UB Art Gallery to Present Lecture and Film Series Exploring Relationship between the Environment and Trade

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo Art Gallery will present a riveting lecture and film series this spring that will explore the past, present and future relationship between the environment and trade.

Tuesday, March 16, at 6 p.m.

UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, Room 215

Lize Mogel, interdisciplinary artist who works with the interstices between art and cultural geography.

"The World as a Map"

As technology and commerce blur more and more geographic boundaries, the iconic world map can't adequately describe the intricacies of globalization. Mogel will present mapping projects that re-think familiar representations of the world such as the world map, the UN logo, and the spectacle of World's Fairs. She will also discuss her work of the past decade creating and disseminating "radical cartography."

Thursday, April 1, at noon

UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, First Floor Gallery

Alberto Rey, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Visual Arts and New Media

"Looking for Home" investigates this artist's images and videos over the past 25 years and its relationship to his recent body of work, two on-going series -- Biological Regionalism and the Aesthetics of Death -- that explore contemporary society's connection to the natural environmental and the series connection to art history, biology, and social disconnection with nature and death.

Thursday, April 8, at noon

UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, First Floor Gallery

Jennifer Nalbone, Great Lakes United Director, Navigation and Invasive Species

"Hindsight on Highway H2O"

Big water like the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River has historically been used to move commercial goods regionally and internationally. Big investments into big engineering projects led to the construction of canals and waterways to facilitate larger ships and higher volumes. But re-plumbing the lakes and rivers brought unforeseen consequences. From the construction of the Chicago Waterway System to the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, commercial navigation development has facilitated one of the worst ecological tragedies of all time, the introduction of aquatic invasive species. The consequences of invasive species beg the question: If we knew then what we know now, would we have done things differently?

Thursday, April 15, at noon

UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, First Floor Gallery

Margaret Wooster, Habitat Coordinator, Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper

"I Drink Therefore I Am" follows a few of the major Great Lakes rivers across New York State, using maps created by Wooster for her book "Living Waters." Wooster will tell stories about the latest taking of the Niagara River's "unlimited power" to Cartier's first probes of the St. Lawrence River, in the context of the great cycles of resident and migratory life these rivers have sustained.

Saturday, May 1, at 10 a.m.

UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, First Floor Gallery

Richard Price, Seedsavers' Exchange Member, Former NOFA-Certified Organic Market Gardener

"Grow-Your-Own Garden Seedlings Organically" is a hands-on presentation on organic seedling production to get you started, or to fine tune your home seed-starting techniques. This workshop will cover soil mixing, lighting and heat requirements, potting-up, equipment and supplies, and seedling care among other topics. Materials will also be provided to give an opportunity to start some plants. Get the experience and the satisfaction of doing it yourself, and the knowledge that your vegetables and ornamental seedlings are organically grown, properly tended to and the varieties you want.

Friday, May 14, at 8 p.m.

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

$7 general, $5 students/seniors, $4 members

Film screening and performance featuring work by Paul Lloyd Sargent, Thomas Comerford and the collaborative team Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat.

Paul Sargent's "Untitled Seaway Studies" is a short video culled from years of footage of the shipping traffic along the St. Lawrence River. The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation, which overseas shipping routes, canals, and locks along the waterway, recently dubbed the Great Lakes and river "Highway H2O" through a PR campaign designed to green wash the detrimental effects of international shipping on this freshwater environment. "Untitled Seaway Studies" imagines these ships as invasive species, literal and figurative vehicles for border invasion/evasion, by documenting vessels as they travel deep into the North American interior from seaports all over world.

Thomas Comerford's"Land Marked/Marquette" is a series of clear, concisely observed landscape studies of sites and monuments in Chicago connected to 17th century exploration by Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette. In examining the monuments to Marquette, the "stories" the monuments tell and the relationship of the monuments to their surroundings, the film deploys different audio-visual and stylistic tactics, allowing for the contemplation of both historical representation and the transformation of the land in the passage of time.

Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat's "Time Machine" is a time warp performance in which analog and digital signals are combined or rerouted, audio signals are patched through video inputs, and machines are utilized in a hybrid system in ways they were not originally built for. Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat set the dials and push the levers while guiding you through the fourth dimension. Audio and video signals are controlled by a number of interface devices, including FM transmitter necklaces, computer game joysticks, and technology-enhanced inflatables. The hardware and software used is rewired and upgraded with custom-built physical interfaces so that both viewers and performers may operate Time Machine's narrative engines. During the performance, the stage becomes the control panel for an immense ship and the screen becomes a window through which we visualize different spaces and times. Sometimes aboard a transatlantic freighter; sometimes whisked into the future amid a constellation of unknown stars; other times driving down an American highway peeking into old motels. In all of these locales, we are space-time tourists linked by a common exploratory urge.