April 25, 2002-Vol33n26: City Hall inspires UB students' work

City Hall inspires UB students' work
Site-specific installation on display today and tomorrow on 25th floor of city hall

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

The 25th floor of Buffalo City Hall has become the inspiration for some UB art students, as well as the site for "25th Oversite: New Art for City Hall," a group exhibition on display today and tomorrow on the 25th floor of City Hall.

The 25th floor of the Art Deco-style Buffalo City Hall provided the inspiration for "25th Oversite," an installation on display today and tomorrow in City Hall.

The exhibit, which is free of charge, can be viewed from 4-9 p.m. today and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow. Visitors should take the elevator in the lobby of City Hall, located on Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo, to the 25th floor.

The 21 artists have produced site-specific projects inspired by—and designed for—the 25th floor of City Hall. The artists, a mix of graduate and undergraduate students, are taking one of two courses focusing on site-specific installation art being taught by Caroline Koebel, visiting assistant professor of media study. They primarily are either art or media study majors, although a few architecture majors also are involved.

Why City Hall?

The idea to use the Art Deco building as the site for the group installation came about as a result of an overheard conversation in the Spot coffee shop in downtown Buffalo, Koebel says

She says she first taught the installation art course at UB during the Fall 1999 semester, and about midway through the semester she held class in the Spot. David Granville, executive director of the Buffalo Arts Commission, overheard the conversation and was curious to know more about the class.

"We chatted and he offered to work with us in finding a Buffalo site where the students could do site-specific works," Koebel says. That December, the class held an exhibition, called "Method 13," at the old Asbury-Delaware church at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Tupper Street, which recently was purchased by singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco.

"So, when I knew that I was going to teach the course again, I contacted David and he was again happy to work with me in determining a site," she says. "We considered other sites before David came up with the idea of the vacant office space on the 25th floor of City Hall. Once he showed it to me, I knew that it was ideal for the project."

Koebel notes that the 25th floor is the last floor of office space in the building before the observation deck. The space features banks of windows offering "a panoramic view of the city and the whole region. The views alone are so amazing—you get a real sense of the city and the region," she says.

The artists' interpretations of the space are "very broad and far-reaching," she points out.

"The overriding premise of the project was that the students were to have no preconceptions of their actual artwork before entering the site," she says, adding that students were instructed to take time to meditate on the site, explore their associations with it and how it affected them, "and then be inspired and come up with an interpretation."

Those interpretations run the gamut, from the political to the personal to the general.

Many are completely tied to the space—"they could not exist anywhere else but on the 25th floor," Koebel says.

For example, Mike Bouquard's "Radial Wave," which surveys the paranormal activity of Buffalo and lifts the bad spirits that haunt the city, actually is installed on the building's observation deck.

Some works are not so "truly site-specific—they would work in another context," she says. One such work is "The Perpetual Intercourse" by Kathryn Mary Cielewich, which explores the human psyche through a collection of stored images and memories.

Others are more personal. In "Where is My Chopstick?" Bonaventure Tain is inspired by his grandmother's obsessive control over her 37 pairs of chopsticks, representing each member of the family. Noting that Tain's ethnic Chinese grandmother frequently misplaces her chopsticks, Koebel says the work underscores the relationship between the misplaced chopsticks and Tain's own physical and cultural displacement in Buffalo.

Some artists who grew up in Buffalo identify with the site in completely different ways, Koebel says. "Their response to the site is more continuous with the idea that Buffalo is so intertwined with their identity and sense of self," she says.

The variety and diversity of the students' artwork—and the fact that some of the work is not specific to the site—"makes the exhibit more dynamic," Koebel adds.

Other artists featured in the exhibition and the title of their installations:

Chris Coleman, "Beholden Vision," which confounds divisions between pleasure in looking and control through surveillance as it invites viewers to observe pedestrians 25 flights below
Adam Donnelly, "Tall Buildings/Single Bound," which asks how long in the wake of Sept. 11 America's abated thirst for violence and destruction as entertainment will last
Ryan Ettipio, "Casino," which foregrounds the full extent of the controversy around Buffalo's move to embrace casino culture
LindaBeth Nichols Flack, "The Soul is the Prison of the Body," a commentary on the self's claustrophobic encounter with cultural images of women
Beatriz Flores, "Wrong Bird," a piece about certain kinds of identities in high positions and the legitimacy of authority
Estella Ford, "Iphigenia," a video installation inspired by references to Greek mythology in the architecture and murals of City Hall
Valerie Ingold, "Versus," which draws attention to how City Hall's numerous references to Native Americans are in effect misrepresentations
Mirela Ivanciu, "Traces," which uses poetic means to record the viewer's path as she/he encounters the artwork and other viewers
Sadiq Javer, "Anti-Deco," an architectural intervention that both embraces and shuns the Art Deco style of City Hall
Ann Marie Lepkyj, "Impacted Views," a collaborative art project with environmentally compromised Buffalo communities
Brian Milbrand, "Pay No Attention," which looks at the way people communicate with each other through the use of a robot
Aaron Miller, "Talents Diversified Find Vent in Myriad Forms," a sound installation mapping the architecture and occupants of City Hall
Kisha Patterson, "Bureaucrat," which shows how the well-meaning civil servant's mission often is an exercise in the futile and absurd
Bernie Roddy, "Buffalo Profile Tapes," which videotapes exhibition visitors' questionnaire responses for telecast on cable Channel 20
Nathan Sobczak, "From the Window of Time," which contrasts the artist's perception of Buffalo with his grandfather's memory of the glorious city of yesteryear
Elizabeth Wasmund, "Fragments of Memory," which uses oral history to explore the artist's childhood associations of her father and grandmother with the Buffalo area
Megh Worthington, "Fondness Documented," which solicits pleasurable memories from diverse Buffalonians and then certifies them
Catherine Mavourneen Young, "Blossom of Snow," which features the artist in a live performance wrestling questions of whiteness, regional pride and territorial prejudice