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As a refresher, PLAY/GROUND is an annual art festival presented by M&T Bank and produced by The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art and Resource:Art. Artists create ambitious, immersive, site-responsive installations for our community to explore. This year P/G is happening on the banks of the Buffalo River, with thirteen artist installations in and around the old grain silos at Buffalo RiverWorks. When the festival began in 2018, in its original home, a former Medina High School—the opening night was the party of the year — and this year, the team is expecting nothing less than a booming celebration of our city’s incredible art scene.
This fifth edition of PLAY/GROUND features familiar names from the event’s past. Amanda Besl’s multimedia installation, The Harvest, imagines a haunting memory from the viewpoint of the harvested. Bethany Krull returns with one of her signature colossal, handmade creatures that will hang from inside the silos, its beating heart audible in the cavernous space. There are also plenty of new names among the list of artists including video-artist Logan Ryland Dandridge and Buffalo architect Shawn Chiki. Many artists will engage with the architecture of the silos and the history of the site at RiverWorks in unique ways. Rochester-based artists Ong Siraphisut and Manon Wada will transform one of the grain silos into a metaphorical telescope, inviting viewers to peer into a fantastical alternate universe, and Chicago-based artist Jess Bass is planning an interactive installation with homemade playdough created with the same grains that the GLF Silos historically housed. Underneath RiverWorks’ Ferris wheel, design team Serweta Peck is planning a surreal beach party in a life-sized cereal bowl inspired by the city that smells like Cheerios, complete with inner tube oat Os and marshmallow foam pillows shaped like Buffalo’s architectural icons. A few other projects will be reprised especially for PLAY/GROUND 2022. Adam Weekley’s Camp Everything, a whimsical float that appeared earlier this summer in Buffalo’s Pride Parade, will make its second appearance. The project River Lab BUF, by New York-based artist Mary Mattingly and designed and programmed by Rochester-based Julie Chen, was initially conceived for and installed along Pier 16 in South Street Seaport, New York City. Mattingly and Chen will work with local artists to reconceive this installation for the Buffalo River.
In addition to installation art, several one-night-only performances will take place during the opening night including. Jodi Lynn Maracle’s WHY HERE WHY NOW, a performance that involves Haudenosaunee material culture, and acts of gratitude in the form of traditional Haudenosaunee song and dance. Miggie Wong will present a site-specific performance, StarEyes: Round of Applause, and Brandon Williamson and Saranaide will bring an evening of music and spoken word intended to stimulate, uplift, and inspire. Chango4, way2wavybaby, and OGLXRY will close out the night with their own unique brand of multidisciplinary performance.
PLAY/GROUND 2022 Artists include: Jess Bass • Amanda Besl • Jacob Todd Broussard & Adam Thibodeaux • Chango4, way2wavybaby, and OGLXRY • Shawn Chiki • Logan Ryland Dandridge • Bethany Krull • Xinghuai Huang & Heather Leslie • Mobile River Lab: Mary Mattingly and Julie Chen • Jodi Lynn Maracle • Serweta Peck • Ong Siraphisut & Manon Wada • Adam Weekley • Jesse Walp • Zeitpunk (Matthew Graham) • Brandon Williamson & Saranaide • Miggie Wong
Mobile River Lab: Mary Mattingly & Julie Chen
River Lab BUF: Experience the Buffalo river with all your senses.
Buffalo O’s: Enjoy a beach party in a life-size cereal bowl full of lucky charms inspired by Buffalo icons. Part of a balanced breakfast.
Camp Everything: A whimsical world of inclusiveness and celebration.
Funnel : Explore how the past and present meet through a growing interactive installation made with homemade playdough.
The Harvest: A haunting refrain; the wheat remembers the scythe.
Jacob Todd Broussard & Adam Thibodeaux
Mighty Real: Celebrate the legacy of Buffalo native and queer underground dance music pioneer Patrick Cowley in the kind of marginal architectural space queer communities have activated through history
The Interactive Womp Womp Machine: Teleport to another dimension in this powerful interactive sound and light piece!
Invisible Church: Invisible Church responds to the poem Southern Gothic by Rickey Laurentiis – the liminal rooms his poems worship, dream, and dance within and the weightless atmosphere they create: an infinite Black continuum.
Chrysalis: Creatures constantly work to integrate and infiltrate our own built environments despite our architectural efforts to hold nature at bay. The chrysalis swelling with metaphors of growth, change, and latent potential represents the wild and unpredictable inevitability of nature reclaiming its space.
Xinghuai Huang & Heather Leslie
Transcendent Nature: Transcendent Nature creates a possible future where human’s built environment and nature can thrive alongside each other.
WHY HERE WHY NOW: Through Haudenosaunee material culture, and acts of gratitude in the form of traditional Haudenosaunee song and dance, songs and dances that made this land and our lives possible, WHY HERE WHY NOW offers an interrogation into the notion of history, of place, and of present responsibility to the land that Buffalo, NY now sits on.
Siloscope: Siloscope transforms a grain silo into a metaphorical telescope/microscope for viewing an alternate universe.
The Very Foundation: An unknown force changes what we thought we could count on.
Zeitpunk (Matthew Graham)
Brick & Mortar: Step Right Up! Act Now! Don’t be Fooled by Cheap Imitations. This is a Limited Time Offer.
Brandon Williamson & Saranaide
Poetry on the upbeat: Brandon Williamson and Saranaide come together to bring you an evening of music and spoken word intended to stimulate, uplift, and inspire.
StarEyes: Round of Applause: One Applause-Circle will be created under the Buffalo historic silo. Individuals are welcomed to visit the Applause-Circe and receive a round of applause service facilitated by StarEyes Representative.
Tickets to the opening night ($35) as well as Saturday and Sunday entrance tickets ($10) are available at artplayground.com/tickets. Entrance to PLAY/GROUND 2022 on Indigenous Peoples Day, Monday, October 10th is free for everyone courtesy of PLAY/GROUND presenting sponsor M&T Bank.
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