Slope Weekday Event Spotlight: May 9-12

Welcome to the week, which features oodles of events: Secret Science, puppy killer flirting, home brewed opera, and more.

Density Is A Kind Of Love
When: Monday, May 9, 8:00pm
Where: ShapeShifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Place (between 1st and Carroll Streets)
What: Transient Canvas (Amy Advocat, bass clarinet; Matt Sharrock, marimba) and Chris Watford (bassoon) perform works exploring radical new sonic identities of the bassoon, bass clarinet and marimba. With raw, primordial, and human tapestries, the works transform the instruments in strange and startling ways. The program features the NY premiere of Scott Wollschleger’s trio “DENSITY IS A KIND OF LOVE”—an erotic soup of structured sound—along with Timothy McCormack’s monumental BODY MATTER for solo amplified bassoon, and NY premieres of works by David Coll and Matthew Welch for bass clarinet and marimba.
How much: $8, at the door.

Secret Science Club presents Theoretical Physicist and Cosmologist Sean Carroll
When: Tuesday, May 10. Doors: 7:30pm, Show: 8pm
Where: The Bell House, 149 7th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues)
What: Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on Higgs bosons and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
How much: Free.

‘Never Flirt With Puppy Killers’ Book Release Variety Show with Dan Wilbur and Janeane Garofalo
When: Tuesday, May 10, 8:00pm
Where: Littlefield, 622 Degraw Street (between 3rd and 4th Avenues)
What: Join author/comedian Dan Wilbur (creator of Betterbooktitles.com) for a Late Night-style show about books, featuring stand-up comics (who also write), characters (from books), funny games (about books), and a live band (that writes songs mostly about sex). It’s fun for the whole family, if your whole family reads a lot and is over 21.
How much: $8-$15, tickets available online.

Vinyl Club
When: Wednesday, May 11, 8pm-11pm
Where: Threes Brewing, 333 Douglass Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues.
What:  You bring it, you spin it. 15 minutes sets. All genres welcome, first-timers welcome. Sign up for your turn by the DJ table. Join the Vinyl Club Facebook group and attend vinyl events around the city.
How much: No cover

Mystery Diagnosis Live! An Interactive and Illustrated Lecture with Pathologist Assistant Nicole Angemi
When:  Wednesday, May 11, 7pm-9pm
Where: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 3rd Avenue at 7th Street
What: Do you follow @mrs_angemi on Instagram? Do you love the #mysterydiagnosis but hate waiting days to find out what the answer is??? If you answered yes you will love this lecture!!! This is an interactive lecture with encouraged audience participation and merchandise giveaways!!! Nicole Angemi is a Cytotechnologist and a Pathologists’ Assistant and uses her 16+ years experience working in a pathology laboratory to post interesting and sometimes gross photographs to Instagram to educate her followers about diseases. She is married to photographer and firefighter Gabriel and has three daughters Maria, Lillian and Lucia.
How much: $12, tickets available online.

Brooklyn By the Book presents Geoff Dyer
When: Thursday, May 12, 7:30pm
Where: Brooklyn Public Library, Dweck Center, 10 Grand Army Plaza
What: From one of our most original writers (Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine) comes an expansive and exacting book firmly grounded, but elegant, witty, and always inquisitive about travel, unexpected awareness, and the questions we ask when we step outside ourselves. Geoff Dyers restless search for what? is unclear, even to him continues in this series of fascinating adventures and pilgrimages: with a tour guide who is in fact not a tour guide at the Forbidden City in Beijing, with friends in New Mexico, where D. H. Lawrence famously claimed to have had the greatest experience from the outdoor world, with a hitchhiker picked up near a prison at White Sands, with Don Cherry (or a photo of him, at any rate) at the Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Weaving stories about places to which he has recently traveled with images and memories that have persisted since childhood, Dyer tries to work out what a certain place a certain way of marking the landscape means; what its trying to tell us; what we go to it for.
How much: Free with RSVP.

Home Brewed Opera: All Fached Up!
When: Thursday, May 12, 9pm-11:30pm
Where: Freddy’s, 627 5th Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets
What: Opera on Tap is throwing all the rules out the window for this one. We’ll have sopranos singing bass arias and basses singing Carmen. We’ll have classical singers singing country and Baroque arias done in the style of Beyonce. We promise a raucous night of opera outside-the-box. You won’t want to miss this one! Followed by Liveband Karaoke at 10:30pm
How much: No cover.

Party for the Park 2016
When: Thursday, May 12, 8pm-11pm
Where: Prospect Park Boathouse
What: Join the Prospect Park Alliance as we toast the return of spring, enjoy small bites by a few of Brooklyn’s best restaurants, and dance under the stars. All proceeds benefit the Alliance in its mission to sustain, restore and advance Prospect Park.
How much: Tickets begin at $125. Purchase tickets online.

Fear Not To Appear — Paintings, Drawings, and Books, 1980-1997 by Dale Williams
When: Through Sunday, May 22. By appointment only.
Where: Gowanus Loft, 61 9th Street #C8 (between 2nd Avenue and the Gowanus Canal.)
How much: Free — contact colby@vanderbiltrepublic.com for an appointment.

Rawiya: In Her Absence I Created Her Image
When: Panel Discussion at 7pm, Thurday, May 12. Exhibit through May 28. Regular hours: Thursdays-Saturdays, 2pm-6pm.
Where: Open Source Gallery, (306 17th Street at 6th Avenue)
What: Rawiya presents In Her Absence I Created Her Image, an exhibit of documentary photography. The exhibit will explore the lives of communities and individuals in the Middle East through documentary photography, focusing on social, political, and human rights issues across Arab countries. At a time when Islamophobia in the U.S. runs rampant and many view the Middle East with suspicion, efforts to create understanding are of the utmost importance. This exhibit, the title of which is inspired by a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, includes work by photographers Laura Boushnak, Tanya Habjouqa, Myriam Abdelaziz, and Tamara Abdul Hadi, members of the Rawiya photography collective. Rawiya aims to dispel stereotypes about this often misunderstood and underrepresented region by shining a light on the everyday hardships and shared experiences of its inhabitants, thereby encouraging a more compassionate and empathetic worldview. Within In Her Absence I Created Her Image, individual projects and varied themes contribute to an overarching theme of humanity, dignity, and empowerment.
How Much: Free

Karen Gibbons: Pachamama
When: Through May 29. Thursdays and Fridays, 4:00-7:00pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 11:00am-7:00pm.
Where: 440 Gallery, 440 6th Avenue, between 9th and 10th Streets
What: 440 Gallery is pleased to present new sculptures, drawings and collage by Karen Gibbons. This exhibit is a continuation of Gibbons’s idiosyncratic sensibility, where collaged elements create a dream-like near-narrative. Her new work introduces the use of plaster substrates, a material that gives each piece a substantial, weighty dimension. Gibbons’s work entwines feminine imagery and references to the earth.  In the large scale piece, “Pachamama”, Gibbons creates a mountainous structure out of plaster, painting the form in earthy greens and yellows.  Through collage elements, the face of the Virgin Mary peers from the top of the mountain; her hands surround her mountain/body in a comforting embrace.
How much: Free.