Rapid expansion and abandonment as a result of industry boom and bust cycles is a recurrent phenomenon in American history, one that has forged our national character and defined our migrations. Lyman has always been interested in these places - in the hard labor, raucous living, personal sacrifice, loneliness, enormous optimism and great risk that quickly fills them up, and then of course, how the din of voices quiets down, leaving echoes and remnants in its wake. (Read more...)

600 Highwaymen is the moniker for artistic duo Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone. Since 2009 they have devised seven original works, presenting nationally and internationally at venues such as the Under the Radar Festival In New York City and Centre Pompidou and Parc de la Villette in Paris. (Read more...)

Sam Van Aken is an award-winning contemporary artist and Syracuse University professor of sculpture who has developed a project called Tree of 40 Fruit Project in which the artist hand-grafts trees that bear over 40 different kinds of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries and almonds. (Read more...)

Kruck will photograph, sketch, and ultimately produce a series of relief prints (woodcut prints) of the Niagara Power Authority Intake Gate structures by the “Niagara Scenic Parkway” in Niagara Falls, NY, and the surrounding Niagara river area in Buffalo. (Read more...)

For their CAI residency, Duo Axis will curate and present of a concert experience that examines the nature of duo playing itself. (Read more...)

The Hayley-Laufer Duo champions adventurous voice-and-piano repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and seeks to expand the boundaries of voice-and-piano composition by commissioning works from innovative composers. Their mission is to continue the grand Lied duo tradition by presenting audiences with the most audacious and exciting vocal music of today. (Read more...)

Bartosik’s CAI residency will center around the development of a long-term choreographic project, "I hunger for you (1-2)"(working title), a two-phase, dual-venue work which marks the culmination of Bartosik's extensive examination into deeply internalized forces of faith, violence, life force, and compassion pulse through bodies that exist in a mesmerizing, starkly beautiful, often dangerous world. (Read more...)

Helen Simoneau Danse will come to UB for a 3-week residency in order to create a new dance work while integrating the University of Buffalo students in all stages of the process as well as offering the larger dance community an inside view to their creation and methodologies. (Read more...)

Comunidades Visibles (Visible Communities): The Materiality of Migration brings together artworks by six first- or second-generation immigrant Latinx artists. In conjunction with this exhibition, which will be at the Albright-Knox Northland from Feb. 12-May 16, 2021, the Creative Arts Initiative will be partnering with the AKG to host a series of films selected by the artists.

DreamTown is a documentary about the precarious dream of a young Afro-Ecuadorian soccer player, Anibal Chala, as he strives to make it to the professional leagues, and eventually sees his dreams become reality. This coming-of-age story follows Anibal over the span of six years, from the youth minor leagues until he secures a place on Ecuador’s First Division team, ranking among the country’s top 10 players at the young age of 17.

In Pais de Blancos, Modou Camara, a Senegalese immigrant in Argentina, lives his routine in Buenos Aires, while missing Senegal. After his ritual bath, his work filming a Murit festival, going out at night with his comrades, taking care of the children of a friend, and discussions with his girlfriend, Modou reflects on immigration and the intercontinental problems of the current system. Following the film screening, join Curatorial Assistant Dr. Andrea Alvarez and filmmaker Pavel Tavarez for a conversation about Pais de Blancos.

The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who are detained by Border Patrol and thrown into a shadowy for-profit detention center—on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri attempt a daring reverse ‘prison break,’ things don’t go according to plan. By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, The Infiltrators tells an incredible and thrilling true story in a genre-defying new cinematic language.

Maggie Lee's Mommy is a documentary about the relationship between a mother and daughter before and after death, the shared struggle for love and independence, and a young artist's coming-of-age. Maggie Lee is a Taiwanese American artist based in New York. Since she was a teen she has made zines, shot photos for magazines, and made movies, her diaristic documentation referencing and responding to ideologies of alternative culture. Mommy is her first film.

In Los Angeles in 1992, after a brief car chase, police pulled over unarmed Rodney King from his car and brutally beat him. The incident was captured by a photographer living nearby and his was released to the news media, unleashing an unparalleled series of marches, protests, and rioting. In news footage and photographs from that time, the critically acclaimed film LA 92, from Academy Award winners Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin, tells the story of King’s arrest, beating, and trial, and the subsequent events that shook the city of Los Angeles to its core.

In Talk to Her, after a chance encounter at a theater, two men, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco's girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been gored and is in a coma. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in a coma, Alicia, a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny.

Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue is the world-premiere of a new site-specific performance that combines theatre, cinema, and live music. 

We have been closely monitoring how current health and travel issues are evolving with regard to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). After consultation with University at Buffalo leadership and a great deal of deliberation, our proactive feeling is that the best thing we can do for our community is to limit non-essential large gatherings. As such, the UB Humanities Institute is postponing An Evening with Nick Cave (March 27) and Performance, Publics, Possibilty (a one-day symposium scheduled for March 28), with the hope of rescheduling in Spring 2021.

We have been closely monitoring how current health and travel issues are evolving with regard to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). After consultation with University at Buffalo leadership and a great deal of deliberation, our proactive feeling is that the best thing we can do for our community is to limit non-essential large gatherings. As such, the UB Humanities Institute is postponing An Evening with Nick Cave (March 27) and Performance, Publics, Possibilty (a one-day symposium scheduled for March 28), with the hope of rescheduling in Spring 2021.