In this hands-on workshop, you will work with the Battle Pass Collective of artists, performers and educators as you explore the Revolutionary Battle of Brooklyn, which culminated on the Gowanus Creek in 1776. The workshop will connect past to present as we explore conflict, history and memory,  searching for new forms for imagery that has become cliche from overuse and manipulation.

Eva Melas, Porcelain Pistol

The workshop will include: a cockade-making workshop with artist Robyn Love in which you will explore your inner rebel; boat-building using found materials with artist Eva Melas; a performance workshop with Paul Benney, culminating in a Battle Pass performance in the MoMA hallways; a presentation by educator Angela Kramer on historic tide mills that once existed along the Gowanus and throughout the New York area, after which you will experiment with your own mill wheels; an overview of the Battle Pass Project by PG founder and co-creative director Sasha Chavchavadze.

We look forward to seeing you at MoMA! Buy your tickets NOW

Location: The Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont Street at Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights
Taught by educator Angela Kramer

In this family workshop, participants will reflect on the relationship between Brooklyn past and present by making their own three-dimensional accordion books, or dioramas, using copies of old and modern maps, photographs, and other images. We will be working in the spectacular Othmer Library at the Brooklyn Historical Society, which holds the original versions of many of the documents we will be using in our artworks.

The workshop is part of the Battle Pass Project , a Proteus Gowanus initiative that explores ideas of conflict, history and memory by marking sites of the Battle of Brooklyn with workshops, performances and public installations. We encourage you to visit Battle Pass – Revolution IV, an installation currently up at the Old Stone House through June 23th.

Also, visit the Battle Ground exhibit at Proteus Gowanus, up through June, where you can see Molinology, Angela Kramer’s installation about historic tide mills along the Gowanus, one of which played a seminal role in the Battle of Brooklyn, and where you can have the “strangely pleasurable” experience of grinding wheat into flour.

The Battle Pass Family Workshop Series is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

One of the first tide mills in America once stood not far from where Proteus Gowanus stands today. Brouwer’s Mill, built in the mid-17th century, used the power of the Gowanus Creek’s rising and falling tides to turn wheat into flour.  During the Battle of Brooklyn, the mill and its bridge burned, forcing soldiers to cross the rising waters of Gowanus Creek. This workshop will uncover the little known history of tide mills in Brooklyn, as families work together to build their own miniature mills.

Please join us for opening reception of Battle Ground, the third and last exhibit of our yearlong Battle theme. Battle Ground will explore the pathos of the Battle of Brooklyn, stimulating our collective memory, evoking parallels between past and present, while focusing on the complexity, moral ambiguity, and devastation of this important Revolutionary confrontation. Historical imagery, rendered meaningless by over-use and political manipulation, will be revived in new forms.

The word “revolution” circles around us, forming the early consciousness of our country. History, also cyclical, repeats itself, and when it is forgotten, it haunts us, lying dormant in our collective memories. In 1776 one such haunting unfolded across a wide swath of what is now Brooklyn. Perhaps the battle is often forgotten (relative to others) because it was, in the words of Walt Whitman, a “resolute defeat.”

The battle-haunting still rages around us at Proteus Gowanus. Its culminating events took place just feet from our gallery location, along what was then the Gowanus Creek. The fields and marshes of 1776 are now a post-industrial urban landscape, and the Gowanus Canal is a hotly contested Federal Superfund and development site.

Maryland Willow, Robert Gould

Battle Ground is curated by Sasha Chavchavadze with help from Robert Gould, Angela Kramer and Eva Melas.

Battle Ground participants include artists, educators, urban planners and writers:

Paul Benney, Peter Bonner, Sasha Chavchavadze, Eymund Diegel, Robert Gould, Katarina Jerinic, Andrew Keating, Christina Kelly, V. Komar & A. Melamid, Angela Kramer, Robyn Love, Eva Melas, Duke Riley, Robert Sullivan.

*Special thanks to the restaurant and bakery, Runner & Stone, which takes its name from tide mills that operated along the Gowanus Creek in the 18th century.