Daily Archives: January 27, 2020

Tyler Mitchells first solo exhibition, I Can Make You Feel Good, opened in Amsterdam last spring, at the citys Foam photography museum. Tomorrow, almost a year later, and a second iteration of the exhibition launches in New York pt. 2 the remix as Mitchell called it on Instagram marking the photographers first solo exhibition in his home country.To coincide with the launch, Mitchell-designed merch dubbed Items from the Studio will be available to buy at the ICPs new Lower East Side building in the coming weeks. Whats more, a monograph published by Prestel will be released this spring, looking at Mitchells oeuvreso far and the heights he has reached all before the age of 25.

Mitchells name became widely known throughout the fashion industry and beyond when, in August 2018, his history-making cover of Beyonc was revealed for American Vogues September issue. Then 23 years old, Mitchell was both the youngest photographer to shoot a Vogue cover, and the first person of colour to do so. Both personal work and editorials created for the pages of magazines like Dazed feature in I Can Make You Feel Good, a survey of the rich and compelling black utopia that Mitchell imagines with his camera. People say utopia is never achievable, but I love the possibility that photography brings, he says in a statement released to mark the exhibitions opening in New York. It allows me to dream and make that dream become very real.

The length of one hallway in the International Center of Photography houses a series of washing lines, on which hang large fabric prints of Mitchells photographs. The Atlanta-born image-maker has long taken suburban mundanities and inserted them into his work, visualising idyllic leisure scenes for his ever-expanding utopic world. Though there are nods to quotidian microtraumas and violence experienced against black people in his photographs and films, Mitchell insists on an overarching positivity; the exhibition is gut-punching in its optimism, he says.

Speaking to Dazeds Ashleigh Kane for AnOtherlast year as the Foam exhibition opened, Mitchell explained this feeling of positivity. I already had an idea that was fixated on optimism and a sense of play and freedom, rather than looking at the negative, political side that sometimes people attribute to my work, he said. So it was really focused on a theme, with the title, the work selection, the sizing, the curation, and the videos... Its a feeling of optimism within blackness. Im more interested in showing a certain community, intimacy, optimism, sense of play, and freedom, rather than focusing on any other aspects that sometimes black artists get thrown into the throes of needing to talk about.

In December of last year, Mitchell was announced as a fellow of theGordon Parks Foundation for 2020, alongsideNina Chanel Abney;each will receive $20,000 towards projects that draw inspiration from Parks pioneering creative outlook, in particular his focus on themes of representation and social justice, to be exhibited in New York later this year. Mitchell has explained, in a post on Instagram, that his project willmine Parks archive to explore and respond to his understanding of dress and identity, in a series inspired by the late image-makers 20th-century fashion photography, dating from the 1940s to the 70s. Bookended by two major exhibitions, 2020 is already looking set to be one of Mitchells most exciting years yet.

Tyler Mitchell: I Can Make You Feel Goodis at the International Centre for Photography, New York, from January 25 May 18, 2020.

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Inside Photographer Tyler Mitchell's First Solo Show in the US - AnOther Magazine

AMC Networks Acorn TV North Americas largest streamer devoted to British and international television has announced a stellar 2020 lineup, consisting of five commissioned Acorn TV Originals. As the largest streamer devoted to a specialized audience, Acorn TV is the ultimate destination of high-quality, world class dramas, mysteries and comedies from all sides of the pond.

Coming up in 2020, Acorn TV will feature both brand-new and returning riveting Acorn TV Original series: upcoming debuts include highly-rated UK drama Deadwater Fell (starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo), Irish comedy drama The South Westerlies, New Zealand thriller The Sounds, and Irish period mystery series Dead Still (starring Luthers Michael Smiley). Returning shows include British mystery (and Acorn TVs first sole commission) Agatha Raisin, Irish comedy Finding Joy (series 2), ABC Australia drama Mystery Road (series 2), and Irish thriller Blood (series 2). Also, this spring will feature the premiere of Acorn TVs eagerly anticipated feature-length film Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears starring award-nominated actress Essie Davis (The Babadook, Game of Thrones.)

Among the returning favorite series are the #1 UK drama of 2019 Line of Duty (season 6), British school dramedy Ackley Bridge, New Zealand detective drama The Brokenwood Mysteries, French crime drama Balthazar, new episodes of Canadian hit drama Murdoch Mysteries, and acclaimed Swedish noir Rebecka Martinsson.

2020 PREVIEW VIDEO: https://youtu.be/VkHEBgpdk8o

EXCLUSIVE U.S. PREMIERES - ACORN TV

JANUARY 2020

THE BROKENWOOD MYSTERIES, Series 6 Monday, January 6 through January 27 (Exclusive U.S. Premiere, new episodes to premiere weekly every Monday)

This acclaimed New Zealand detective series filmed amid the beautiful landscape of the countrys North returns with four feature-length, standalone mysteries featuring compelling characters, dry humor, and piquant wit. After transferring from a big city to the quiet, little, murder-ridden town of Brokenwood, Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd (Neill Rea, Go Girls) and Detective Kristin Simms (Fern Sutherland, The Almighty Johnsons) uncover more macabre goings on and investigate murderous rivalries and lethal grudges. (4 EPS)

MURDOCH MYSTERIES, Season 13 (Episodes 4-18) Monday, January 6 through April 13 (new episodes to premiere weekly every Monday)

Garnering more than two dozen Gemini nominations and the sole 2016 Fans Choice Award at the Canadian Screen Awards for lead actor Yannick Bisson, Murdoch Mysteries has found a huge audience in North America for its period charm, entertaining mysteries, and likeable characters. Set in Toronto in the late 1890s and early 1900s during the age of invention, the mystery series centers on Detective William Murdoch (Bisson), a methodical and dashing detective, who enlists radical new forensic techniques like fingerprinting, ultraviolet light, and trace evidence to solve some of the citys most gruesome murders.

ACKLEY BRIDGE, Series 3 Monday, January 13 (Exclusive U.S. Premiere)

From the creators of Shameless (UK) comes the return of this hit British dramedy set in a multicultural academy school in a small West Yorkshire mill town. Ackley Bridge offers a character-driven, gritty, funny, truthful, and mischievous angle into the daily drama of the teachers, teenagers and families. The series 3 cast includes Jo Joyner (EastEnders), Sunetra Sarker (Broadchurch), Poppy Lee Friar (Mr. Selfridge, In The Club), Amy-Leigh Hickman (EastEnders), Megan Parkinson (Game of Thrones) and new cast addition Robert James-Collier (Downton Abbey). (8 EPS)

FEBRUARY 2020

AGATHA RAISIN, Series 3 (Acorn TV Original Series, Commissioned) Monday, February 10, 17 and 24

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Emmy-nominated actress Ashley Jensen (Catastrophe, Extras, Ugly Betty) returns in the acclaimed adaptations of MC Beatons best-selling comedic mystery novels. The series follows a London PR whizz turned amateur sleuth, who becomes entangled in mischief, mayhem, and murder when she opts for early retirement in the country. In series 3 of this contemporary mystery, Agatha is now an official private investigator and has just opened her first detective agency, where pressures are high to keep new business flowing. In addition, shes now living with on-and-off-again beau and British history author, James Lacey (Jamie Glover, Waterloo Road). Stay tuned for more of her wild, hilarious adventures in these new movies: The Deadly Dance, The Love From Hell and As The Pig Turns.

MARCH 2020

BLOOD, Series 2 (Acorn TV Original Series, Co-production) Monday, March 9 with first two episodes

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Compared to Broadchurch and The Killing by critics and called a dark, addictive and unmissable crime drama by The Guardian, this highly-rated Irish psychological mystery stars BAFTA nominee Adrian Dunbar (Line of Duty) as Jim Hogan, a respected doctor in a small Irish town with a family full of secrets. In series 2, Jim Hogan returns home a year later after the suspicious death of his wife, determined to make amends and reconnect with his family. But when eldest daughter Fiona (Grinne Keenan (Victoria, Black Mirror) is in an accident, a disturbing discovery threatens to tear them apart again. (6 EPS)

MISS FISHER AND THE CRYPT OF TEARS (Movie) mid-to-late March in select theatres and on Acorn TV

This highly anticipated and gorgeously-shot feature film continues the story of Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries, which aired for three seasons (2012-2015) and is one of the most popular Australian series worldwide. Essie Davis (The Babadook, Game of Thrones) returns in the five-time Logie-nominated role that made her a worldwide star. Set in the late 1920s, The Crypt of Tears follows the slinky, seductive and risk-taking detective Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher on a Middle Eastern adventure in search of an ancient treasure. The film also features series regular Nathan Page as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson. (Feature-length)

April 2020

DEADWATER FELL (Acorn TV Original Series)

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Called the new Broadchurchbut more irresistible moving, compelling crime drama by The Guardian, and complex and fascinating mystery by Radio Times, this darkly gripping and highly-rated UK dramas stellar ensemble cast features David Tennant (Broadchurch, Doctor Who, Good Omens), Cush Jumbo (The Good Fight, The Good Wife, Vera), Matthew McNulty (Versailles, Cleaning Up, The Terror) and Anna Madeley (Patrick Melrose, The Crown, Utopia). When a seemingly perfect and happy family is murdered by someone they know and trust, the small Scottish community they call home becomes torn apart with mistrust and suspicion as those closest to the family begin to question everything they thought they knew about their friends. Deadwater Fell examines in unflinching detail the nature of female friendship and the harmful, entrenched gender stereotypes and conformity that can lead to the most devastating consequences. Laying bare the fragility of trust and the corrosive nature of lies, the series demonstrates that even the closest of friends all have their secrets. (4 EPS)

Spring 2020

DEAD STILL (Acorn TV Original Series, Commissioned)

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Set in 1880s Ireland in the Victorian era of postmortem photography, this period drama follows renowned memorial photographer Brock Blennerhasset (Michael Smiley, Luther, Kill List), as he investigates the murders of his recently deceased subjects. Dublin Detective Frederick Regan (Aidan OHare, Jackie, Pilis) suspects that Ireland may have its first serial murderer at large, and with Blennerhasset as a possible suspect and his family is put in harms way, the police must track down the serial killer before he strikes again. Inspired by a true-life Irish tradition in the 1800s, this series also stars Kerr Logan (Game of Thrones, Alias Grace) and Eileen OHiggins (Brooklyn, Mary Queen of Scots). (6 EPS)

THE SOUNDS (Acorn TV Original Series, Commissioned)

This eight-part New Zealand psychological thriller centers on a happily married couple (Rachelle Lefevre, Proven Innocent, Under the Dome and Matt Whelan, The Luminaries, Narcos) who move into a sleepy town to start a new business venture and set them on a new life path. But when husband Tom disappears, unsettling facts about him soon come to light, and the search brings long-buried wounds to the surface. As wife Maggie struggles to navigate the escalating events, it becomes clear that in this small, seemingly close-knit community, nothing and no one are quite what they seem. THE SOUNDS was created by bestselling author, Sarah-Kate Lynch, also the series lead writer. (8 EPS)

BALTHAZAR, Series 2 (Foreign language)

This acclaimed French crime thriller, one of the top ten highest-rated French dramas of 2018, introduces a forensic pathologist with an unusual talent the brilliant yet unconventional Raphal Balthazar (Tomer Sisley, Philharmonia, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch), who can make the dead speak like no one else to help solve Paris most baffling crimes. New, tough-as-nails police commander Hlne Bach (Hlne de Fougerolles, Le Secret dElise, The Beach, VA Savoir) must learn to collaborate with Raphal on these investigations. This series also stars Yanig Samot (The French Kissers). (10 EPS)

Summer 2020

FINDING JOY, Series 2 (Acorn TV Original Series, Commissioned)

Created, written and starring Irish Film & TV Academy winner Amy Huberman (Striking Out, The Clinic), this six-part comedy follows a single woman, Joy, after a painful breakup who looks for happiness in all the wrong places.(6 EPS)

REBECKA MARTINSSON, Series 2 (Foreign language)

Characters so vividly created the script, and performances, shine throughout, as does the arctic background, both beautiful and menacing (The Wall Street Journal) and based on sa Larsson's celebrated and popular crime novels, this series set in the bleak Northern Environment revolves around Rebecka Martinsson, a lawyer from Kiruna who has succeeded professionally, but still hasnt found herself. In Series 1, when a dear friend from childhood suddenly passes away, Rebecka reluctantly returns to her hometown, but soon discovers that her death becomes more and more suspicious, and Rebecka cannot tear herself away until she finds answers. Drawn into the gripping pursuit of a killer on the hunt for the next victim, Rebecka is forced to confront the terrible trauma that caused her to abandon her hometown. (8 EPS)

MYSTERY ROAD, Series 2 (Acorn TV Original series)

Voted Most Popular Drama at the 2019 Logie Awards, series one of this beautifully filmed, acclaimed ABC Australia series, featured multiple Emmy, BAFTA, and Golden Globe winner Judy Davis and AFCA winner Aaron Pedersen (Jack Irish, A Place to Call Home) as two detectives investigating the mysterious disappearance of two young men in a remote outback town. Series 2 will feature the return of Jay Swan (Pedersen) as he investigates a gripping new mystery in a small coastal community alongside a detective played by Sofia Helin (Scandi crime drama The Bridge). (6 EPS)

Fall 2020

THE SOUTH WESTERLIES (Acorn TV Original series, Commissioned)

With an impressive ensemble of acclaimed actors including Orla Brady (American Horror Story, Mistresses,) Eileen Walsh (Catastrophe, Women on the Verge, Cant Cope Wont Cope), and Ger Ryan (Little Dog, Rialto, Raw), this sharp Irish comedy-drama focuses on a small coastal town in the southwest of Ireland earmarked for a Norwegian-owned wind farm. Kate (Brady) is a single working mom and environmental consultant who has to go undercover among protesters to quash objections to the wind farm project. Her eco-battle is compounded by the return of a surfer with an unmistakable resemblance to her teenage son, as well as the emergence of old secrets shes keeping under wraps. (6 EPS)

LINE OF DUTY, Season 6 (Acorn TV Exclusive)

Written and created by Jed Mercurio (creator of international sensation Bodyguard), the highly-anticipated season six marks a new case for the police anti-corruption unit AC-12, featuring new guest star Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire), alongside series regulars Adrian Dunbar (Blood, The Crying Game), Vicky McClure (The Secret Agent), and Martin Compston (The Great Train Robbery). Season 5 was the highest rated UK drama of 2019. (6 EPS)

About Acorn TV

AMC Networks Acorn TV is North Americas largest streaming service specializing in British and international television with over 1 million paid subscribers in the U.S and Canada. Acorn TV adds exclusive new programs every week with a deep library of mysteries, dramas, and comedies with no commercials. In 2020, Acorn TV features several commissioned series including the return of Agatha Raisin starring Ashley Jensen, period mystery Dead Still, Irish comedy drama The South Westerlies, New Zealand thriller The Sounds, and Irish comedy Finding Joy; as well as the return of Irish thriller Blood and Essie Davis in Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears; and a growing catalog of popular bingeable dramas A Place to Call Home, Detectorists, Jack Irish and Foyles War; among much more. Facebook: OfficialAcornTV - Twitter @AcornTV

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ACORN TV ANNOUNCES 2020 LINEUP FEATURING A RECORD FIVE COMMISSIONED SERIES PLUS NEW SEASONS OF ACCLAIMED SERIES BLOOD, MYSTERY ROAD, AND LINE OF DUTY...

The Student Lectureship Committee will welcome actor, writer and YouTuber Rainn Wilson to the University on Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Weis Center for the Performing Arts. Best known for portraying Dwight Schrute on NBCs Emmy Award-winning comedy, The Office, Wilson is expected to cover topics spanning from his nine seasons on The Office to his new Amazon series, Utopia. The lecture will be in the form of a moderated talk and conclude with a Q&A session.

With an MFA from NYUs Graduate Acting program at the Tisch School of the Arts, Rainn Wilson worked largely in theater during his early career as an actor. He starred on Broadway in the Tony-nominated London Assurance and The Tempest, in addition to being in several off-Broadway shows.

Wilson made his on-screen debut in an episode of the soap opera One Life to Live in 1997. His first breakthrough role was his portrayal of assistant mortician Arthur Marin in the HBO series Six Feet Under. The cast won a Screen Actors Guild Award (SAG) for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

In 2005, while Wilson appeared in the comedy film Sahara and the mockumentary film The Life Coach, he was cast as Dwight Schrute in the new comedy series, The Office. For playing the socially awkward, obsessive salesman, Wilson won two SAG awards for best comedy ensemble on the series, in addition to being nominated for an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Wilson not only acted in the series but also directed three episodes: The Cover-Up, Classy Christmas and Get the Girl.

Rainn Wilson is an outstanding actor and artist capable of bringing immense joy to those who follow him. His unique ability to captivate an audience makes him one of the most exciting lecturers to come to campus since I have been here at the University, Ryan Bailis 21, a member of the Student Lectureship Committee, said.

More recently, Wilson appeared in several movies including Permanent, Shimmer Lake and The Meg. In 2017, he was cast to play Harvey Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery and he directed an episode of Star Trek: Short Treks. In the upcoming Amazon Original Series, Utopia, Wilson is slated to be a series regular, playing virologist Dr. Michael Sterns.

Wilson is also the co-founder ofSoulPancake, which has grown from a YouTube channel into a media company with over four million fans. SoulPancake has developed shows like Kid President and Tell My Story. The media company has created hundreds of hours of content and has accumulated over 500 million video views.

Rainn Wilson is one of my favorite actors of all time. The Office is one of the only shows I can watch year after year and still find the jokes funny every time, Bailis said.

Tickets to the event are free for all students and will be available at the Campus Box Office.

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Student lectureship series to host Rainn Wilson - The Bucknellian

Dystopian works are simply canaries in the global coal mine we ignore at our peril, says the writer. (Illustration: Adobestock)

The sunll come out Tomorrow

Bet your bottom dollar

That tomorrow

Therell be sun!

Just thinkin about Tomorrow

Clears away the cobwebs

And the sorrow

Til theres none!

When Im stuck with a day

Thats grey

And lonely

I just stick out my chin

And grin

And say

Oh!

The sunll come out

Tomorrow

So ya gotta hang on

Tomorrow from Annie. Music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin

It is common, at the beginning of a new year, for analysts, commentators, and columnists to offer some predictions and possibilities for the future (sometimes paired with dire warnings as well as a jeremiad or two), as the old year becomes history. Given what seem to be the increasingly dire circumstances of our globe both in political and environmental terms the writers thoughts have turned to more dystopic visions of our collective future.

More than 500 years ago, English writer Thomas More came up with the idea of a worldly heaven on Earth. He called his imaginary land a utopia, thus coining the very idea of an imagined future.

As Terry Eagelton wrote in The Guardian on the 500th anniversary of Mores work, Mores book, in some ways a work of early science fiction, gave rise to a whole new genre of writing. Judging from that literature, there are really two kinds of utopia. There are carnivalesque societies in which, instead of working, everyone will drink, feast and copulate from dawn to dusk. In one such 18th-century fantasy, men and women bereft of all body hair leap naked into fountains, while the progressively minded narrator watches on. Whether his pleasure is entirely theoretical remains unclear.

There are also more austere utopias, in which everything is odourless and antiseptic, intolerably streamlined and sensible. In these meticulously planned countries of the mind, the natives tend to jaw on for hours about the efficiency of their sanitary arrangements, or the ingenuity of their electoral system. Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe is in some ways an exercise of this kind, as Crusoe, marooned on a desert island, potters about, chopping wood and staking out his enclosure as if he were in the home counties. It is reassuring to see him practising a very English rationality in such exotically unfamiliar circumstances. Mores fantasy is an odd mixture of both visions, rational and libidinal. On the one hand, his ideal society is a high-minded, fairly puritanical place, one likely to appeal to the stereotypical Hampstead vegetarian; on the other hand, its inhabitants are genial, laid-back and agreeably disinclined to do much work.

While utopian visions (often drawing on socialist ideals and political urges), have inspired many, as with William Bellamys very influential, but naively optimistic tract, Looking Backward, it has become the dystopian vision that has captivated us and terrified us even more. Much more.

In Britain, America and the Soviet Union, a clutch of visionary, but very dark novels beginning with Jack Londons The Iron Heel, and on to Aldous Huxleys Brave New World, Anthony Burgess Clockwork Orange, BF Skinners Walden 2, George Orwells 1984, Yevgeny Zamyatins We, Sinclair Lewis It Cant Happen Here, and Philip Roths The Plot Against America have posited a world where various tendencies already in evidence have shaped a nightmarish landscape, if such trends continue unabated.

Mostly, these novels have relied on insights into human nature and developments in social control, rather than powerful, extraordinary scientific advancements, as might be the case with the usual run of much science fiction. Although Brave New World makes use of a psychotropic drug, Soma, to regulate emotions and control society, in Walden 2, the authors insights into psychological experimentation such as operant conditioning, keeps everyone happily in line. Such projections could easily fit in sync with contemporary headlines.

1984, meanwhile, sets out a totalitarian surveillance state of Big Brother, but one set in a world of food and consumer goods scarcities, worn-out, rundown infrastructure, a world of grittiness and decrepitude, and, of course, permanent warfare. And it all takes place in a world of ominous conspiracy theories, alternative facts and the infamous memory hole. We had deeply influenced Orwell when he first read and reviewed it, most especially in the way We created a world where human individuality had been totally erased, right up to the point where numbers replaced individual names.

Meanwhile, Jack Londons The Iron Heel portrayed an America under a classic dictatorship, relentlessly pursuing the working class. Then, in It Cant Happen Here and The Plot Against America, domestic and global turmoil leads to populist demagogues taking control of the US legally, but with catastrophic consequences. In Lewis 1938 novel, the newly elected, populist president (a man with appetites and little learning), becomes an increasingly authoritarian president (not totally unlike the populist governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, also fictionally portrayed by Robert Penn Warren in All The Kings Men). And Lewis president eventually generates a counter-revolutionary revolt as a result of his repressive policies. Meanwhile, Roths more recent book offers raw ethnic populism in the service of an increasingly dictatorial, erratic president (in the lightly fictionalised version of hero-aviator Charles Lindbergh). This Lindbergh, like the real one, is given to an America First, rhetoric that seems startlingly current, given the times in which we live.

But, naturally, given South Africas volatile racial landscape, this country has had its very own stream of extraordinarily sharp, dystopic visions seized by the always-impending communal violence.

First was Witwatersrand University historian Arthur Keppel-Jones When Smuts Goes, published in 1947. The author, increasingly appalled by the countrys seemingly inevitable future, had written a dark, partially prophetic tale. It told of a National Party electoral victory in 1952, the subsequent imposition of full-scale apartheid, the ensuing violent civil conflicts, a mass migration of Afrikaners to Argentina in extremis, a UN peacekeeping intervention, and finally, the sad circumstances of a devastated nation, ruled by a poorly educated black leader nicknamed Six Pence. Keppel-Jones finally so despaired of the countrys future that he decamped to Canada.

Then, in response to the rising violence and increasingly harsh repression of black hopes, in the late 1970s and early 80s, three of the countrys most important voices, Nadine Gordimer, JM Coetzee and Karel Schoeman, wrote their respective prophecies of a possible doom of the old order. Gordimers book, Julys People, provoked an angry response from many sides, given its apparent expectation of a violent revolution against white rule. JM Coetzee, meanwhile, had written Waiting for the Barbarians in 1980 and The Life and Times of Michael K three years later. Schoemans novel, Promised Land, had come out even earlier, in 1972.

Gordimers book has a good, liberal, white family suddenly fleeing the chaos of the civil war washing over their city. Roles are reversed as they flee the destruction in the care of their black houseman, July, to sanctuary in his presumably more peaceful rural homestead.

In Coetzees two books, meanwhile, one profiles the world of a military man posted in the vastness of the frontier region of an imaginary land, waiting for the inevitable invasion by the barbarians. They are, he knows, coming to invade, pillage and destroy. By contrast, Coetzees second book is a harshly unblinking portrayal of a mentally handicapped young man, cast adrift in a Cape Town already caught up in chaos of civil conflict, with fighting everywhere. Metaphor is everywhere.

Schoemans book, out several years earlier than the other three, follows a young man, the son of exiled diplomats from the old apartheid regime, who has come back to a post-revolution South Africa to sort out the inheritance of a now-ruined homestead. He comes face to face with the presence of the countrys revolutionary black government and army as well as a shadowy white resistance.

South African dystopic literature has focused, not surprisingly, on the apparent intractability of the countrys racial divide, and resistance to its iniquities. In all five of these South African books, the inevitability and destructiveness of a black revolution is either an implied or explicit driver of the tale. And there has also been the description of the parallel societal and economic trajectory of a South Africa that seemed inexorably headed towards its collapse.

This stands in an interesting contrast to those American, British, or even Russian dystopian classics. Those have largely focused on the growing impact of the surveillance state, increasingly pervasive social control mechanisms, the use of international conflict as a tool for concentrating power and the abuse of populism as a way to draw political control into the hands of ruthless leaders.

But in our current circumstances, there is yet another strand of dystopic literature the cataclysm that destroys human society, either by an atomic holocaust, environmental disaster, or catastrophic climate change. Here the traditions of science fiction are important, and now, most often, are seen via film and television screens in original productions or through powerful adaptations of earlier novels.

Obvious examples of the first catastrophe could include the various film versions of Nevil Shutes On the Beach, as well as the near-twins, Failsafe and Dr Strangelove. And JG Ballards novel, Drowned World, and films like The Day After Tomorrow, Interstellar, Deep Impact, or even sillier ones like 2012 and Waterworld that have all focused attention on the ultimate dystopia, either man-made or inflicted from above.

Meanwhile, documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth and a growing tide of newer works are adding to the dystopic visual literature. Their impact now combines with real online and broadcast reportage on vast continental fires, frightening rises in ocean and land temperatures, along with the destruction of major forests, species extermination, and the impact of yet broader climate change.

And so, Annie and Daddy Warbucks, in the show, Annie, can sing The sunll come out Tomorrow, Bet your bottom dollar, That tomorrow, Therell be sun! and in the end, it will always be a better day out there. But what if, as with the messages and prophecies of dystopic novel and film traditions, the equivalents of Miss Hannigan and her evil accomplices in Annie are in charge instead and thus these dystopian works are simply canaries in the global coal mine we ignore at our peril. DM

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The age of utopia or dystopia - Daily Maverick

Polygons entertainment team is on the ground at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, bringing you first looks at what are sure to be some of the years best blockbuster-alternative offerings. Heres what you need to know before these indie films make their way to theaters, streaming services, and the cinematic zeitgeist.

Logline: Documentarian Matt Wolf (Teenage, Recorder) chronicles how science-fiction dreams begat the $200 million Biosphere 2 architecture project, and tracks where it all went wrong.

Longerline: In the 60s, artist-engineer John Allen was an avant-garde thinker who attracted younger San Franciscans with his anecdotes about world travel and artistic ideology. His close-knit group of hippie pals formed a theater group before eventually hightailing it out of the city to establish Synergia Ranch, a New Mexico commune focused on ecology, architecture, and really, whatever people could dream up. That meant planting and harvesting crops to become fully self-sufficient, but also, with zero expertise, building a science vessel out of Chinese scrap metal and sailing around the world.

Synergias members hungered for knowledge and were always looking to one-up themselves, under the philosophy that life could be playful and meaningful if you were open to all possibilities. So in the late 1980s, Allen and his band of visionaries embarked on their most ambitious project ever: the construction of a biosphere that would sustain the lives of eight crew members for two years without any outside interference.

Most of Spaceship Earth focuses on what happened when Synergia teamed with billionaire oil maven Ed Bass to build Biosphere 2. To the pragmatic futurists, the research facility was a giant science-fair project, a towering work of concept art, and a haven for their of-the-soil lifestyle. If man was going to one day settle on the moon or Mars, this was the way to lay the stepping stones. But the scope of Biosphere 2 provoked the science community and wooed the media, putting Synergias process under the public microscope for the first time. The group was all about experimentation and learning they had been since the theater days. But the world wanted results.

The quote that sums it up: John Allen was a brilliant, charismatic leader because he simply met emotional needs ... part of John Allens genius was helping people realize: its all theater.

Whats it trying to do? In almost a true-crime-documentary mode, Wolf rips a stranger-than-fiction moment from historical headlines, then peels back the surface to get to the bottom of the debacle. Even Spaceship Earths opening, a salvo of talking-head interviews that introduce John through the mesmerized young women and men who followed his lead, has an air of cultiness that could be mistaken for the intro to Wild Wild County season 2. But the twist is that theres nothing nefarious about Synergia: a few wayward souls discovered one another, finding faith in their shared ambition. The artists and the art are inspiring.

Unlike their circumnavigating junk boat, Biosphere 2 had problems. The structure was conceived to support plant, animal, and human life for two years, thanks to a recycling ecosystem, but the team eventually faced life-threatening levels of carbon dioxide and accusations that food was smuggled in through the sealed doors. Wolf probes the issues from the perspectives of those who survived it, juxtaposing the sensible breakdowns again the media reaction.

Does it get there? Talky documentaries often plod through explanation, but the grown-up theater kids of Synergia give the oral history a melodic rhythm. The lives of straight-edge wallflowers who spent their free time mounting geodomes in the middle of the desert look pretty damn fun compared to our current age of saturated media and hyper-kinetic social feeds. How Synergia turned its wild projects into a money-making operation (another example of insular, self-sustaining living) is the kind of detail that would be overlooked in a more indulgent, celebratory documentary. But heres, its Wolfs way into proving the teams innocence. Biosphere 2 was not a malicious fakeout. Everyone wanted it to work.

Instead of outright stating any of this, Wolf lets the subjects radiate on their own. They loved being together, loved creating, and even during the toughest moments of Biosphere 2, they look thrilled to be collecting data and guzzling homemade banana wine. (Biosphere living was not easy.) Scientists frowned upon the amateur science of Biosphere 2 and still might but Wolf buys into John Allens mission, just as many of his followers did in the early days. Watching the film, its hard not to feel the same way.

What does that get us? Earlier this year, Clint Eastwood came out swinging against mainstream media with his divisive Richard Jewell, the story of the Atlanta bomber suspect who was dragged through the mud by local newspapers before being vindicated by the law. Spaceship Earth takes a similar jab at TV news sensationalist tendencies, but instead of demonizing the journalists behind the circus acts, his story always returns to the creators and their dream of utopia. Their story, flaws and all, is a wonder to behold.

The most meme-able moment: Discussions over the failure of Biosphere 2 became fraught enough that, at one point, John Allen reportedly told his cohort: In Dantes Inferno, betrayal is the sin that puts people at the deepest level of Hell. Great potential for a Linkedin meme.

When can we see it? Spaceship Earth is an independent production that premiered at Sundance, and its currently seeking distribution. While we wait for it to hit theaters or a streaming service, check out Wolfs previous film Teenage, released by Oscilloscope Laboratories and currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Sundance: Spaceship Earth is a reverse true-crime doc about Biosphere 2 - Polygon

The photographer's series Flood Zone provides an eerie glimpse into the future of America's sinking southern states.

Madame de Pompadours foreboding epigram, Aprs nous, le dluge (After us, the flood), has become eerily sinister in light of climate change. The excesses of Western modernism rival that of the court of Louis XIVonly this time the vast accumulation of wealth and wastefulness are rapidly decimating not just the peasantry but the planet and the very life it supports.

The United States may desperately need a wallbut the last place it should be located is inland, along the desert keeping asylum seekers out. In a June 2019 report, the Center for Climate Integrity predicted the nation needs to build seawalls along 50,000 coastal miles across 22 states by the year 2040 to stave off the impact of rising sea levels. Estimated to cost $400 billion in total, Florida, the most at-risk state, faces costs of $76 billion alone.

After eight years of climate denial led by former Gov. Rick Scott, who reportedly banned the terms climate change and global warming in state agencies, Florida is in desperate straits. In November 2019, the city of Miami joined Miami Beach in declaring a climate change emergency, asking Washington and Tallahassee to match the $192 million the city has set aside for projects like anti-tidal valves, urban reservoirs, king tide monitoring, and other climate mitigation projects.

Positioning himself as himself as a green Republican, current Gov. DeSantis awarded $685 million (of the $91.1 billion state budget) in 2019 to environmental restoration, removed anti-environmental members of the board of the South Florida Water Management District, appointed the states first Chief Science Officer to address environmental concerns, and renewed a Florida Crystals lease for land slated to become an Everglades restoration reservoir.

All things considered, its a drop in the bucket and Generation Z refuses to wait. On January 9, Florida students age 12 to 21 filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the Florida Cabinet, and two state agencies for violating their constitutional rights and endangering their future by failing to aggressively develop a plan to combat climate change.

They are not alone. According to the first-ever Florida Climate Resilience Survey, published in October 2019, two thirds of Floridians do not feel the government is doing enough to address the impact of climate change. Theres shared anxiety in the communityeverybody knows, even the deniers know, says photographer Anastasia Samoylova. You cant escape it. Its hard to deny when you are standing in water. You can say whatever you want but the evidence is surrounding you.

Hailing from Moscow, Samoylova moved to the United States at the age of 23 to pursue her MFA from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. After being on the academic track, she decided to move to Miami Beach in 2016 to resume her love of making art. Samoylova decided to walk the streets taking photographs as a way to gain a sense of placesomething she could only do in the morning and in the evening during what was the hottest summer on record (though every passing year has claimed the title).

The following year, Hurricane Irma hit. There was a mandatory evacuation but we couldnt evacuate because there was no gas anywhere. People were stranded, Samoylova recalls. We live in an older condo building with lots of concrete so we thought we could wait it out. This was an experience of the real sublime. You feel so small in the face of the elements. The howling winds: that was the scariest part. I photographed during the hurricane while I could and then the aftermath. Miami Beach, usually packed with tourists, was a zombie city. It felt apocalyptic. Thats when I realized I had a project.

In FloodZone, the new book and exhibition opening January 17, Samoylova peels back the layers of fantasy to reveal the impending horror that lies at our doorstep. Lush, beautiful and seductive, Samoylovas photographs are anything but trauma porn. Rather they are subversive images of paradise, glossy and sleek, subtly revealing something hellish lurking just beneath the surface. They are, for all intents and purposes, the moment just after weve passed the tipping pointwhen its too late to go back but we havent quite realized what we have lost.

Just six years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, Samoylova still remembers the impact of propaganda posters from her childhood, drawing a parallel to Floridas image as a tropical paradise and the added devastation of losing ones illusions on top of everything else. Theres this promise of utopia and everything will be amazingbut that didnt happen. When the Soviet Union collapsed it wasnt only the reality that didnt deliver, it was also this imaginary world that everybody believed in; images have a lot to do with that, Samoylova says.

These images that promise a more beautiful life create this false reality, this imagined geography of this place being solid and well-constructed, and we now know it is built on swamp land and porous limestone. Theres no foundation to South Florida and many other southern states. In Miami Beach, a city saturated with images of its own perfection, you start wondering: what is being hidden? Its not going to be the millionaires who will suffer. It will be people who wont be able to relocate quickly. Then you wonder whether those facts are not being disclosed [because] it will cost the government to relocate those people eventually.

In the interim, delusion persists. I live across from the Deauville Hotel where the Beatles recorded The Ed Sullivan show in 1964. The NADA art fair used to take place there. That was the last time I saw the interior. The next year, Hurricane Irma hit. For three years, the hotel has been abandoned. The damages were so severe they couldnt recoup the loss. It had 600 rooms and fed into the neighborhood economy, Samoylova says.

Across from the hotel, there is a parking lot-sized lawn built on concrete. I call it the Beatles Lawn. Its in the same flood zone as the hotel and it was just sold for $40 million. It was the last undeveloped green patch in Miami Beach.

Anastasia Samoylova: Floodzone is on view at the USF Contemporary Art Museum through March 7, 2020.

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In Florida, Anastasia Samoylova captures a tropical utopia on the brink of disaster - Document Journal

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post Reporter | Sunday, January 26, 2020 N.T. Wright, a retired Anglican bishop and now chair of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, recently released his latest book, "The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians," co-authored with Michael F. Bird. | N.T. Wright

Biblical scholar N.T. Wright believes that failing to read the New Testament in its proper context has a devastating effect on both the unity of the Christian church and the theological understanding of God and the world.

When we fail to care about or recognize the history, literature, and theology of the early Christians, we tend to make them in our own image, Wright told The Christian Post. We imagine that they're just like us with our sorts of concerns, yet very often they're not.

The early Christians, particularly those from the Jewish background, were celebrating the fact that in and through Jesus, something had just happened, and as result, the world was a different place, he continued.

In other words, this was news. Something had happened, something would therefore happen and they were caught up in this new movement. For us, Christianity has collapsed into being a set of good advice about how to go to Heaven when you die. We forget that it started off as news and about something that happened concerning Jesus. If we could reemphasize that, we would all be a lot healthier for it.

Wright, a retired Anglican bishop and now chair of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is seeking to combat biblical illiteracy through his new book, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, co-authored with Michael F. Bird.

Complete with maps, diagrams, and a series of lectures, the book is intended for both students needing an introduction to the New Testament and any Christian feeling stuck reading Scripture, according to Wright.

Its an invitation to walk in the Jewish world, the Greek world, the Roman world of the New Testament, he said. What it was like living in those days, why people thought the way they did, why they looked at things the way they did. And then particularly, what can we actually say about Jesus himself, about the Gospels, about the early Christians, about Paul, about the resurrection?

His goal, Wright said, is to transform the way that the next generation learns and studies the new Testament, both in seminaries and colleges and in churches more broadly.

Its user-friendly enough for the absolute beginner, but then it'll take people on a long way from there into all sorts of exciting stuff, more than they'd ever imagined, he said.

The theologian stressed that the ultimate truth in the New Testament is deeply personal, not a mere how-to guide when it comes to living a good, moral life. He expressed hope that The New Testament in Its World will help modern-day believers study and apply the New Testament with a clarified focus and mission.

What you find in the New Testament is this deeply personal encounter; the documents themselves are breathing with this sense that we have actually met the living God in the person of Jesus and He's not like we thought He would be. And that's a bit scary, but it's also very affirming and supportive and life-transforming, he explained.

The New Testament is summed up in Galatians 2:20: I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me, Wright said.

I think that that sense of a debt of love, which only love can repay, is absolutely at the heart of the New Testament, he argued. "It's the same whether you fall in love with music or fall in love with great art or fall in love with another person. Then what you do as a result is not a list of rules. Its I need to plunge myself into this new reality and let it shake me and transform me.

According to Wright, the early Christians were seriously concerned with unity across cultures, ethnicities, and gender; in fact, the topic of unity is threaded throughout Pauls letters. But unity as a Christian imperative is something the modern world has largely forgotten about, he lamented.

As long as we are a wildly disunited, as we are in Western Christianity at the moment, then the powers that run the world take no notice office. Why should they? Because we're just a babble of different voices, Wright said.

The early Christians lived as family, supporting one another in practical, financial, and realistic ways, Wright contended.

They weren't just a religion; they were an outward-facing, but inwardly coherent family. I think it's a challenge to us today when in so many of our churches, the people around us rather look like us. We tend to gravitate towards churches where we feel comfortable because it's people of our culture, our socio-economic group.

The author of more than 80 books emphasized that the New Testament must be read using first-century eyes with 21st-century questions for greater theological and eschatological clarity.

He further delved into his earlier claim that many modern Christians are wrong about the idea of Heaven and the afterlife. The early Christians, he charged, didnt simply exist on earth to go to Heaven. Rather, they sought to bring Heaven to earth through the Gospel.

The early Christians were mostly Jews, and they believed that the world was good, that it was God's world, and that God's aim and intention was not to snatch some people from this world to go and live with Him, but so to remake the world, that it would make sense for God Himself to come and live with us, which is what it says at the end of the book of Revelation," Wright said.

The dwelling of God is with humans, not the dwelling of humans is with God. Of course, that then is the corroboree. But the point is that the New Testament as a whole addresses our culture by saying, Wait a minute, we may actually have been getting our Christianity itself somewhat wrong because we've been imagining the wrong goal to the process.

If Christians would truly study the Scriptures, they would see both the theology and the history addressing us in our historical moment, and saying, let's get the theology right, he said. Maybe this would really help with getting the church itself back on track.

Modern Western culture, according to Wright, has become increasingly Epicurean.

He explained: Its an ancient philosophy, which is that the gods, if they exist, are a long way away. They don't get involved in our world or we don't get involved in their world. So the best thing to do is let the world run itself and make itself. And if you want to pray towards this God, then fine, but don't expect very much from it. That's, that's Epicureanism in a nutshell.

He pointed out that Epicureanism has infected contemporary Western thought in ways that often we don't realize because it's the air we breathe.

Christians have done their best in the last 200 years to find a way of dealing with that, but often by appealing to Plato who said that we have souls that really belong in the upstairs world and that we want to get back there as soon as we can, Wright said. The frustrating thing to me as a historian and a theologian is that actually that's not how the early Christians saw things.

On its own, the simplistic love God, love people mantra popular among Western Christians is problematic, according to Wright, as it raises questions about which god you are worshiping, how its supposed to work, and who these people were supposed to be loving?

In the New Testament when Jesus says the two great commandments are love God and love your neighbor as yourself, this is not to the exclusion of the early Christian belief that with Jesus, the kingdom of God is actually arriving on earth as in Heaven, he clarified. But most people today in our world simply want to reduce this to an ethic: Here's what I'm supposed to do and then it'll be all right.

This book is trying to make people realize that the early Christians were not just a religious movement, they were an everything movement, he explained. This was a whole new way of being human. Of course, loving God and loving your neighbor; that's fine, that's in there. But it needs the structure, the scaffolding, the surround support system of all the other things which we get at through the historical study and theological analysis.

Still, Wright said hes optimistic about the future of Christianity, as he believes people are searching for something and growing through and past the sterility of post-modernity.

Its one of the reasons our political world is so confused. People are hoping if only they vote this way or support that policy, maybe that will be the way to utopia, he said. There is a lot of confusion.

He also challenged Western Christians to lay aside their arrogance, pointing out that most Christians in the world today are not Westerners and do not speak English as their mother tongue.

Christianity is flourishing in sub-Saharan Africa, in Southeast Asia, in Latin America, in all sorts of ways, Wright pointed out. And I think we in the West need to not say, Oh well they're a bit behind and they need to catch up with us. We need to say, Maybe it's we who've gone a bit over the hill and we need to be reminded of where the action really is.

I hope and pray that that will be the effect that this book and the study of the New Testament that goes with it will have on people."

See the original post here:

NT Wright on misconceptions about Heaven, the early Christians, and combating biblical illiteracy - Christian Post

In 2020, doomsday scenarios are legion. Bruce Munro talks to preppers of various stripes about getting ready for the end of the world as we know it.

He is a respectable professional who lives in the South Island. But he is stockpiling silver and gold against what he says is an inevitable, global, economic meltdown.

She is a successful New Zealand businesswoman who also heads up Survival Movement New Zealand. She is calling on the Government to stockpile enough food and fuel to buffer the country against risks ranging from droughts and war to meteors and solar flares.

He is an ordinary dad looking to shift permanently from Australia to New Zealand with his daughter. He has done the calculations. He has looked at the safest options. He wants to be living in Mosgiel when the world goes pear-shaped sometime after 2028.

Take your pick.

No, seriously, how would you most like, or most fear, the world as we know it to end?

Whatever your doomsday flavour - economic, political, natural, environmental, military, technological, social, climatic, extraterrestrial - there is someone who will tell you it is inevitable, imminent, inescapable ... and that you should be preparing for it.

Not that they are necessarily all barking mad. On Sunday it was announced the Doomsday Clock - set up in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to signal the proximity of nuclear, climate and other global catastrophe - had moved 20 seconds forward. It now sits at 100 seconds to midnight. The closest ever.

No wonder. The warning signs of a dozen different Armageddons lurking on the horizon are difficult to ignore.

Or how about the shaky global financial system? Around the world, private debt continues to balloon. New Zealand is right up there. Household debt levels, at 93% of GDP, are among the highest in the world. Bubbles are also appearing in housing markets, bond markets and stock markets worldwide.

I see bubbles everywhere,warns Yale Prof Robert Shiller, who has a Nobel Prize in economics. Prof Shiller predicted both the 2000 stock market crash and the 2007 United States housing market crash.

Last time, the banks were considered too big to be allowed to fail. But there are many who say the underlying problems that led to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) were plastered over by printing money rather than reigning in debt. As far back as 2010, the International Monetary Fund said a tax on financial activities was needed to pay for the next GFC. But its warnings have not been heeded. Could the next international pecuniary calamity, perhaps just around the corner, mean our whole monetary system keels over, taking with it governments, businesses, law and order?

Then, there is, of course, the gathering climate crisis.

The world is warming. The worlds oceans, which absorb 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases, are warming at a rate equivalent to five nuclear bombs of heat every second, day and night, 365 days a year.

Extreme weather events are increasing. Globally, since 1980, floods and various water events have quadrupled, while other climate events such as extreme temperatures, droughts and forest fires have more than doubled, the European Academies' Science Advisory Council says.

Close to home, Australian bush fires, piggy-backing off the worst drought in decades and record-breaking air temperatures, have scorched 18.6 million hectares and could keep burning for months.

It fits predictions of life in a climate-changed future. Scientists warn that beyond a global temperature rise of 2degC the impacts of climate breakdown will likely become catastrophic and irreversible.

Add to the horrendous list the increasing risk of nuclear warfare, an expected major earthquake on the Alpine Fault, the possibility of super volcanoes, the potential for synthetic viruses to be unleashed as bioweapons ... and it is hard to avoid the feeling the end is nigh. Or, at least, the end of life as we have known it.

SO, how best to prepare?

What are those who see the end fast-approaching in their rear vision mirrors doing to ready themselves?

What can be learnt from them?

If you do not live in a temperate, antipodean paradise at the bottom of the world, then the doomsday preppers clear message is - move there. Or at least buy yourself a bolt hole there and have a private jet capable of flying non-stop from the US to New Zealand fuelled and waiting for the apocalypse to kick off.

Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal, has bought a multi-million dollar chunk of land on the edge of Lake Wanaka. Thiel has cited The Sovereign Individual, a roadmap to power and riches in a post-democratic future, as the book he is most influenced by. He has also called New Zealand a utopia.

He is not the only one.

Speaking of New Zealand as a favoured refuge in the event of a cataclysm, billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman told the New Yorker that saying youre buying a house in New Zealand is kind of a wink, wink, say no more.

It has been reported that five Silicon Valley executives co-own an escape jet, a Gulfstream G550, capable of reaching New Zealand without refuelling.

There are also unsubstantiated claims that up to 35 underground survival bunkers have been shipped to New Zealand by super-rich Americans scared by whatever end-game scenario they see on the horizon.

They might be on to something, according to Prof Nick Wilson.

The Wellington-based University of Otago academic says the risk of human extinction has never been higher. His particular focus is near-extinction events such as a northern hemisphere nuclear war (1.4% annual risk) or a global pandemic caused by a synthetic virus escaping a laboratory.

In such scenarios, Prof Wilson says the resources, development and relative isolation of New Zealand and Australia make them the worlds top two candidates for island refuges - hideaways where a remnant of humanity could hole-up until the dust settled and then begin rebuilding.

He has called on the Government of New Zealand to do three things; collaborate with Australia in planning for a near-extinction event, invest in resiliency and rehearse rapidly sealing the nations borders.

Also urging the Government to act is Lisa Er, founder of Lisas Hummus, which she sold in 2006, and head of Survival Movement New Zealand. In the face of risks ranging from drought to war, Er wants the Government to set up a disaster think tank and to stockpile and maintain a three month supply of food and fuel for the whole country.

Sarah Stuart-Black, who is executive director for the National Emergency Management Agency, says they are all over it, sort of.

The country has extensive and agile arrangements in place across agencies that would allow it to deal with a range of events, both foreseen and unforeseen.

This includes working with other countries to respond to emerging threats.

In regards to building resilience nationwide, a National Disaster Resilience Strategy was launched last year.

New Zealand has reasonable stocks of medical, food and other supplies. But individuals and families should make sure they have their own supplies, the nations emergency planner says. There is no mention of fuel.

Asked whether any members of Cabinet had a secret bunker or a panic room, Stuart-Black says Meeting facilities for Ministers are available within the Parliamentary precinct in Wellington. I would note that arrangements are also in place to move Parliament to Auckland on a temporary basis should Wellington become severely impacted by an earthquake.

It is best to ask Customs NZ about border closure rehearsals, she advises.

Customs NZ responds that bits of the border, including sea and air ports, are closed during regular national security exercises. But the country has never tried shutting down the entire border at one time - an action that would require Cabinet-level sanction - and so no-one knows how quickly it can be done.

Bottom line, despite uncertainties New Zealand is a better place than most to ride out a global meltdown.

But once here, where to live and how to prepare?

Hoard silver. And gold. That is the advice of a Dunedin man in the education sector who does not want to be identified.

I dont want to appear like a nutter, he says.

He is not anticipating the collapse of society. The world will keep turning. But he insists there is a financial adjustment coming that will be big enough to cause our paper money-based monetary system to keel over.

All those bills have to be repaid. But when the financial house of cards starts to fall, individuals and banks will be caught a long way short, he says.

I can already see cracks appearing.

Silver and gold, however, hold their value. In fact, their worth climbs every time the financial markets get spooked and soars when it crashes.

So, he has bought gold, silver coins, and silver bars. He owns five, 1kg bars of silver, worth $50,000 each.

When it does go awry, he is going to use his hoard to invest in property and companies.

Someone told him youre going to be king of the rats when it all falls down.

Better to be a king than a rat, he replied.

A different apocalyptic vision floats in the mind of Greg Cromack. An Australian-born New Zealand data programmer, Cromack is alarmed by projections of life in a climate crisis world.

A widower, he describes himself as a scared parent who worries about the future of his daughter.

Im a deep adaptation prepper, Cromack explains.

Were doing too little, too late to respond to climate change. Were going to have a hard time of it.

Cromack has decided Australia will be hit too hard. He plans to move permanently to New Zealand. But not to the North Island - that will be too chaotic. Nor to Canterbury - too dry. Nor the West Coast - too many storms.

Ticking all his climate change survivor boxes, however, is Otago. Specifically, Mosgiel.

From his research, a population of 3000 to 5000 individuals is ideal when things go pear-shaped. It will be a big enough community to be sustainably self-sufficient in food, energy and other basics such as healthcare.

Were going to have to respond to this on a community level.

Cromack does not believe we will have to wait long to see he is sadly correct.

People will be able to keep on lying to themselves that life is going great - I give us eight years ... That will be the point when everyone realises, thats it.

Cromack is friendly and voluble, especially compared with self-confessed hardcore doomsday preppers; the type that foresee a world gone not just ugly but nasty. They keep their heads low.

One, a Rambo-type individual who lives on the West Coast, tells a Dunedin-based intermediary he does not want to talk to a journalist. Another, who lives north of Wellington, does not want to detail his preparations but is happy to provide tips on how to prepare.

Put earthquakes, heatwaves, financial collapses or bioweapons to one side, however, and it becomes clear that the differences between how people believe the world as we know it will end are less important than actually preparing for it.

A message arrives from the Wellington doomsday prepper who is writing his top 10 tips.

Im sticking to the basics of prepping, he writes.

Im avoiding [listing] underground bunkers filled with enough gear to supply a small regional war.

Focus on how you'd suggest preparing for whichever armageddon you consider most likely, he is requested.

If you prep for one, you prep for the other, he replies.

Continued here:

Coronavirus: Could it be the start of a global disaster? - Otago Daily Times

By Doug Cantwell dcantwell@taosnews.com

Teams from Taos Charter School and Taos Integrated School of the Arts took fourth- and fifth-place honors, respectively, at the state-level "Future City" competition held in Albuquerque Jan. 11.

Future City starts with a question: How can we make the world a better place? To answer it, teams of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders imagine, research, design and build cities of the future that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability issue.

The 2019-2020 theme was "Clean Water: Tap Into Tomorrow." Teams chose a threat to their city's water supply and designed a resilient system to maintain a reliable supply of clean drinking water.

The teams had to complete five deliverables: a virtual city design, using the SimCity computer platform; a 1,500-word essay about their city and its problem; a scale model of their city built from recycled materials; a project plan that explains their solution; and a presentation to judges at the state or regional competition.

Among the three Taos Charter School teams, Emma Atkinson, Violet Hay and Karissa Winters took fourth place overall out of 43 participating teams for their entry, "Vera City."

TISA students opted to work together as a single team of 10, with guidance from sponsoring teacher Sally Greywolf. Their entry, "Utopia," took fifth-place honors.

"It's an amazing program," said Greywolf. "We often have our kids work in groups of three, but collaborating with that many others presented a whole new challenge. It's when the struggles occurred, though - that's when the growth started to happen."

Greywolf pitched the idea to Avery Blair and Stephanie Daffron at Taos Academy. No one there had ever competed, but Blair and Daffron got three smaller teams organized.

"Students worked on these projects for months," said Blair, "and their hard work truly paid off. We were thrilled at how well the teams did during multiple judging and presentation sessions."

Judah Daffron, Aaliyah Padilla, Joaquin Rose and Lucy Schreiber won awards for "Best Green Architecture" and "Best Presentation" with their city, "Umakyat." The team also won honorable mention.

Theo Blaustein, Scarlett Brunson and Saul Rotman won the "Best Accessibility" award for their city, "New Jefferson."

According to Future City's website, it's one of the nation's leading engineering education programs. It has received national recognition and acclaim for its role in encouraging middle-schoolers to develop an interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Editor's note: Emma Atkinson is the daughter of Shane Atkinson, advertising manager at the Taos News.

Read more:

Two Taos teams place in top five at 'Future City' competition - taosnews

Thoughtful readers and critics are the greatest gift to any writer, and so I am grateful to George Weigel, Wilfred McClay, and David Novak for reading my essay on the meaning of Jerusalem with their usual mix of moral clarity and civilizational depth.

All four of us seem to agree that the modern West faces a serious moral and cultural crisis. Social pathologies like broken families, low birthrates, opioid deaths, and sky-rocketing rates of depression are getting worse. And we also seem to agree that charting our way out of this crisis demands a genuine religious awakening. We need to recover, restore, and renew the Judeo-Christian moral vision, which will require, as George Weigel puts it, a long, difficult, countercultural campaign of cultural resistance for the sake of cultural renewal.

The progressive idea that dethroning the God of the Hebrew Bible would improve human life is now showing itself to be a tragic lie. Weigel, once again, speaks well for all of us: if the true God is exiled, false godsbeginning with the false god of the imperial autonomous Selfwill be worshipped, with the grave public effects of deracination and decadence memorably on display in the case of a certain golden calf. And today, as Weigel describes, the golden calf rules again, as evidenced by

the irrationality of the proponents of abortion-on-demand and the related LGBTQ agenda, leading to the kind of unhinged behavior seen during the confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the degradation of our universities by a virulent identity politics that mocks any serious notion of academic freedom (or reason, for that matter); the grim determination of secularists to drive not just religiously-grounded argument but also religiously-informed philosophical and legal argument out of public life and public service; and the capture of the Democratic party by fevered activists who regard the God of the Bible as the enemy of human maturation and liberation.

The question is: how did the Western world get here? And does Jerusalem, both the real living city and the ancient civilizational symbol, offer us the best light unto the nations to chart our way backand thus our way forwardtoward a civilization that preserves and perpetuates the redemptive truths of being human?

In trying to sort out how we got here, it helps to know something about the history and spirit of Western religion, politics, and culture, and very few people know as much or think as deeply about these matters as Wilfred McClay.

In his response, McClay questions my claim that Jerusalemboth the living city and the civilizational symbolshould be seen as the singular moral capital of the West. He admits that there are not any other good candidates for the title, but then he reminds us that the West is really a product of two civilizational spirits: the spirit of Jerusalem and the spirit of Athens, of Hebraism and Hellenism, of piety toward the God of the Ten Commandments and the rational human quest to understand the natural world by our own lights and on its own terms.

McClay fully recognizes that such dichotomiesilluminated by thinkers like Matthew Arnold and Leo Straussinevitably simplify the complexity of both Jerusalem and Athens.

For what is the defining spirit of Athens: the belief in an ordered and knowable universe, or the tragic sense of natures irrationality and mans Sisyphean confrontation with a world that inevitably belittles and destroys even its greatest heroes? Is it Aristotle, or is it Aeschylus?

And what is the defining spirit of Jerusalem: a world of Thou Shalt Nots that try to restrain the sinful animal that is man, or a world of creative men and women created in the divine image, who build beautiful temples of gold as monuments of gratitude to the Creator?

But let me go McClay even one better: to understand the modern West, I think one needs to have in mind a triad of spirits: Jerusalem and Athens, to be sure, but also the modern spirit of Edinburgh, home of the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment, now transformed (or mutated) into the postmodern spirit of Silicon Valley.

The prophets of Silicon Valley are not the direct descendants of the Athenians (or of Adam Smith and Joseph Blacks Edinburgh). They seek not simply to understand the world through human reason but to re-make it, to fix it, to bend it to human will. They believe that mans technological creativity and resulting technological power is the new and only liberator: liberating human beings from physical illness and psychic pain, and empowering every individual to choose ones destiny (or lifestyle) without natural or religious constraints and without any inherited obligations from ones ancestors. In Silicon Valley and its offshoots around the world, scientism and bohemianism come together. This is the spirit that defines our age.

And we should give the spirit of Silicon Valley its due. For the new science often serves a truly moral purpose: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, connecting the distant. The pediatric oncologist (not to mention the generations of researchers who armed him with the power to heal): he is a genuine moral hero.

But the problem is that the underlying theology (or anti-theology) of the new scientism is flawed: it assumes there is no God and thus that man is on his own. This anti-theology can lead to bitterness and depression: why do we live in such a painful world? It can lead to heroic resistance: we will find a cure. And it can lead to moral nihilism: without God, we are free to do anything we want. In a world of human paina world without a creator God Who actually cares about us and about what we dothe primary thing that matters is reducing pain, which means both enabling all to live as they please without guilt and preempting (through euthanasia and abortion, especially the abortion of handicapped children in the womb and diminished elders in nursing homes) those fragile human lives that would be marked forever by pain or lack of will.

Well, now we live in the world remade by this anti-biblical theology. And for all its successes, we are seeing the dark side: better medicine but also broken homes, better neonatal care but also cultural suicide driven by low birthrates, marvelous high-tech laboratories devoted to uncovering the truths of nature but also universities that marginalize or shut down those who wonder if the postmodern project has led us astray.

If my argument is that Jerusalem isor should bethe moral capital of the West, it is because I believe that the spirit of Athens and the spirit of Silicon Valley are both flawed. Athens, you might say, possessed realism without hope: it did not flinch from the dark realities of human nature, and it celebrated the heroic confrontation with mankinds seemingly tragic, mortal, cyclical fate. Silicon Valley, by contrast, possesses hope without realism: it dreams of a human world without limits, without suffering, and without shame, and it arms human beings with remarkable machines, pills, and digital pleasures that try to hold hunger, death, and anomie at bay.

Jerusalem, instead, offers human beings realism and hope: a truthful account of the wayward possibilities of men and women and thus the need to live under commandment, but also an understanding that human beings are creative because they themselves were created in Gods image and that human history has a beginning, a middle, and a providential end: from Egypt to the Promised Land, with twists and turns, with epochs of darkness and inexplicable personal tragedies, but ultimately a redemptive story if we heed the God Who started it and Who directs it, and Who takes pleasure in free human beings playing their revealed parts.

McClay puts this beautifully in his response to my essay, when he rightly observes that thinkers like Arnold and Strauss, great as they are, fail to capture the full dimensions of Hebraism in particular: its ebullience, its creative energy, its reverence for the law, its electric sense of living in a world suffused with moral significance.

I cannot imagine a better description of the true spirit of Jerusalem.

And that brings us to the real Jerusalem: the ancient Jewish capital of the modern Jewish state. While sympathetic to my overall argument, McClay also wonders whether the reality of modern Jerusalem lives up to the moral weight I have given it.

Arent there, he asks, deep divides between secular and Israeli Jews themselves over the meaning of the Jewish state and the nature of being Jewish? Doesnt modern Israel also possess its own anti-biblical forces, and isnt it also filled with people whose spiritual model is more the postmodernism of Silicon Valley than the ancient Hebraism of Jerusalem? As McClay puts it: Does the actually existing Jerusalem correspond to the political vision of Davidic restoration, and is there not a high degree of standard Western liberal-democratic pluralism underwriting the Israeli political order as it actually exists?

McClays challenge is welcome, and it is one I fully acknowledged in my original essay:

Like any normal nation, Israel has its share of corruption, imperfection, fecklessness, and internal division. No one is claiming that modern Israel isor ever will bea moral utopia. But the eternal ethos of Jerusalem once again shapes Jewish communities throughout the holy land. In their calendar, language, holidays, and landscape, Israeli Jews live in direct continuity with their biblical past. And alone among the advanced nations of the West, Israel has a high birthrate: a deep sign of cultural vitality connecting past, present, and future.

But I would go even farther, as I also did in my essay: the restoration of the Jewish people as a nation in their ancestral homeland, after centuries of dispersion, assimilation, assault, and near-annihilation: reason cannot explain this. Israel is the best evidence that God exists. And while many of the great Zionist founders believed more in the Jewish people than in God, more in the human greatness of the Bible than the sanctity of its commandments, they, too, were summoned to play some role in a story that they could notand we cannotfully understand.

The question that matters today is: will the Jews of Jerusalem shine brightly enough? Will modern Israel look to its own Hebraic past for moral and political guidance, as a figure like Menachem Begin did when he rose to power? Will the modern Zionist project of courageous nationalism and the rabbinic project of sanctified normalcy weave together into an exceptional nation-state that resists, imperfectly but differently, the deracination and decadence of post-modernitys golden calves?

Modern Israel is not yet the Davidic restoration. The waiting continues, and the mystery of the biblical human drama persists. God only knows what new twists and turns lie ahead, or whether some ultimate confrontation with Israels annihilationist enemies (like Iran) can be avoided. But as Weigel observes in his response, Jerusalems rising generation leaves one hopeful. Something has changed:

In my previous visits to Eric Cohens iconic city . . . discussions of religion and democracy tended to be polite but rather sterile; it appeared that the only available Jewish interlocutors for a Catholic thinker like me were open-minded and courteous but thoroughly and irretrievably secular. In 2015, by contrast, I experienced a new determination among younger Israeli scholars . . . to develop a biblically informed and philosophically sophisticated theory of Israeli democracy in particular and of the Western democratic project in general.

Here was a discussion with a future, I thought. Here was a first glimpse into the possibility of a Jewish and Israeli theory of democracy that, rather than imagining that serious reflection on the democratic present and future can only begin with John Locke, incorporated into its thinking the Hebraic vision of human nature and human relationships. The evolution of such a theory in Israel would certainly reinforce parallel work by Jews and Christians throughout the rest of the West.

The crisis of the West is real, but the message of Jerusalem is that all is not lost. Far from it. But religious Jews and Christiansand anyone seeking to live in truth who now recognizes that postmodern culture is a big lieneed to stop surrendering to the kingdom of secular humanism gone mad.

David Novak says it well in his own response: Once faithful Jews and faithful Christians submit their faith to the greater authority of any secularist universalism, becoming not only in the world but of it, they will sooner or later be done-in by that world. The alternative is moral courage: to defend our biblical inheritance, to build and rebuild our families and schools and cities in the divine image, to look again to Jerusalem as our lodestar and guide.

See the article here:

The Consequences of a World without Constraints - Mosaic