Media Advisory: Ineffably Urban: Artists and Creative Thinkers Discuss Image and Identity of Buffalo in Art and Architecture

BUFFALO, N.Y.--How do artists, architects, activists, and scholars creatively engage with Buffalo and other cities in similar situations? What is the image, the identity they create for those cities?

Artists and creative thinkers will address these questions on April 30 at Ineffably Urban, a daylong symposium organized at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center by the University at Buffalo.

The event begins at 9 a.m. at Hallwalls, 341 Delaware Ave. It will bring together artists of different disciplines to discuss how they portray Buffalo, its past and possible futures, in their work. A complete program is available at http://ineffablyurban.net.

Like any other city, Buffalo has various and conflicting identities, and the goal of Ineffably Urban is to explore the narratives of Buffalo that have emerged through art in recent years.

Symposium organizer Miriam Paeslack is an art historian and adjunct professor in UB's Arts Management Program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"It's not a conference about whether we like or hate Buffalo, but it's really about how we can talk about Buffalo as a place beyond the cliches, beyond the city that used to be great but is not anymore, or the city that is now decaying," she said. "It's about how artists, poets, photographers and filmmakers have presented Buffalo or cities in similar positions."

"I think what we can assume when we go into this is that there is no one picture of Buffalo that we can reduce ourselves to, and I think this conference tries to broaden our horizon when talking about Buffalo," Paeslack added.

Ineffably Urban is sponsored by UB's strategic strength in Cultures and Texts, one of eight interdisciplinary research and academic strengths that the university is emphasizing under its UB 2020 strategic plan.

Besides Paeslack, other speakers and panelists include:

- Jean-Michel Reed, an artist and photographer whose projects have investigated the phenomenon of fires in a declining city.

- Jeff Byles, author of "Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition" and an architecture, urbanism and culture writer whose work has appeared in publications including The New York Times and Metropolis.

- Dennis Maher, an architect and clinical assistant professor in the UB School of Architecture and Planning, who has crafted large-scale sculptures from discarded building materials from demolition sites.

- Mary N. Woods, architectural historian and the Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory at Cornell University.

- Eddy Dobosiewicz and Marty Biniasz, activists and guides for Forgotten Buffalo, whose custom tours introduce Buffalo's unique landmarks and old-world neighborhoods and provide a sense of why Buffalo Niagara is one of the nation's most unique urban communities.

- Julian Meyrick, theater director, theater historian and visiting faculty member in UB's Arts Management Program.

- Kenny Cupers, architectural historian and the UB School of Architecture and Planning's 2010-11 Reyner Banham Fellow.

- Alexander Bitterman, an architect, designer and assistant professor in the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Design, whose books include "Buffalo is a Cool Place to Live."

- David Gracon, an artist and assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University who teaches courses in documentary production, cultural studies and the political economy of communication.

- Marc Moscato, an artist, curator and activist who directs The Dill Pickle Club, a Portland, Oregon-based cultural club that uses nontraditional and interactive learning environments to help residents understand the place in which they live.

- Julie Perini, a video artist, writer, educator and a graduate of UB's Media Study Department, who has written about art that promotes progressive social change.

- Aaron Bartley, co-founder and co-director of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH Buffalo), which mobilizes residents to implement sustainable development projects that improve housing and job opportunities in Buffalo.

- Jordan Geiger, an architect and assistant professor of architecture at UB, whose research and design practice addresses time-based and temporary constructions and collaborative interdisciplinary methods of practice.

Post-symposium events on April 30 include:

- 5 p.m.: A screening at Hallwalls of "Tough Stuff from the Buff: Experimental & Activist Video from the Fringes of Buffalo, NY."

- 6 p.m.: An opening at 949 Broadway in Buffalo for an exhibition of designs by Geiger's architecture students at UB for a theoretical mixed-use building that would include a birthing center, hospice and community learning space in Buffalo's Polonia district.