It’s disappointing to hear the Kansas City based video art/film series Eletromediascope is came to an end after a 20 year run this past April 26th.
As the accessibility of online instant-video streaming services like Youtube, Hulu, and Netflix expands the need for a curated cinema series may seem out of step. But Electromediascope served a community of filmmakers and artist by connecting them to a unique lineage of cinema and art history. Screening the works of Guy Maddin, Luis Bunuel, Mathew Barney’s Cremaster Series, and a multitude of unique international filmmakers and performers Electromediascope served as a primary influence for my own work.
In 2010 my short film Last Man of Idaho was included in the series, among other Kansas City Art Institute Alum, highlighting the effect of Electromediascope and the current community it impacted. Within that screening it was clear our community of filmmakers and artists would continue to strive after THE END, after the final screening of Eletromediascope.
SECRET IDENTITY
Private Eye, by Brian K Vaughn and Marcos Martin, a downloadable-only comic, is a unique anachronistic comic book experience.
A futuristic-noir set in a world without an internet, where everyone’s online identity has become public, prompting citizens to create a secret identity to protect their privacy.
The premise is slightly confusing however it does provide an excuse for a uniquely vivid and surreal cityscape whose population looks to be dressed by Nick Cave influenced by the film Blade Runner. I think I would trade the convenience of email and online shopping for world where my mundane life is filled with espionage and high-tech hologram projectors.
Download now at http://panelsyndicate.com/ and jump into the world of PRIVATE EYE!
“You wanna fight?”
Can’t wait for REFN/GOSLING’s next film ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Shot by Kubrick’s last DP (LARRY SMITH) Refn’s uber violent thai-set macho-thriller is sure to be GORGEOUS.
MORE POWER NAPS!
Just received my Indiegogo reward for donating to Power Nap’s successful campaign. This fold out mini-comic is a super smart one-shot and I wished I splurged and got their vol. 1 Maxicomic. The art is sooo fantastic and the story unfolds in such clever ways.
Can’t be happier to have provided to Maritza Campos and Bachan exciting web-comic and I look forward to their future success, i.e. me buying more of their amazing comics.
A REAL ESCAPE
Get locked in a room with 10 other people and try to solve the mystery and escape the REAL ESCAPE ROOM! I love the idea of transforming mundane spaces into possible story world environments through the use of gaming mechanics.
OTOMO Retrospective
One more reason I am bummed I am not a Japanese time-traveler: missing out on OTOMO’s 30 year Retrospective last April in Tokyo.
Check out the trailer for OTOMO’s new short COMBUSTIBLE.
IN-BETWEENERS is Coming Soon!
Check out these preview stills of Episode 2 starring Rhiannon Birdsall and Trey Hock. Episode 1 stills here and at ascotjsmith.com.
Updates soon!
KICK ME! (2013)
Looking forward to Gary Huggins’s first feature film. Can’t wait to see some KCK MADNESS!
“KICK ME is a nightmare action comedy about the violent indignities that befall a mild-mannered high school guidance counselor who reaches out to a troubled kid - and ends up running for his life.
[The film stars] real life action-hero Santiago Vasquez – supercop, karate master, actor – has spent half his twenty years as a KCK police officer working undercover (homicide, narcotics).” - from the film’s successful Kickstarter page.
Check out Gary’s award-winning shorts:
TRADING SPACES
Returning to Philadelphia soon and Eddie Murphy’s expression sums up my feeling about the trip. I’m happy to return to the East Coast but not looking forward to those grimy SEPTA subways. P.U.
SECRET MESSAGE (UCLA D M A)
Good news, UCLA got my application! It is a little odd a Design and Media Arts program needed a physical application, considering all of my other apps were completely electronic.
But the Luddite Award goes to NYU for requesting a copy of my films on VHS! Maybe exclusive programs intentionally make it harder to apply: “Please submit all materials within a single a wax-sealed letter and be hand-delivered from a horse and buggy. Note, rickshaws are not preferred but are also permitted.”
More Grad School Updates Soon.
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW!
I doubt I’ll ever be able to see Randy Moore’s feature film, Escape from Tomorrow, a film shot secretly and without permission at Disneyworld.
Shooting with DSLRs and using smartphones to read their scripts the filmmakers easily blended in with the other vacationers capturing family memories. The story itself, a family vacation turns darkly hallucinatory after the father learns he’s lost his job, sounds possibly interesting amid the Cartoon Theme Park. I’m mostly excited by Morre’s use of guearlla-style filmmaking and what it mean for other storytellers as it reflects the affordability and decimation of technology. It’s exciting (and maybe a little scary) to think any public attraction could be movie set.
Also I LOOOVE this image. Epcot headgear as a brain-washing device sounds like something from a Grant Morrison comic. Until ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW appears on your nearest torrent site, check out a story with a similar tone, Morrison’s SEAGUY.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY VITO ACCONCI!
When I first encountered Vito Acconci’s Following Piece, a work in which he decided to follow random people on the streets of NYC, I assumed it reflected a kind of insulated conceptional exclusiveness. That the work was only fascinated with the process of documenting the artist’s movements in a public space and ignoring the total weirdness of stalking people.
I responded with Vito Acconci ain’t from my neighborhood, a photo series that parodied Following Piece by imagining the effects of performing it on the blighted inner-city streets of my home town of Kansas City, Missouri.
But I was wrong about Acconci. As Acconci moved from performance artist to architect creating otherworldly bridges and canoes with portable islands that would connect with other canoe-islanders, his ideas of societal and public interactions were realized in ways that I had not seen in the Following Piece. Simply all his body of work and what he was working towards suddenly clicked and it blew my mind.
Ever since I’ve pursued something similar in my career, following my ideas where ever they may take me.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY VITO and THANK YOU!
