Photo Club Meeting 2: Instruction

REGISTRATION CLOSED

BICA School Photo Club is a free, year-long program for people interested in making, looking at, and thinking through photography. Led by artist and educator Nando Alvarez-Perez through BICA School but open to all, Photo Club will meet regularly from September 2026 through May 2027, with a public presentation of participants’ work in June.

Meetings will move between making photographs, learning and sharing technical skills, reading and discussion, looking closely at photographs, and group critique. Participants will develop their own projects while studying photography’s tools, histories, and ideas—and considering what photographs can tell us about the lives, places, and conditions we inhabit.

Who is it for?

Photo Club is open to any level of photographic experience. You might have been making photographs for years or still be figuring out how your camera works. What matters is curiosity, a willingness to experiment, and an interest in learning alongside other people. Knowledge is useful here; not knowing something yet is useful, too.

Participants should be prepared to attend regularly, make photographs between meetings, bring work and ideas into conversation, and complete occasional readings.

Participants will need:

• access to a digital camera

• access to a computer

• access to photo-editing software (check out Affinity if you’re looking for Adobe alternatives!)

Schedule

Meetings: Saturdays, 12–3pm

Fall 2026

• September 26 — Orientation

• October 10 — Instruction

• November 14 — Critique/check-in

• December 12 — Final fall meeting

Spring 2027

• January 16 — Spring relaunch

• January 30

• February 13

• February 27

• March 13

• March 27

• April 17

• May 1

• May 15

• May 29 — Final working meeting

Public presentation: June 2027 (date TBD)

The first workshop of BICA School Youth Assembly will be DEBRIS: a collaborative art challenge, led by lead teaching artist Robin Jordan! Don’t miss this fun opportunity to make something surprising out of unconventional materials.

About Youth Assembly:

BICA School Youth Assembly is a free program for artists ages 14–18 working across visual art, writing, and civic engagement. Join us for a monthly workshop and open studio hours — bring your own project or start something new. The year builds toward a group exhibition and zine at BICA.

BICA School Youth Assembly is led with support from teaching artist Robin Lee Jordan. The 2026-2027 season is funded by WNY With Youth For Youth (WYFY), a grant designed, reviewed, and selected by youth. WYFY is supported by the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and funded by the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation.

BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→ Osborne, Peter. Contemporary Art is Postconceptual Art (2010)

Toy Theatre, Fluxus, and other oddities

featuring “Soft Opening” by Kevin Thurston with Kristen Smigielski & John Smigielski

Toy Theatre, Fluxus, and Other Oddities is an evening of original performance works by Kevin Thurston with Kristen Smigielski and John Smigielski in BICA’s Garage.

The night brings together various experimental traditions in text, theatre, visual, and performing arts. Soft Opening anchors the evening in playfulness and humor to try an attempt to answer serious questions about hospitality and who is responsible for what and to whom in local economic communities.

Toy Theatre, Fluxus, and Other Oddities invites audiences into an emerging artistic practice that uses unconventional form to examine the contradictions of contemporary life.

Photo Club Meeting 1: Orientation

REGISTRATION REQUIRED & CURRENTLY CLOSED

BICA School Photo Club is a free, year-long program for people interested in making, looking at, and thinking through photography. Led by artist and educator Nando Alvarez-Perez through BICA School but open to all, Photo Club will meet regularly from September 2026 through May 2027, with a public presentation of participants’ work in June.

Meetings will move between making photographs, learning and sharing technical skills, reading and discussion, looking closely at photographs, and group critique. Participants will develop their own projects while studying photography’s tools, histories, and ideas—and considering what photographs can tell us about the lives, places, and conditions we inhabit.

Who is it for?

Photo Club is open to any level of photographic experience. You might have been making photographs for years or still be figuring out how your camera works. What matters is curiosity, a willingness to experiment, and an interest in learning alongside other people. Knowledge is useful here; not knowing something yet is useful, too.

Participants should be prepared to attend regularly, make photographs between meetings, bring work and ideas into conversation, and complete occasional readings.

Participants will need:

• access to a digital camera

• access to a computer

• access to photo-editing software (check out Affinity if you’re looking for Adobe alternatives!)

Schedule

Meetings: Saturdays, 12–3pm

Fall 2026

• September 26 — Orientation

• October 10 — Instruction

• November 14 — Critique/check-in

• December 12 — Final fall meeting

Spring 2027

• January 16 — Spring relaunch

• January 30

• February 13

• February 27

• March 13

• March 27

• April 17

• May 1

• May 15

• May 29 — Final working meeting

Public presentation: June 2027 (date TBD)

Celebrate the openings of three new installations:

Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Patinated
Main BICA Gallery

Morgan Strahorn: parting
Courtyard

Peaches
BICA School Project Space

In Patinated, Lyndon Barrois Jr. considers the patina that forms on an object over time: a physical change to its surface, but also evidence of where it has been, who has handled it, and how its value has been determined.

Join us for a walkthrough of his exhibition where the the artist will discuss the exhibition and answer questions about his practice.

Matt Sargen & Joe Hall w/ Lihuen Sirvent Wild Gone Girls

Sept 19th

Matt Sargent (guitar) & Joe Hall (poetry)

w/

Lihuen Sirvent

Wild Gone Girls

8:00 PM

$10

30D Essex Street

Bios:

Matt Sargent is a composer, guitarist, and recording engineer based in New York, where he is an assistant professor of music at Bard College. A versatile artist with an international reputation for his prolific musical life on the concert stage and in the recording studio, Sargent’s music has been described as “remarkable from all angles.” (Colin Clarke, Fanfare Magazine)

Joe Hall is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Fugue & Strike (2023) and  Someone’s Utopia(2018). With Chad Hardy, he co-authored The Container Store Vols I & II (2012). With Cheryl Quimba, he co-authored the chapbook May I Softly Walk (2014). His next book, Fugue & Strike, is forthcoming in 2023. Hall has performed and delivered talks nationally at universities, living rooms, squats, and/or rivers in most of the 50 states as well as Canada and Washington, DC. He participates in Hostile Books, a publishing collective dedicated to radical materiality, with Ryan Kaveh Sheldon and Angela Veronica Wong

Lihuen Sirvent is an Argentinian composer and flutist currently based in Buffalo, New York. She has participated in several music festivals such as June in Buffalo (US), Impuls (Austria), SoundSCAPE (Italy), and Barcelona Modern (Spain), among others. Her compositions have been featured in these international settings, where she has had the opportunity to collaborate with leading musicians, such as the [Switch~Ensemble] and the Arditti Quartet. Since 2022, she has been working on experimental lutherie projects by designing and constructing or electroacoustically modifying musical instruments, with the goal of reconfiguring the boundaries of the tools used for music making. 

Wild Gone Girls is a collaboration between Dr. Hamburger (video) and Martin Freeman (audio) started in Rochester in the early 2010s incorporating unpredictable feedback systems, found footage, amplified pinball machines and sketchy performance tactics.

2026 Generator Fund IRL Info Session (ROYCROFT CAMPUS)

no registration required!

Saturday, September 12, 2026 @ 4:30pm

at Roycroft Campus, 31 S Grove St, East Aurora, NY 14052

Last year’s virtual info session

This year’s virtual info session

HEADSHRINKER STUDIOS

Film Screening & Discussion

Friday, September 11th, 2026

doors 7 // movies 8

Showing the Bonzo Trilogy:

★This Ones a Whale

★Good Show

★Data Says Thirteen

Followed by panel discussion with main cast and characters

BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→Campagna, Federico. Otherworlds; Mediterranean Lessons on Escaping History, (2025)

Yes some pages are extremely crooked. Email adobe and tell them they need get rid of “deskew” and just add the ability to rotate pages or sections at anything less than 90 degree angle.

"Exploring the material importance of myth as a practice in liberation? Federico Campagna discusses how myth can become a practice of imagination, solidarity, and survival. We look at myth’s tension with materialism, and its role in resisting despair."

(partially edited from the acid horizon podcast episode discussing the book with the author)

2026 Generator Fund IRL Info Session (BICA)

no registration required!

Saturday, September 5, 2026 @ 3:30pm

at BICA, 30D Essex St

Last year’s virtual info session

This year’s virtual info session

informal budget & cv workshop led by Nando Alvarez-Perez to follow information session.

Due Additions presents 3 part Album Release Show

Featuring Auxcab, Ryan Bell & Justin Von-Strasburg, happygroupppp, Softwares & IYĘD, Silas Rubeck & James Werick

Due Additions presents 3 part Album Release Show featuring:

Auxcab: Look at this Camel!

Ryan Bell & Justin Von-Strasburg: About an Hour of Snare and a Couple Turntables

happygroupppp: 4p

also featuring: Softwares & IYĘD,

moving images by: Silas Rubeck & James Werick

Friday, September, 4th @ 7:30PM

$10/PWYC

BICA GARAGE 30 ESSEX ST

CEPA GALLERY | 617 Main St #201, Buffalo, NY 14203
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

**this reading group follows a crit from a bica schooler

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→ Glissant, Édouard. "For Opacity." In Poetics of Relation, translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

We’re going to be discussing the second essay from last week’s reading group alongside a crit of a BICA Schooler’s work. David Foster Wallace had us immersed, we needed more time for Glissant.

Why should we have to fully understand someone to respect them?
Glissant pushes back on the idea that real connection requires total transparency—that we must fully grasp another person or culture in order to value them. He argues for a right to opacity instead: people and cultures can remain partly illegible to each other and still relate, still build solidarity, without one side having to dissolve into something fully knowable by the other. Short, poetic, and quietly radical—a useful counterpoint to Wallace, and to any framework that treats "understanding" as the only path to respect.

BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→ Wallace, David Foster. "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 2 (1993): 151–194.

→ Glissant, Édouard. "For Opacity." In Poetics of Relation, translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

Two short, very different essays this week—pair them how you like.

What does it mean to grow up fluent in irony?
Wallace's essay argues that television trained a generation of American writers and readers to be endlessly self-aware, endlessly knowing, allergic to sincerity. He's writing as a novelist worried about his own toolkit—if irony is the only mode television has taught us to value, what happens to fiction that wants to mean something? Long and funny in places, sharp and a little anxious throughout, it's an early and still-relevant diagnosis of a problem many people now just call "being online."

Why should we have to fully understand someone to respect them?
Glissant pushes back on the idea that real connection requires total transparency—that we must fully grasp another person or culture in order to value them. He argues for a right to opacity instead: people and cultures can remain partly illegible to each other and still relate, still build solidarity, without one side having to dissolve into something fully knowable by the other. Short, poetic, and quietly radical—a useful counterpoint to Wallace, and to any framework that treats "understanding" as the only path to respect.

BROOM, External Line Return, 4d.s, & Sailing Stones

BICA SCHOOL invites you to a night of progressive and activated sonic liberation on Tuesday, August 18th.

External Line Return is an experimental/ambient performer based in Rochester, NY.

They will be deploying a Quadraphonic layout for their live set.

Returning to the BICA garage, 4d.s is an electronic producer based out of Buffalo whose music is comprised of dream-like vocals and aural textures from their live improvisations.

Sailing Stones is a 5-piece progressive rock band based out of Buffalo whose music could be considered akin to a magical spell. They will be performing sans their vocalist for the evening.

BROOM is an ambient collective visiting us from NYC that has described themselves as an “experimental street cleaning service”. They float within the space of raw, improvisation and sonic ritualistic expression. They invite the listener to immerse themselves fully and become a part of a world that feels both strange and beautiful.

Doors at 7

Music at 8 (ish)

$15 PWYC

NOTADTLOF

Herr God, Dogs in Stereo, People I Love, & Shep Treasure

BICA Garage | Doors 7pm & Music 8pm

Rochester’s underground legend Shep Treasure returns to the garage with Portland-based touring act Herr God, and locals People I Love and Dogs In Stereo.

A night of acoustic pleasantries and dulcet tones to start your week off right.

BICA School Garage | $10 Admission | Garage Sale Before

Come on down to the BICA Garage for a good ol’ night of music!

The ambient duo Dekalb Works will kick the night off, followed by Buffalo locals Dev & Co, Rattlesnake Jake, and Spud.

Music will begin at 5 pm, but show up early for a limited-supply garage sale beforehand. Who knows what treasures you might find!

Enjoy one of the last weekends of the summer with some cozy Buffalo folk.

BICA School Closed Mic

Kicking off Dog Days right with a night of music BICA Schoolers performing. During dog days planning, wavy realized there has never been a night of only BICA Schooler performances. We constantly open and share our space to other acts and touring artists, but we’ve yet to get together and play in our own space. Come enjoy performances from BICA Schoolers: Chango, Sage, Aneris, Silas, Nick Mass, and wavy.

During dog days, we encourage you to draw a dog picture in the lab and we’ll be slinging hot dogs to enjoy during the show.

doors at 6, music at 7

like $10 to support us

hot dogs for sale and dog drawings in the lab

BICA School is an alternative school for artists, curators, writers, and generally creative people looking to learn and grow together. We meet weekly on Thursdays for reading groups or critiques. We also run the project space in BICA’s gallery, host experimental music shows, hold workshops, host artist talks, plan fieldtrips to see art together, and more. It’s all the best parts of an MFA or MA program, but run communally and without hierarchy. BICA School is open to artists of all ages (although we have another program better geared towards teens).

On August 13, we invite you to come to BICA School to meet us, learn more about what we do, and see if it might be a good fit for you!

2026 Generator Fund Virtual Info Session

Register Here

Wednesday, August 12, 2026 @ 5:30pm

Last year’s Virtual Info Session

Matt Wellins + Martin Freeman, Sheet, & Lala Buckstar

Matt Wellins (New Haven) has taken tinkering to the extreme level of designing and constructing his own tape music system from scratch. Picture not a walkman, but instead an exploded factory floor with magnetic tape conveyor belts zipping around frantically.

Duo with MF. Sheet (Rochester) is the rarest r.nuuja (Pengo, Tuurd, Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, etc.) project started in 1996. Please join us in celebrating 30 years of Sheet.

Lala Buckstar makes evocative and mesmerizing anti-New Age music.

Music at 8 $10 30D Essex Street

BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity. Note: Chapter 1 only — the link goes to the full book.

→ Kristeva, Julia. "Approaching Abjection." In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, pp. 1–31. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Why does a corpse, or spoiled milk, make us recoil before we even think about it?
Kristeva calls that reaction "the abject"—not quite an object you can name and hold at a distance, and not quite part of you either. It's what gets expelled to keep the boundary of the self intact: filth, waste, anything that blurs the line between inside and outside, self and other, life and death. She traces this further than disgust—into questions of language, religion, and art, suggesting that literature and art have long served as ways of approaching the abject safely, giving form to what otherwise threatens to undo us. Dense in places, but the opening pages are vivid and physical, grounded in concrete sensations before they get philosophical. A challenging, generative read for anyone interested in how art handles what culture would rather not look at directly.

Static Becomes Signal

in collaboration with EXIT/ENTER & Antenes

registration required at www.exit-enter.net

The Lavender Room Presents:

Tiberius & Sweet Petunia with Mimeo and Ian Mccuen

hi!!!! come join us for our first EVER show at the illustrious BICA Garage!

Joining us will be the return of our dear ol pals Sweet Petunia (@sweetpetuniaband), along with our new pal Tiberius (@tiberiuswright) on tour! Joining them will be the fantastic Mimeo (Jake King (@rockinjakeking) & Ronnie Mae Valentine (@dirt_swagg)) and lan Mccuen (@ianmccuen)

* it will be an evening of lofi nonbinary folk music, art, and splendor!

Friday July 24

BICA Garage

Doors 6pm Music 7pm

$15 // PWYC

Folk / Freak Folk / Anti-Folk / Indie / Singer-Songwriter

All Ages

Flyer by @sweetpetuniaband

BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you've read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We'll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there's no pressure to be an expert—bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→ Brecht, Bertolt. The Threepenny Opera. 1928.

What happens when you make crime as charming as it actually is?
Brecht's musical follows a gangster, a corrupt police chief, and a cast of thieves and sex workers through a version of Victorian London that looks suspiciously like Weimar Germany. The songs are catchy. The morals are nonexistent. That's the point. Brecht wanted audiences to enjoy the show and feel uneasy about enjoying it—a deliberate jolt meant to keep people thinking rather than just feeling. It's an early, vivid example of his theory of "epic theater," where the goal isn't to lose yourself in the story but to stay sharp enough to question it. A lively read for anyone curious about how art can entertain and unsettle at the same time, and what theater owes to the world outside the theater.

BICA School is planning a Field Trip to the Medina Triennial, and all are welcome!

Art is better experienced together — formulating an opinion and then testing it against a friend's is half the fun and how we develop our own tastes and thoughts. So we're heading to Medina on July 19th to see the Triennial, and anyone who wants to come is invited.

This isn't a tour, and there's no official program, though the Triennial is running its own tour that day at 1pm, open to anyone who wants to join.

Otherwise: wander, look, talk. Afterward, maybe we'll land at a bar or park or ice cream stand nearby to keep going — what we saw, what stuck, what we'd argue about.

We’ll start at the Triennial Hub at Noon.

Join us for the opening of New Formations, BICA's 2026 guest-curated exhibition, organized by Toronto-based curator Yasmin Nurming-Por. The show brings together Lucas Cook, Maggy Hamel-Metsos, Liza Lacroix, Scott Rogers, Silas Rubeck, Unconditional Design, and Haena Yoo — artists who take apart what's already in front of us: church organs, car parts, gua shas, the building itself.

Meet a few of the artists and the curator, and see the gallery transformed by five new bodies of work built from material most people would call finished.

New Formations is on view through September 5.

We’ll also celebrate the opening of Nicholas Christakis: Junk Drawer in the BICA School Project Space.

The experimental trio of Ryan Bell, Tim Georger, and James Pardue have put on multiple memorable sets in our garage and around the Buffalo area over the past few years. With James Pardue headed back to his home state of Louisiana to pursue a PhD, this will likely be their last performance as a unit for an unknown period of time.

With support from Regional Headbutting Techniques, Canticle Fade, and Lihuen Sirvent.

Doors: 7pm, Start: 7:30pm