Cornell Cinema presents a multimedia event examining the arts and 9/11

In conjunction with this year's Cornell Council for the Arts theme, "Art & Politics/Politics & Art," and in commemoration of the one-year anniversary of 9/11, Cornell Cinema will host Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Deborah Shaffer and acclaimed performance artist Pat Oleszko for a special event tonight, Sept. 19, at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.

Tickets for the event, which is co-sponsored with the CCA and the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, are $7 and can be purchased in advance from the Cornell Cinema office, 104 Willard Straight Hall. Tickets also will be available at the door. For more information or to reserve tickets, call 255-3522.

Shaffer's "From the Ashes: 10 Artists" interweaves stories of 10 downtown New York artists as they relate their experiences of Sept. 11, pick up the shattered pieces of their lives and struggle to redefine the meaning of their art. Multimedia/performance artist Pat Oleszko is one of them. Following the screening, Oleszko will perform "Rubble Without Pause," a performance piece she developed after appearing in Shaffer's documentary.

When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the dust and rubble spread over the neighborhood of Tribeca, home to hundreds of working artists. Many were forced to abandon their homes and studios for an unspecified period of time. Among them is Laurie Anderson, who offers eloquent testimony and raises soul-searching questions about the role of the artist and social responsibility. Also featured is Skip Blumberg, a video artist who was contacted by a children's television program to produce a piece about a 12-year-old neighbor who bakes cookies for the rescue workers.

A despondency comes from Oleszko, a performance artist whose costume-driven work is normally zany and fanciful. She had performed at the World Trade Center Plaza when it was new and then volunteered with the rescue workers for four days at Ground Zero. In "From the Ashes," she is struggling to reconcile her quirky humor with the devastation she has just experienced. "My work as an artist is playing the fool. I question whether I can continue to do that," she says through her tears. But days later, some artists are back at work. Painter Jane Hammond, dragging her brush across a large canvas, recalls how people continued making art during World War II, "even in the concentration camps. So making art in my Soho loft isn't so bad."

Other artists interviewed include Shahzia Sikander, a successful young painter who grew up in a Muslim household in Pakistan, and guitarist Oscar Santiago, whose cousin perished in the attack. He says, "I don't hear the music anymore. But I know I will. You know, that will come back to me. My cousin? I don't know. My stuff? Probably. My life? My normal life? No."

Shaffer, winner of the 1986 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, interweaves these stories and others with scenes of lower Manhattan in the days following the attack, as the artists clean up their homes and begin to get back to work.

Oleszko is a visual and performance artist whose work ranges from street to stage to silver screen. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement.