Tag Archive for: events

A black, white, and teal logo for Art Slope

The Park Slope Civic Council and Art Slope present a free outdoor screening of films from their Shorts in the Slope short film festival.
Bring your lawn chairs and blankets to the field behind OSH to support talented Brooklyn filmmakers and enjoy movies under the stars!

Art Slope is the arts advocacy committee of the Park Slope Civic Council, whose mission is to enhance the lives of Park Slope residents and visitors.

Join artist, educator, and tour guide Rich Garr for a bike tour around Brooklyn. Meet at the Old Stone House and ride to Brooklyn Bridge Park.
$30 tickets at Brown Paper Tickets – bike rental not included.
Limited to 12 riders so reserve soon! Tickets available here.

No More Water brings together emerging artists Tahir Carl Karmali and Justin Sterling to respond to the Old Stone House’s unique space. Both artists use reclaimed and abstracted vernacular materials––including used cell phone batteries and broken windows––to symbolize local and global policies that contribute to inequality and displacement. The title No More Water also implies our current climate emergency (characterized by increased floods, wildfires, and water contamination) and an urgent call for action.

The artists chose No More Water to reference James Baldwin’s 1963 publication The Fire Next Time, which begins and ends with the line, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!”, quoting the spiritual Mary Don’t you Weep and alluding to the Old Testament story of God flooding a corrupt earth. The Fire Next Time is considered a galvanizing text for the American Civil Rights movement in its examination of racial injustice and its call for all people of “consciousness” to “change the history of the world.” Situated at OSH in a reconstructed colonial farmhouse and Revolutionary War battleground, Karmali and Sterling’s work helps confront uncomfortable truths of the past and present while also suggesting possibilities for transformation.

Both artists explore the potential and limitations of art’s role in addressing injustice. Karmali describes his installations as “deceptively beautiful or attractive, as an art form, allowing the viewer to savor them as primary material before a layer of trauma (of migration, of displacement, of labor) slowly reveals itself.” He presents new and site-specific work from his ongoing STRATA series, which consists of layered raffia dyed with cobalt extracted from cell phone batteries, referencing traditional Congolese kuba cloth and the exploitation of cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sterling’s sculptures made of broken windows and other urban detritus, by contrast, retain more of their original, sometimes jarring forms, alluding to the controversial policing policy of the same name as well as other forces that contribute to displacement, gentrification, and mass incarceration. Yet they offer myriad “attempts to fix, recycle, or archive” as an alternative to discarding. Both artists metaphorically push back against the destruction of both local communities and our larger environment, while simultaneously placing the viewer in close physical proximity with the impact of this destruction, challenging a “culture of indifference.”

At the August 15 opening at 7pm, Justin Sterling’s opening performance will combine trumpet and movement improvisation to respond to the work on view, also alluding to his roots in New Orleans, an area with a history of natural disasters and rebuilding.

Funding for No More Water is made possible, in part, by the Puffin Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Musical Ecologies returns to OSH for a seventh season of music and conversation. The season begins with New York-based composer and audio technologist Anastasia Clarke performing her Crushed Matrices project.

Anastasia Clarke (she/they) works in live embodied electronic music performance. Anastasia’s solo and collaborative projects use custom musical instruments and performing systems, functioning as sites for research and meaning-making around the subjects of physical instrument interaction, improvisation, and the healing qualities of sound.

Founded in 2012, Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event focuses on a single artist. Each presentation is preceded by an extended conversation between the artist and curator.

Admission is $10, advance tickets are available here.

a green apple on white background with text that reads "Grow!"

Follow the life cycle of an apple seed through four seasons in this lovely, interactive performance for very young children.

Young audiences and the storyteller plant a seed together and help it grow, while learning gentle and charming songs and ASL signs to help tell a story of seasonal growth.

Get your tickets here.

Jen Kutler operates one of her instruments

Musical Ecologies returns to OSH for a seventh season of music and conversation. The season continues with artist Jen Kutler, who will perform a work using one of her unique interactive electronic media systems.

Jen Kutler is a multidisciplinary artist and performer. She modifies found objects that are cultural signifiers of power, gender, queerness and intimacy to create atypical instruments and sculptures. Her performances feature many of her instruments incorporated with immersive field recordings to explore common and discrepant experiences of familiar social tones in immersive sound and media environments.

Founded in 2012, Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event focuses on a single artist. Each presentation is preceded by an extended conversation between the artist and curator.

Admission is $10, advance tickets are available here.

Parade goers manipulate a giant puppet

Dress up in your best costume and join in the annual Park Slope Civic Council Halloween Parade!

The parade begins at 14th Street and 7th Avenue, then heads north on 7th Avenue, turning left on 3rd Street and ending in J.J. Byrne Playground at the Old Stone House. This is a family-friendly event with a focus on children.

Betsey Biggs hiking on glaciers in Greenland

Musical Ecologies season seven continues with composer Betsey Biggs, performing at OSH on November 14. Biggs is based in Boulder, CO where she is a Fellow and Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Colorado. She attended Colorado College and Mills College, and holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in Music Composition.

The evening’s discussion will concentrate on Biggs’ career in music and her multimedia opera music-film titled MELT: The Memories of Ice. The piece blends field recordings from her exploration of Greenland’s glaciers including the sounds of bubbling streams, sled dogs, and whale song. Don’t miss the rare opportunity to hear this great work!

Founded in 2012, Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event focuses on a single artist. Each presentation is preceded by an extended conversation between the artist and curator.

Admission is $10, advance tickets are available here.

Santa Claus is coming to town on December 14! From 10 am – Noon Santa will be making a pit stop in Park Slope; join us for a seasonal photo session with professional photographer Marc Goldberg.

We’re co-hosting the day with Park Slope Parents and the Park Slope Fifth Ave BID and we’ll have crafts and hot coco to keep everyone cozy while Marc takes photos on a first-come-first-served basis.

For $10, each family will receive a water-marked portrait from Marc, he will also have all of the photos available for purchase on his website and visitors are welcome to snap their own keepsake selfies.

If you would like to support family programming like this all year round, become a member of the Old Stone House & Washington Park for $35 and get your photo session for free!

Author Matt Stoller and Zephyr Teachout hosted a great a conversation centered on Stoller’s debut book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, from Simon & Schuster Publishers.  Thanks to act.tv, you can listen here!

Goliath examines how concentrated financial power and consumerism transformed American politics, resulting in the emergence of populism and authoritarianism, the fall of the Democratic Party—while also providing the steps needed to create a new democracy. You can read more about the book on the Simon & Schuster website here.

About Matt Stoller:

Stoller is a Fellow at the Open Markets Institute. Previously, he was a Senior Policy Advisor and Budget Analyst to the Senate Budget Committee. He also worked in the US House of Representatives on financial services policy, including Dodd-Frank, the Federal Reserve, and the foreclosure crisis. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Vice, and Salon. He lives in Washington, DC.

About Zephyr Teachout:

Teachout is an Associate Law Professor and has taught at Fordham Law School since 2009. She grew up in Vermont and received her BA from Yale in English and then graduated summa cum laude from Duke Law School, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. She also received an MA in Political Science from Duke. She clerked for Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She was a death penalty defense lawyer at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina, and co-founded a non-profit dedicated to providing trial experience to new law school graduates. She is known for her pioneering work in internet organizing, and was the first national Director of the Sunlight Foundation. She has written dozens of law review articles and essays and two books. Her book, “Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United” was published by Harvard University Press in 2014.
She ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination of the Governor of New York in 2014, and for Congress’s 19th Congressional District in 2016.

The author’s portrait is by Sophia Lin, the book cover image is property of Simon & Schuster, Inc.