Procession, shuffleboard, drink specials, and Gowanus-themed variety show with music, lectures, sword swallowing, films and drink specials!
Date: Sunday, August 16
SCHEDULE:
2:30 Procession beginning at The Morbid Anatomy Museum (424A Third Avenue, Brooklyn 11215)
3:00-6:00 Variety Show, Cocktails and Shuffleboard at Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club ( 514 Union St, Brooklyn, 11215 )
Admission: $20 (includes free admission to the Morbid Anatomy Museum before the procession)
Location: OFFSITE Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club ; procession begins at The Morbid Anatomy Museum
Tickets here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2074344
Please join us for the first annual pageant and procession in honor of Saint Florian, patron saint of flooding! Gowanusites are keenly aware that their livelihoods rely on keeping the good favor of Gowanus Canal. By reviving a lost ritual to honor Saint Florian, The Morbid Anatomy Museum hopes to draw attention to the predicament of this improbably gentrifying neighborhood and encourage new rituals to serve as a basis for a new community, all with a sense of whimsy and spectacle.
The day will begin with a procession in which we will carry a papier mâché effigy of Saint Florian from the Morbid Anatomy Museum to the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Court (about a 10 minute walk).
At the Shuffleboard Court, guests will enjoy a special $4 “Gowanus Canal Juice” cocktails and complementary shuffleboard, as well as a three-hour variety show of short acts inspired by the Gowanus (key words: the monstrous, mutated, polluted, toxic, abject, lost causes, mob deaths, gonorrhea).
Lineup includes:
TALKS:
-E. P. Bell (graduate student, Rutgers University) tracing the roots of this lost ritual and how it was discovered
-Forensic Pathologist Jay Stahl-Herz, MD on the post-mortem challenges presented by bodies found in water
-Ksenya Malina on processional banners used by members of lay confraternity orders in medieval and Renaissance Italy
-Erin Chapman with “A Short Illustrated Bestiary of the Gowanus”
-Lady Ayea on the complexities involved in finding the right patron saint for sideshow performers with sword swallowing demonstration
-Urban explorer Will Ellis (Abandoned NYC) about The Batcave, a famous Gowanus abandoned space
-Professor Amy Herzog: TBA
FILMS
-Short films curated by Imagine Science Films at the intersections of art, science and the grotesque
-Jonah Patrick King’s film “the Dowsers,” which follows a New Age activist cult who worship water in a world where it has been privatized
-Guilherme Marcondes’ film Caveirão, an urban fable about ghost in abandoned outskirts of Sao Paulo
-Nicole Antebi’s film Riparianism, an animated film which re-imagines a national anthem around the “most” polluted waterways in this country
MUSIC
-Comedian and musician Jessica Delfino with a stirring rendition of “Ghosts of Oysters Past”
-Song by Kim Boekbinder
Image: Saint Sebastian (left) and Saint Florian (right). Oil painting by an Austrian painter, 18th (?) century. Wellcome Library.
