2025 / Fabrication

Buffalo has a long and storied history of “fabrication” in industry and the arts. Its legendary steel and manufacturing plants, hydroelectric power grid, celebrated writers, artists, and architects, and the many working peoples of this region, speak to a complex history of fabrication and forging—of making up and making do. 

The Rust Belt continues to forge new paths, both in its mills and artists’ studios. However, the idea of “fabrication,” with its dual pressure on craft and concoction, is bound by competing impulses that, on the one hand, highlight generative and inspiring creative forms and, on the other, evoke potentially dangerous machinations designed to deceive or make “forgeries” of truth for malicious ends. 

Fabrication—the theme of the 2025 Buffalo Humanities Festival—arises at a moment when we find ourselves navigating stories, images, social media posts, and advertisements at a whirlwind pace, often taking great pains to determine fact from fiction, news from propaganda, and jokes from hoaxes. Though the idea of fabrication is knit into the very heart of storytelling (from spinning yarns to weaving tales), it has also now become a critical element of our everyday practices as we wrestle with misinformation, lies, and their distressing socio-political repercussions.

The Buffalo Humanities Festival will take place on Friday and Saturday, September 19-20, 2025. Headlined by internationally recognized performance and textile artist Nick Cave on Friday evening at Asbury Hall (341 Delaware Avenue), the Festival Proper will continue on Saturday at the Buffalo & Erie County Central Library (1 Lafayette Square) and feature speakers from University at Buffalo, Buffalo State University, Daemen University, and Canisius University. 

Join us at the festival for two days of engaged conversation about hoaxers, imposters, and creatives of all kinds, as we reflect on forms of fabrication we now embrace and resist every day.