\nJason Livingston\nAncient Sunshine\, 10:26 min\, 16mm film and iPhone video presented on digital video\, sound on headphones\, open captions\, 2020 \n“A fossil cast in plastic\, an artificial plateau\, classic cars running on the fumes of the nation. Ancient Sunshine marks a path through fossil fuel extraction and climate defense in the American West. The film proposes solidarity against the violence by which “earth” becomes ‘resource.’ \nUtah Tar Sands Resistance has been fighting experimental mining in the Tavaputs Plateau for almost a decade\, setting up camp every summer in sight of heavy equipment and construction crews. The film asks\, how might the concept of horizontalism be applied to the physical horizon\, its decimation\, and to capital’s propensity for vertical extrication? Ancient Sunshine interweaves the endless remaking of the Western landscape with labor history\, reflections on anarchist organization\, and interspecies economies. \nAncient Sunshine consists of interviews with the Utah Tar Sands Resistance primary organizers and other Utah land protectors\, and sets their voices in and against an industrialized landscape. The film presents an array of voices\, drawing attention to the role of resistance and kinship during times of threat and extinction. Toward a poetic solidarity\, toward a formal politics. – Jason Livingston \nJason Livingston\nNOT ALL FOSSILS ARE GRAVES (positive) and NOT ALL FOSSILS ARE GRAVES (ghost)\, two pressure prints\, 22 x 30”\, 2024 \nNOT ALL FOSSILS ARE GRAVES is named after a remark Livingston made as Cohen explained to him that not all fossils are formed from the dead bodies of living things – some are instead the imprints and marks of still-living creatures. This began a conversation on the relationship between the indexical relationship between fossils and image making processes such as photography\, and here\, pressure printing. \nThe work also directly references what fossils – and by extension – fossil fuels are. Phoebe Cohen states: “…we often think of fossils as being associated with death. This framework that not all fossils are graves\, to me\, spoke of a sense of hope\, and of\, again\, of a sort of resiliency. Also\, in the sense of thinking about fossils as fossil fuels and that right now fossil fuels are leading us to our grave as a society\, as a species. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Like fossil fuels\, coal is not inherently bad. It is preserved ancient sunshine. It’s what we’re doing with it. It’s the choices that we’re making that are having a negative impact.” \nThe two prints – a positive and a ghost – were printed by Rachel Shelton at Mirabo Press and framed by Dennis Wisniewski at Buffalo Canvas. \nJason Livingston and Phoebe A. Cohen\nNO ONE NOON (paper)\, butcher paper\, ink\, 2024\nNO ONE NOON (neon)\, neon sign\, 2024\nNO ONE NOON (video)\, looped\, digital video\, sound\, 2024. Audio description: A low rumbling sound throughout. \nThe centerpiece of In the Sun’s Absence\, the suite of works encompassing NO ONE NOON contemplate the nature of time. Emerging from an exercise that Cohen regularly assigns to her students to understand the vast nature of deep time\, Livingston and Cohen plotted events across millenia on a long piece of butcher paper. Playfully\, the timeline intertwines specific moments within the earth’s history such as the moment carbon is fixed with poetic\, human ones\, such as “gossip bonds.” \nUnderpinning the work is an essential discussion of the nature of time\, and a debate between cyclical and linear interpretations of time. As Cohen stated: “We see an arrow moving forward and we think\, what are we moving towards? ….evolution isn’t moving towards anything. It’s moving away from something. It never goes back. It does not have a direction in mind. Organisms respond to their environment in the moment and then the environment changes. They are not intending to go anywhere or do anything or be anything\, except what they are in the moment. Timelines can be dangerous\, and they have been used to promote a worldview that humans are the pinnacle of evolution\, that we are the top of the mountain\, as it were. That’s the danger of timelines. One of the things that we were interested in playing with was creating a view\, a timeline where the moment that we are in right now was not legible\, to basically pull the viewer away from that sense of progress or inevitability.” \nThis cyclical nature is iterated on in NO ONE NOON (video). The title of the work – repeated in Livingston’s haiku installed outside Tri-Main Center – is a palindrome. \nJason Livingston \n7.24.14\, 4:15 min\, 16mm film presented on digital video\, silent\, 2014 \n7.24.14 documents protesters gathered in Ithaca\, NY for the National Day of Action for Gaza on July 24\, 2014. The action was called by over 100 social justice organizations around the country. That year\, the Israeli military killed over 2000 Gazans through its “Operation Protective Edge”; the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted that 551 of those killed were children. Livingston’s silent film documents people gathering and hanging pieces of paper on a clothesline. On the paper are the names of child victims\, the dates they were killed\, and their ages\, ranging from 5 months to 18 years old\, with one referred to simply as “child.” \nThe film sharpens the intertwined nature of climate\, capital\, and colonialism that grounds In the Sun’s Absence. Speaking at the UN COP28 in late 2023 regarding the Israeli military’s current assault on Gaza\, Gustavo Petro\, the president of Colombia\, noted: “I invite all of you to imagine a combination of facts — the projection of the climate crisis in five or ten years and the current genocide of the Palestinian people. Are these facts disconnected? Or can we look at there [Gaza] as a mirror of the immediate future? The unleashing of genocide and barbarism on the Palestinian people is what awaits the exodus of the peoples of the South unleashed by the climate crisis.” \nPlaced next to the millenia charting timeline of NO ONE NOON (paper)\, the clothesline of 7.24.14 brings much shorter spans into view\, violently cut short by colonial power. With Ancient Sunshine\, showcases Livingston’s long-standing work in charting social justice movements and tracing shared solidarities. \nJason Livingston \nTHE TOTALITY (pieces)\, mixed media\, black light\, 2024\nTHE TOTALITY (assembly)\, 5 hours\, digital video\, sound\, 2024. Audio description: The majority of the video features ambient sounds from a city neighborhood: birds\, cars on a street. During the total eclipse section\, there are sounds of an oil pumpjack and a donkey braying. \nTHE TOTALITY (assembly)\, a five hour long video\, features a 3 minute 45 second interpretation of the April 8\, 2024 total solar eclipse daily at 3:18pm. The video directly takes on Livingston’s and Cohen’s focus on climate\, colony\, and capital\, threading abstraction and representational elements as a durational experience. \nDuring the majority of the film\, it features contemplative 20 minute long shots of the sky\, with slow-moving images floating across the screen of the infrastructures of oil extraction\, border control\, and war. At the time of the total eclipse\, the work continues the wordplay present in the exhibition by intermixing images of oil pumps – often referred to as “nodding donkeys” – with footage of a donkey wearing a hand sewn blanket. Shot transitions foreground a graphical motif – seen on the donkey blanket – that is present on the billboards installed around Buffalo such as those used by the Geological Society of America\, an interpretation of the geological timescale. The precise duration of the work places the work in the present as it looks backwards and to the future. \nNext to the video work\, on a shelf with a black light\, THE TOTALITY (pieces) playfully looks towards the future. Small shapes featuring visual icons of the oil industry\, the work is a speculative imagining of what a future fossil\, unearthed by children\, will look like.
\n\nThe following conversation between Jason Livingston and Phoebe A. Cohen took place on February 16\, 2024 over Zoom. It has been edited for clarity\, and can also be read on our website. \nJason Livingston \nYou are quite active in public-facing science. You recently appeared in an episode of PBS Nova Ancient Earth\, and you are currently producing a podcast called Jax and Phoebe Make a Planet! Can you say more about your passion for science\, and sharing that passion with the public? Are stories helpful in communicating? What kind of stories do you want to tell\, and how do you want to tell them? \nPhoebe A. Cohen \nThat’s a big question. I have always loved sharing my enthusiasm for science and the natural world. And it’s been a part of my professional life since I graduated from college in one form or another. It comes from a variety of places. One is that I think the natural world is really fucking amazing and fascinating\, and I think that I have had the privilege of being able to spend much of my life in deep study of our planet and its past. That is something that most people will never have an opportunity to do. It’s not necessarily because of a lack of interest. \nAs a paleontologist\, people are always telling me\, oh my god\, I loved fossils as a kid\, I loved dinosaurs as a kid\, you know\, I loved collecting rocks as a kid. And it’s always as a kid. A lot of my passion for communicating science is about sharing my enthusiasm\, my knowledge\, and my sense of awe and wonder for the natural world with adults. Not that sharing with kids isn’t important\, but I feel like so many adults feel like they are disconnected from that part of themselves\, or that they’re not allowed to have that sense of awe and wonder as grown-ups. That it’s something they had to leave behind as children. \nI consider myself a storyteller. My science is a historical science. I will never know the truth about what happened 800 million years ago. My job is to take pieces of the past and weave them together in what I think is the most likely story given the evidence\, given the data. Being a paleontologist\, someone who works in deep time\, requires a massive amount of imagination. I have to\, in my mind and with my data\, reconstruct a world that no one has ever seen\, and no one will ever see. That requires imagination. It requires vision. It’s one of the reasons I love doing what I do. Storytelling is something that I’ve always loved doing; I’ve always loved reading stories and writing them when I was younger. It comes very naturally to me to want to communicate science as a story. That fits in well with this project\, which is about bridging these artificial divides and schisms between the sciences and the humanities. \nJL \nI think sometimes people think that science is all about the truth or that science is only about certainty. Which isn’t the case. I’m wondering two things. One is\, more broadly\, if there’s something about stories that can allow for uncertainty\, and then more specifically\, if geological records can allow for that storytelling. As it turns out\, there is a lot of uncertainty. There are a lot of things that simply aren’t known\, like unconformities. \nPC \nYeah\, yeah. Missing time. The scientific method as taught in a seventh-grade science class is you have a hypothesis\, you do an experiment\, and you see whether the results of your experiment confirm your hypothesis or not\, and if they don’t then you adjust your hypothesis. That works for a lot of biology and chemistry and physics\, but it does not work for historical sciences like geology. It also doesn’t work for astronomy\, which is also a historical science because you’re looking at light from stars or galaxies or supernova that is millions of years old. You can’t do an experiment on a black hole\, just like you can’t do an experiment on a trilobite or a dinosaur. \nAnd so we have to think about science differently. Like I said earlier\, we will never know the truth. All we can do is do the best that we can\, given the tools and information that we have\, and that will change over time. \nThis is something that you and I have sort of butted heads with a little bit: this idea of\, is there an objective truth? I think that I have some comfort with that uncertainty\, up to a point. Because I still believe that like the natural world exists\, that reality exists\, and that there are observations that can be made about the natural world that are true. I knock my coffee off the desk and it will fall to the ground. There are rocks outside that we can date using geological and chemical techniques that are millions or billions of years old. Those things are true. \nI think I have more comfort with uncertainty than other scientists do because of the nature of my discipline. And also because of my personality. But there’s a limit to that. I guess an empiricist at heart. \nJL \nThere may be a productive tension between us but also between a lot of people in these kinds of collaborations. What I see is there’s the question of method and there’s the question of goal\, and where it fits in the world\, too. I think some of our differences have come out not so much about whether a rock can be dated and placed in time\, because it can be. But where does that certainty fit into meaning making? Or in shared worlds? That may be where I place my focus in the arts and humanities. \nWhen we began this project\, we talked a lot about how the absence of the sun during a total eclipse affords an opportunity to think about the importance of the sun for all manner of things. Photosynthesis and life on the planet. The production of energy for all life forms\, including the production of fossil fuels. The predicament we’re in because of burning fossil fuels. How we might imagine a transition to renewables and a more just distribution of resources. Now that we’re further along into the project\, and the eclipse is a few weeks away\, what are your thoughts on art’s role in imagining new worlds? Or maybe that’s too grand! Do you think art can play a role? What can we do to not fall into doom and gloom futurecasting? Feel free to be honest about art’s limitations. I see no reason to be overly rosy. \nPC \nThat’s a really interesting question. I think of myself as a pragmatist when it comes to thinking about climate change and global change. Anthropogenic global induced change because it’s not just climate\, right? We are inexorably altering the planet. Our actions will lead to the extinction of other species that otherwise would not have gone extinct in this time interval. That climate change is going to negatively impact our species and it’s going to disproportionately impact minoritized communities\, the Global South. These things I believe to be true. I also am a deep believer in harm reduction. You can sort of use a harm reduction framework to think about climate change. My perspective is that anything we do is better than doing nothing. It will not only reduce harm on other species and ecosystems\, but also on other people. If we can take actions now that will mitigate suffering\, then I believe we have a moral and ethical responsibility to do so\, even if we cannot reverse the impacts that we are enacting on the planet. \nThat’s my positionality in terms of thinking about where we are. I think being a doomer is a very privileged position. I also firmly believe in the Mariame Kaba quote\, “hope is a discipline.” It requires work to be hopeful. She said that in the framework of abolition\, but I think it holds just as true for thinking about environmental degradation and climate change and global change\, global warming. \nAnyway\, art\, right\, art. I’m getting there\, don’t worry! \nMy research is on 800-million-year-old tiny fossils. My research does not have a direct climate change focus. It doesn’t have modern-day relevance in the most specific sense of that term. So is what I do useless? No. Because what I’m doing in my research and my teaching is\, I am giving my students a holistic and comprehensive view of how the Earth system works\, and how it has changed over time\, which is essential to understanding the situation we’re in now and how our impacts will affect the Earth system moving forward. It’s also just a way to share the Earth’s resilience\, right? \nExplaining that mass extinctions have happened in the past and that life and the earth have always recovered\, I think\, is a place of hope. So what does that mean about art? You could say\, well\, my work is not relevant\, it doesn’t have inherent value because it’s not immediately addressing the societal problem of everybody right now. But that’s silly. It has value. And art has value too. I see my work and artistic work as quite similar in that way. Art has inherent value because it gives us a different way of seeing the world and seeing ourselves and seeing each other. Thinking about deep time and thinking about Earth’s history does a similar thing. It’s a way of twisting perspective and shifting someone out of their moment. That’s important for thinking about big problems. And big questions. I think it’s essential. \nAre artists going to solve climate change? No. But no one person\, no one discipline is going to solve climate change. It will require effort\, work\, creativity by people in all spectrums of society and all areas of inquiry. To say that it is only the responsibility of one group of people or another and that other people don’t have responsibility\, I think\, is wrong. It requires a shift in how we view ourselves as humans and art has a big role in that. \nJL \nI appreciate so much of what you’re saying right now. And I think it’s interesting to hear the quote you put forward from Kaba that “hope is a discipline” in the context of what we’re doing and in the context of our conversation\, where we’ve been talking about the discipline of geology as scientific discipline. What if we think about discipline as a daily practice\, of practicing something like hope or practicing something like imagination\, working on those muscles as you would with yoga or baseball or drawing? We can elevate something that seems like it’s “merely” in the realm of imagination or sci-fi thinking or artistic experimentation to considering it as a discipline- \nPC \n-an area of inquiry\, an area of work. \nJL \nAn area of inquiry\, yes\, I think it’s productive to think about it that way. You’ve mentioned deep time\, and I want to keep talking about that\, as well as several key phrases that have come up for us. Some of them are drawn from paleontology and geology\, or are scientific phrases\, and a number of them are phrases that we’ve come up with or that we’ve created between us\, like for example in the sun’s absence. Which has become an overarching title meant to unify or gather the disparate pieces in the constellation of works which will be sited in Buffalo leading up to and extending beyond the totality. No one noon\, a palindrome. We’ve focused a lot on language. What are your thoughts about how we’re approaching language in our shared work? Perhaps we could begin by talking about the phrase “not all fossils are graves.” We were on a walk at Crystal Lake with Caroline Doherty in the Catskills\, and it emerged in conversation. Why did that phrase land with you\, and why did it stick with you? \nPC \nIt’s a great question and I’ve thought about it since that moment. Language has played a big role in our collaboration\, the language of my discipline and communicating that\, and translating it to you. It’s been so cool and interesting to see the phrases from my discipline that have resonated with you. And\, you know\, one of the things that drew us together was the fact that you have this film called Ancient Sunshine. I have often talked about the fossils that I work on as essentially the remnants of ancient sunshine in the form of fixed organic carbon. I think that we found a lot of similarities in technical language and in metaphor around technical language\, which has been exciting\, I think\, for both of us. \nAnd yes\, we were on this walk\, and I was describing different kinds of fossils to you\, and I was describing trace fossils in that moment\, which are things like footprints or trackways or burrows that are evidence of the behavior of an organism as opposed to its actual physical body. It’s not like a shell or a bone. Your response to that was “not all fossils are graves.” There were a lot of layers to that for me. One is that we often think of fossils as being associated with death. \nThis framework that not all fossils are graves\, to me\, spoke of a sense of hope\, and of\, again\, of a sort of resiliency. Also\, in the sense of thinking about fossils as fossil fuels and that right now fossil fuels are leading us to our grave as a society\, as a species. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Like fossil fuels\, coal is not inherently bad. It is preserved ancient sunshine. It’s what we’re doing with it. It’s the choices that we’re making that are having a negative impact. There are two levels there. One is thinking about fossils in the sense of a bone\, or a shell\, or a trackway as being evidence of past life\, right? Focusing on the life as opposed to the death of an animal or an organism\, and then\, on the other hand\, thinking about the role of fossil fuels and ancient carbon in our current predicament. But can I flip the question around on you? \nJL \nSure! \nPC \nSo\, you know\, it immediately resonated with me and I think also with you\, which was the inspiration for the amazing print that you did with Mirabo Press. I’m curious to hear from you\, what about that phrase resonated from your perspective? \nJL \nI want to respond to one thing you mentioned\, about how coal is not inherently bad\, it’s what we’re doing with it. To tease out a bit of what you’re saying there about fossil fuels\, which bring with them certain ideas or traces of ideas about fossils\, or ancient life forms: I think this is strongly connected with what for some of us seems to be a death cult\, an orientation toward a species-level flame-out or multispecies-level flame-out in the hands of capitalists. \nThere’s a carbon fixation\, for those of us on the tree hugging side\, where we might think\, with this addiction or with this fixation\, comes the death cult. If only it were so simple. If only it were just a matter of being released from the death grip of fossil fuels. But it’s a good deal more complicated than that. One of the things that art can do\, I hope\, is bring a productive ambiguity\, a generative complexity\, to these questions which can contribute to imagination. It’s hard to predict how that will go\, of course! And it’s a humble contribution. \nAround the moment that we shared together with Caroline on our walk\, about not all fossils or graves\, I think my first response was wonder\, like being struck\, like in kid mode. That little revelation of mind blown\, what?! I didn’t realize that! At that level it was very powerful. As we talked about it and then as it sat with me\, I thought about how there are these connections between fossils and images. The way that images index objects\, as do fossils. \nPC \nYes! \nJL \nThe questions that sometimes the philosophically inclined get interested in. Is the thing the thing or is the thing not the thing? And that brought us deeper into the project- \nPC \n-right\, and I’m interjecting because a couple of weeks before the retreat\, I had been in the car with friends\, and my friend Carolyn Clayton who’s an artist. I was describing this project to her in our collaboration\, and she said\, is a fossil a photograph? And that was another moment of stopping and thinking\, having sort of an “oh shit” or “aha” moment. That definitely fed into “not all fossils are graves” and this idea of imprinting\, indexing\, which inspired the format that “not all fossils are graves” is taking in the exhibit. \nOne of the things that’s been so exciting for me in this project is stepping out a little bit\, conversations that I’ve been able to have with not just you\, but other artists in my life. I’ve stretched my conception of my work. It has allowed me to access my childlike sense of awe and wonder and curiosity in ways that aren’t always easy. \nJL \nI like that and I want to take that as an opportunity to remind you to bring your camera to Buffalo. I know that you are a long-time photographer. You have a fantastic eye. The Simons Foundation has encouraged us not to make anything or do much other than experience it\, but maybe you’ll take some pictures? \nPC \nThe camera will come. \nJL \nOkay! I feel like there’s further to go with language because at another point in the last half year of our conversations\, we realized we were both interested in where deep time and metaphor come together. This led us to look at Stephen J. Gould’s writings about metaphor\, about deep time\, about geology and paleontology vis-a-vis pedagogy and storytelling\, specifically time’s arrow and time’s cycle. These tools can be linguistic or visual or both\, like the timelines and the timescales used in your field. We’ve decided to use the timeline\, to riff on that. It’s become fundamental and is moving through our project in different iterations\, for example on the billboards we’ve been creating. How do you or your colleagues use a timeline in a classroom? What are its benefits? But also\, what are its limits? If you’ll allow me to use a pun here\, what are its faults? \nPC \nLove your puns\, so good! Timelines help us. They structure our thoughts. They also help us conceptualize processes. That are way beyond human conception. Things like the movement of tectonic plates\, changes in global climate\, the evolution of new species. Extinction can sometimes happen fast\, but evolution happens pretty slow on human timescales. Many of those processes don’t make sense unless you can conceptualize the immensity of time over which they occur. You look out the window and you don’t see the North American plate moving away from the European plate\, but they are. And again\, that comes back to the imagination\, right? I can look out the window and imagine that movement happening a micron at a time\, but I can’t actually watch it happen during my lifetime. \nI often use timelines in my courses to help students start to conceptualize for themselves the immensity of the age of the Earth\, and to bridge the gap between human perception of time and geological time. Seeing a long roll of paper down a hallway\, and realizing that all human history fits into the last half a centimeter is extremely helpful as a visualization to help students figure out what’s going on. \nIn a scientific sense or in terms of my research\, timelines are necessary for us to figure out the order of events. We cannot pull apart cause and effect without knowing how old things are relative to each other. Or their absolute ages if we’re thinking about rates of change. Geochronology\, the science of dating rocks is extremely important in my discipline and in many other disciplines because it allows us to get at causality and rate. Gould called this “tempo and mode”\, the tempo of evolution\, and then the mode type of evolution. Timelines that are calibrated are essential to that process as well. They serve a conceptual purpose\, but they also serve a more immediate research function in terms of being critical to answering questions that we’re interested in as Earth historians. \nJL \nHmm. At one point you and I discussed how a timeline can have an unfortunate effect; that the timeline may place the human being at the very end of linear time in the present moment\, as if the human is the goal. \nPC \nYes\, the dangers of timelines. Yes. \nJL \nThat’s something we have in view as a concern or as a question that we wanted to unpack in this project. \nPC \nYes\, that’s right. Thank you for prompting me\, because the problem with timelines is that they imply directionality\, and for humans\, directionality is very much linked to a sense of progress. We see an arrow moving forward and we think\, what are we moving towards? This is something else that I said at some point recently\, which is that evolution isn’t moving towards anything. It’s moving away from something. It never goes back. It does not have a direction in mind. Organisms respond to their environment in the moment and then the environment changes. They are not intending to go anywhere or do anything or be anything\, rather than what they are in the moment. Timelines can be dangerous\, and they have been used to promote a worldview that humans are the pinnacle of evolution\, that we are the top of the mountain\, as it were. That’s the danger of timelines. \nOne of the things that we were interested in playing with was creating a view\, a timeline where the moment that we are in right now was not legible\, to basically pull the viewer away from that sense of progress or inevitability. I hope we’ve been effective in that. I think that’s a powerful change\, again thinking about changing\, twisting\, altering someone’s view of themselves in the world\, right? Both art and science can do this. \nJL \nI think of our timeline as very experimental. We had to sort through a philosophical conundrum and questions about method\, to what extent nonlinearity is a useful tool for shaping time. You held the line when I was pushing for nonlinearity. We arrived at a good place\, an engagement with a dynamic of time’s arrow and time’s cycle\, to try to produce a timeline in which both are moving. We have the movement of an arrow and the movement of a cycle\, with substitutions that are designed to hopefully bring people in. For example\, rather than produce a timeline with a big bang at the beginning or all the way on the left\, it begins with laughter. We have these recurring events\, some of which are drawn very directly from geological sciences\, phrases that a scientist might recognize\, but also other phrases that are more poetic\, more human oriented\, a bit strange even\, to move in and out of human consciousness\, and not to place it at the end – \nPC \n– yes\, but throughout. That was something that I struggled with at first when we were initially conceptualizing this because it was very hard for me to remove my attachment to my timeline. There is a timeline of the earth that exists in my head that I refer to continually. This is not that timeline. I was very excited about the idea of time cycles. When you started pushing on that there was a sense of discomfort that I had to get over\, but then it transformed into enthusiasm and excitement. That’s been the case for both of us as part of this whole project\, right? Pushing each other up against these moments of discomfort where we’re having to step outside of our disciplinary bins. I think we’re both used to doing that and good at it already\, which is why this has worked. Even so\, there have still been multiple moments where we’ve tried to do that. \nJL \nVery much so. For me it’s been a good exercise in discipline\, asking myself how the tendencies in arts and humanities on what some people call geopoetics\, or “fancy” words\, can go so hard into imagination and ambiguity that certain tetherings can be compromised. It’s just to say that I think it’s dialogue that’s been at the center of our project. Without that\, I don’t think we would have landed where we have. On the question of landing\, I have one or two more questions. I thought we might take a moment to ground the project in Western New York. \nPC \nYeah. Go Bills! \nJL \nHa. Are there any rocks or geological features in Western New York or near Buffalo that interest you? What stories might local sedimentary rocks tell us? What kind of futures – if this makes sense – might we imagine from them? I’m asking you to tell us a bit about the specifics of rocks here\, and I’m asking\, if rocks tell us something about the past\, can they tell us something about the future? Are stones fortune tellers? \nPC \nMost of Upstate New York is made up of rocks that were deposited at the bottom of an ocean in the Paleozoic era\, from – I’m going to get the numbers wrong – 500 to 380 million years ago. At the time\, the Taconic Mountains were very high\, maybe as high as the Andes. They were formed by the compression of one small continent\, pushed into the side of what is now North America. A big mountain range formed\, and as it formed the crust on the back side of that mountain range flexed down and created a basin. Ocean water came in. That ocean was there for tens of millions of years. Sediments and life filled that ocean and those sediments and fossils of those living organisms fell down to the bottom of the ocean created thick layers of sediment. Tens of hundreds of millions of years later\, the ocean is gone\, the Taconics are now basically hills. Upstate New York mostly consists of these flat lying sedimentary rocks from that ancient ocean. \nThey are full of carbon. Some of them are very organic rich. Some of them are even what we call petroliferous\, which means that if you hold it up to your nose it smells like gasoline because there’s so much organic matter in there. They’re also full of fossils. I happen to work on some of the microscopic fossils that are found just south of Buffalo. There are areas that are full of shells. Corals and clams and things like that. There’s a rich record of the life that lived in those oceans preserved in those rocks. \nJL \nRocks tell us a lot about the past\, but then there’s this other thing that we’re trying to think through\, which is this future business. \nPC \nCan they predict the future? I think they can remind us about the inevitability of the future. They were once sediments at the bottom of an ocean. We are now covering the planet with ourselves and our cities and our domesticated animals. But we will also end up as sediment someday. We will be the past\, just as those corals\, preserved in rocks and Upstate New York\, or once flourishing in that ocean and are now fossils. I think maybe they can be a reminder of the inevitability of time\, and that when they were alive\, that was the present moment. The idea that that ocean would disappear was unfathomable. If a coral could fathom- \nJL \n-if a coral could fathom!- \nPC \n-they were fish. Fish could fathom. Maybe. I don’t know. How’s that? \nJL \nLove it. One more. We decided early on that the center of our work would be these bi-weekly conversations. We also wanted very early on to bring in other voices to the project. That commitment has been like a loadstone\, a way of navigating the process to allow for magnetic attractions and forces to shape outcomes. Partly this is an excitement about the unknown. How could haiku contributions generated in workshops change our direction? \nThe eclipse is a chance to wonder\, to be in awe\, to revel in our own senses. It’s also a chance to pause human overdrive\, perhaps even pause human imagination in a curious way. Are we really in control? There’s these tensions and contradictions\, then\, in an eclipse\, which I’ve been wanting to draw out. It’s a moment to ponder human insignificance. It’s also this moment to consider dumb human luck. \nAs I’ve learned from you\, a total eclipse doesn’t stand outside of time. It has this weird temporality. Deep time but not eternal. Beyond human yet situated in time and space in such a way that we human beings are uniquely positioned to experience the phenomena in terms of how the earth and the sun and the moon line up. These contradictions are sublimely dynamic. So not only have I wanted to generate a totality poetics\, if you will\, to think with these dynamics and to think of these contradictions and the motion of it all\, I wanted to bring in other voices\, a chorus so that whatever language you and I are trading in\, which is already impossibly metaphorical and metaphorically impossible\, but a language beyond us\, a language beyond you and me. Take this question as you will! We can talk about the phenomena itself or you can bug me about poetics. What about this craziness of how the eclipse is a very limited time offer from the cosmos from the position of the human? \nPC \nIt’ll be around for a while\, but eventually\, yes\, human evolution coincides with a time limited offer\, part of Earth’s history where we have total eclipses because the moon is continually moving farther and farther away from the earth. We used to have more eclipses and eventually we’ll have fewer and then eventually we’ll have none\, or no total ones. \nHow lucky are we? I mean\, it didn’t have to be this way. I think maybe that’s another way of talking about decentering the human. As in the time scale\, right? The Earth will go on and maybe other organisms will experience things that we have never been able to experience. But we get this. How cool is that? \nJL \nBefore I learned from you about how an eclipse varies over time\, that there is no such thing as a singular abstract eclipse outside of time\, and that one day in the future the alignment of our planet with the sun and moon will eclipse\, if you will\, the phenomena of the eclipse\, I think my focus was primarily on the way in which two objects that are spheres overlap with one another in the sky in such a way that the one blanks out the other and produces the phenomena\, and I didn’t think about the other sphere that’s involved\, which is the earth. It’s three bodies. In so far as it’s three bodies\, it’s not so much a couple as a chorus. That’s why I’ve been wanting to bring in so many voices to the project beyond just you and me\, to create a chorus\, a polyvocality. We’re trying to produce something cosmic. \nPC \nComing back to the beginning of the conversation about public engagement\, what better way to engage the public than to engage the public? Like bringing people in\, and giving them the opportunity to think about metaphor and time\, is something that most people aren’t ever given the ability to do\, and we can give people a glimpse of that\, whether it be participating in one of our workshops or driving by one of the billboards. The potential for a moment of reflection\, a moment of stepping outside of one’s human time scale and human framework. \nI want to ask you one quick question. There have been multiple times over the course of this collaboration where I have been like\, I don’t really know what that means\, like poetics\, for example. I know what poetry is. And so how has interacting with me been? Has it made you think differently about your own discipline and the limitations of it? What are you taking from this as you move forward in your own practice? \nJL \nIt’s a great question. I think that working with you and working on these materials has invigorated my love and wonder for and about language in a way that I wouldn’t have predicted. When I look at my film practice\, it’s full of language. If someone had asked me last summer “ What will you do next?” I might have said something like\, “A film with no words.” But through this I’ve found so many rich meanings in scientific language\, and in dialogue\, which is often figurative out of necessity. I’m coming through on the other side with a wordless film on the horizon that I still may want to make\, but I’m reminded of how important\, and precious\, words can be\, especially when dealing with something like the mystery of stones and the rare transit of celestial bodies that will be on display. \n \nBiographies\nJason Livingston is a media artist\, filmmaker\, and educator. His award-winning films have been widely exhibited at festivals and museums\, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington\, D.C.\, the International Film Festival Rotterdam\, and Media City in Canada. He is currently researching histories of extractive cinema and abolitionist re-imaginings of our shared world as a Presidential Fellow in the Department of Media Study\, University at Buffalo. \nPhoebe A. Cohen is a paleontologist\, geobiologist\, teacher\, and science communicator. Her research focuses on understanding the interactions between life and the earth system in deep time by integrating micropaleontological\, geological\, and biological lines of evidence. Phoebe is an Associate Professor at Williams College\, where her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. She is also the co-host of the forthcoming podcast Jax and Phoebe Make a Planet\, and an advocate for inclusion and equity in the earth sciences and beyond. \nAbout the In the Path of Totality initiative\nThis work is supported by the Simons Foundation and is part of its ‘In the Path of Totality’ initiative. For more information\, visit inthepathoftotality.org . \nThe Simons Foundation’s mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. Since its founding in 1994 by Jim and Marilyn Simons\, the foundation has been a champion of basic science through grant funding\, support for research and public engagement. We believe in asking big questions and providing sustained support to researchers working to unravel the mysteries of the universes. Through our work we make space for scientific discovery. \nThe Simons Foundation makes grants in four areas: Mathematics and Physical Sciences\, Life Sciences\, Autism and Neuroscience and Science\, Society and Culture. Our Flatiron Institute was opened in 2016 and conducts scientific research in-house\, supporting teams of top computational scientists. We recognize the value of collective effort and know that good science requires a diversity of perspectives. We actively promote large-scale collaboration through a pioneering grantmaking approach and are committed to the sharing of knowledge within the scientific community. We understand science is part of society and culture\, and we actively provide opportunities for people to engage with science in ways that are relevant and meaningful to them. \nImage: A still from Jason Livingston’s film Ancient Sunshine. A white round sun fills the image. On the top and middle around it are yellow\, orange\, and red fields\, and on the bottom\, are black and white textures that cut off the bottom of the sun. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/jason-livingston-with-phoebe-cohen-in-the-suns-absence/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Exhibition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Ancient-Sunshine.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240416T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240416T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191538Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191538Z UID:10001161-1713290400-1713297600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Postponed - How to be a Good Sport with Kristin McWharter DESCRIPTION:Postponed – Stay tuned for the new date!\nTuesday\, April 16\, 2024\, 6–8 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nOpen to ages 16+. All materials provided.\nIn this interactive workshop\, Workspace Resident Kristin McWharter will coach participants as they design a new sport that responds to the unique skills\, attributes\, fears and desires of the collective participants. Kristin will first provide an introduction to different competitive game structures and discuss how aspects of these structures can act as metaphors for our behavior. Students will then collaboratively design their own sport and the workshop will conclude by playing the game and crowning the created sport’s first champion! \nBiography of the instructor\nKristin McWharter uses performance and play to interrogate the relationship between competition and intimacy. Her work conjoins viewers within immersive sculptural installations and viewer- inclusive performances that critically fuse folk games within virtual and augmented worlds. Her software installations and performative objects incorporate experimental technologies and playful interaction to produce performances that speculate upon alternative forms of social behavior. Inspired by 20th century sports narrative\, collective decision making\, and technology as a contemporary spiritual authority\, her work blurs the boundaries of intimacy and hype culture to challenge viewer relationships to affection and competitive drive. Her work has been exhibited at The Hammer Museum\, Walt Disney Concert Hall\, Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center\, Ars Electronica\, Museo Altillo Beni\, and FILE Festival among others. McWharter received her MFA from UCLA in Design Media Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor in Art & Technology Studies at SAIC. \nWorkspace Residency is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. \nImage description: Screen capture of software performance RARA by Kristin McWharter. A cheerleader avatar stands in an abandoned and overgrown football field. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/how-to-be-a-good-sport-with-kristin-mcwharter/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Kristin-McWharter-Rara.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240418T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240418T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191540Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191540Z UID:10001158-1713463200-1713470400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:How to make a DIY Force-Sensitive Resistor (FSR) Sensor with Jaehoon Choi DESCRIPTION:Thursday\, April 18\, 2024\, 6–8 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nOpen to ages 16+.\nParticipants are encouraged to bring their own laptops\nIn this lecture and demonstration\, Workspace Resident Jaehoon Choi will lead participants through the steps to make a FSR Sensor that can be used to create a range of sound production for sonic and other art performances. Jaehoon will begin the workshop by talking about what an FSR Sensor is and demonstrate to participants through the process of making and using basic materials and wiring and soldering. Students will see how to to begin to make their own interactive physical interfaces. \nBiography of the artist\nJaehoon Choi is a computer musician / sound artist / researcher based in New York and Seoul. His practice involves embodied experimentation through a technical medium\, which involves both the process of making and bodily engagement. As a researcher\, he is interested in how a creative practice that involves embodied experimentation with a technical medium can suggest a different form of techne and contribute to technodiversity. His works have been presented at Venice Biennale\, MATA Festival\, NEW INC\, San Francisco Tape Music Festival\, NIME\, ICMC\, CeReNeM\, ECHO Journal\, ZER01NE\, Dunkunsthalle\, EIDF\, Visions Du Reel\, CEMEC\, and etc. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electronic Arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) as a Masters. \nWorkspace Residency is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. \nImage description: Jaehoon Choi performing Brushing Improvisation – N°2\, 2023 at the La Biennale di Venezia in 2023. Photo Credit : Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia / ph. Andrea Avezzù. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/how-to-make-a-diy-force-sensitive-resistor-fsr-sensor-with-jaehoon-choi/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/brushing-improv-2.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240419T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240419T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191540Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191540Z UID:10001149-1713553200-1713558600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Meet the Residents: Everest Pipkin\, Kristin McWharter\, Jaehoon Choi\, Léwuga Tata Benson DESCRIPTION:Friday\, April 19\, 2024\, 7 pm ET\nOnline and in-person @ Squeaky Wheel\nFree or suggested donation. ASL interpretation provided. Catering from AliBaba Kebab provided for in-person attendees.\nRegister below\nSqueaky Wheel is pleased to present this hybrid artist talk with our Spring 2024 Workspace Residents! Everest Pipkin (Truth or Consequences\, NM)\, Kristin McWharter (Chicago\, IL)\, Jaehoon Choi (Troy\, NY)\, and Léwuga Tata Benson (Buffalo\, NY) will be presenting on their previous and current projects\, including essays on video games\, and media art installations that explore notions of language and translation\, historic children’s games and locative sound\, and the devastating effects of oil extraction. Their event will conclude with a Q&A with the residents moderated by curator Ekrem Serdar. \nFor in-person attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. \nFor online attendees: A private link will be sent to you; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here. \nDuring their residency\, researcher resident Everest Pipkin will be working on The Fortunate Isles: Fragment Worlds\, Walled Gardens\, and the games that are played there\, a speculative essay about the edges of space within video games. Based on a talk Pipkin gave at the 2023 Roguelike Celebration\, the essay will focus on the concept of the walled garden\, expanding it to include games and games spaces. It looks at ornamental gardens\, cloisters\, isolate spaces\, and even mythological or utopian fantasies of worlds\, and goes beyond to where the garden stops and a wildness of bugs\, errors\, logical failures and edge cases begin. The essay seeks to connect the logic of potent isolation to the games we make and play. \nJaehoon Choi will be working on an untitled media art installation on the intermingling of translation and language through light and sound. Influenced by the work of Karen Barad\, the artist will be working with mylar film\, projection\, and audio from speech recordings in various languages. The work is latest in a series of installations that delve into the artists concern\, the first of which\, “Hello. hEllo! heLLo? hellO” was created and showcased at EMPAC in May 2023. \nKristin McWharter will be working on Marco Polo\, an interactive sound installation\, based on the children’s game where one player\, with eye’s closed\, calls out “Marco” and listens for the location of other players who call out “Polo” in response. McWharter will be adapting the children’s game in a new work that incorporates megaphones\, RF transmissions\, and a series of sculptural beacons for audiences to engage with locative sound. Noting the Italian explorer’s role in shaping racist notions of Western superiority\, the project reflects on the history of trade route landscapes and the consequences of western culture’s history of continuous evasion and pursuit. \nLéwuga Tata Benson will be working towards their exhibition Fueling Change: A Multimedia Exploration of Niger Delta’s Oil Crisis that will open at Buffalo Arts Studio on July 26\, 2024. Utilizing oil drums\, video\, and audio\, the project focuses on the oil industry’s effects upon the people of the Niger Delta in Western Nigeria and the social\, economic\, and environmental consequences of unregulated oil extraction practices. \n Biographies of the residents \nEverest Pipkin is a game developer\, writer\, and artist from central Texas who lives and works on a sheep farm in southern New Mexico. Their work both in the studio and in the garden follows themes of ecology\, tool making\, and collective care during collapse. They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin\, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University\, and have shown and spoken at The Design Museum of London\, The Texas Biennial\, The XXI Triennale of Milan\, The Photographers Gallery of London\, Center for Land Use Interpretation\, and other spaces. When not at the computer in the heat of the day\, you can find them in the hills spending time with their neighbors— both human and non-human. \nJaehoon Choi is a computer musician / sound artist / researcher based in New York and Seoul. His practice involves embodied experimentation through a technical medium\, which involves both the process of making and bodily engagement. As a researcher\, he is interested in how a creative practice that involves embodied experimentation with a technical medium can suggest a different form of techne and contribute to technodiversity. His works have been presented at Venice Biennale\, MATA Festival\, NEW INC\, San Francisco Tape Music Festival\, NIME\, ICMC\, CeReNeM\, ECHO Journal\, ZER01NE\, Dunkunsthalle\, EIDF\, Visions Du Reel\, CEMEC\, and etc. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electronic Arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) as a Masters. \nKristin McWharter uses performance and play to interrogate the relationship between competition and intimacy. Her work conjoins viewers within immersive sculptural installations and viewer- inclusive performances that critically fuse folk games within virtual and augmented worlds. Her software installations and performative objects incorporate experimental technologies and playful interaction to produce performances that speculate upon alternative forms of social behavior. Inspired by 20th century sports narrative\, collective decision making\, and technology as a contemporary spiritual authority\, her work blurs the boundaries of intimacy and hype culture to challenge viewer relationships to affection and competitive drive. Her work has been exhibited at The Hammer Museum\, Walt Disney Concert Hall\, Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center\, Ars Electronica\, Museo Altillo Beni\, and FILE Festival among others. McWharter received her MFA from UCLA in Design Media Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor in Art & Technology Studies at SAIC. \nLéwuga Tata Benson: As an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker\, my work bridges cultures and explores the dynamic interplay between identity\, environmental sustainability\, and human connection. Rooted in my Ogoni heritage in Nigeria\, I draw inspiration from our tradition of repurposing to prevent waste. This ethos infuses my art\, as seen in installations like “The Land Gives Until It No Longer Can\, 2022\,” “Hang in There\, 2022\,” “Traces of Displacement\, 2023\,” “Carrying Identity\, Carrying The Weight\, 2023\,” and “Fueling Change\, 2024.” In Ogoni storytelling\, we engage all the senses\, integrating songs\, dance\, and props for a holistic experience. My artistic practice seamlessly incorporates these traditions to create immersive narratives that provoke thought\, foster empathy\, and celebrate cultural richness. My journey has been marked by awards and accolades\, including the NYSCA 2024 Grant and the Gregory Capasso scholarship for outstanding work in film\, underscoring my commitment to the arts. \n \nImage descriptions: Four photographs in a grid\, left to right\, top to bottom: Everest Pipkin\, a white nonbinary artist\, stands in front of a cottonwood tree in a field. They have short brown hair\, glasses\, and are wearing a striped sweater. It is a sunny day. A photograph of Jaehoon Choi by Steven Pisano; a portrait of artist Kristin McWharter sitting in her studio; and Léwuga Tata Benson\, a Nigerian-born artist from Buffalo\, New York. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/meet-the-residents-everest-pipkin-kristin-mcwharter-jaehoon-choi-lewuga-tata-benson/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Hybrid,Residencies ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Spring24-Residents.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191540Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191540Z UID:10001159-1713808800-1713816000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Artifacts of Identity: Crafting Meaningful Narratives with Personal Objects by Léwuga Benson DESCRIPTION:Monday\, April 22\, 2024\, 6–8 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nOpen to ages 16+. All materials provided. Please bring a meaningful personal object you wish to explore!\nWorkspace Resident Lewuga Benson will facilitate conversations with participants on the transformative powers of personal artifacts and the ways they can shape personal and community narratives. This workshop will be both structured and flexible\, and participants will be encouraged to share and explore in depth the meanings of their own personal objects. Lewuga will then guide students through creative exercises in different mediums around their chosen artifact. The workshop encourages collaboration\, reflection\, and meaningful dialogue among participants\, fostering a sense of community and creative exploration. \nBiography of the instructor\nLéwuga Tata Benson: As an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker\, my work bridges cultures and explores the dynamic interplay between identity\, environmental sustainability\, and human connection. Rooted in my Ogoni heritage in Nigeria\, I draw inspiration from our tradition of repurposing to prevent waste. This ethos infuses my art\, as seen in installations like “The Land Gives Until It No Longer Can\, 2022\,” “Hang in There\, 2022\,” “Traces of Displacement\, 2023\,” “Carrying Identity\, Carrying The Weight\, 2023\,” and “Fueling Change\, 2024.” In Ogoni storytelling\, we engage all the senses\, integrating songs\, dance\, and props for a holistic experience. My artistic practice seamlessly incorporates these traditions to create immersive narratives that provoke thought\, foster empathy\, and celebrate cultural richness. My journey has been marked by awards and accolades\, including the NYSCA 2024 Grant and the Gregory Capasso scholarship for outstanding work in film\, underscoring my commitment to the arts. \nWorkspace Residency is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. \nImage description: Léwuga Tata Benson’s installation The Land Gives Until It No Longer Can (2022) at the University at Buffalo. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/artifacts-of-identity-crafting-meaningful-narratives-with-personal-objects-by-lewuga-benson/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Benson-Installation.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240423T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240423T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191539Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191539Z UID:10001160-1713895200-1713902400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:The Fuzzy Edges of Character Encoding with Everest Pipkin DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, April 23\, 2024\, 6–8pm\nFree or suggested donation\nOpen to ages 16+.\nBring your own laptops or computational device. Students will need a basic text editor installed. Details will be given in registration email.\nWorkspace Resident Everest Pipkin will lead a workshop on the history\, politics and computational basics of text-based character encoding. Discussions will cover morse code\, ASCII\, Unicode (including emoji)\, and alternative text encoding schemes\, as well as their social\, ethical\, and emotional stories. The second part of the workshop will be a laptops-open play along exploration through software demos and creative exercises. What “is” a character on a computer? How can we play around with the foundational building blocks of digital materials in ways that lets us understand files as materials? How can we think about language as a type of logical encoding that makes computers work? \nBiography of the artist\nEverest Pipkin is a game developer\, writer\, and artist from central Texas who lives and works on a sheep farm in southern New Mexico. Their work both in the studio and in the garden follows themes of ecology\, tool making\, and collective care during collapse. They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin\, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University\, and have shown and spoken at The Design Museum of London\, The Texas Biennial\, The XXI Triennale of Milan\, The Photographers Gallery of London\, Center for Land Use Interpretation\, and other spaces. When not at the computer in the heat of the day\, you can find them in the hills spending time with their neighbors— both human and non-human. \nWorkspace Residency is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. \nImage description: An image from The Barnacle Goose Experiment (2022) by Everest Pipkin. An old-school text-based interface is open\, with various lists of items\, verbs\, experiments\, locations and actions available to you\, like “cry” or “eat [honey]”. Each one is a link. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/the-fuzzy-edges-of-character-encoding-with-everest-pipkin/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Everest-Text.png GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240507T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240507T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191539Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191539Z UID:10001163-1715108400-1715115600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Rushes: Films and actions by Jason Livingston DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, May 7\, 7 pm ET\n@ Journey’s End Refugee Services (2495 Main St #530\, Buffalo\, NY 14214) and online\nFree or suggested donation\nTickets available below\nSqueaky Wheel presents an evening of films\, actions\, and conversation with artist Jason Livingston. This evening of films showcases Livingston’s long-standing work on the climate crises and protest movements through visual and linguistic play. Featuring his celebrated film Ancient Sunshine (2020)\, the screening features work made by the filmmaker from 2012 to the present day. This event is organized on the occasion of his exhibition with Phoebe A. Cohen\, In the Sun’s Absence. The artist will be present to deliver an artist talk ahead of the screening\, and the exhibition will be open after the screening at Squeaky Wheel. \nFor in-person attendees: JERS is located on the fifth floor of Tri-Main Center; head left after you exit the elevator. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. \nFor online attendees: Upon check-out\, you will receive an email titled “Your Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center order has been received!”. A private link will be included in that email; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here. Please note that the artist talk will not be available online. \n Program (click to expand) \nTotal program time approximately 65 minutes. \nIntroduction and artist talk by Jason Livingston \n#RUSHES/URL\n11:52 min\, silent\, 16mm on digital video\, 2015 \nAn in-camera 16mm edit of the 1st anniversary/birthday/funeral of OWS in New York City\, as seen from an embedded role in the Jellyfish Brigade\, an ad hoc affinity group formed to participate in the day’s event. Bold impact fonts compliment and countervail the images toward a warm antagonism. \n“Experimental filmmakers with no obligation to spoon feed the public fared better in documenting Occupy in a manner that proved more meditative and avoided reducing the movement to a list of talking points. Jason Livingston’s short film\, #Rushes\, provides an alternative to what the filmmaker himself labels “populist agitprop.” The two versions of the film deploy contrasting reflexive strategies designed to challenge standard representations of dissent and on-the-spot reportage of street activism. Offering a glimpse of a festive protest cum celebration commemorating the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in 2012\, Livingston juxtaposes the culture-jamming antics of the Jellyfish Brigade with familiar scenes of police intimidation and use of force. Demonstrators dressed in whimsical costumes holding signs such as “No Fossil Fuels…Frack Wall Street\, Not Water” highlight the march’s blend of earnestness and carnivalesque glee; the differences in tone are reinforced by\, on the one hand\, the satirist Reverend Billy’s comic spiel and\, on the other\, the unironic politicking of perennial presidential candidate Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala\, her 2012 vice-presidential candidate. \nForsaking digital for 16mm with in-camera edits\, the initial version of #Rushes was projected silently to live audiences. Refusing to bombard the audience with riot porn clichés\, talking heads\, voice over—or even the ambient sounds of a demonstration—Livingston instead solicited a running commentary from the audience at various screenings and encourage a participatory ethic and aesthetic. His decision to shoot in 16mm and move away from the more au courant DSLR aesthetic evolved from his revulsion towards consumerist pressure to abandon “technologies deemed obsolescent.” \nAlthough Livingston’s regarded his stripped-down aesthetic—and his promotion of audience participation—as “Occupy poetics\,” a screening at Union Docs in Brooklyn convinced him to launch an extended auto-critique of his own neo-Brechtian assumptions concerning “active spectatorship.” Despite the fact that #Rushes inspired some impassioned responses from audiences (particularly a frenetic screening at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo which Livingston loved because it engendered a “lot of talking” over the silent images)\, he feared “that by encouraging ‘participation’ (i.e. talking) without sufficient direction on my part\, I was inadvertently disavowing my role as the maker (not that it’s much power in the end…)\, and actually promoting a very\, very vague participatory democracy that felt all too much like upper management’s penchant for doodlepolls\, or asking workers for ‘input’.” \nLivingston’s ambivalence towards his own attempt to emulate Occupy-style egalitarianism one microcinema at a time convinced him to accompany the film with narration\, later transformed into a series of memes embedded in a second version of the film\, that undercuts the celebration of a participatory ethos with what he terms a “warm antagonism.” Warm antagonism might be defined as playful self-laceration\, almost a parody of the type of self-criticism that was once de rigueur among authoritarian leftists. In the self-détourned version of #Rushes\, Livingston proclaims:: “Against participation\, not because participation denies the primary role of the artist in any given work and thus projects an anti-hierarchical fantasy…but because participation itself is a bureaucratic imagination.” While there’s a tongue-in-cheek aspect to Livingston’s self-indictment\, the cadences of his manifesto also undermine the pieties of “active spectatorship” and the hallowed entity known as the “emancipated spectator.” In certain respects\, the alternative film world’s penchant for participatory events might constitute a farcical equivalent of the pseudo-participation that anarchists discerned as integral components of Yugoslavian experiments in self-management. From another perspective\, the film’s dialogue with its audience\, and with itself\, is close to the kind of “auto-ethnography” that David Graeber proposes as a riposte to the vanguardist sensibility.” – Richard Porton\, author of Film and the Anarchist Imagination\, 2nd edition \n7.24.14\n4.5 mins\, silent\, 16mm film on digital video\, 2014 \nDemonstration in support of Gaza and against Operation Protective Edge on July 24\, 2014 in Ithaca\, NY. \nShale Raga\n4.5 min\, sound\, digital video\, 2015 \nSet to an excerpt of Don Cherry’s Malkauns from his border-erasing 1975 album\, Brown Rice\, Shale Raga extracts a mining industry in-house video to put pressure on carbon-based capitalist sorcery\, in this case EcoShale technology\, which is patented by Alberta-based Red Leaf Resources\, Inc. and promises to “revolutionize” oil shale production in the Book Cliffs of eastern Utah by accelerating geological time. The video is a counter-spell to ward off venture capital’s appetite for ancient life forms baked into rock. \nACID REIGN\n4.5 min\, sound\, digital video\, 2012 \nCombining archival/found footage\, treated images and diaristic Hi-8 video\, ACID REIGN explores the ongoing battle between human beings’ technologies of control and other life forms. In this case\, animals re-inhabit a post-human urban landscape. \nAncient Sunshine\n19.5 mins\, sound\, 16mm film on digital video\, 2021 \nA fossil cast in plastic\, an artificial plateau\, classic cars running on the fumes of the nation. Ancient Sunshine marks a path through fossil fuel extraction and climate defense in the American West. The film proposes solidarity against the violence by which “earth” becomes “resource.” \nUtah Tar Sands Resistance has been fighting experimental mining in the Tavaputs Plateau for almost a decade\, setting up camp every summer in sight of heavy equipment and construction crews. The film asks\, how might the concept of horizontalism be applied to the physical horizon\, its decimation\, and to capital’s propensity for vertical extrication? Ancient Sunshine interweaves the endless remaking of the Western landscape with labor history\, reflections on anarchist organization\, and interspecies economies. \nAncient Sunshine consists of interviews with the Utah Tar Sands Resistance primary organizers and other Utah land protectors\, and sets their voices in and against an industrialized landscape. The film presents an array of voices\, drawing attention to the role of resistance and kinship during times of threat and extinction. \nToward a poetic solidarity\, toward a formal politics. \n \nBiography of the artist\nJason Livingston is a media artist\, filmmaker\, and educator. His award-winning films have been widely exhibited at festivals and museums\, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington\, D.C.\, the International Film Festival Rotterdam\, and Media City in Canada. He is currently researching histories of extractive cinema and abolitionist re-imaginings of our shared world as a Presidential Fellow in the Department of Media Study\, University at Buffalo. \nBanner image: A still from Jason Livingston’s film #Rushes/URL (2012). Two policemen on scoooters on a sunny day in New York City. On top and on the bottom of the image are superimposed words like a mid-2000s meme in Impact font: “AGAINST THE ACTIVATED SPECTATOR.” URL:https://squeaky.org/event/rushes-films-and-actions-by-jason-livingston/ LOCATION:Journey’s End Refugee Services\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite #530\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Hybrid,Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Livingston-Rushes-scaled.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240514 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240615 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191539Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191539Z UID:10001165-1715644800-1718409599@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Call for submissions: Squeaky Wheel's 21st Animation Fest! DESCRIPTION:Deadline: June 14\, 2024\, 11:59 PM\nNotification Date: August 15\, 2024\nSqueaky Wheel announces the call for submissions for our annual Animation Fest! Celebrating its 21st year\, we are proud to continue a festival showcasing artworks made in a diverse variety of animation techniques such as stop-motion\, claymation\, 3D animation\, hand-painted film\, special effects\, and motion graphics. Past festivals have showcased work from both rising artists as well as established artists. \nThe 21st Animation Fest will be held online and in-person on Friday\, October 4\, 2024\, an in-person screening at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and a virtual screening through Squeaky Wheel. Films in the virtual program will be accessible for 24 hours thereafter for general audiences\, and 72 hours for Squeaky Wheel members. If selected\, you will be asked for a downloadable copy of your film. \n\nEach individual submission should not exceed ~10 minutes.\nThere is no submission fee.\nAll selected artists will receive a screening fee of $100 per selected film. (International applicants must have a Paypal account to receive their screening fee).\nAll selected artists will receive a one year membership to Squeaky Wheel.\nMultiple submissions per artist are accepted.\n\nArtists who are African/Black\, Indigenous / Native / Aboriginal\, POC\, creatives with disabilities\, women\, 2SLGBTQIA+\, and artists who face systemic and structural barriers are encouraged to apply. Please direct any questions about the application process and your submissions to Ekrem Serdar at ekrem@squeaky.org \nClick here to apply\nImage description: Documentation from the 20th Animation Fest retrospective at North Park Theater. A projection in a darkened movie theater. On the screen is the word “Filmmakers!”\, which is from Helen Hill’s 2004 short film Madame Winger Makes a Film: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/call-for-submissions-squeaky-wheels-21st-animation-fest/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Open Call,Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/North-Park-Helen-Hill.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240522T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240522T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191558Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191558Z UID:10001164-1716400800-1716408000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Football Practice: Speculative Football Players with Kristin McWharter DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, May 22\, 2024\, 6–8 pm ET\nOnline over Zoom\nFree or suggested donation; register below\nJoin us for this workshop intensive in which participants explore the cultural impact of American football and collectively contribute to a new simulation of the sport. Part performance lecture\, part interactive imagining\, participants will be given prompts to write and craft new players for the artists Football Practice simulation software. Each workshop designs and “drafts” two players into the scrimmage of the software\, directly shaping the speculative imaging of the game. Inspired by the surrealist game Exquisite Corpses and video game sports simulations such as Madden\, this workshop discusses the importance of consent\, aggression\, and competitive drive as participants playfully imagine speculative football futures in real time. \nThe workshop is open to anyone regardless of their knowledge or interest in football. A Zoom link will be shared with your email address near the event date. \nThis workshop is presented as part of an ongoing project by Kristin McWharter. To learn more\, click here. \nBiography of the artist\nKristin McWharter uses performance and play to interrogate the relationship between competition and intimacy. Her work conjoins viewers within immersive sculptural installations and viewer- inclusive performances that critically fuse folk games within virtual and augmented worlds. Her software installations and performative objects incorporate experimental technologies and playful interaction to produce performances that speculate upon alternative forms of social behavior. Inspired by 20th century sports narrative\, collective decision making\, and technology as a contemporary spiritual authority\, her work blurs the boundaries of intimacy and hype culture to challenge viewer relationships to affection and competitive drive. Her work has been exhibited at The Hammer Museum\, Walt Disney Concert Hall\, Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center\, Ars Electronica\, Museo Altillo Beni\, and FILE Festival among others. McWharter received her MFA from UCLA in Design Media Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor in Art & Technology Studies at SAIC. \nImage description: Two digital avatars on a digital grassy field. The figures are wearing American football outfits. Both the outfits and the grassy field look like they were crocheted. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/football-practice-speculative-football-players-with-kristin-mcwharter/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Kristin-McWharter-Hero-scaled.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240821T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240821T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191612Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191612Z UID:10001174-1724263200-1724270400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Plant Cinema Workshop at Silo City with Kathryn Ramey DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, August 21\, 6–8 pm\n@ Silo City (85 Silo City Row\, Buffalo\, NY 14203)\n$10 general | $7 members\nOpen to ages 16+\nRegister below\nIn this one-time workshop by visiting filmmaker and Workspace Resident Kathryn Ramey at Silo City\, the filmmaker will show participants how to expose and process 16mm film with plants. Participants will use plant materials from Silo City’s environment\, that they will develop and expose with a sodium carbonate and vitamin C mixture. Ramey will then show participants how to fix their films\, upon which they’ll let them dry and project them on site. \nThe event will take place at Silo City; please gather promptly at Duende (85 Silo City Row\, Buffalo\, NY 14203) at 6 pm. Squeaky Wheel members can email ekrem@squeaky.org for their discount code ahead of checking out. Special thank you to Olivia McCarthy and Silo City. \nAbout the artist and our partner\nKathryn Ramey (1967)\, Vancouver\, WA / USA. A Guggenheim and Creative Capital fellow with an MFA in film and a PhD in anthropology who has made over a dozen films and installations\, contributed numerous articles to anthologies and journals and written the essential text Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE (2015). Her films operate at the intersection of experimental analogue processes and ethnographic research and are characterized by hand-processing\, optical printing\, and animation. She has screened at several festivals such as Toronto\, Ann Arbor\, TriBeca\, Ji.hlava\, and 25fps\, among others. \n \nSilo City is a unique post-industrial landscape comprised of the world’s largest collection of historical grain elevators. We create and host happenings on site through our 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that operates under the legal name Friends of Silo City. Click here to learn more. \nThis workshop is presented as part of the Workspace Residency program. Learn more here. \nBanner image provided by Kathryn Ramey. Sage leaves from a volunteer plant in the artists garden are harvested\, soaked in vitamin C and sodium carbonate\, placed on undeveloped black and white film and left in the sun. The leaves print themselves onto the film which is revealed when the film is run through a weak fixer. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/plant-cinema-at-silo-city-with-kathryn-ramey/ LOCATION:Silo City\, 85 Silo City Row\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14203\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sageflowers-scaled.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240823T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240823T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191612Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191612Z UID:10001172-1724439600-1724445000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Meet the Residents: Ahmed T. Ragheb\, Lily Ekimian Ragheb\, and Kathryn Ramey DESCRIPTION:Friday\, August 23\, 2024\, 7 pm ET\nOnline and in-person @ Squeaky Wheel\nFree or suggested donation. Catering from AliBaba Kebab provided for in-person attendees.\nASL interpretation available; request by Tuesday\, August 20.\nRegister below\nSqueaky Wheel is pleased to present this hybrid artist talk with our Summer 2024 Workspace Residents! Ahmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb (Pittsburgh\, PA) and Kathryn Ramey (Roslindale\, MA) will be presenting on their previous and current projects\, along with a Q&A with the residents moderated by curator Ekrem Serdar. \nFor in-person attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. \nFor online attendees: A private link will be sent to you; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here. \nAhmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb will be working on Visitor\, a short experimental essay film about an Egyptian vampire who travels to America in search of family. The film will pair a fictional voiceover narrative with docu-style video footage of the post-industrial landscapes of Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Consisting of hand-held\, point-of-view shots with no on-screen actors\, the observational style of Visitor will facilitate an exploration of Arab and Arab-American cultural identity\, immigration\, family and the changing landscape of the American Rust Belt. \nDuring her residency\, Kathryn Ramey will be working on SILVER & earth: Marina A which will be presented to the public on Friday\, September 6 at Silo City. The multi-channel digital and 16mm projection performance will highlight environmentally conscious artistic practices within reclaimed post industrial sites such as Silo City. Part of a larger suite of work\, SILVER & earth: Marina A\, focuses on analogue film\, using outdated material that would otherwise find its way to a landfill through a variety of experimental gestures. These include: phytograms in which Vitamin C\, plant material and soda or wood ash is used to print onto film; burying film in compost; among other methods. Ramey’s project marks a deepening of Squeaky Wheel’s partnership with Silo City to also support ecological media arts practices. \nBiographies of the residents\nAhmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb are a married experimental filmmaking duo based in Pittsburgh. Lily – American\, Russian and Armenian – grew up between Washington\, D.C.\, and Cairo\, Egypt. Ahmed – Egyptian\, Dutch and American – was born and raised in Cairo. Their films emphasize identity\, place\, feminism\, cultural dislocation and domestic relationships and are noted for their use of voiceover and mixed media. Their work has screened at Oscar-qualifying festivals including Uppsala Short Film Festival (Nominated\, Ingmar Bergman Award)\, Athens Int’l Film & Video Festival and RiverRun\, as well as the Arab American National Museum\, Pittsburgh Shorts\, and the Arab Film and Media Institute’s Arab Film Festival. Together they founded the independent production company Studio Ragheb. \nKathryn Ramey (1967)\, Vancouver\, WA / USA. A Guggenheim and Creative Capital fellow with an MFA in film and a PhD in anthropology who has made over a dozen films and installations\, contributed numerous articles to anthologies and journals and written the essential text Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE (2015). Her films operate at the intersection of experimental analogue processes and ethnographic research and are characterized by hand-processing\, optical printing\, and animation. She has screened at several festivals such as Toronto\, Ann Arbor\, TriBeca\, Ji.hlava\, and 25fps\, among others. \nBanner photo: Two photographs side by side: Ahmed Ragheb and Lily Ekimian Ragheb sitting side by side in a black and white photograph. Kathryn Ramey\, a white woman in her 50’s with long gray blond hair in a bun wearing a black and white plaid mock turtle-neck blouse and a black cotton blazer and pink glasses sits smiling facing the camera in front of a white picket fence with green trees and blue sky in the background. This photo was taken at Camden Film Festival. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/meet-the-residents-ahmed-ragheb-lily-ekimian-ragheb-and-kathryn-ramey/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Hybrid,Residencies ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ahmed-Lily-Kathrynjpg.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240827T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240827T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191600Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191600Z UID:10001173-1724781600-1724788800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Essay Filmmaking with Ahmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, August 27\, 6–8 pm\n$10 general | $7 members\nRegister below\nIn this one-time workshop by visiting filmmakers and Workspace Residents Ahmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb\, the filmmakers will introduce and provide a space for participants to workshop their own essay films. The pair will provide a brief introduction to essay filmmaking\, with examples of their own work and films by Chantal Akerman\, among others. The filmmakers will then facilitate a workshop space for participants to write their own treatments and loglines for their own essay films. Participants will then discuss and workshop their ideas as a group. \nThe event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Squeaky Wheel members can email ekrem@squeaky.org for their discount code ahead of checking out. \nBiographies of the residents\nAhmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb are a married experimental filmmaking duo based in Pittsburgh. Lily – American\, Russian and Armenian – grew up between Washington\, D.C.\, and Cairo\, Egypt. Ahmed – Egyptian\, Dutch and American – was born and raised in Cairo. Their films emphasize identity\, place\, feminism\, cultural dislocation and domestic relationships and are noted for their use of voiceover and mixed media. Their work has screened at Oscar-qualifying festivals including Uppsala Short Film Festival (Nominated\, Ingmar Bergman Award)\, Athens Int’l Film & Video Festival and RiverRun\, as well as the Arab American National Museum\, Pittsburgh Shorts\, and the Arab Film and Media Institute’s Arab Film Festival. Together they founded the independent production company Studio Ragheb. \nThis workshop is presented as part of the Workspace Residency program. Learn more here. \nBanner image: Studio Ragheb\, She Sings (2024). A woman\, lit in red\, holding her hand up to the lens. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/essay-filmmaking-with-ahmed-t-ragheb-lily-ekimian-ragheb/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Ragheb-Workshop-She-Sings.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240906T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240906T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191600Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191600Z UID:10001176-1725649200-1725652800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Silo City | Kathryn Ramey's SILVER & earth: Marine A DESCRIPTION:Friday\, September 6\, 7 pm\n@ Silo City (85 Silo City Row\, Buffalo\, NY 14203)\nFree or suggested donation; register below\nJoin us at Silo City for a projection performance by artist and filmmaker Kathryn Ramey! Made in collaboration with Noam Ramey-Winikur\, SILVER & earth: Marine A is a three projector 16mm performance which will highlight environmentally conscious artistic practices within reclaimed post industrial sites such as Silo City. The work is a holistic portrait of the site\, featuring both the site of Marine A\, and developed\, not with traditionally toxic photographic formulas\, but with Ramey’s ecological processes and plants from the grounds of Marine A. Working with the habitat-restorative approach of Silo City’s staff\, the work showcases how artists can approach the complicated legacies of 20th century industry. \nThe ~20 minute long projector performance will be preceded by an introduction by Kathryn Ramey speaking to her practice and process. Audiences will have the opportunity to closely inspect the films on a light table following the event. \nPart of a larger suite of work\, SILVER & earth: Marine A\, focuses on analogue film\, using outdated material that would otherwise find its way to a landfill through a variety of experimental gestures. These include: phytograms in which Vitamin C\, plant material and soda or wood ash is used to print onto film; burying film in compost; among other methods. Ramey’s project marks a deepening of Squeaky Wheel’s partnership with Silo City to also support ecological media arts practices. \nThe event will take place at Silo City. Entrance will be through the garden of Duende (85 Silo City Row\, Buffalo\, NY 14203) at 7 pm. This event marks the final event with our summer residents. Special thank you to Carl Lee and our partners at Silo City. \nAbout the artist and our partner\nKathryn Ramey (1967)\, Vancouver\, WA / USA. A Guggenheim and Creative Capital fellow with an MFA in film and a PhD in anthropology who has made over a dozen films and installations\, contributed numerous articles to anthologies and journals and written the essential text Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE (2015). Her films operate at the intersection of experimental analogue processes and ethnographic research and are characterized by hand-processing\, optical printing\, and animation. She has screened at several festivals such as Toronto\, Ann Arbor\, TriBeca\, Ji.hlava\, and 25fps\, among others. \n \nSilo City is a unique post-industrial landscape comprised of the world’s largest collection of historical grain elevators. We create and host happenings on site through our 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization that operates under the legal name Friends of Silo City. Click here to learn more. \nBanner image courtesy of Kathryn Ramey. Several strips of 16 mm film overlaid with plant clippings at Silo City. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/silo-city-kathryn-rameys-silver-earth-marine-a/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Performance,Residencies ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IMG_6481-scaled.jpeg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241004T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241004T193000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191613Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191613Z UID:10001177-1728064800-1728070200@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Squeaky Wheel's 21st Animation Fest! DESCRIPTION:Friday\, October 4\, 6 pm ET\nIn-person at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and online\nIn-person is free as part of M&T First Fridays. Online is free or $10 suggested donation\nSqueaky Wheel is excited to present the 21st annual Animation Fest! Featuring eleven films from Buffalo and beyond\, this years edition provides a survey of gorgeous vistas and inventive joy\, with films made in a variety of techniques and media\, from charcoal drawings to 3D animation. \nThe films take on love and identity\, landscapes and gardens\, artificial intelligence\, and much more. Featuring films by Alisi Telengut\, Calvin Hardick\, Delia Hass\, Eva Davidova\, J. Ramos\, Kolya Kishinsky & Geneva Huffman\, Marina Santana De la Torre\, Miranda Javid\, S4RA\, Suncana Brkulj and Tony Nash. \nContent notes: The 10th film in the program\, Red Thumb\, features a foreboding atmosphere and a scene of a character choking another that may not be appropriate for young children. See film descriptions below for caption availability. \nTo attend in-person: The screening will take place at 6 pm at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum’s auditorium. Just show up! \nTo attend online: Get your ticket below! Upon check-out\, you will receive an email titled “Your Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center order has been received!”. A private link will be included in that email; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here. \nAlisi Telengut’s Baigal Nuur is courtesy of Fabian&Fred Studio. Suncana Brkulj’s Butterfly and Delia Hass’ On Hold are courtesy of Bonobo Studios. Special thank you to Fabian Driehorst\, Vanja Andrijevic\, Charlie Garland and Amina Boyd. This years edition of the Animation Fest was curated by Squeaky Wheel staff Carra Stratton\, Ekrem Serdar\, Mark Longolucco\, and Zainab Saleh. \n
\n\nProgram duration: ~53 minutes. Descriptions courtesy of the filmmakers and distributors. \nTony Nash\, Where Was I?\n1:37 minutes\, open captions\, 2024\nThis work was inspired by friendship and nostalgia. \nDelia Hess\, On Hold\n7:11 minutes\, 2024\nA young woman is stuck in the hold queue of a telephone hotline. A surreal episodic short film about the absurdities of urban life and the frustration of a paralysing standstill. \nMiranda Javid\, What Humans Do\n6:40 minutes\, open captions\, 2023\nA macro view of human-actions\, as told from within a singular body. Animated frame by frame with biodegradable ink + paper. \nMarina Santana De la Torre\, La Estación de las Rosas (The Season of the Roses)\n2:45 minutes\, Spanish with English subtitles\, 2024\nChronicle about freedom and sexual diversity. The film centres on the gay relationship between two university students who discover what life is like when they graduate. \nJ. Ramos\, Eldritch Kiss\n2:53 minutes\, open captions\, digital video\, 2024\nA workplace romance sparks up at a small convenience store. Claire is a shy\, awkward girl with a secret. Addie is a nice girl who is unaware of Claire’s truth. Will their newfound love survive Claire’s reveal? \nCalvin Hardick\, Silo\n1:17 minutes\, 2024\nA very personal and specific representation of universal creative energy manifested as a character. Inside of an impossible structure somewhere in the cosmos\, seen through the impenetrable safety of a viewing portal\, we get to witness the moment of ascension into the material plane. We\, the viewers\, our hoppy two dimensional friend\, and the being born in the silo are all segments of an infinite accordion\, seeing\, feeling\, sharing\, and expressing. \nS4RA\, bot3quim\n4:45 minutes\, Spanish with English subtitles\, 2023\nstage for intellectuals\, artists & freethinkers 2 meet\, a cultural institution that has become the sanctuary for creative expression & a symbol of resistance during the portugese dictatorship \nAlisi Telengut\, Baigal Nuur (Lake Baikal)\n8:56 min\, Buryat-Mongolian with English subtitles\, 2023\nThe formation and history of Lake Baikal in Siberia are re-imagined with hand-made animation\, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat-Mongolian language. \nEva Davidova\, Vinson And Flying Dancers Over A Lush Garden With Animals\n2:46 minutes\, 2024\nVinson and Flying Dancers Over a Lush Garden with Animals is an experimental animation investigating through hundreds of prompts the biases in the dataset of Runway’s LLM about dancers of color\, and the frustrating attempts at feeding concepts like Flying (we ended up writing Falling to achieve Flying)\, Bare Feet\, or Dancing with Animals. The sound is a mix by Eva Davidova\, based on Matthew D. Gantt experiments with Artificial Intelligence in sound. \nKolya Kishinsky and Geneva Huffman\, Red Thumb\n5:52 min\, 2024\nA stop motion short about a gardener who tries to control his environment as he discovers a pulsing red plant. As it physically grows so does their connection\, becoming his prized blooming obsession. \nSuncana Brkulj\, Butterfly\n8:07 minutes\, 2024\nA community of garden creatures all contribute to the flow of life\, using water from a fountain. When a butterfly gets stuck in the fountain\, they’re faced with an unfamiliar situation. \n
\n\nAlisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian origin\, living between Berlin and Tiohti:áke/Montréal. Her work received multiple awards and nominations and has been screened and exhibited internationally\, including at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures\, Sundance Film Festival\, TIFF\, Videonale\, among others. \nCalvin Hardick is a multi-disciplinary illustrator and animator from Buffalo\, NY. \nDelia Hess studied animation at the Lucerne School of Art and Design in Switzerland. Since her graduation in 2012 she has been working independently on her own short film projects as well as on commissioned films and illustrations. She lives and works in Lucerne.\nFilmography: On Hold (2024)\, Emmen by the Lake (2021)\, Circuit (2018)\, Around the Stairway (2018)\, Morning Train (2012\, student film)\, Partition (2011\, student film)\, In the City (2011\, student film) \nEva Davidova explores behavior\, ecological disaster\, and the social implications of technology through performative works rooted in the absurd. Challenging a singular narrative\, she combines ancient mythology with current technologies to address the impending ecological catastrophe. Her practice involves research\, performance\, 360 video and 3D animation\, game engines\, participatory Virtual Reality\, and interactive\, site-specific immersive installations. Davidova has exhibited at the Bronx Museum\, the UVP at Everson Museum\, Buffalo AKG Museum\, MACBA\, CAAC Sevilla\, La Regenta\, ISSUE Project Room\, Harvestworks\, Instituto Cervantes\, and the Museum of Moving Image (MoMI) in New York. \nJ. Ramos is someone inspired by their own experiences with sexuality and mental health. They’re pursuing a BFA in Animation at Villa Maria College\, going into their senior year in 2024. They love animation and working on new projects as they come. \nKolya Kishinsky is a recent RISD graduate and Bay Area born animator where in the foggy hills one’s hand disappears if it’s too far from the body. As in the fog\, his work focuses on searching\, autonomy and creating personal identity. He works in both stop motion and 2D animated mediums as well as holding a printmaking and illustration practice focused on telling surreal yet personal stories.\nGeneva Huffman is a recent graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design\, working in both 2D and 3D aspects of illustration. She particularly enjoys fabrication in the world of stop motion and is constantly tinkering. Geneva is probably making something creepy and macabre this very moment. Be afraid\, be very afraid. \nMarina Santana is a Mexican Director\, cinematographer\, animator and sound designer. Her work explores dreams and eerie circumstances as well as fear of the unknown. She has screened at Ann Arbor\, Shorts México\, Festival Internacional de Cine de Hidalgo\, Austin Arthouse\, ICDOCS\, Pantalla de Cristal\, New York City International Film Festival and Trinidad y Tobago Film Festival. She holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and is an alumni of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. \nMiranda Javid (she/her) is an animator\, curator\, and art-educator. Her animations describe cognitive experience\, human bias\, and the relationship between individuals and their communities. \nS4RA is an < non-binary && genderqueer > interdisciplinary artist that feeds on con*sensual power dynamics & gender role play through a /non/ linear looping hybrid process between digital animation & ( immersive : ) environments. also spends endless hours strolling through post-capitalism mazes & it’s influence on libidinal pleasure. \nSuncana Brkulj (1997) earned her MA in animation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Her student films have been selected for screenings at prestigious festivals in Annecy\, Ottawa\, Zagreb\, Stuttgart\, and elsewhere\, winning several awards. After graduating\, Suncana undertook a residency at Open Workshop in Viborg\, where she made her first professional film\, Butterfly. \nTony Nash: I began painting about 50 years ago and now also enjoy making video artwork. \nSponsors\nThank you to Villa Maria College for being the Reel Sponsor of Squeaky Wheel’s Animation Fest. Thank you to our sponsors Buffalo Spree\, Rigidized Metals\, Rose Jade Consulting Co-op\, Delaware Council Member Joel Feroleto\, Tri-Main Center\, Harlequin Pet Services\, Buffalo State College Communication Dept\, Rich Products Corporation\, Legislator April Baskin\, 26 Allen\, Lumpy Buttons\, Niagara Council Member David Rivera\, PUSH Buffalo\, Buffalo AKG Art Museum Altreuter & Berlin\, If Music Be. \n \nBanner image: A still from Suncana Brkulj’s Butterfly (2024). A colorful\, unrealistic. and dense landscape of cute creatures smiling or looking sad. Some are sitting next to each other\, some are dancing\, some have their hands up in joy. Two circles that could be the sun and moon overlook them. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/squeaky-wheels-21st-animation-fest/ LOCATION:Buffalo AKG Art Museum\, 1285 Elmwood Avenue\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14222\, United States CATEGORIES:Hybrid,Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Butterfly.jpg GEO:42.9324531;-78.87566 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Buffalo AKG Art Museum 1285 Elmwood Avenue Buffalo NY 14222 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=1285 Elmwood Avenue:geo:-78.87566,42.9324531 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241023T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241023T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191612Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191612Z UID:10001189-1729710000-1729715400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Works-in-progress: Three video games by Kurt Treeby DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, October 23\, 7 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nSqueaky Wheel welcomes artist Kurt Treeby for a presentation of three in-progress video games based on art historical themes\, and based on older titles created for older game consoles such as the Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System : Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column\, Guernica\, and Un Chien Andalou. The artist will present the games and speak to his work and process. Computers will be available for audiences to play the individual games the evening of. \nBiography of the artist\nA native of Buffalo\, NY\, Kurt Treeby first studied art at the College of Art and Design at Alfred University. While at Alfred he studied painting\, drawing\, and art history. After receiving his MFA from Syracuse University\, Treeby developed a conceptual-based approach to art making that continues to develop as he works with a wide range of fiber and textile processes\, and has recently begun to explore electronic art. His work comments of the production and reception of art\, as well as the role art plays in our collective memories. He focuses on iconic imagery and the connection between so-called “high” and “low” art forms. Treeby has exhibited his work on a national and international level. He teaches studio art and design at Erie Community College. He lives and works in Buffalo. \nBanner image: A still from Kurt Treeby\, Guernica. A video game field composed of a limited number of pixels depicting apartments\, a car\, and people across a digital field. Some of the people are dressed like soldiers holding guns\, and a black and white image of a woman in a dress. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/works-in-progress-three-video-games-by-kurt-treeby/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Work-in-progress ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Kurt-Treeby-scaled.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241108T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241108T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191614Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191614Z UID:10001194-1731092400-1731099600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:The Big Picture Event: Vague Questions by Nick Mass and Silas Rubeck DESCRIPTION:Friday\, November 8\, 7 pm\nFree\nAs part of The Big Picture series\, Squeaky Wheel is excited to screen Vague Questions by Nick Mas and Silas Rubeck. \nVague Questions is an interview series conducted by Nick Mass and Silas Rubeck. Together they have compiled a series of interviews documenting the reactive minds of their respective peers and members of the community. Through a series of Rorschach tests and an auto didactic interview process that gives control of the questions to the interviewee\, what answers might you find? This project is supported by The Generator Fund\, a grant for artists administered by The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. \nThe Big Picture is a Squeaky Wheel access program initiative designed to provide local artists a platform to showcase their projects; to impact and be impacted by the community of makers\, viewers\, critics & supporters and to grow from the experience. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/the-big-picture-event-vague-questions-by-nick-mass-and-silas-rubeck/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Event Series,Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IMG_20241010_104038.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241206T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241206T220000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191614Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191614Z UID:10001190-1733511600-1733522400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Squeaky Wheel's Holiday Fundraiser Squeaktacular: Art Auction! Party! Music! Basket Raffle! DESCRIPTION:December 6\, 7 pm – 10\n6 – 7 pm VIP includes open bar\, light refreshments\, a bid number and full access to the party!\n$20 presale\n$40 VIP includes open bar\, refreshments 6 pm – 7\n$25 at the door\n$10 online only bid\n
\n\nJoin us for Squeaky Wheel’s 2024 holiday fundraiser—a festive evening with a cosmic twist! There will be a BASKET RAFFLE! There will be COSTUMES! There will be DANCING and a DRAG SHOW and LIVE MUSIC by Pam Swarts and friends and DRINKS! And there will be so much amazing art available at the auction with online bidding. Come celebrate our friends and community with an evening of music\, dancing\, libations\, and art\, and help us continue our mission to foster artistic expression and innovation. Your support keeps us reaching for the moon! \nThe art auction will be online for remote bidding if you aren’t able to make it in person! More details and auction preview available soon! \nBanner image: An orange cat in a spacesuit on the moon\, with a purple space field of stars and a planet. A flag is planted on it with the Squeaky Wheel logo. The text on the image states: “INTERGALACTIC HOLIDAY SQUEAKTACULAR PARTY & ART AUCTION. 7-10pm // 6-7 VIP. December 6\, 2024” URL:https://squeaky.org/event/squeaky-wheels-holiday-fundraiser-squeaktacular-art-auction-party-music-basket-raffle/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Fundraiser,Party ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Squeaktacular-scaled.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241221T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241221T130000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191613Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191613Z UID:10001197-1734782400-1734786000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Work in progress: Kalpana Subramanian's Breath Worlds DESCRIPTION:Saturday\, December 21\, 12 pm ET\nFree or suggested donation\nOnline over Zoom. RSVP below\nSqueaky Wheel is excited to welcome back Kalpana Subramanian for an online artist talk on her in-progress project Breath Worlds – an interdisciplinary project composed of sound works\, emerging technologies\, moving image and performance. \nWith breathing in crisis\, our existence as a respiratory species is becoming increasingly precarious and inequitable. This project speculates on what it means to breathe\, in an era when breath itself can no longer be taken for granted. How can breath be reclaimed from the forces that imperil it? Can breath be cultivated and shared? These are just some of the motivations that guide this project – exploring breath and breathing as a universal right (Mbembe\, 2020)\, a form of interconnectedness and a future paradigm. \nThe project is supported by the New York State Council of the Arts’ Support for Artists grant. \nBiography of the artist \nKalpana Subramanian\, PhD\, is a multidisciplinary artist\, filmmaker and scholar whose recent practice explores transcultural and interdisciplinary approaches to experimental film and media. Her arts-based doctoral research at the Department of Media Study\, University at Buffalo\, proposes a novel mode of experiencing cinema through an attention to breath philosophy and poetics. Her films have been exhibited at venues including the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival\, Toronto International Film Festival\, Images Festival (Canada)\, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Scotland)\, Chicago Underground Film Festival\, Flaherty NYC Seminar (USA) UNESCO (France)\, Wildscreen UK\, and National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai\, India) among others. Her films have received awards from the Documentary Festival of History and Archeology (Italy\, 2015)\, Montana CINE International Film Festival (USA\, 2003\, 2005) and the Center for Media Studies Vatavaran Film Festival (India\, 2008). Her curated programs have screened at Simon Fraser University (Canada)\, Harvard FAS CAMLab\, Alternative Cinema series (Colgate University\, USA) and Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (UK) among others. Subramanian is recipient of a UK Environmental Film Fellowship (2006)\, Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship (2015-16) and a New York State Council on the Arts grant (2024) among other honors. She is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder. \nBanner image: Blue and orange light curved around a flecked surface. On top of the image are the logos of Squeaky Wheel and the New York State Council of the Arts and the words “Breath Worlds. Kalpana Subramanian”. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/work-in-progress-kalpana-subramanians-breath-worlds/ LOCATION:Virtual\, NY\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Virtual ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/BREATH-WORLDS-FLYER-MB-copy.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250313T183000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250313T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191631Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191631Z UID:10001207-1741890600-1741899600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Seed Stories DESCRIPTION:Thursday\, March 13\, 6:30 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nRSVP below\nJoin us for a screening of Chitrangada Choudhury & Aniket Aga’s Seed Stories (42 minutes\, 2024)\, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers in conversation with Dr. Samina Raja (UB Planning). There will be catering with vegetarian options by Ali Baba Kebab. The doors will open at 6:30 pm\, and the screening will begin at 7 pm. \nIn a village in the Niyamgiri mountains of Odisha’s Eastern Ghats\, a heroic effort is underway: barefoot ecologist Dr. Debal Deb and his 3 member-team are conserving in-situ over 1000 endangered heirloom varieties of rice. Odisha’s Eastern Ghats region is one of the world’s surviving biodiversity hotspots\, with Adivasi communities like the Kondhs possessing the knowledge of growing multiple crops with their folk seeds\, evolved over centuries. At the same time\, the village and the wider region is irreversibly changing with the coming of genetically modified cotton seeds and associated chemicals. Seed Stories takes a worm’s eye view of how this is reshaping a geography and a people steeped in agro-ecological knowledge\, and altering their attitudes towards farming\, food and ecology. It invites audiences to reflect on the question\, “What is sustainability?” \nOfficial Selection: Kolkata People’s Film Festival\, Chennai International Documentary & Short Film Festival\, Festival delle Terre\, Rome\, Give Peace A Screen\, Torino Other Screenings: Vikalp@Prithvi – Films for Freedom\, Mumbai; India International Centre\, Delhi; National Centre for Biological Sciences\, Bengaluru; Bengaluru International Center; Museum of Goa. Click here to read a review of the film American Anthropologist. \nAttendees: Squeaky Wheel is located in Suite 310 of Tri-Main Center. Take the elevator to the third floor\, and head left. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Click here to see parking\, transportation\, and accessibility information. \nThis program is presented and funded by UB Department of Geography\, UB Asia Research Institute\, UB Center for Global Health Equity\, UB Department of Indigenous Studies\, UB Food Lab\, UB Critical Ecologies Research Collaborative. \nBiographies of the filmmakers\nChitrangada Choudhury is a journalist\, filmmaker and PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Zurich. Her reportage on the environment and social justice has been cited for multiple awards including the Sanskriti Foundation Award\, the Press Council of India’s National Award for Investigative Reporting\, and the Lorenzo NataliJournalism Prize twice. She has been on the founding team of The People’s Archive of Rural India and is on the Editorial Board of Article 14 – two award-winning digital publications. Her research has appeared in journals and edited volumes including Elementa – Science of the Anthropocene\, Capitalism Nature Socialism\, Economic & Political Weekly\, and the Columbia Journalism Review. \nAniket Aga is Assistant Professor of Geography at UB-SUNY\, the author of Genetically Modified Democracy: Transgenic Crops in Contemporary India (Yale University Press\, 2021) which won the 2022 Fleck Best Book Prize from the international Society for the Social Studies of Science. His research lies at the intersection of science and technology\, development and democracy. His article on pesticide marketing and caste\, published in the Journal of Peasant Studies\, won the 2019-20 Krishna Bharadwaj-Eric Wolf Prize from the journal. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/seed-stories/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEEDSTORIESFILMSTILL3_ChitrangadaChoudhury.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250321 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250531 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191630Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191630Z UID:10001221-1742515200-1748649599@squeaky.org SUMMARY:The Image in its Absence: Azza El-Hassan\, Carolina Ebeid\, Crystal Z Campbell\, Noor Abuarafeh DESCRIPTION:Opening\, Friday\, March 21\, 6–8 pm. On view through May 30\nRemarks by Curator Ekrem Serdar at 7 pm\nOn view Tuesdays\, Thursdays\, Fridays\, 12–5 pm\, Wednesdays 12–7pm\, and by appointment.\nExtended hours for final week of the exhibition:\nFriday\, May 23\, 12–7 pm\nSaturday\, May 24\, 12–5pm\nTuesday–Friday\, May 27–30\, 12–7pm\nFree and open to the public\nThe Image in Its Absence is a group exhibition and public events featuring work on archives that have been displaced and destroyed\, and how communities care for and imagine them in their absence. The exhibition includes contemplative essay films\, speculative video\, poetry\, and more\, featuring work by Azza El-Hassan\, Carolina Ebeid\, Crystal Z Campbell\, and Noor Abuarafeh. The public programs include work by Assia Djebar\, Inas Halabi\, Joe Hall\, Onyeka Igwe\, and Tiffany Sia. \nThe works in the exhibition and public programs focus on several different historiographic approaches to how artists address the absence of archives. Azza El-Hassan’s A Remake of a Revolutionary Film reconstructs the last five minutes of Palestinian Film Unit member Hani Jawherieh’s (1939-1976) life before he was killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon. The film is accompanied by In the Presence of a Fighter\, a projection of seven photographs by Jawherieh\, made in Lebanon in 1969 before he was killed\, and that is part of El-Hassan’s long-standing archival work as part of The Void Project. Noor Abuarafeh\, in The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost\, contemplates the role of exile in collective memories. The work the follows the fate of artworks that were featured in a 2005 exhibition in Switzerland by Palestinian artists\, and which were unable to be returned to Palestine due to challenges by the Israeli government. Crystal Z Campbell\, in Go-Rilla Means War\, fabulates a new narrative for an unfinished\, vinegar damaged\, and neglected 35 mm film found on the floor of a now demolished Black Civil Rights movie theater in gentrifying Brooklyn. Carolina Ebeid’s poem\, She Got Love: A Circle of Spells for Ana Mendieta\, focuses on the testimony and lack of witnesses to the death of the singular Cuban-American artist; its circle is both protective and repellant\, seemingly circling Mendieta herself. In the context of the exhibition\, the work dives into what is hidden in recorded official testimony\, and what exists beyond it. \nThe exhibition is accompanied by two public programs\, including a screening of films by Inas Halabi\, Onyeka Igwe\, Tiffany Sia\, and Assia Djebar’s The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting; and a poetry reading with Carolina Ebeid and Joe Hall. \nThe exhibition is curated by Ekrem Serdar\, who would like to thank Judith Goldman\, Laura Marris\, the University at Buffalo Poetics program\, Zeynep Öz\, and Jeff Sherven. This program is funded by Teiger Foundation\, and co-sponsored by the Poetics Program at University at Buffalo. \nImages\nA still from Crystal Z Campbell’s Go-Rilla Means War. A seemingly disintegrating film strip in pink\, with a black person holding his fists up towards the camera. Other damage is visible across the frame.A still from Noor Abuarafeh’s The Moon Returns as a Ghost. Numerous boxes across shelves\, with the subtitle “Countless shelves stand as witnesses”A still from Azza El-Hassan’s A Remake of a Revolutionary Film. A photograph of the Hani Jawharieh holding a 16mm camera in black and white. On the image is the subtitle\, “Hani remained in black and white.”A still from Noor Abuarafeh’s The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost. An image of the moon in grey\, black\, and patches of purple blue\, with the words “I wonder when something disappears” on the bottom left.\nLeft to right: 1. Crystal Z Campbell’s Go-Rilla Means War (2017). Noor Abuarafeh\, The Moon Returns as a Ghost (2023). Azza El-Hassan\, A Remake of a Revolutionary Film (2019) Noor Abuarafeh\, The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost (2023).\nPublic programs and special hours\nSaturday\, April 5\, 7 pm at Squeaky Wheel\nReading with Carolina Ebeid and Joe Hall. Click here for more information. \nWednesday\, April 23\, 7 pm at Squeaky Wheel\nScreening of short films by Inas Halabi\, Onyeka Igwe\, Tiffany Sia\, and Assia Djebar’s feature\, The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting. Click here for more information. \nWednesday\, May 14\, 6 pm at Squeaky Wheel \nTour with curator Ekrem Serdar \nFriday\, May 23\, 12–5 pm\nSaturday\, May 24\, 12–5 pm\nTuesday–Friday\, May 27–30\, 12–7pm\nExtended hours for final week of the exhibition \nVisiting the exhibition\nThe exhibition features four video and audio installations\, with a total running time of ~40 minutes. Installations feature seatings and room to navigate mobility devices. See Squeaky Wheel’s accessibility information here\, and see captioning and subtitle information for individual works below. The exhibition is on view\, Tuesday\, Thursdays\, Fridays\, 12–5 pm\, with extended hours on Wednesdays\, 12–7 pm\, and by appointment. To make an appointment\, including fully masked visits\, email office@squeaky.org. \nWorks in the Exhibition\nDescriptions provided by the artists.\nAzza El-Hassan\, A Remake of a Revolutionary Film\nDigital video\, Arabic with English subtitles\, 7 minutes\, 2019\nFrom the personal photo album of Palestinian photographer and cinematographer\, Hani Jawherieh\, El-Hassan reconstructs the last five minutes of Hani Jawherieh’s life\, who was killed while filming in the mountains in Lebanon. The five minutes were featured in Palestine in the Eye (1977) a film made by the Palestine Film Institute to commemorate the life of one of its founders. Yet\, forty-two years later\, what motivates these images takes on a different turn in A Remake of a Revolutionary Film. \nAzza El-Hassan\, In the Presence of a Fighter\nDigital video\, silent\, 2:43 minutes looped\, 2019\nIn the Presence of a Fighter is a modern digital installation by Azza El-Hassan of Palestinian fighters portraits which Palestinian photographer\, Hani Jawherieh\, made in 1969. The portraits were first exhibited by Jawherieh in 1969 as gigantic prints to illustrate the presence and strength of the fighters. These portraits were plundered by the Israeli army in 1982 during the Israeli invasion in Lebanon\, and they no longer exist in public spaces. In this modern installation\, reflections of the images are projected on the empty wall. The fighters are phantoms who appear only to disappear. \nCrystal Z Campbell\, Go-Rilla Means War\n35mm scanned to digital video by the artist\, English with open captions\, 20 minutes\, 2017\nGo-Rilla Means War is a filmic relic of gentrification featuring 35mm film salvaged from a now demolished Black Civil Rights Theater in Bedford-Stuyvesant\, Brooklyn. After finding the film unfinished and un-canned on the floor of The Slave Theater\, Campbell collaborated with the unknown director (presumably amateur filmmaker Judge John Phillips who owned the Slave Theater) to finish the film. A secret Black fraternal organization dominates the visual narrative\, accompanied by a parable that binds intersections of development\, cultural preservation\, and erasure. \nNoor Abuarafeh\, The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost \nDigital video\, Arabic with English subtitles\, 10 minutes\, 2023\nThe video is based on research that follows the cases of seventeen exhibitions by Palestinian artists\, each containing different artworks and exhibited in different countries around the world\, the majority of which are considered missing today. The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost follows one of these cases\, an exhibition that took place in 2005 in the Swiss town of Martigny. The works could not be returned to the artists and were instead moved from a country to another and from one storage facility to another. The video questions how the immateriality of missing objects affects our memory of them\, especially in a colonized context where the materiality of the object is constantly in danger of being manipulated\, destroyed or stolen. The work shows that by poetically liberating historiography from its objecthood\, more narratives can emerge that extend beyond the materiality of the object in which it is transmitted orally. \nCarolina Ebeid\, She Got Love: A Circle of Spells for Ana Mendieta\nPoetry on vinyl and read by the artist in digital sound\, 2:55 minutes\, 2024\nShe Got Love: a circle of spells for Ana Mendieta is a visual poem that centers the letter O\, whose orthographic origins date back to the Phoenician pictograph of the eye. While there was no eye-witness to Mendieta’s death (other than her husband Carl Andre\, who was arrested and later acquitted)\, a witness heard her say “no” as recounted in testimony. The poem then conjurs the O of the witness and the O of no to open up a protective space whose ensorcelling text the viewer and listener can read in a multitude of ways. The work was first installed in the exhibition and concurrent publication A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hyrbid-Literary Collection at Stelo Arts (Portland\, OR) in 2024; the exhibition was curated and the publication was edited by Dao Strom and Jyothi Natarajan\, co-directors of De-Canon.\n \nBiographies of the artists\nAzza El-Hassan is a visiting professor of practice at the Doha institute for Graduate Studies and an award winning documentary filmmaker. She is the founder of The Void Project\, a research and media production project that examines the effect of colonial plundering on the formation of a present visual Arab narrative. Her book The Afterlife of Palestinian Images: Visual Remains and the Archive of Disappearance is considered a groundbreaking study in how colonial violence alters and changes visual objects – which in turn affects how a society and culture relates to its own images. \nCarolina Ebeid is a multimedia poet. She is the author of You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior (Noemi Press\, 2016) and the chapbook Dauerwunder: a brief record of facts (Albion Books\, 2023). Her next book Hide is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in winter of 2026. Her work has been supported by the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University\, CantoMundo\, the NEA\, and a residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. She is the current Bonderman Assistant Professor of poetry at Brown University. A longtime editor\, she currently edits poetry at The Rumpus\, as well as the multimedia zine Visible Binary. Carolina grew up in West New York\, New Jersey in a Cuban and Palestinian family. \nCrystal Z Campbell\, 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts\, is a visual artist\, experimental filmmaker\, and writer of Black\, Filipinx\, and Chinese descents whose works center the underloved. Working through archives and omissions\, Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken.\nCampbell’s works have screened and exhibited internationally: MIT List Visual Arts Center\, SFMOMA\, Walker Art Center\, St. Louis Art Museum\, The Drawing Center\, Nest\, ICA-Philadelphia\, MOMA\, BLOCK Museum\, REDCAT\, Artissima\, Bemis\, Project Row Houses\, SculptureCenter\, Semana Cinema de Negro in Belo Horizonte\, 67th Flaherty Film Seminar\, and others. Awards include a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship\, Creative Capital Award\, Freund Fellowship\, Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship\, Pollock-Krasner Award\, MAP Fund\, MacDowell\, Skowhegan\, Rijksakademie\, Whitney ISP\, Franklin Furnace\, Black Spatial Relics\, and a DUKE DocX Fellowship.\nCampbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press\, World Literature Today\, Monday Journal\, GARAGE\, and Hyperallergic. Campbell is a Visiting Associate Professor in Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo. \nNoor Abuarafeh is a Palestinian artist based between Jerusalem and Rotterdam. Her practice spans video\, performance\, publications\, and video installations\, with a focus on the themes of memory\, history and archives and the complexities of tracking absence. Noor’s videos and performances are based on texts and call the complexity of history into question: how it is formed\, constructed\, made\, perceived\, visualized and understood. She asks how all these elements are related and investigates the possibility of representing the past when the past is still present. Her videos and socially-engaged works are based on interviews\, workshops and other participatory encounters.\nIn the past Abuarafeh has shown in solo and group exhibitions at De Appel (2024)\, Art Jameel (2024)\, Jakarta Biennale (2024)\, Frieze Museum (2023)\, Venice Biennale (2022)\, Berlin Biennale (2020)\, and Sharjah Biennale 13 (2017). She also participated in the Off-Biennale Gaudipolis in Budapest (2017) and the Qalandia International in Jerusalem (2018)\, among others. In 2019\, she held her first solo exhibition\, The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost\, curated by Lara Khaldi in Jerusalem. \nBanner image: A still from Azza El-Hassan’s A Remake of a Revolutionary Film. A photograph of Hani Jawharieh holding a 16mm camera in black and white. On the image is the subtitle\, “Hani remaind in black and white.” URL:https://squeaky.org/event/the-image-in-its-absence-azza-el-hassan-carolina-ebeid-crystal-z-campbell-noor-abuarafeh/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Exhibition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Azz-Remake-of-a-Film-Screenshot-2025-01-31-at-12.00.34-PM-scaled.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250405T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250405T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191630Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191630Z UID:10001222-1743879600-1743886800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Carolina Ebeid and Joe Hall DESCRIPTION:Saturday\, April 5\, 7 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nSqueaky Wheel is proud to present a poetry reading by Carolina Ebeid and Joe Hall as part of the public programs accompanying our exhibition\, The Image in its Absence which features an installation by Ebeid. Catering from Ali Baba Kebab\, with vegetarian options\, will be available to attendees. Special thank you to Judith Goldman and Laura Marris. This program is funded by Teiger Foundation\, and co-sponsored by the Poetics Program at University at Buffalo. \nAttendees: Squeaky Wheel is located in Suite 310 of Tri-Main Center. Take the elevator to the third floor\, and head left. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Click here to see parking\, transportation\, and accessibility information. \nBiographies of the artists\nCarolina Ebeid is a multimedia poet. She is the author of You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior (Noemi Press\, 2016) and the chapbook Dauerwunder: a brief record of facts (Albion Books\, 2023). Her next book Hide is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in winter of 2026. Her work has been supported by the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University\, CantoMundo\, the NEA\, and a residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. She is the current Bonderman Assistant Professor of poetry at Brown University. A longtime editor\, she currently edits poetry at The Rumpus\, as well as the multimedia zine Visible Binary. Carolina grew up in West New York\, New Jersey in a Cuban and Palestinian family. \nJoe Hall is a Buffalo-based writer and researcher. His six books of poetry include Fugue & Strike (Black Ocean 2023) and People Finder\, Buffalo (Cloak 2024). Current Affairs on Fugue & Strike: “a remarkable poetic project\, unlike anything else in literature today.” Hall has performed and delivered talks nationally at bars\, squats\, universities\, and rivers. Protean\, The Cleveland Review of Books\, Eighteen-Century Fiction\, Poetry Daily\, Fence Digital\, mercury firs\, dollar bills\, and an NFTA bus shelter have all featured his writing. He has taught community-based writing workshops for teachers\, teens\, and workers. Community Mausoleum recently featured his essay “PEN America: Cultural Imperialism’s Avant-Garde.” Find more at http://joehalljoehall.com. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/carolinaebeidandjoehall/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Special Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Carolina-and-Joe.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250407T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250407T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191630Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191630Z UID:10001224-1744048800-1744056000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Somatic and Devised Performance Workshop with Kyla Kegler DESCRIPTION:Monday\, April 7\, 6–8 pm\nFree or suggested donation. Limited capacity. Open to ages 16+\nRegister below\nSqueaky Wheel presents a special performance based workshop with Workspace Resident Kyla Kegler (Buffalo\, NY) based on her project Care-Core that examines self-care\, collective care\, and somatic knowledge. Participants will be guided through a series of somatic / embodiment exercises\, journaling in response to prompts\, group sharing\, culminating in the collaborative development and ultimately performance of a Sesame-Street-esque song and dance responding to what emerges from this process. The workshop is suitable for all bodies and levels of experience. \nAttendees: For the workshop\, please: \n\nWear comfy clothes / footwear you can move in\nBring a reference object: anything at all that you’re interested in looking at and thinking about\nBring a notebook + pen\nSqueaky Wheel is located in Suite 310 of Tri-Main Center. Take the elevator to the third floor\, and head left. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Click here to see parking\, transportation\, and accessibility information.\n\nThis event is part of the Spring session of Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency\, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Visual Arts and Teiger Foundation. \nBiography of the artist\nKyla Kegler is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores desire and connection between people\, place and purpose. She is the founder and director of performance / movement space Agatha Falls. Kegler’s practice draws from her past work with Bread and Puppet Theater (Vermont) and as co-founder of theater\, “Zuhause” (Berlin\, Germany). She received an MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship from the Art University of Berlin and an MFA in Studio Art from the University at Buffalo. Her past projects include: Feel Me\, video installation exploring the mindfulness industry; The House on Fire Show\, teen web-drama about the climate crisis; Mountains: a tragicomedic puppet soap opera; Relationships don’t finish\, they change\, a video and sculpture installation exhibited at the Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College\, Ithaca\, NY\, 2024. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/somatic-and-devised-performance-workshop-with-kyla-kegler/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-07-at-3.31.15-PM-scaled.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250409T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250409T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T212323 CREATED:20251230T191630Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251230T191630Z UID:10001225-1744221600-1744228800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Collage Aesthetics: Working With Found Footage with Sue Ding DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, April 9\, 6–8 pm\nFree or suggested donation. Limited capacity. Open to ages 16+\nRegister below\nIn this special seminar with visiting artist Sue Ding (Los Angeles\, CA)\, participants will learn about creative strategies for working with photographic and moving image archival\, with a focus on popular media. The workshop will showcase a variety of approaches for remixing archival materials\, including stop-motion animation\, supercut editing\, and sound interventions. The artist will share clips from found footage and collage-driven works by herself and others\, followed by a discussion with participants. \nRemixing allows us to critique and contextualize popular media texts\, as well as to transform them into new creative works. This workshop aims to instill in participants a greater sense of agency with regards to media imagery and narratives\, empowering them to deconstruct and reimagine popular media in creative ways. \nAttendees: Squeaky Wheel is located in Suite 310 of Tri-Main Center. Take the elevator to the third floor\, and head left. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Click here to see parking\, transportation\, and accessibility information. \nThis event is part of the Spring session of Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency\, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Visual Arts and Teiger Foundation. \nBiography of the artist\nSue Ding is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her work explores race\, gender\, and diaspora through the lens of visual culture. In her research-based practice\, she emphasizes process\, form\, and deep readings of both media and landscapes. Sue’s work has screened internationally at venues including SXSW\, IDFA\, Antimatter [Media Art]\, and Copenhagen Contemporary\, and can be found on platforms including PBS\, Netflix\, and The New York Times. Sue’s interdisciplinary practice spans film\, installation\, and emerging media\, and she consults and lectures widely on filmmaking and media arts. In 2023\, she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” \nBanner image: Collage of retro tv screens and makeover movie images on notebook paper background. Image courtesy of Sue Ding. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/collage-aesthetics-working-with-found-footage/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-07-at-4.09.45-PM-scaled.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR