Worldwide, human migration is accelerating at a pace that makes the migratory patterns of the industrial revolution look trivial. These changes of course affect the migratory creatures with whom we share the planet: birds and beasts, microorganisms and the ideas or memes that travel like lightening across continents and, like live creatures, require care and feeding. All this movement drives and is driven by the movement of stuff, the products and things that are consumed, discarded, recycled, dumped and consumed again.

There is crisis and calamity aplenty to consider in these topics but there is also exponential knowledge growth, increasing porosity of boundaries and borders, more and better communication of ideas, greater empathy and interaction. For the next nine months, Proteus Gowanus will consider Migration and the usually unanticipated effects that flow from it using art, artifacts, books and events as the tools of our investigation.

And because Proteus too is constantly moving and changing, we introduce two new projects in this Migration year. We are inaugurating an Artists-In-Residence program, inviting a new artist for each of the year’s three Migration exhibitions to work at Proteus, opening their process to viewers to observe, engage with and even participate in. Our artists will be, in order of their residency, Lado Pochkhua of the Republic of Georgia, Sal Randolph of the U.S. and Bundith Phunsombatlert of Thailand.

We are also introducing a blog for the Migration year, named Proteoscope. Krista Dragomer, artist, writer, and graphic essayist, will be Proteoscope’s Editor-in-Chief, collecting, reporting, editing and musing on the art, artifacts, books and events presented during our Migration year. We hope you will add our Proteoscope RSS feed to your feedbox and join in the conversation.

Finally, we welcome as Migration Correspondents, the following distinguished individuals: Carol Becker (Dean of Columbia School of the Arts); Svetlana Boym (Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University and a Faculty Associate of the Graduate School of Design); and Sean Hanley, filmmaker. Our Migration interns are Allison Klion and Ryan Jones.

Migration 1
Fall, 2011
Contributors: Aileen Bassis, Meredith Bergmann, The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, Lola Bunting, Marie Cieri, Viv Corringham, Dillon de Give, Sarah Lederman, Portia Munson, Lance Rutledge, Randall Stoltzfus, Lorena Turner, James Walsh and, in partnership with Reanimation Library, Ami Yamasaki.

Wine Reception for Migration
An exhibit of art, artifacts, and books

Saturday, September 17, 7-9pm

Proteus Gowanus
543 Union Street (at Nevins)
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.243.1572

http://proteusgowanus.org/migration/

Image credit: An installation in progress of “Voices-Feather Composition” by Ami Yamasaki in the Reanimation Library