October 28-29, 2005
We hope that you will join us for this memorable event that brings together a diverse group to discuss issues of cryptozoology, science and art: October 28th and 29th, 2005.
The keynote speaker on Friday night will be the famous cryptozoologist Loren Coleman who is widely published and viewed as the authority in the field. His books include Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology, Bigfoot: The True Stories of Apes in America; and The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. He recently founded the Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine where he lives and works.
Often considered a marginalized science or a farcical adventure, the practice of cryptozoology is the quest for unknown, rumored or hidden animals. Its most notorious pursuits include the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman, though it has also revealed animals that are now part of the classified natural world. CZ is a fascinating zone of inquiry for contemporary artists interested in the fertile margins of the history of science and museums, taxonomy, myth, creativity and discovery. The theme out of time place scale provides an opportunity to challenge the taxonomic limitations of hierarchy, linearity, chronology and/or context that museums and art history manipulate to control presentation and reception. Staking out a position or non-site that blurs the boundaries between time place scale and choosing not to deconstruct predominant museum ideologies, this project constructs an alternative mode of address that favors a return to the organized mayhem, wonder, delight, spiritual and intellectual adventurism of pre-Enlightenment curio cabinets.
