Buffalo Literature: Ariel Aberg-Riger, Kevin Cain and Noah Falck of Buffalo Correspondance School discuss Friday’s event at Burchfield Penney

By R.D. Pohl

On Friday, Oct. 24, from 7 to 9:30 p.m, The Buffalo Correspondance School (note variant spelling: it’s correspon-dance, as in a bodily performance) and the Burchfield Penney Art Center will present Fatigue Performance, an immersive experiential event blending poetry, music, and art.

The evening will feature poet and culture worker Noah Falck performing new poems from his upcoming collection Fatigue Performance alongside the dynamically inventive musical group Plant Water (Kevin Cain, guitar/loops; Patrick Jackson, bass; and Ryan Campbell percussion/drums). The unique, unfolding sonic experience will be engulfed by projection artwork and design by Ariel Aberg-Riger.

I caught up with Noah, Ariel, and Kevin earlier this week and compiled this interview via a series of emails. Here is the transcript:

Question 1: Please tell me a little bit about Buffalo Correspondance School, and how the three of you came to know one another, and on the path each of you took to work together on this project. [Note: I will suture each of your answers together into a three way response to this question.] I’m curious as to how this project and Buffalo Correspondance School came to be.

Ariel Aberg-Riger: The Buffalo Correspondance School started in the summer of 2024. Noah and I had been collaborating on the Silo City Reading Series, where he had invited me to be the July artist. Three days after the silos I had to abruptly move across the country to California, and it felt like we were mid-sentence, creatively. We had so enjoyed making things together, and I wanted to just keep making things with him. I knew we both loved Ray Johnson and mail art so I sent him a small pile of drawings and found photos and wrote “Welcome to the Buffalo Correspondance School. Please add to and respond.” And he did. And then I did. And we just kept going.

About six months in I think we both realized the exchange had kind of taken on a life of its own. It was pushing us to create in new and different ways, the whole thing was just really generative and fun. It was physical and slow and rambling and exploratory—so different from online communication. We found the forms and formats and tones and rhythms we were playing with were all circling back and burrowing into our own work. And that made us start to see it—really I think it was Noah who really started to see it first because he has this kind of magical sixth sense for conjuring up and holding creative space—as something that was much bigger than just us, it was more of an ethos, a state of being, a kind of commitment to collaboration and community and play as a framework and force for making.

Noah Falck: I met Kev in 2014, I think, he called me after one of the Silo City Readings and one of the first times we spoke, we spoke for nearly 2.5 hours. At the time he was producing these incredible music videos at the grain silos called Silo Sessions. They were sort of like Tiny Desk Concerts, but inside the massive grain silos and mostly featured WNY talent. So we immediately were having big conversations about how to make the silos a sort of epicenter of cool.

Kev has a long history of advocating for musicians and artists, specifically making space for them. He ran the cherished DIY space The Vault for many years and has always had his hand in various creative endeavors – whether it was producing, creating, or supporting. When I wanted to do something different with my Fatigue poems, I naturally wanted to run it by Kev and he was down from the jump.

Kevin Cain: As Noah said the second time we talked to each other we talked for a couple of hours, the natural flow of the conversation, the ease of exchange surrounding ideas about culture and possibility made us fast friends. The first conversation on the phone was Noah calling me about tickets to a DIY show at The Vault, it was a hilarious exchange, “Is there a box office I can go to get tickets for the show tonight?” “Man, what do you think this place is Carnegie Hall?” “I really like this band and I want to see them” “Don’t worry man, just show up” or something to that effect. We have essentially been having the same conversation for 15 years.

Noah and I have collaborated on many projects together over the years, I think we are always collaborating on something one of us is working on. So when he mentioned the idea of the Buffalo Correspondance School to me, I immediately started to figure out a way to weasel my way into working on a project that I believe will have a lasting impact on our shared community and my personal growth as an artist. Once we started meeting weekly to discuss Fatigue Performance, I was introduced to Ariel and one of my first thoughts was “dang, this is going to be rather special” mostly because of her uncanny ability to see to the heart of the matter from multiple perspectives.

Ariel: Kev! That is really kind. And I actually didn’t know your guys’ origin story, so I am loving this. One thing I wanted to add is how cool it is when you open collaborations up to bring in more people, how it just goes fractal—all of these incredible crystalline connections form.

Kev and I didn’t know each other at all when we began planning this performance and we’ve become really close over the last six months, in different ways than Noah and I are close. Kev and I both have a background in theatre and we’re both collage artists and we have a similar obsession with detail and doing. And music has always been a really huge part of my creative connection with Noah even though neither of us are musicians. We are both really driven by music, in life and in work, and Noah often communicates through music. So bringing an actual musician into the mix to play with and respond to and grow with has been really wonderful.

Noah: There’s not much to add that Ariel didn’t bring into focus regarding the Buffalo Correspondance School. I love how she discusses it as a framework for play. And respect. I think that is an important part to hold up. How can we keep playing – alone in our own art, but also together across the country, in different time zones, in different modes? How can we respond with new insights without pressure, without particular outcomes? Finding a creative space for joy feels particularly vital now, and that to me is the generative heart of BCS.

Question 2: Tell me a little more about Fatigue Performance in particular. What was your process in conceiving this particular immersive experiential event and on working on it together? To what degree did creative interplay and sharing back and forth, or even bouncing ideas off one another and between the three of you transform the project as it evolved into what we will be seeing Friday night?

Noah: I did a reading with Plant Water at the Hostel a few years ago in celebration of the show Cultural Commodities organized by Ulysses Olivier Atwhen. I read a few Lucille Clifton poems over the top of one of the band’s improvisatory exchanges. It felt like we had already been performing together. Kev has always been so welcoming in his collaborations with his music. Plant Water would play around town and Kev would shoot me a note inviting me to pop in and read a few poems while they performed. I think those invitations stuck with me, and when I asked Kev about playing music while reading these Fatigue poems, he’d already imagined it all.

As Ariel mentioned, we’d been in response creatively through the Buffalo Correspondance School since August of 2024. So it felt natural to include her and take the next step as a presenting / publishing form with BCS. Ariel is such a wildly, talented artist who is limitless with her ability to create, to imagine. I was deeply saddened when she moved to LA, but equally grateful that we continue to talk and share and make.

When everyone was on board, we’d meet up via Zoom and discuss details, share ideas, laugh too much. Plant Water (Kev (guitar/loops); Patrick Jackson, (bass); and Ryan Campbell (percussion/drums) and I would get together each week and rehearse at the Chemical No. 2 building. It has been one of the great joys in my life this past year being in conversation with Ariel & Kev, and I think this performance will showcase that joy and wildness.

Ariel: What about the knife show, Noah?

Kev: Yeah Noah, where’s the knife.

Noah: I’m originally from Dayton, Ohio, have you ever heard of the famous Bill Goodman’s Gun + Knife show? That jingle will stay with you forever. “Join a buddy, bring a friend.” That’s sort of what we are doing here, right?

Kev: Yes Noah, that is what is happening.

Ariel: The thing about Noah is that he will have a Dayton reference for whatever you are discussing, and it will be deeply random, but also, somehow, perfect. For real though, the creative interplay was everything. When I came on board the pieces were set—Noah was going to read his poems, and Plant Water was going to play their music, and I was going to make projections. But I know for me the projections went through a series of different styles and iterations as I got to know Kev and really sit inside of his wonderful music, and as I spent more and more time with Noah’s poems. The projections are absolutely a direct response to the content of the poems as well as their emotional tonality as well as the feeling and rhythm and rolling force of Plant Water’s music as well as both Noah and Kev’s personalities which are, honestly, the best. I love those guys.

Kev: Yeah Plant Water started as a project born out of the Open Mic at Nietzsche’s. In late 2022 I was really hitting a wall with some of my ideas surrounding time and tone. Most of my music is based on the idea of incremental change over a period of time inviting the listener to take a dip in the cosmic river of sound which is eternal and beyond our normal perception. So I had hit a wall and decided that I was going to play the open mic every week and see if I could shake something loose. Patrick Jackson was running the open mic at the time and Ryan is constantly playing somewhere. They are two of my favorite musicians and people in town so being able to collaborate with them on a weekly basis has been an amazing experience. One night we decided to give playing together a shot and everything just clicked without too much thought. Playing improvised music together just felt natural. A few months went by, Sonny Baker reached out to me to ask if I wanted to do a performance at the Burchfield Penny, I said yes and called Ryan and Patrick. Plant Water was born. In March of 2023 we performed a two day show at the Burchfield called “The Tranquility of Resilience“which was based on the concept of maintaining balance during shifts in one’s environment.

Fast forward two years and here we are working with Noah and Ariel creating an incredible performance again for the Burchfield. It is a wonderful thing working as an artist in a city like Buffalo, where we all are able to encourage, and support growth within ourselves and the community we share.

Plant Water is an improvisational group at its’ core. We create within the moment, nothing is ever played the same way twice, so working with Noah and Ariel has been really great because they have created an engaging framework for us to experiment within. Noah’s poems illuminate the feeling of exhaustion while Ariel’s projections evoke memories of daydreams, would bes and could bes. As we have been “rehearsing” for this show we have developed a freedom in the framework of the projections and poems which I think creates a sense of urgency of understanding that this is the moment we all share and it “will be over before you know it.”

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Question 3: Each of you works as an individual artist, poet, writer, musician/composer et al., but I recognize that the spirit of collaboration is also very central to your work as a creative in everything you do. I wonder if each of you might want to speak briefly to how collaborative artmaking informs your process in what might otherwise be a very isolating age?

Ariel: It’s funny, because I’ve always thought of myself as a very I-make-things-just-me kind of artist. I researched and wrote and did all of the art and design for my book, America Redux, for example. And there is a lot about that little ecosystem of one, and the fullness of that control, that I love. But since the book came out I’ve found myself falling into collaboration after collaboration, all of them bleeding boundaries between media—I collaborated with Kronos Quartet to write a piece about Rachel Carson to their music and perform it with them at Carnegie Hall, I collaborated with Noah and Sun June’s music to create projections and installations at the silos, we started and we’re growing BCS, we’re doing this performance.

I kept thinking of all of those collaborations as delicious distractions, almost feeling guilty about them, honestly. That they were SO FUN but that I really should be getting back to my real work any day now. But what I’ve finally realized—and I think I’ve realized it because of BCS—is that the collaborations are the gooey molten core. The way I am as an artist when I am responding, when I am playing collectively—it’s an entirely different creative mode of being than when I am sitting down and just making stuff solo. It has always been a place I have actively sought out—it’s the reason I gravitate toward history and non-fiction (I’m collaborating with the archives) and why I adore collage (I’m in a conversation with the materials and the other artists who made them). But in person, with friends I respect and am inspired by, that volley, that back and forth, that transfer of energy—it truly is everything, and every time I create collaboratively—especially with hilarious, talented, open, kind humans like Noah and Kev—I just want more! It is a balm and a fuel and I’m hooked.

Noah: Like translation, I think collaboration is part of every creative act. I think the act of reading is a collaboration between reader and writer. There is this give and take on every page. The older I get the more I think collaboration is a necessary part of my own work. I need space and time with writers, with music, with art. All of it feeds me. It also gives me permission to explore and be filled with what has been done and what can be done.

A lot of what Ariel and I hope Buffalo Correspondance School does, is offer up time and space and an invitation to respond. And know that there is not an exact, correct way to do so, and I think that is freeing and opens up more tributaries of thought and potential for new ways into the work.

Kev: Plant Water being an in-the-moment improvisational band we rely on being present to create anything worth listening to or enjoyable. So our music is based in collaboration and ego death. Ryan, Patrick, and I understand that by listening we can create something singular for a moment in time, which I think is the goal of any artistic collaboration. When the opportunity came up to work with Noah and Ariel we approached it from that same perspective. Incorporating Noah’s poems and Ariel’s artistry has been a complete joy, an exercise in growth. Learning takes multiple perspectives, and Noah and Ariel’s are some of the best I have had the pleasure of encountering, always supportive, always ambitious, always caring. I have learned a great deal about art, friendship and community over the past couple of months working with them. Couldn’t be more excited to share the work on Friday.

ABOUT THE EVENT

Doors open at 7:00 p.m., with the performance beginning at 8 p.m. General Admission – $25, Members – $15 (Members, please check your email for the discount code to enter at checkout.); Student – $5. Visit www.burchfieldpenny.org/events to purchase tickets. Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo.