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City Hall Inspired UB Students' Work
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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The 25th floor of the Art Deco style Buffalo City Hall provided the
inspiration for "25th Oversite," an installation that was on display in
April at City Hall.
Twenty-one artists produced site-specific projects inspired by—and
designed for—the 25th floor of City Hall. The artists, a mix of graduate
and undergraduate students, took courses focusing on site-specific
installation art taught by Caroline Koebel, visiting assistant professor
of media study. They were primarily art or media study majors, although
a few architecture majors were also 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
at 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.
"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," Koebel 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, 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, "The Perpetual Intercourse" by
Kathryn Mary Cielewich, 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 intertwined with their identity
and sense of self."
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's "Beholden Vision" confounds divisions between
pleasure in looking and control through surveillance as it invites
viewers to observe pedestrians 25 flights below
- Adam Donnelly's "Tall Buildings/Single Bound" asks how long in the
wake of Sept. 11 America's unabated thirst for violence and destruction
as entertainment will last
- Ryan Ettipio's "Casino" foregrounds the controversy around
Buffalo's move to embrace casino culture
- LindaBeth Nichols Flack's "The Soul is the Prison of the Body"
comments on the self's claustrophobic encounter with the cultural images
of women
- Beatriz Flores' "Wrong Bird" is about certain kinds of
identities in high positions and the legitimacy of authority
- Estella Ford's "Iphigenia" is a video installation inspired by
references to Greek mythology in the architecture and murals of City
Hall
- Valerie Ingold's "Versus" draws attention to how City Hall's
numerous references to Native Americans are in effect misrepresentations
- Mirela Ivanciu's "Traces" uses poetic means to record the viewer's
path as she/he encounters the artwork and other viewers
- Sadiq Javer's "Anti-Deco" is an architectural intervention that
both embraces and shuns the Art Deco style of City Hall
- Ann Marie Lepkyj's "Impacted Views" is a collaborative art project
with environmentally compromised Buffalo communities
- Brian Milbrand's "Pay No Attention" looks at the way people
communicate with each other through the use of a robot
- Aaron Miller's "Talents Diversified Find Vent in Myriad Forms" is a
sound installation mapping the architecture and occupants of City Hall
- Kisha Patterson's "Bureaucrat" shows how the well-meaning civil
servant's mission often is an exercise in the futile and absurd
- Bernie Roddy's "Buffalo Profile Tapes," videotapes exhibition
visitors' questionnaire responses for telecast on cable Channel 20
- Nathan Sobczak's "From the Window of Time" contrasts the artist's
perception of Buffalo with his grandfather's memory of the glorious city
of yesteryear
- Elizabeth Wasmund's "Fragments of Memory" uses oral history to
explore the artist's childhood associations of her father and
grandmother with the Buffalo area
- Megh Worthington's "Fondness Documented" solicits pleasurable
memories from diverse Buffalonians and then certifies them
- Catherine Mavourneen Young's "Blossom of Snow" features the artist
in a live performance wrestling with questions of whiteness, regional
pride and territorial prejudice
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