Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics
Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics
Curators: Catherine Parayre, Reinhard Reitzenstein
April 2017
105 Silo-City Row, Buffalo, NY 14203, USA
Buffalo, US and St. Catharines, Canada are neighboring cities separated by a river and a border, but they also nurture a strong sense of regional togetherness and cultural kinship. Colleagues in Sculpture, Arts, Comparative Literature, English Studies, Visual Arts, Studies in Arts and Culture, and French Studies at SUNY on the US side and Brock University on the Canadian side will share a common space at Silo-City, Buffalo between 22 and 29 April 2017. Coming from different places and practices, we wish to foster interdisciplinarity.
Together, we want to reflect on the notion of dispersal. A concrete monument, an overwhelming structure, Silo-City is also a crucible of ephemeralities – sounds dissipating as they echo up the walls, the wind blowing through hollow buildings, the decay of objects deposited in the empty halls, the temporary presence of others, productive resonances of creative experiences. Is Silo-City a memorial? Silos are built to maintain large networks of commodity exchange for human and animal sustenance. Here, however, the workers are gone; the buildings are exposed to inclement weather; the projects we bring with us will disappear, be dispersed or displaced. Silo-City, despite its imposing constructions, invites visitors to become more perceptive to the transience of human endeavours.
We will plant colourful seedpods, install a neon sign in tribute to the Buffalo river that flows by Silo-City, crush words out of their discourse, scatter mourning songs for long gone lives, bring images, noise and stories from other places. We will capture the brilliance of a moment.
A follow-up one-day symposium at Rodman Hall Art Centre, St. Catharines will document and revive the exhibition on Saturday 16 September 2017. https://brocku.ca/rodman-hall
Photograph, Shawn Serfas, 2017
Perot Elevator, Site of Alloyed Installation
Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics
Perot Annex, Silo-City, Buffalo, NY, 2017