Buffalo's Central Terminal hosts artist Don Paul Swain's Ghost Train on May 5, 10 & 11. The multimedia exhibit and performance engages the work of multiple artists.

On May 5, 11 and 12, performers, mechanical sculptures, storytellers of the supernatural and the paranormal, and wild and fantastical inventions will take the stage as part of Ghost Train, a multi-media event at Buffalo’s old Central Terminal, the East Side icon that was saved from demolition and now has become a choice venue for events, as well as for art exhibitions and performances that push genre definitions. Ghost Train is most assuredly all three.

At the helm of Ghost Train is Don Paul Swain, an artist from San Francisco and director of the project. Swain describes Ghost Train as an “industrial séance,” which speaks to Buffalo’s history as both a post-industrial city and also the beginning of the Spiritualism movement in upstate New York in the 1840s—a movement that was still prominent in the 1920s, when the Central Terminal was built.

Swain is ringmaster, collaborator and artist. Ghost Train is described by Swain as “not music, not theater, but more events. I create public spectacles.” With the help of a Web hosting company, Laughing Squid, based in San Francisco, he has invited and coordinated a vast array of guests to perform and to present their work. Handcranked Film Projects from Rhode Island School of Design will show their film American Ruins, which documents other relics and ruins of abandoned America. Mason Winfield, a local author renowned for his explorations of the region’s spiritual and paranormal phenomena, will intrigue the crowd with his insights and histories. The Madagascar Institute, a post-industrial guerilla art group, brings an eight-foot-tall, pedal-powered, singing spider to the mix. Ars Subterranea, an international urban exploration society, will install a Victorian-themed miniature golf course within the space. There will be a colossal, 15-by-20-foot Ouija board ride, fantastical machines, steam-powered inventions and a grand finale performance by circus aerialist Mirina Luna. The list goes on.

Swain, originally from San Francisco, humanizes aspects of science in his sculptural-performative works. He creates sets and costumes, and brings stories to life. “I create themed and automated environments,” he says. “I call in performance architecture.” In his former work, one of his creations was a faux genetic experimentation which spawned a terrifying, life-sized Lobsterman. In another project, he created Robo Erectus, an invented species combining machine and animal. Swain uses these tactics to critique technological development, adding human and mythical qualities to his creations. In Ghost Train, Swain continues to engage issues of technology and advancement in the juxtaposition of his spiritualist, carnivalesque acts in the Buffalo Central Terminal.

Spiritualists believed that the spirits of the dead could be contacted through a medium. In 1848, Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville, New York, reported that they communicated with the spirit of a murdered peddler through audible rapping noises. It was the communication through the senses, rather than a spirit simply appearing, that took hold in the movement. Swain draws on these ideas for Ghost Train: “I will take you through and across to the Other Side,” he says, “to a place that doesn’t exist.” The medium through which he communicates through is the Central Terminal itself.

The Central Terminal conveys the aura of three periods in the life cycle of the city: the city on the rise, the city fallen and the city as it is today. The building opened in 1929 and was heralded as a premier example of Art Deco architecture. However, after years of financial instability and after passing through several hands, the terminal was abandoned in 1979. After 20 years of abuse and neglect, the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation intervened and has now partially restored the former grandeur of the building. The terminal conveys its own spirit; one can both see and feel the deterioration of the building. In Swain’s use of the building as a medium to conduct his industrial séance, the terminal becomes more than just a medium—it becomes a body with a soul.

The Central Terminal, of course, is not the only ghost connecting the city to its past. Other buildings in Buffalo are both body and spirit as well: Grain elevators, empty factories and mills and other abandoned sites stand as a reminder of the city’s history while still evoking their own energy today. Other Rust Belt cities—Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh—have shared Buffalo’s history in one form or another, and they share our architectural heritage as well. Today these buildings are being engaged in different ways. Some, like the HO Oats grain elevator, are torn down, while others, like the Buffalo Central Terminal, are restored. New programs are continually applied to these spaces. The restoration process of the Buffalo Central Terminal opens up new possibilities for the community and adds to a new energy in the history of the space. Don Paul Swain’s Ghost Train is an example of the growing interest in engaging this new energy. The Central Terminal stands again at a crossroads, as a terminal between the physical and the spiritual—between one phase in the city’s life cycle and the next phase.

For a detailed list of events that will be a part of Ghost Train, visit www.industrialseance.com. For more information on the Buffalo Central Terminal, visit www.buffalocentralterminal.org.

Design Matters is presented in association with the UB School of Architecture and Planning and supported by a fellowship endowed by Polis Realty.