I’m continuing my writing hiatus as I’m focusing on my health, which is the reason posts have been sparse lately. I hope to be back at it in a few weeks. In the meantime, check out the free workshops we’re presenting this Spring. All classes are free, open to the public, and take place at the beautiful Evergreen State College.

Related posts:

1. Back in Olympia & Proteus Gowanus!
2. And the Plants Will Set You Free
3. Spring 2012 Reading List

Tomorrow night’s workshop is The Basics of Herbcraft, presented by yours truly. We’ll talk about core principles of medicine making, with a special eye for branching out, being creative and developing your craft. We’ll specifically talk about infusions, decoctions, infused oils, salves and alcohol tinctures. I put together a short & sweet 12-page booklet of what we’ll be talking about for participants. It includes methods recipes, tips & tricks. For those of you not in attendance and want to obtain one, here’s the .pdf file for you to print, peruse and distribute as you see fit.

https://rapidshare.com/files/3895861965/Final_Herbcraft_Booklets.pdf

It’s hosted on Rapidshare, and I assure you it’s not sketchy. Alternatively, if that doesn’t work, you can find the file here on GoogleDocs, no sign-in required. Print 2-sided, short-edge binding. Then you’re good to go! Enjoy, and see you tomorrow!

No related posts.

Here’s the description from the Coney Island Museum website:

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.

Here’s a schedule of events:

CONGRESS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE 2-DAY SYMPOSIUM

Date: Saturday April 17th and Sunday April 18th
Location: Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave. Brooklyn

ADMISSION: $25 for full weekend admission

Presented by Morbid Anatomy and Observatory with Coney Island USA
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. You can find out more about the Congress of Curious Peoples at www.coneyisland.com/congress.shtml.

Saturday, April 17th 11 AM-12:30 PM – Education and Spectacle in 19th and 20th Century Amusements, Lectures and Panel Discussion
Eva Åhrén, author of Death, Modernity, and the Body : Sweden 1870-1940
Andrea Stulman Dennett, author of Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America
Amy Herzog, author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film
Kathy Maher, Executive Director of the Barnum Museum
Moderated by Betsy Bradley, New York Public Library

LUNCH 2-3:30 PM– Cabinets of Curiosity: Collecting Curiosities in the 21st Century, Lectures and Panel Discussion
Joe Coleman, collector and artist
Johnny Fox, collector, performer, founder of The Freakatorium
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
Mike Zohn, Antique and Oddity Dealer, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Moderated by Aaron Beebe, Director of the Coney Island Museum

4-5:30 PM – Freaks and Monsters: The Politics of Bodily Display, Lectures and Panel Discussion
Mike Chemers, author of Staging Stigma: A Critical History of the American Freak Show
Nadja Durbach, author of Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture
Michael Sappol, Historian of the National Library of Medicineand author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America
Moderated by Jennifer Miller, Bearded Lady and founder ofCircus Amok

6-8 PM Drinks and light fare

Sunday, April 18th 12-2 PM – A History of Cultural Display in World’s Fairs and Sideshows, Lectures and Panel Discussion
Lucian Gomoll, University of California at Santa Cruz
Alison Griffiths, author of Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn of the Century Visual Culture
Barbara Mathé, Archivist, American Museum of Natural History
Moderated by Aaron Glass, author of The Totem Pole: An Intercultural Biography and In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting

2 PM – Closing remarks

A WEEK OF THEMATIC LECTURES AT THE CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM WILL PRECEDE THE SYMPOSIUM:

The Saddest Object in the World
An Illustrated Meditation by Evan Michelson, Obscura Antiques and Oddities and Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence
Date: Monday, April 12th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: The Coney Island Museum
“The Saddest Object in the World” is a meditation on one particular artifact; an exercise in Proustian involuntary memory, aesthetic critique, and philosophical bargaining.

Sometimes objects have consequences.

Evan Michelson is an antiques dealer, lecturer, accumulator and aesthete; she tirelessly indulges a lifelong pursuit of all things obscure and melancholy. She currently lives in another place and time.

A Rogue’s Approach to Stuffing It: Taxidermy in Contemporary Pop, Art and Sub-Cultures
Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists
Date: Tuesday, April 13th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: The Coney Island Museum
ave you seen a rise in taxidermy in the world around you? What could be causing this resurgence? A Rogue’s Approach to Taxidermy will identify prominent practitioners of natural history art; discuss popular trends in preservation, presentation and representation; and delve into the sub-culture of artistic taxidermy. Robert will also discuss the highs and lows of running a taxidermy art group, and offer suggestions on which emails to return and who to not let into your house.

Robert Marbury received his BA in Anthropology from Connecticut College and a post-Bac from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He is the co-founder of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. Robert is currently curating a Rogue Taxidermy show which will run from May 7th to May 30th at La Luz de Jesus in Los Angeles. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

A Brief History of Automata
An Illustrated Lecture and Demonstration by Mike Zohn, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Date: Wednesday, April 14th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: The Coney Island Museum
In this illustrated lecture, Obscura Antique and Oddities‘ Mike Zohn will demonstrate his 19th Century taxidermy automata, as featured in last year’s Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest. He will explain its curious mechanisms, and, in an illustrated lecture, will introduce us to the history of these fascinating uncanny machines, tracing their trajectory from tools of religious coercion to prince’s plaything to Disney’s imagineering experiments.
Mike Zohn is co-proprietor of Obscura Antique and Oddities. He fixes automata in his spare time.

A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science and Bad Taste

An Illustrated Presentation By Dr. Pat Morris, Royal Holloway, University of London

Date: Thursday, April 15th

Time: 7:00 PM

LOCATION: The Coney Island Museum
Should taxidermy be viewed as art, science, or bad taste? And why is it so interesting? Dr. Pat Morris’ illustrated lecture “A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science and Bad Taste” will explore these topics and more. His talk will range over the history of stuffed animals, considering how a small-time taxidermist business operated in the 19th century and exploring the many diverse and amusing uses of taxidermy and the taxidermist’s products ranging from major museum exhibits to stuffed pets, hunting trophies, animal furniture, kitten weddings (see above, Walter Potter, circa 1890s), frogs eating spaghetti and squirrels playing cards. He will discuss in detail the work of anthropomorphic taxidermist Walter Potter and his eponymous “Museum of Curiosities,” as detailed in his own lavishly illustrated book on that topic, which will be available for sale at the lecture.

Dr. Pat Morris is a retired staff member of Royal Holloway College (University of London), where he taught biology undergraduates and supervised research on mammal ecology. In that capacity he has published many books and scientific papers and featured regularly in radio and TV broadcasts. The history of taxidermy has been a lifelong hobby interest and he has published academic papers and several books on the subject. With his wife Mary he has travelled widely, including most of Europe and the USA, seeking interesting taxidermy specimens and stories. They live in England where their house is home to the largest collection and archive of historical taxidermy in Britain.

Charles Wilson Peale and the Birth of the American Museum
An Illustrated Presentation by Samuel Strong Dunlap, PhD, Descendant of Charles Wilson Peale
Date: Friday, April 16th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: The Coney Island Museum
Long time historian and editor of the Peale Family Papers Dr. Lillian B. Miller (now deceased) described Charles Willson Peale as a true renaissance man. Peale is perhaps best remembered today as the founder of America’s first cabinet-of-curiosity like museum–the Philadelphia Museum (later the Peale Museum)–which housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens and can be viewed in the image above. Famously, Peale’s museum also pioneered the habitat group–or natural history diorama–an art form memorably perfected by such museums as the American Museum of Natural History and Chicago’s Field Museum in the early 20th Century.

In this illustrated lecture, we will learn about Peale the museologist, and examine how his museological work continuously overlap with his inventive, artistic, scientific, literary and exploratory interests. Peale was a friend or acquaintance with most of the military, scientific, diplomatic and foreign individuals who played significant roles in our revolutionary war and the early growth of our democracy.

RELATED EXHIBITIONS

The Secret Museum
An exhibition exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world in photographs and artifacts, by Joanna Ebenstein, co-founder of Observatory and creator of Morbid Anatomy.
Location: Observatory
Opening Party: Saturday, April 10, 7-10; on view On view from April 10th-May 16th, 3-6 Thursday and Friday, 12-6 Saturday and Sunday
Admission: Free

The Collectors Cabinet
An exhibition which will showcase astounding objects held in private collections, including artifacts featured in Joanna Ebenstein’s Private Cabinet photo series of 2009. Featured cabinetists include Curious Expeditions and Observatory‘s Michelle Enemark and Dylan Thuras, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, and Morbid Anatomy and Observatory‘s Joanna Ebenstein.
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn

Related posts:

1. Obscura Day: March 20, 2010
2. What Makes You Curious?
3. Entomologia: A Group Show of Insect Art

Up until April 23 is a show called Ouroborus: The History of the Universe by Sweatshoppe and Ali Hossaini. Here’s a part of the description:

Ouroboros tells the history of cosmic evolution by animating more than 30,000 found images in custom software that generates a holographic 3D environment.Visitors will be handed 3D glasses that reveal mesmerizing arrays of animated holograms, created by seven channels of video, within a 2,000 square foot gallery. A ten-panel video sculpture will form the exhibit’s entrance, creating a richly detailed atmosphere for contemplation. Original compositions of ambient sound have been produced by the artists.

It’s up for only another week , so if you’re around you need to GO THERE and tell me all about it! It’s at the ISE Cultural Foundation. A big thanks to Pam at Phantasmaphile for getting me all worked up about it.

Ouroboros: The History of the Universe from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. On the History of Herbals

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Jennifer Angus
Joianne Bittle
Catherine Chalmers
Joanna Ebenstein
Michelle Enemark
Judith Klausner
Barrett Klein
Shanna Maurizi
Herbert Pfostl
Brian Riley
Stacey Steers
Steve Thurston
James Walsh
Lisa Wood

ABOUT THE CURATOR:
Michelle Enemark is the creator of Curious Expeditions, a site devoted to traveling and exhuming the extraordinary past. Curious Expeditions was named a finalist for best travel blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards and received a 2009 Cliopatria Award. A motion graphics artist by trade, visual artist by training, and historian and naturalist by self appointment, Michelle aims to show the forgotten bits of the world, be they lost pieces of history, forgotten museums, or elements of the natural world that have been ignored or overlooked.

ADDITIONAL CURATION:
Jessica Oreck works as an animal keeper and docent at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. When not at the museum, Jessica spends her time inventing new ways to create a sense of wonder in the world. Jessica just finished her first feature documentary, “Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo.” She is currently in production on several animated science shows, building her own museum exhibition, and pre-production for her next feature film, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga.

Related posts:

1. Extra City: Animism Group Show
2. The Congress for Curious People: April 9-18, 2010

Heidelberg Project, Detroit

Much to my excitement (and certainly that of others), Atlas Obscura organized their first event. March 20 is the first Obscura Day. It’s “a day of exhibitions, back-room tours and hidden treasures in your hometown,” an “international celebration of wondrous, curious, and esoteric places.” There are events going on at the most interesting places…it’s where teleportation is a much-desired skill!

If you’re in Portland, you can tour the Reed Research Reactor, the only nuclear reactor operated by undergraduates. But other than that, there’s not a whole lot happening in the Northwest for Obscura Day. (Unfortunately.)

There are also no entries for Olympia. Now, seriously. Seriously. Maybe this should change. OR, maybe we should just continue to keep it all a secret…

Related posts:

1. The Congress for Curious People: April 9-18, 2010

Étienne-Jules Marey, Buse volant avec l'appareil qui signale les mouvements décrits par l'extrémité de son aile, 1886

Extra City is a collective founded in 2004 in Antwerp. Their newest project is Animism, now up and running until May 2010. Here’s the decription:

The project approaches the concept of animism – coined by 19th century anthropologists in the context of the colonial encounter – from a contemporary perspective. It addresses the current increase in interest in animism, which stems from a widespread re-visioning of modernity, by a reflection on aesthetic processes seen through the prism of an exhibition.

The normative modern understanding of the concept holds animism to be a pre-modern social and psychological mechanism by means of which nature and things were erroneously endowed with souls and agency. This project seeks to move beyond those mistaken but sedimented commonplaces that have narrowed the understanding of animism to a matter of belief and psychology and instead raise questions about the collective practices of humans and non-humans and the qualitative relations that they produce. The term is employed like a mirror in an investigation of modern cosmography, reversing its underlying assumptions, and in particular, the way in which modernity conceived of the boundary between life and non-life.

I added the emphasis. They point to a number of important facets of modern notions of life, namely, that only humans really had life.  And according to so-called primitive/animist types, other-than-humans were merely mistakenly “infused” with some sort of life force. This has deeply ruptured our connection with the living world.

Understanding that all things have life (maybe not in the way we usually think of life), and all that lives is worthy of respect (you don’t have to respect someone to like them) has changed how I see myself in relation to the world. It’s about how we relate to things.

For people who are interested in the concepts of life, personhood and inherent respect for all persons that are embodied in animist philosophy, I highly suggest checking out Graham Harvey’s work. His Animist Manifesto (read it online here) was a groundbreaking work for me. These concepts, if genuinely pondered and lived, change the way we see and relate to everything. I am therefore very excited to see shows like this that challenge us to rethink our identity and the erroneous divisions between the human and nonhuman world.

Related posts:

1. Entomologia: A Group Show of Insect Art