Most Buffalonians have heard of The Infringement Festival, which takes place over the course of ten+ days in Allentown every summer. But there’s another far out festival that has been gaining ground, which is a little more esoteric, if you will. The Indeterminacy Festival takes place over the course of a week, and is held at locations throughout the area. This is the third year that the festival will occur – this year’s theme is “PastFuture/FuturePast”.
With a theme such as “PastFuture/FuturePast”, the doors are wide open for people of all ages and backgrounds to participate, especially those who are interested in arts, sciences, architecture, and engineering. Throughout the course of the week, attendees will be able to attend events and workshops, and view documentaries. For example, there will be a chance to visit an inflatable planetarium, and create a musical object out of recyclable materials (see more below).
“Indeterminacy tells us that potential can be steered and that we have the power to harness our tendencies into something profound and unprecedented,” says Stanzi Vaubel, a doctoral candidate in the University at Buffalo Department of Media Study (College of Arts and Sciences), and director, founder, and co-producer of the festival. “We need new paradigms for living on earth and there is no more time to wait.”
[The festival will] explore eras of geologic time and ways in which gravitational and electromagnetic waves serve as communicators between past, present and future.
“This theme shows us that in each moment of our lives we interact with and take the events of the ancient past with us into the future,” says Vaubel, who is producing the festival with Sarah JM Kolberg, a doctoral candidate in visual studies. “I want visitors to walk away feeling that the impossible is possible and realize that powerful unprecedented change can happen when individuals and ideas come together.”
Participants in this year’s Indeterminacy Festival include members of the UB Nanosatellite Laboratory, dancers with Parkinson’s, Buffalo String Works, Starlight Studios, 5 Loaves Farm, and Our Lady of Hope Youth Choir.
The festival officially opens on Saturday, May 11, and comes to a close with a two-day finale on May 17 and 18 at the Penn Dixie Fossil Park & Nature Reserve. There will be a grand finale held, considered a “large-scale immersive performance of over 80 dancers and musicians from UB and the local community interstellar communication.”
Indeterminacy Festival 2019
Sunday May 5 @ Hallwalls, 2PM
(This event is considered a lead up to the festival)
Composting Symposium
Saturday May 11 @ 5 Loaves Farm, 2pm
Monochord and little green men
Wednesday May 15 @ Hallwalls, 8:00pm
Recycled Music
Wednesday May 15 @ Hallwalls, 5:30-7:30
Build Your Own Transmitter
Wednesday May 15 @ Media Lab, 201 Crosby Hall, UB South Campus, 1-5pm
RSVP
Cookies and Constellations
Saturday May 18 @ Cradle Beach Workshop, 11-1pm
RSVP
A complete schedule of workshops is available here. Details on the festival’s concluding weekend and a link to purchase tickets is also online.
Lead image by Mike Mondolfo | Quotes attributed to University at Buffalo