Wednesday, February 21, 2024
6 pm ET
$20 General Admission or free with purchase of Cabarets of Death deluxe package

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

Mel Gordon—whom The New York Times dubbed “drama scholar of the fringe”—was a beloved member of the Morbid Anatomy community; he also served as a mentor to our founder and creative director Joanna Ebenstein. When he died unexpectedly in 2018, the two were collaborating on a book about three infamous Parisian fin-de-siècle nightclubs called “The Cabarets of Death.”

Tonight, we will celebrate Mel Gordon’s legacy, focusing on the posthumous publication of his Cabarets of Death: Dance, Death, and Dining in Early 20th Century Paris. In this richly illustrated book, Mel turns his scholarly and irreverent gaze on three Parisian cabaret restaurants which, from 1892 until 1954, captivated tourists with their grotesque portrayals of death in the afterworlds of Hell, Heaven, and Nothingness. Each offered specialized cuisines and morbid visual displays featuring flashes of nudity and shocking optical illusions. 

The event will be introduced and moderated by the book’s editor, Morbid Anatomy founder and creative director Joanna Ebenstein, featuring a sampling of some of the original images from the book unearthed by Mel and drawn from contemporary journals, postcards, tourist brochures, and menus. Director Ronni Thomas will screen his short film on Mel Gordon. We will have words from Maer Ben-Yisrael, Mel’s nephew; Mark Pilkington, the book’s publisher; and Christina Ward of Feral House, publisher of many of Mel’s other books. 

The night will end with a feature-length illustrated lecture by Morbid Anatomy European Attaché Eleanor Crook, exploring the dark history of morbid popular rites and entertainment, including funereal bars, hellish dark rides, chambers of horrors and dancehalls macabre which our ancestors devised to tackle fear of the beyond. 

We hope you will join us as we lovingly remember an impish and inspiring manifester and his newest work from beyond the grave.

BIOGRAPHIES

Eleanor Crook is an artist inspired by a fear of mortality and intimations of immortality. She works internationally, exhibiting fine art and specializing in wax modeling and bronze sculpture, rediscovering forgotten art techniques and studying the dark masters from art history. She is artist in residence at the Gordon Museum of Pathology London, with sculptures commissioned by the Science Museum London, the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the Vrolik Museum Amsterdam. She has found her spiritual calling as European Attaché for Morbid Anatomy where she communicates Death Things for an eclectic and congruent community.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy. Her books include Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy, Death: A Graveside Companion and The Anatomical Venus.

Ronni Thomas is a filmmaker and artist based out of New York City.  Career highlights include writing, producing and directing the acclaimed AMC documentary compendium to the Breaking Bad franchise. His first feature film, The Kybalion, is available in limited release. His short film works including The Midnight Archive and Morbid Anatomy Presents, have garnered nominations at Tribeca, Raindance, Toronto, and Hot Springs, among others. He was the filmmaker in residence at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA from 2020-2023. He is currently working on Von Cosel, a narrative dramatization of the uncanny story of Key West necrophile Carl Von Cosel.