EPISODE 10 “LUST DRIVES THE HEART IN AN ELECTRIC WORLD PT.2”

Air date: 6/21/2010 - 7/4/2010

EPISODE 9 “ENTER THE PROGRAMMABLE MAN PT.1″

Air date: 6/7/2010 - 6/20/2010

EPISODE 8 “LUST DRIVES THE HEART IN AN ELECTRIC WORLD PT.1”

Air date: 5/24/2010 - 6/6/2010

EPISODE 7

Air date: 5/10/2010 - 5/23/2010

EPISODE 6

Air date: 4/26/2010 - 5/9/2010

EPISODE 5

Air date: 4/12/2010 - 4/25/2010

EPISODE 4

Air date: 3/29/2010 - 4/11/2010

EPISODE 3

Air date: 3/15/2010 - 3/28/2010

EPISODE 2

Air date: 3/1/2010 - 3/14/2010

EPISODE 1

Last Man of Idaho- "Hibernation" poster designed by IAN WILCOX

In this PHOTOFILM- a film structured around still images- a talking potato from the future guides an aspiring author as they travel through time. Highlights include: bank robbery, lottery winning, and cryogenic hibernation.

• Arts writer Alex Schubert  wrote a special in depth article  for the Kansas City Star.  Published March 21, 2010,  ‘Forever People’ downtown is an interactive art project’

• An interview with Pete Dulin promoting Forever People went online March, 13th at Present Magazine.

• Art Critic Alice Thorson mentions Forever People in her article Art moves to the streets - and onto the billboards for all to see. Published in the March 13, 2010 issue of the Kansas City Star.

• Also Artdaily.com -The First Art Newspaper on the net-  covered the project’s release.

Photo credited to Ascot Smith and Robert Heishman

In the year 2200 a nameless couple sends recorded messages into the past hoping to prevent a dystopian future.  However the two begin to use the recordings to confess their struggles of sustaining a relationship amid holographic love affairs and android rivalries.

Forever People is presented through a series of phone messages that can be reached by dialing the free phone number on the ARTwall billboard.  Viewers are encouraged to call the number to hear the latest installment of the story.  A new audio message episode will be updated every-other-Monday and will run for nine months.

Previous episodes will be archived at this site when the new one goes live.

Voice acting by Rhiannon Birdsall and Albert Burnes.

Forever People was commissioned by Art in the Loop and is presented on their ARTwall located at 13th and Grand, Kansas City, MO, 64016.

FOREVER_PEOPLE_PRESS_RELEASE.PDF

“LAST MAN OF IDAHO” TO RECEIVE WORLD PREMIERE

The world premiere of “Last Man of Idaho,” a film by Ascot J. Smith, is at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 11, at Kurruption, 1717 W. Ninth St., Kansas City.

The event includes a silent auction of art from the film, merchandise from B-Bop Comics and a multitude of potato-themed appetizers. Tickets cost $5 at the door.  The event is for ages 21 and over.

“Last Man of Idaho” is grandiose and absurd. Writer, director and star Ascot J. Smith finds a talking potato from the future. The two travel through time to re-imagine the artist’s life. Highlights include robbery and cryogenic slumber.

The limits of choice and human beings’ navigation toward the inevitable end are interpreted by Smith and his fantastic vegetable cohort. The result simultaneously embraces and mocks cinematic seriousness.

Smith’s film consists entirely of digital stills and includes some of Kansas City’s brightest young talents, including photographer Robert Heishman, who collaborated with Merce Cunningham and Iceland’s Sigur Ros.

The film is narrated by Albert Burns, whose credits include Robert Altman’s “Kansas City.”

Smith is a Kansas City filmmaker, multimedia artist, writer and blogger originally from Moscow, Idaho. His work reflects an interest in the banal, the mundane and the pedestrian, contrasted with the hyper-sensational and over-stimulated pop culture that unifies this generation.

Smith has received awards from the Kansas City Filmmaker’s Jubilee and has been featured in the traveling multi-media exhibition, Scope, exhibited from London to Los Angeles. His first gallery solo show “Bloodsport Remix” (2007) was a multi-screen re-editing of the 1988 martial arts classic, “Bloodsport”, and was lauded by The Kansas City Star as a “comic, postmodernist commentary on Hollywood film images and violence in sports.” Smith is also a contributor to Review magazine and has recently been commissioned for the Art in the Loop: ARTWALL.

For more information, call 816-729-7949 or email aj@ascotjsmith.com.

Two meandering office co-workers contemplate and fantasize about each other and their past lives in a post-apocalyptic future. In the end it is revealed the office co-workers are not humans but androids mimicking human ennui.

Albert Burnes and Kerry Curtis stood perfectly still for over 3 hours.

Originally conceived as a performance/installation, Forever People was exhibited with live actors. The actors stood perfectly still for over 3 hours as their corresponding vignettes were projected above their heads, like telepathic thought-balloons filling the gallery for all to see and hear.

A multi-channel installation, BloodSport Remix takes as its starting point the 1988 American martial arts classic, BloodSport, staring Jean-Cluade van Damme. By re-editing the film in non-linear, spatially oriented manner cuts through the nostalgic fog to reconsider the film’s seductive elevation of violence. An adolescence machismo fantasy was to fight in the deadly and secretive tournament, the Kumite, to avenge lost honor. Later though an adult’s gaze Van Damme’s buxom, sweat-coved, screaming, flying splits appear silly or even erotic.

Triple Threat, a split screen narrative, focuses on the broken relationship of an abusive schizophrenic couple as they find comfort in sex, apathy, and Batman.

Originally published at INKKC.COM on April 24th, 2009

Within the Aladdin’s Shrine’s appropriately titled “multipurpose” room was a hundred or so cartoonists with an array of eclectic tales for trade and sale. Slightly more organized than a garage sale, SPACE was a vast and seemingly aimless arrangement of comic book underground culture. Discombobulating at first, SPACE contained a nearly infinite range of genres: old-school sci-fi, adult-themed vamp action, historical romance, autobiography, anthologies, and more anthologies. It was apparent that no list could contain the event’s smorgasbord of stories. Entering SPACE early Saturday morning I found myself drawn to the event’s amateurish charm. There was Cybor (the story of a cybernetic pig), and Straw-man (a super-powered bendable straw) and Big Breasted Vampire Death (its voluptuous vampires killing people, duh). Much of this kind of genre-rehashing imitates poorly (in many cases imitates artists who are not worth imitating) but there is an obsessions in their eccentric visions that is fascinating. The art was crass and sometimes manic, likened to a bathroom wall covered with doodles of an unknown pulp hero. These cartoonists produced tales so brazen and unabashedly raw (under-cooked, not vulnerable) that were much like an enthusiastic garage band filled with so much passion, it was difficult not to stare in awe.

It was impossible to take in SPACE with a simple perusal, but after navigating row after row and then circling around again there was a certain complexity that emerged from the unconventional convention. It became apparent to me that SPACE was a venue for many cartoonists whose luminary works would otherwise never have been seen. These were cartoonists who explored narrative on their terms without the restraint of following a specific genre. Here is a list of notable books (in no corresponding order):

1.Franklinstein by Dave Arhar presents the premise What if Ben Franklin created Frankenstein? The story is based on the true historical fact that ten carved up bodies were found beneath his home after his death.

2. Transition Transportation by Joey Jack presents conversing landscapes who banter about an ongoing courtroom drama and a bird who confesses his sins to the moon.

3. A surreal pop/hip-hop/graffiti amalgamation of influences from R. Crumb to Junko Mizuno (and some critics have even mentioned Hanna-Barbara) is Phonzie Davis’s Left-Handed Soffie. The tale is a “shocking saga of a young albino woman corrupted by drug trafficking and the occult”.

SPACE contained a sense of comradery that was simultaneously insulary and inspiring. As exhibitors traded and shared their humble narratives some made connections, expanding their base of fans and collaborators, while others swapped to enhance their own sense of uniqueness, which is, well, in most cases false. (If SPACE did not take them in no one would.)

Among the aspiring talents were two notable artists - Tom Scioli and Nate Powell. Both artist have been nominated for Eisner Awards (the comic industry’s highest award) and are published (Scioli’s Godland through Image and Powell’s Swallow Me Whole through Top Shelf), but what is more importantly notable is that both artists started at tables, just like the ones at SPACE, peddling their own handcrafted fables- uncertain of the future ahead.

THE EXPERIENCE OF BROWSING

Whenever I lowered a book back to the table rather than unfold my wallet I was met with a desperate look from the exhibitor. And strolling from table to table I was confronted with even more sad eyes. It was like a room full of puppies begging to come home with me. I should mention it was lack of my funds rather than a lack of quality titles that elicited so many mopey reactions. When I sat behind the table to help solicit, even I could not help but feel rejected when people would pass by only giving a mere glance. I imagined our table of mini-comics whine, “Won’t you come take me home with you? So much love was put into me, so why can’t you love me too?” Smile artists. We’re in SPACE!

We will be shooting off like a crew of astronauts filled with anticipation and destined towards the unknown, minus the air-tight suits and Velcro. Instead equipped with cartoonist’s gear- inks, pens, and papers- we aim for the Small Press & Alternate Comic Expo (SPACE) in Columbus, Ohio. Over a hundred comic book creators make their way to the SPACE convention each year to share and solicit their self produced mini-comics. Like a zine, these mini-comics are usually in black and white and are cheaply produced, thus lacking the polish and commercial gleam of a regular $3.99 superhero title. And the convention is no different. No ex-playmates or television actors or sci-fi movie stars will be in attendance, just the largest concentration of unknown comic creators. (SPACE’s most notable guest is Dave Sims, creator of Cerebus. However it is unclear if he will be attending this year.)

The trip is more than an opportunity to navigate the perils of self-publishing or meet the next big name of the underground comics scene (a contradiction in terms I know, but then again Robert Crumb is more famous than Jim Lee) but more importantly it is an escape from our home- Kansas City. Our locale contains a bustling array of comic book talent who started their career with a version of this trek (Matt Fraction, Hector Cassanova, Harold Sipe, Nathan Fox… the list goes on) and their current success is an inspiration, and simultaneously a distraction. After the release of each new issue of Uncanny X-men or Scream Land hitting the stands from Honolulu to Albany, their creators appear to ascend further and further into the heavenly clouds of official comic-dom. Wikipedia would not challenge their “notability”, (like they did mine) and their entry would last forever, unless the heavens fall destroying all recorded history once and for all.

I don’t want to imply we are a group of bumbling amateurs hoping to get lucky. In fact our talent pool runs deep and wide with evidence for larger growth in the future. Kyle Strahm’s short graphic novel, Clockwork Creature was nominated for a Space prize last time he attended SPACE, and Matt Hawkins is a paper-craft master whose clients include various fast-food corporations and Disney. And combined with the remainder of our traveling party (Duane Cunningham-the voice of the KC Roller Warriors, Chris Garrett- indie-comic-extraordinaire, and myself) we amass a certain spark of ambition not unlike a rocket, fueled for (3, 2, 1) –BLASTOFF!

Stay tuned for transmissions from SPACE…