PLAY/GROUND 2020

PLAY/GROUND 2020 is organized by Resource:Art and the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art and is being reimagined for our current times. This year, outdoor art projects will be installed at sites across Buffalo including the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Hotel Henry, and at Larkinville. Installations will be specially made to be experienced while social distancing.

Julie Henson's Not Quite the End is a video installation on the front facade of the Burchfield Penney Art Center. The video is a montage of female performers from past NFL Super Bowl Halftime shows, displaying positions of power though movement, costumes, and stage props; it is projected onto a giant sequin screen with the phrase, "not quite the end," sewn into it. Displayed without sound, the context of the video is reshaped, as is the phrase itself, which originally appeared in the closing title card of the 1963 James Bond film, From Russia with Love. Together, the video and phrase raise questions of how historical narratives are formed and modified over time.

Ladder Tired of Being a Ladder is a sculptural installation situated on the Burchfield Penney Art Center's second floor patio. Created by artist Kevin Kegler, the work consists of a ladder delicately placed in a bowl of sand, held in supportive tension by a rope tied to an oversized kite winder. The work's tenuousness is a reflection of the uncertainty of our times, of the newly discovered fragility of our institutions, and of our collective future.

 Yola Monakhov Stockton and Jared Thorne's project Redlining in Buffalo: from the Great Migration to Gentrification consists of a website, photographic installations, and a set of self-guided audio tours of locations in the traditional "redline" area of Buffalo, which was used by real estate agents, city planners, and federal authorities to designate the area where African-American residents were intended to live. Such lines were in use as recently as 2010, according to a lawsuit brought against Evans Bank by the State of New York. The events of this year have laid bare the stark consequences of segregation on the lives of people of color all across America. The visual components of Redlining in Buffalo will be anchored at 808 Main St. and at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. These photographic installations address just one topic affected by redlining: food insecurity. The photographic display will be accompanied by a barcode link to the map and audio tours, and links to additional resources.