ASSASSINS Fact #2: Oswald's Self-Portrait in Red

For those vinyl afficionados among us, here's ASSASSINS Fact #2: Lee Harvey Oswald recorded his thoughts in the now (in)famous "Conversation Carte Blanche" interview, originally broadcast live on Radio Station WDSU in New Orleans, just a few weeks before President Kennedy's assassination in November of 1963.

The unedited  conversation was released on LP as "OSWALD: Self-Portrait in Red" in 1964.

Don't have your ASSASSINS tickets? Click here!

From the Back Cover:

"I AM A MARXIST" - Lee Harvey Oswald, August 21, 1963

With these words, a few weeks before President Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald sketched the indelible outline of this Self-Portrait in Red.

What did Oswald really think of President Kennedy? Hear the only recorded statement in existence, as Oswald gives his own opinion of President Kennedy. Was Oswald alone? Listen to this record, as Oswald defends the Fair Play for Cuba committee. Then decide for yourself. Was Oswald insane? Listen to this record... then judge for yourself. What did Oswald call his enemies? Hear Oswald pin a label on people he dislikes, and smear the State Department and the CIA. Whom did Oswald admire? Hear Oswald's own suggestion, that the United States should have dropped weapons "into the Sierra Maestra where Fidel Castro could have used them." How did Oswald explain his three years in Russia? Listen to this record, and hear his revealing reply.

ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES

[Updated] What If Festival 2011

Here's the final film for "Project(ing) Peace" - we used a camera to photograph the kids of all ages!

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
 Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

The What IF! Festival of Innovation and Imagination invites inquisitive community members of all ages to join the day of interaction and creativity. The day-long Festival will feature tech-enthusiasts, art-makers, garage inventors, Do-It-Yourself-ers, scientists, culinary magicians, original musicians, robot builders, urban farmers, innovators, engineers and many other thinkers and tinkerers from the region. The Festival will include interactive booths, demonstrations, video presentations, live performances and numerous hands-on experiences. This celebration of innovation and creativity is open to the public and is meant for all age groups. We welcome you to bring your family and invite your friends!

Saturday, Sept. 10 | 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. | FREE
Downtown Colorado Springs - Pikes Peak Center, Plaza of the Rockies, Pioneers Museum

Bemis School of Art, with help from Fine Arts Center staff and Aspen Pointe's Military Creative Expressions program, will again be participating in Imagination Celebration's second-annual Festival of Innovation and Imagination in downtown Colorado Springs. What If experiences range from tech enthusiasts, art makers, innovative businesses and more!

What If Festival 2011 from PPLD TV on Vimeo.

Pollinator Pixelator Costume Contest

Calling all 'bee'decked and 'bee'dazzled dancing divas: Please join us at the BEE Dance Party to kick off a two week-long costume contest! This costume party spans time and place to bring you fabulous prizes from artful organizations.

The most fun way to enter is in the Pollinator Pixelator photo booth at the BEE Dance Party. Hosted by Cross-Pollination collaborator GOCA121 on Friday Sept. 23, 9 p.m. - 12 a.m., this is where you'll find the cool kids after the Pikes Peak Arts Council awards.

Cross-Pollination collaborators will then accept pollinator-inspired costume submissions online right here on this blog.

How do you enter if you can't make the dance party? First, you really don't want to miss the dance party. But if you absolutely must skip one of the coolest costume parties Colorado Springs has ever seen, please submit a link to a picture of you wearing your best pollinator costume on the FAC's blog by Oct. 7 | 12 p.m.

Rules: You must be wearing a costume for consideration and be at least 16 years old. A panel of judges will determine winners, who will be announced in the FAC's weekly edition email. (To subscribe to the our weekly email newsletter, please click here.)

PRIZES:
**************
•Bees(t) of Show – most creative/ best costume
Tickets & Drinks For Two to ASSASSINS from the Fine Arts Center

•Dance Party Diva – best pose
A month of free Yoga, Dance, or other classes from Marmalade at Smokebrush

•Eco Mojo – best use of recycled/reused materials
Tickets to Eiko & Koma's performance on October 14 and a copy of their book
from IDEA Space at Colorado College

•Nectar Collector – most remarkable (and G-rated) probiscis
$25 Swirl gift card from GOCA

•Urban Flier – most cosmopolitan pollinator costume
$20 Downtown Partnership gift card from GOCA



COMMENTS

ASSASSINS: Win Tickets & Drinks for Two!

You may have seen last week's post with this fabulous picture of Scott RC Levy along with this fun fact: Six of the assassinations or attempts featured in ASSASSINS took place on a Friday.

A slightly less historical but equally Fun Fact (#2) is this: Jonathan Spencer, the lighting designer for the FAC's production of ASSASSINS, was also lighting designer on four recent Broadway shows.

So. To win tickets:
Please tell us in the comments about what YOU would choose to do on Broadway if someone (miraculously) offered you a job doing whatever you wanted to do.  Sing and dance in the chorus? Sweep the stage? Play the romantic interest? Design the set? Let 'er rip in the comments. We'll draw a random winner Wednesday, Sept. 28 at 2:00 p.m. You must be 16 or older to win "ASSASSINS: Tickets & Drinks for Two!" And if you're under 21, your free drink won't contain any alcohol, sorry.

Comments

MEGA-OPENING NIGHT

In a cosmic alignment of dramatic proportions, September 30th marks the opening night of ASSASSINS and our Member-Only Sandzén in Colorado preview. The artistic convergence of this particular Friday - Sept. 30 (mark your calendar!) - brings a season -opening night you won't want to miss. Hope to see you soon!


Mega-Opening Night
Friday, Sept. 30
Doors open at 5 p.m.


Theatre Season kicks off with a bang!
ASSASSINS

• Groundbreaking Sondheim musical
• Tickets are still available
• Discounted tickets for FAC Members
• Not a member? Join Now! 

Exhibition Season opens with an explosion of color
SANDZÉN IN COLORADO

• Members-Only Preview
• Special Guest Panelists
• Free for FAC Members
• Not a member? Join Now!

Cedars and Rocks, Oil on canvas, 1922, Greenough Trust Collection.
Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, Kansas

ASSASSINS Fun Fact #1

Happy Friday! Today's Fun Fact:

Six of the assassinations or attempts featured in ASSASSINS took place on a Friday.

Blackmail-worthy Bonus Fun Fact: this picture features our own Performing Arts Director, Scott RC Levy as Charles Guiteau in a 1995 production of ASSASSINS (the first NYC revival) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Scott assures us: THAT IS NOT A WIG.

What the Arts Teach and How It Shows

Happy Arts in Education Week Sept. 12-18 from Bemis School of Art!

Fall session classes start Sept. 19 so sign up now.

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help students learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

Bemis School of Art leads an Art Day for Eagleview Middle School

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Bumblebee Boogie: Preparing "Katja Loher's Miniverse"

FAC Assistant Curator Joy Armstrong works with Exhibit Preparator Aaron Jakos and Colorado College intern Elena to ready an 8' diameter weather balloon for the Katja Loher video installation.

New York-based Swiss artist Katja Loher creates video works that eloquently articulate the importance of the individual in contributing to the success of the whole. In Why Did the Bees Leave? Loher specifically examines the vital role of bees in perpetuating global survival, addressing the concern over colony collapse both literally and as a metaphor for the human condition. Loher takes a non-traditional approach to presenting her videos, projecting them through glass or liquid or onto large balloons, resulting in sculptural works that the artist refers to as Bubbles, Miniverses, and Videoplanets. Read more>>

Intersections Film Festival 2011

Intersections Film Festival™ (IFF) is a three-day event held 14-16 October 2011 and scheduled to take place on the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) campus as well as the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Oct. 14-15 at UCCS
Oct. 16 at the FAC

All screenings are free and open to the public. Seating is limited; audience members are encouraged arrive early.


IFF is committed to offering free public screenings in order to reach the broadest segment of the Front Range community possible and reinforce UCCS’s commitment to scholarly outreach and the promotion of diversity. For the upcoming festival, award-winning Middle Eastern feature films and documentaries explore multiple contexts of displacement due to economic need, war, imprisonment, and occupation.


The festival will feature co-produced transnational feature films and documentaries by award-winning filmmakers. "Talk back"-styled discussions follow screenings led by either filmmakers, leading experts, or regional scholars from UCCS, Metro State, CSU, CU-Boulder, and Colorado College, or from amongst our cultural partnerships. The discussions are designed to prompt a dialogue with the audience in hopes of making global subject matters relevant at the local level.


Closing Reception & Screenings at the FAC
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16
Parking is free at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.


4:00 PM
Najwa Najjar, Pomegranates & Myrrh (Palestine, 2009) 95 mins. [in the Music Room]Discussant: Dr. Livia Alexander, Executive Director, ArteEastPomegranates and Myrrh | Ustura Films
Dancer Kamar's joyful wedding to Zaid is followed almost immediately by Zaid's imprisonment in an Israeli jail for refusing to give up his land. Free-spirited Kamar wants to support her husband and be a dutiful wife but struggles with the idea of giving up dance and her own dreams.

6:00 PM
Closing Reception in Lobby


7:30 PM 
Hisham Zaman, Bawke (Norway, 2005), 15 mins. [in Upper Gallery]
Bawke | Norwegian Film Institute
They have been on the run for a long time, a man and his very young son. When they reach their destination, they realize they are still in trouble. In the end the father is forced to make a choice of two evils to provide for his sons future.

8:00 PM
Hisham Zaman, Winterland (Norway, 2007), 52 mins. [in Upper Gallery]
Winterland | Norwegian Film Institute
Renas, a Kurdish refugee who lives in Northern Norway, has everything he wants, but misses a woman. He marries a woman from his home country whom he has never seen, after having arranged a wedding in Iraq with a kind of substitute bridegroom. But the marriage has a difficult start when Fermesk arrives in Norway.