Swiss architect Le Corbusier, upon visiting the Buffalo area, once said of the grain elevators, "The fruits of the modern age are upon us." Working with the abundance of industrial and agricultural architecture that still exists in Buffalo, Jesse Webber will utilize these structures as theoretical models of the failed utopia that modernism promised. This common interest and disconnect of past and present will serve as the point of departure for Webber's residency project for Hallwalls.

you can't smoke in here… will consist of several large scale screen prints and fabricated models (in plastic and fiberglass) of architectural renderings depicting fictitious grain elevator explosions in Buffalo and outlying areas. Webber will use existing vernacular architecture to transform the usual modernist politics of form and function into a more complex relationship of local economy, idealism, failure, labor, risk, and latent productive and destructive potential.