Here are some exciting production images (you know the good stuff!).

Cinematography by Joesph Fuller.

Costume by Rachel Rolon.  Sketches by Johan Criswell, Rachel Rolon, Chris Garrett, and me!

Costume design by Chris Garrett

Costume by Rachel Rolon

Domino Mask Doodle by Ascot

Mysterious timer! (Shot by Joe Fuller)

Trey Hock/Comic Shop Employee. (Shot by Joe Fuller)

Shawn Old as Comic book customer with medicore taste. (Shot by Joe Fuller)

M&Ms and Witchblade, that all. (Shot by Joe Fuller)

Forever People was selected in Americans for the Arts 2011 Public Art Network Year in Review

Kansas City based artist Ascot Smith was recognized by Americans for the Arts for his project titled  Forever People.  It was named in the Top 50 Best Public Art of 2010.  Notable award winners from previous years include Yoko Ono (2007), Jenny Holzer (2008), Barbara Kruger (2009), Cindy Sherman (2009), and the late Louise Bourgeois (2008).

The announcement was delivered on June 16, during the Americans of Arts 2011 Public Art Network Year in Review, in San Diego.  Forever People was one of 47 artworks selected from 430 competitors nationwide.  Americans for the Arts is the nation’s leading nonprofit organization advancing the arts in America. Their Public Art Network Year in Review is the only national program that specifically recognizes public art projects.  For a list of the Recognized Public Art Projects: http://www.artsusa.org/networks/public_art_network/year_in_review/YIR2011ProjectList.pdf

• Forever People Audio Archive

• Forever People Press Archive
  

]]> http://ascotjsmith.com/2011/07/forever-people-wins-national-arts-award/feed/ 0 http://ascotjsmith.com/2010/11/forever-people-finale/ http://ascotjsmith.com/2010/11/forever-people-finale/#comments Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:59:08 +0000 ajs http://ascotjsmith.com/?p=356

Come see a live reading of Forever People followed by a Q&A!

To RSVP, please visit the Kansas City Public Library Event Page.

Date: Friday, November 12, 2010
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Downtown Central Public Library
14 West 10th Street, KCMO

Local artists Porter Arneill and Ascot Smith discuss the state of public art in Kansas City as well as Smith’s Forever People, the most recent addition to Kansas City’s ARTwall, the custom-designed billboard that exhibits super-sized contemporary art at 13th and Grand streets.

A script-in-hand performance of Forever People follows. The story is set in the year 2200. A nameless couple sends recorded messages into the past hoping to prevent a dystopian future. The two begin to confess their struggles with sustaining a relationship amid holographic love affairs and android rivalries. Smith is a writer as well as a multimedia artist.

EPISODE 19

EPISODE 18 “EXPIRATION PT.2″ (Air date 10/25/2010 – 11/07/10)

EPISODE 18

EPISODE 17 “EXPIRATION PT. 1″ (Air date 10/11/2010 – 10/24/2010)

EPISODE 17

EPISODE 16 “BROKEN PARTS”  (Air date 9/27/2010 – 10/10/10)

EPISODE 16

EPISODE 15 “PRIDE, PROGENY, PROCREATION”  (Air date 9/13/2010 – 9/26/2010)

EPISODE 15

EPISODE 14 “EMPTINESS AND THE NEON LOVE”  (Air date 8/30/2010 – 9/12/2010)

EPISODE 14

EPISODE 13 ”ENTER THE PROGRAMMABLE MAN PT. 3″  (Air date 8/16/2010 – 8/29/2010)

EPISODE 13

EPISODE 12 “LUST DRIVES THE HEART IN AN ELECTRIC WORLD PT.3″  (Air date 8/2/2010 – 8/15/2010)

EPISODE 12

EPISODE 11 ”ENTER THE PROGRAMMABLE MAN PT.2″  (Air date 7/19/2010 – 8/1/2010)

EPISODE 11

EPISODE 10 “LUST DRIVES THE HEART IN AN ELECTRIC WORLD PT.2”  (Air date 7/5/2010 – 7/18/2010)

EPISODE 10

EPISODE 9 “ENTER THE PROGRAMMABLE MAN PT.1″  (Air date: 6/21/2010 – 7/4/2010)

EPISODE 9

EPISODE 8 “LUST DRIVES THE HEART IN AN ELECTRIC WORLD PT.1”  (Air date: 6/7/2010 – 6/20/2010)

EPISODE 8

EPISODE 7 (Air date: 5/24/2010 – 6/6/2010)

EPISODE 7

EPISODE 6  (Air date: 5/10/2010 – 5/23/2010)

EPISODE 6

EPISODE 5  (Air date: 4/26/2010 – 5/9/2010)

EPISODE 5

EPISODE 4  (Air date: 4/12/2010 – 4/25/2010)

EPISODE 4

EPISODE 3  (Air date: 3/29/2010 – 4/11/2010)

EPISODE 3

EPISODE 2  (Air date: 3/15/2010 – 3/28/2010)

EPISODE 2

EPISODE 1  (Air date: 3/1/2010 – 3/14/2010)

EPISODE 1

 

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

Last Man of Idaho is a science-fiction film entirely constructed of photographs. When an aspiring author is told by a man – from an apocalyptic future and who is trapped in a potato – that his ambitions of success amount to certain failure, the two begin traveling through time imagining alternate futures. Highlights include: bank robbery, lottery winning, and cryogenic hibernation.

Last Man of Idaho was photographed by Robert Heishman, and was funded in part by an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant.

• 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 the FOREVER PEOPLE AUDIO ARCHIVE 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 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.