A Events

Community Ecology Reading Group

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Join NYC Parks Greenthumb and Solar One's Stuy Cove Park at BioBat Art Space for the spring 2025 edition of the Community Ecology Reading Group! This media meetup is a non-traditional book club-- here's how it works: bring a book, article, podcast, film, etc related to this season's theme of MICROBES as well as a short snippet or quote you'd like to share with the group. We'll casually and tangentially discuss all things bacterial, fungal, eukaryotic and viral while enjoying some fermented beverages and other snacks (feel free to BYO!) We can read aloud to one another and add our contributions to the ongoing crowd-sourced Ecological Reading List.

Afterwards we'll take a walk through the current exhibition Water Stories, curated by Elena Soterakis, which includes a good many algal ancestors, ecological extremophiles, and recalcitrant microbes from whom we surely have much to learn about surviving on a rapidly changing planet. We hope to see you there!
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Luminous Waves

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During the Fall of 2024, BioBAT Art Space partnered with Pratt Institute's Dept. of Digital Arts graduate level course: Video Projection Mapping taught by Professor Caroline Voagen Nelson. In this course, Pratt DDA students developed projection mapped video installations proposals for BioBAT Art Space’s current exhibition, Water Stories. The collaboration was developed by Nelson and Curator Elena Soterakis with the aim for students to have the educational experience of creating site-specific digital art installation pitches for an exhibition. Students were divided into groups and created projects inspired by the exhibition’s concept and aesthetics; along with taking into consideration technical feasibility, materials, budget, and timeline in their proposals. These pitches included developing working prototypes of their concepts that were presented in November. Two group projects were accepted to be included in the exhibition: Worn by Waves by Jianing Cui, Jay Bradley, Onur Mavitas and Blue Tears by Iriz Lin, Lynn Feng, Tong Wu Bill.
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Gallery Open Hours

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We are open Saturdays 12-5 PM & Wednesday to Friday by Appointment

Artist talk: John Milisenda

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Stream of Consciousness: an inner dialogue of photographic journey.
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Biography
John Milisenda’s photography has appeared in over 150 shows and in many publications including Smithsonian and the New York Times. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Harry Ransom Collection, Brooklyn Museum, Museum Of The City Of New York, and the Bibliotheque Nationale. in Paris. He has taught basic photography, The Zone system and Photographic chemistry at Drexel University The New School and Parson school of Design. He has lectured on many different photographic topics.

Website: johnmilisenda.com

About the Talk:
Selecting photographs from the thousands taken during John Milsenda’s lifetime for this lecture was a daunting task. However, it highlights the central role of the stream of consciousness in his creative process.

Photographers often question how they arrive at particular images, frequently discovering unexpected insights during the development process. This creative unconscious functions as an underlying stream that artists continuously draw upon. For Milsenda, two quotations provided inspiration for this exploration, not as definitive answers but as sparks for thought and creativity.

One quotation comes from William James’ 1892 essay on the Stream of Consciousness:
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.”

Another definition expands on the concept:
“In literature, a technique that records the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence. The writer attempts by the stream of consciousness to reflect all the forces, external and internal, influencing the psychology of a character at a single moment. The technique was first employed by Édouard Dujardin (1861–1949) in his novel Les Lauriers sont coupés (1888) and was subsequently used by such notable writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.”

These perspectives, combined with metaphors from James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, served as guides in curating the photographs for this exhibition. Each image represents an act of free association, yet together they flow in a seamless confluence. Appropriately, the exhibition has been titled Streams of Consciousness.

Organic Nature Documentary Screening & Panel Discussion

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Trailer: https://vimeo.com/915796876

Event Brite Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/organic-nature-documentary-screening-panel-discussion-tickets-1099074694999?aff=oddtdtcreator

Organic is a short nature documentary series based on the groundbreaking, award-winning film Organic, which invites viewers to experience immersive journeys into North America’s unexamined aquatic habitats. Organic aims to remove the human gaze from the picture and allow nature and environments to narrate their own story.

The pilot episode of Organic has been selected by 60 film festivals around the world, winning more than 40 awards (including a LA Film & Documentary Award, a Los Angeles Short Film Award, a Hollywood Best Indie Film Award and a Cannes Shorts nomination). Now, we are using that momentum to continue our research and prepare our pre-production process for a comprehensive series, which will take us from the ponds of New Jersey to equally magnificent waters teeming with life all around the United States. From Florida to Colorado to Michigan to Mississippi to California and beyond, each episode will focus on revealing the alien worlds of these biomes unique to every state.

DIRECTOR
Egor Subbotin was born in Moscow, Russia, and migrated to the US with his family at the age of 14. A graduate of the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory, he is the director of several short films and series, including Starting From Scratch (2024) and Undergrads (2020), and has worked on many film and television series including American Rust (2021), Gilded Age (2023) and Project Runway (2020). His pivot to documentary filmmaking occurred during the pandemic-induced lockdown, which inspired him to make a movie that did not feature any people at all – that’s how Organic was born.

PRODUCERS
Kristina Baines is professor of anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY), Guttman Community College, affiliated faculty at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, and the co-founder and Director of Anthropology at Cool Anthropology. Her research focuses on the relationships between traditional ecological practices and health.

Victoria Costa is a storyteller, creative technologist and community organizer, and the co-founder and Director of Cool at Cool Anthropology.

PARTNERSHIPS
Cool Anthropology is an ever-growing collective dedicated to breaking down walls between the academic ivory tower and communities around the world. We are anthropologists, community members, other academics and researchers, technologists, artists, filmmakers, activists, students of every age, and concerned-in-general seeker-types, working together to tell transmedia stories and solve problems. Through a deep focus on collaborative efforts and participatory methods, our works push against the exclusivity of knowledge production. https://coolanthropology.com

BlueGAP helps communities to reduce nitrogen pollution by providing a trusted communication and knowledge platform, empowering people through storytelling and taking action based on reliable water quality information. https://blue-gap.org/