5
Sam Dunlap on pioneer museologist, Charles Wilson Peale

SIDESHOW, 8:00 PM  -  $10
Showdevils, featuring The Enigma. An evening of freaks and music with real chainsaws, cheerleaders and electrocution!!

SATURDAY SUNDAY, APRIL 17TH 18TH
SIDESHOW 1-8 PM CONTINUOUS ADMISSION - $10
Super Freak Weekend with Mat Sealboy Fraser, Jennifer Bearded Lady Miller, Koko the Killer Clown and Ravi the Indian Rubber Boy

THE CONGRESS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE! (In the Coney Island Museum) $25 for the weekend Presented by Observatory and Morbid Anatomy, at and with The Coney Island Museum 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.

Saturday, 11am-12:30pm - Lectures and panel discussion - Education and Spectacle in 19th and 20th Century Amusements
Amy Herzog, author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film
Andrea Stulman Dennett, author of Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America
Kathy Maher, Executive Director of Barnum Museum
Eva Åhrén, author of Death, Modernity, and the Body : Sweden 1870-1940
Moderated by Elizabeth Bradley, New York Public Library

Saturday, 1pm-2:30pm - Lectures and panel discussion - Cabinets of Curiosity: Collecting Curiosities in the 21st Century.
Joe Coleman, collector and artist
Johnny Fox, collector, performer, founder of The Freakatorium (Contacted; not yet confirmed)
Mike Zohn, Antique and Oddity Dealer, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Evan Michelson, Antique and Oddity Dealer, Obscura Antiques and Oddities and Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence
Melissa Milgrom, Author of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy
Moderated by Aaron Beebe, Director of the Coney Island Museum

Saturday, 3pm-5pm - Lectures and panel discussion - Freaks and Monsters: The Politics of Bodily Display
Mike Chemers, author of Staging Stigma: A Critical History of the American Freak Show
Michael Sappol, Historian of the National Library of Medicine and author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America
Nadja Durbach, author of Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture
Moderated by Jennifer Miller, Bearded Lady and founder of Circus Amok

Saturday, 6pm-8pm - Drinks and light fare

Sunday, 12pm-2pm - Lectures and panel discussion – A History of Cultural Display in World’s Fairs and Sideshows
Barbara Mathé, Archivist, American Museum of Natural History
Alison Griffiths, author of Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn of the Century Visual Culture
Lucian Gomoll, University of California at Santa Cruz
Moderated by Aaron Glass, author of The Totem Pole: An Intercultural Biography and In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting

http://www.coneyisland.com/congress.shtml