Samizdat Sundays

Join us for Samizdat Sundays, hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each session offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making. Each session is free, open to all skill levels, and guided by artists who delight in subversion and play. Come for one or come for all, and together we’ll stitch, alter, repair, and imagine new forms of expression. November 8: Moon Flags The new exhibition, “Competing Cosmologies,” explores the intersection of art and science during the Cold War, a time of space exploration and interplanetary dreaming, when people were mistaking floating balloons for alien spaceships and writers, painters, and screenwriters were imagining clashes with martians and other creatures from far off galaxies (who almost always had bodies and faces that were similar to ours, with two eyes, two arms, and two legs), all while governments were in a race to put men (and dogs!) into space and onto the moon. The race to the moon was, apparently, in part a race to place a flag on the moon, which is what Buzz Aldrin did in 1969’s Apollo 11 mission, when he planted the United States flag (brought in a “flag transportation assembly”) on the moon before blasting off back to Earth. Aldrin later said that he suspected the flag was blown down during the blast off, but even if it still stands, it is most likely bleached out to white as some of the other nylon moon flags have done since, thanks to the powerful, unmitigated rays of the sun. The US has placed six flags so far and China has placed one (in 2020) and I think it’s interesting to imagine the flags turned into the white flags of surrender, as everything ultimately surrenders to the sun and the processes of decay inherent in our beautiful, life-giving universe. For today’s workshop, we’re going to make a flag to honor our celestial companion. Will your moon flag be in reverence of the moon…