Ineffably Urban Symposium

Ineffably Urban is a one-day event on Buffalo, its conflicting identities and diverse creative representations, as cases of the urban image today. What is the status of the urban, of the image, of its expressions and discourses in diverse disciplines?

ineffable |inˈefəbəl| adjective
too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words • not to be uttered

This city often defines itself in terms of past glory or else its current struggles; its dysfunctional political culture, troubling social segregation, or its strong and persistent grass-roots base in the fields of culture, education and social justice. These disjoined identities find expression in common narratives of Buffalo, from Mark Goldman’s City on the Edge to Lauren Belfer’s City of Light. Likewise, strategies of fragmentation and of reconstruction – literal and mental – crop up, as they do in other post-industrial cities, in fields ranging from architecture to art and the humanities and social sciences. Between capitulation, nostalgia, demise and reconstruction, the urban image is left decidedly unutterable, undecided, ineffable: both sublime and unspeakable.

This symposium finds inspiration in this situation for a vigorous discussion of the urban image itself between critical discourses today. Beyond a local or regional discourse, Ineffably Urban aims at addressing questions one step removed from the actual city: how can we talk about the city’s “unspokens”? How can we render a picture of Buffalo without destroying that image immediately as we articulate observations and strategies explicitly? What is the “imaginaire” between the faded glory of Buffalo and its contemporary reality?

More specifically, the event aims at contextualizing findings within the broader context of other “formerly urban” cities in the rust belt and elsewhere, by investigating the theoretical narratives, the semiotics of texts and images (writing, photographs, films, video) and the driving social, political, and cultural forces around Buffalo and its urban image.

Much more information on the event, including program and participants, is available at its website.

The program that took place at Hallwalls was presented in person by David Gracon, who moderated a panel discussion with two other former Buffalo grad students "Skyped" in from Oregon.

David Gracon is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Eastern Illinois University, located in Charleston, Illinois. David teaches courses in documentary production, field production, cultural studies, and the political economy of communication. He is currently editing a documentary video about the House of Records, an independent record store located in Eugene, Oregon.   He recently received his doctorate in Communication and Society from the University of Oregon.