Thursday, March 3, 2016

Local Art Scene: Events Tonight from Youth Innocence to Visions of a Dystopian Fulture

Tonight the Duluth Art Institute hosts its Opening Reception for Youth Art Month in the Depot's Great Hall, from 5-7 p.m. In addition to K-12 art displayed throughout the hall, there will be "art stations" where local artists work with kids on projects using various materials that artists work with.

"One River, Many Stories" continues its series of events for writers, meeting at 5:30 tonight at the new Ecolibrium3 Building in Duluth's West End. Tonight's topic to be addressed by a panel of journalists is "PolyMet: Reporting on Tough Community Issues." Based on last week's event and the guest panel slated for this week, this will be an invaluable experience for young journalists to attend. Details here.

From 7-9 p.m. there will be an opening reception for Artist Kamikaze VII at Pizza Luce. All three events are free, but if you wish to vote for the winner in this "paired art showdown" then it will cost you $2 per vote. (Does that mean it is an election someone can buy?)

The theme is Dystopian. Details here.

For a list of books in this category check out Wikipedia's Dystopian Literature page. You will readily recognize a number of familiar names including Franz Kafka's The Trial and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. C.S. Lewis's space trilogy ending with That Hideous Strength is another favorite of mine, written in the same period as these and Orwell's 1984. These writers all wrote with great clarity about the dehumanizing effects of unchecked technology and utopian idealism run amok.
More current authors who have written in this genre include Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Ursula Le Guinn, cloaking dark visions of the future in a sci-fi literary package.

When you look through the lens of the dystopians, you'll come to one conclusion: a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Not a matter of if, but of when.

Meantime, the weather tonight should make it easy to navigate to and fro from wherever you are to wherever you wish to be. Enjoy the shows.

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