It’s time for the Ullage Group’s tenth mini-seminar!  In “Unacceptable Flying Objects,” we turn to one of our society’s most pervasive and stigmatized topics, UFOs.  We’re interested in it particularly as a cultural phenomenon, and in the social and religious impact of those pesky mandalas.  We’ll move beyond the dull ping-pong between believer and debunker, and the hipster’s itch for kitsch, to find the darker meanings beneath.

Lisa Hirschfield will offer a multimedia survey of saucer sightings in 20th century children’s culture, with a special focus on UFO aesthetics, the changing culture of extraterrestrial contact, and what subliminal messages — if any — such phenomena may convey.

Anthony Matt will discuss how UFOs have always haunted humanity in various forms throughout history.  He will also discuss the interplay between perception and UFOs.

Doug Skinner will interpret a series of unsettling (and unpublished) drawings by “silent contactees,” which circulated among UFO researchers in the late ’60s.  He will also examine the curious subculture, both of percipients and researchers, that produced them — and which often had little to do with things in the sky.

We’ll be at the Jalopy Theatre, in Brooklyn, on Sunday, May 8, at 3 pm.  Admission is our traditional pittance, $5.  It will be disturbing, and you can drink while you’re spooked.  Directions to Jalopy are over here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The image is from the cover of “Flying Saucers” magazine, October 1964.)