Oct 1st 2010

Future Shock

@ Green Lantern Gallery

2542 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60622

Opening Friday, October 1st, from 7PM - 10PM

On view through Saturday, November 13th

Borrowing its title from sociologist Alvin Toffler’s 1970 bestseller, Future Shock is a group exhibition of artists examining yesterday’s dreams of tomorrow. Toffler warned us that society was experiencing too much change in too short a time, hurtling towards an overwhelmingly technocratic future. Some of his loopy apprehensive futurism has proven correct in that today, via telecommunications and the internet, we have even more anxieties about the large amounts of historical information to dig through and a lack of a method for comparing and processing different kinds of information. And his utopian dream for technology as a tool to build a more decent democratic and humane society is still an active question. This exhibition will bring together a group of artists and thinkers who are surveying the information overload of the present and assembling creative libraries that are both functional and impractical to understand how radical countercultural histories and utopian futures exist uncomfortably in the present.

Brandon Alvendia continues his Silver Galleon Press project with a new publication “Little Brother” by renowned novelist, journalist and copy-left activist, Cory Doctorow. Conrad Bakker’s Untitled Project: SELF HELP is a small-scale lending library comprised of carved and painted self-help paperbacks from the 1970′s. Edie Fake’s City of Night is a series of drawings combating the erasure of local queer history by paying homage to buildings that historically served as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered social spaces in Chicago. The Library of Radiant Optimism brings together a selection of their how-to books documenting cultural practices from the founding and maintenance of communal living spaces and growing your own organic garden, to early sustainable design initiatives and home birthing. Recalling some of the political struggles and utopist visions contemporary to Future Shock, People Powered presents a selection of artist and activist manifestos from 1965-1975, examining the original design and graphic styles of the printed matter as an integral part of their message. Red76’s Follow the Light. Let the Light be Your Guide is equal parts lighthouse and library, featuring a collective archive and reading group of radiant political texts and a spotlight in the gallery that becomes brighter as texts accumulate. Randall Szott’s collection of Future Shock, gathered via trips to thrift stores, displays what he calls “one of North America’s most discarded books.”

Curated by Abigail Satinsky.

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