Category Archives: New Utopia

Electricity is crackling in the sci-fi ether as anticipation mounts for the premiere of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" coming to Paramount Plus on May 5.

This "Star Trek: Discovery spinoff harkens back to the classic "planet of the week" format seen in the original "Star Trek" series from the 1960s and chronicles the intrepid adventures Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and Spock (Ethan Peck) as they go galaxy-hopping in search of exotic new destinations and alien civilizations.

To build upon the geeky revelry surrounding the launch of "Strange New Worlds," this bold new space opera series will receive its first official tie-in novel this fall from New York Times bestselling author John Jackson Miller and Gallery Press.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - The High Country" finds Captain Pike and the valiant Enterprise crew marooned on a planet where their advanced 23rd-century tech becomes useless.

You can check out our Star Trek streaming guide to see where to watch "Star Trek: Discovery" online to catch up on the characters you'll meet in "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."

Miller, a seasoned "Trek" novelist, penned "Star Trek: Picard: Rogue Elements," "Star Trek: Discovery: Die Standing," and the 2019 "Star Trek: Discovery" tie-in novel "The Enterprise War," which explained just where the Enterprise was located while the Klingon-Federation War erupted in "Discoverys" debut season. "The High Country" will showcase the entire current Enterprise crew as depicted in Strange New Worlds, including Cadet Nyota Uhura.

"When I was asked to write the first 'Strange New Worlds' novel, I knew I wanted to tell a story that offered Captain Pike and his companions a real challenge," Miller tells Space.com. "They're called upon to understand a place thats both bizarre and deadly and they have to do it without their technology, drawing instead upon their own talents and knowledge. Theyre completely immersed in the mystery of this place, and its my goal that readers of 'The High Country' will be, too!"

Here's the official synopsis from Gallery Press:

"When an experimental shuttlecraft fails, Captain Christopher Pike suspects a mechanical malfunctiononly to discover the very principles on which Starfleet bases its technology have simply stopped functioning. He and his crewmates are forced to abandon ship in a dangerous maneuver that scatters their party across the strangest new world they've ever encountered.

"First Officer Una finds herself fighting to survive an untamed wilderness where dangers lurk at every turn. Young cadet Nyota Uhura struggles in a volcanic wasteland where things are not as they seem. Science Officer Spock is missing altogether. And Pike gets the chance to fulfill a childhood dream: to live the life of a cowboy in a world where the tools of the 23rd century are of no use.

"Yet even in the saddle, Pike is still very much a starship captain, with all the responsibilities that entails. Setting out to find his crewmates, he encounters a surprising face from his pastand discovers that one people's utopia might be someone else's purgatory. He must lead an exodusor risk a calamity of galactic proportions that even Starship Enterprise is powerless to stop

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debuts exclusively on Paramount Plus starting on May 5, with John Jackson Millers "The High Country" tie-in novel arriving on Nov. 8, 2022.

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'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' scores its 1st tie-in book from veteran Trek novelist - Space.com

No one in Crush, a new queer teen romantic comedy that began streaming on Hulu on Friday, is in the closet. Why would they be? Homophobia is the last thing on anyones mind. In fact, there are so many queer teens at this fictional high schoolWiccan lesbians, horse gays, non-binary influencers, gateway gays, skater girl bisexuals, just to name a fewthat the protagonists straight BFF (played by Tyler Alvarez) aggressively making out with his girlfriend feels out of place. Straight people? Kissing? At this school? Sure, Jan.

It means there are plenty of options for Rowan Blanchards character, a high school senior lesbian named Paige. Paige, an aspiring artist, only has eyes for her longtime crush, Gabriela (Isabella Ferreira). But, with a little bit of rom-com finagling, shell soon fall for Gabbys reserved, aloof sister, AJ (Moana star Aulii Cravalho). The lack of angst over anyones sexuality paves the way for the kind of straight-forward romance usually reserved for heterosexual rom-coms: Girl meets girl, girl initially dislikes girl, girl gets to know girl, girl falls in love. There are no coming-out scenes, because, as Paiges character puts in the movies first 10 minutes, Ive been out for a really long time. Im extremely gay.

Had I watched Crush when I was a senior high school11 years ago, in rural Michiganit would have read as an utter and complete fantasy. There was one kid at school who was out, and everyone knew his name. He was the gay one, after all. I myself was aware of my feelings for girlsId been hopelessly in love with one since I was 13but kept them tightly hidden away. It was my deepest, darkest secret, that I might be gay, kept at bay by my crushes on boys and Robert Pattinson. No one had said the word bisexual to me yet, so my thoughts were consumed by daily questions: Am I gay? Could I be gay? Please, God, dont let me be gay. OK, phew, I have a crush on a boy. I must not be gay.

Being out in high school didnt feel like an option. Teachers half-heartedly told kids off for using gay as an insult, but that hardly stopped them from saying it. One of my own friends deemed a book I checked out of the school libraryThe Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson, an innocent YA novel about two girls falling in lovegross. (I stormed off with tears in my eyes. In retrospect, I was not subtle.) Watching Paige confidently consider her queer options in Crush, I was hit with a mix of joy, jealousy, and disbelief. Paiges high school is a beautiful, uncomplicated queer utopia, unburdened by the weight of homophobia. Is it really so simple, just a decade later, for Gen Z to be gay?

According to Cravalho, the 21-year-old Hawaiian actor who, like her character in Crush, is openly bi, the answer is: yes. Though, she also caveats that she was fortunate to grow up in a progressive environment. I had a lot of queer friends, she told Decider in a previous interview. I kissed a lot of my friends, Ill be honest. I also went to school in Hawaii, so yeah my school was very diverse, and pretty darn inclusive, which Im really grateful for. Cravalho added that she hopes Crush can help reach those who arent yet on board with the blas attitude toward sexuality that Paige and her friends have. Because suddenly you see someone whos living this way, and you realize, Oh people are gay. Okay! And again, its not a character trait. Its just something that exists. Because thats really how it is. Teens are gay!

Would it have been a balm for me, a 17-year-old closeted bisexual, to see a high school where the no-nonsense track coach (a hilarious Aasif Mandvi) casually describes the student body as 60 percent queer, as if its nothing? Maybe. Or maybe it would have cracked open my fissure of loneliness further, seeing teenagers on my TV who were free in a way that, at the time, felt impossible for me. I think, perhaps, I would have felt more seen by a show like Heartstopper, Netflixs recent British coming-of-age series that features a character furiously Googling am I gay, crying while taking BuzzFeed sexuality spectrum quizzes, and watching YouTube videos about what it means to be bisexual.

But perhaps thats the jealously speaking. I cant deny theres something beautiful and escapist about watching Crush now; disappearing into a world where prejudice doesnt exist. Its a tempting fantasy, and one I desperately want to believe. Maybe the next generation, surrounded by queer characters in their media, simply wont have to agonize over their sexuality at all. Wouldnt that be wonderful?

Real life is always more complex than Hollywood makes it seem, of course. Crush is no exception. Queer teens in Texaswhere the governor recently attempted to outlaw gender-affirming medical care for transgender childrensurely feel the threat of homophobia all too acutely. And I suspect my old high school in rural Michigan isnt covered in rainbow flags just yet, either. But who says movies always need to reflect reality? This is a fluffy romantic comedy, after all. The high school in Crush might not be real for teens across America just yet, but maybe its closer than we think. It never hurts to dream big.

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Hulus Crush Is The Gen Z Queer Utopia I Never Got To Have - Decider

Visiting New Zealand can feel like stepping through a time portal at the best of times. But that impression has taken on an entirely different meaning in the age of Covid. It has been shut off for the best part of two years, as part of the strict Covid elimination strategy of Fortress New Zealand.

Kiwi expats such as myself watched with a mix of horror and envy as friends and family back home packed rugby stadiums and sweated all over each other at concerts. Meanwhile we were locked down in our adoptive countries in my case Dubai and Canada recoiling at the thought of a strangers touch.

That Covid-free utopia, however, ceased to exist in late 2021, when the Delta variant crept into the community and paved the way for Omicron to run rampant. But because this was the first time NZ had faced a large-scale outbreak of any strain, this was the first time much of the country experienced lockdowns and the long-term working-from-home life the rest of the world had become accustomed to in 2020.

Two years behind the rest of the world, New Zealands Covid era has only just begun. Luckily a fast-tracked vaccination drive means more than 95 per cent of the total population is now inoculated. As a result the fortress walls have come down, and this week marks the return of international tourists.

Fiordland National Park, South Island

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The costly and prohibitive managed isolation system was scrapped in mid-March for Kiwis, and I, like many fellow expats, could finally buy extortionately priced flights home. I spent about 1,200 on a return flight with stops in Vancouver and Sydney, so last month I flew over New Zealand to get to New Zealand.

Sitting at the boarding gate at Vancouver International Airport, conversations were about how long since wed all been home. An elderly woman spoke excitedly about meeting a grandchild for the first time. A young man was looking forward to seeing his parents for the first time in three years. Someone, naturally, mentioned our unofficial national dish, fish and chips. (In my view best enjoyed by the seaside in the French-inspired town of Akaroa, at Akaroa Fish & Chips, or at Coopers Catch in Kaikoura).

In Sydney, during a layover in a deserted international terminal, people began chanting a real meat pie! (our other national dish involving meat not fruit) on the air bridge. That flight was the most emotional Id ever been on.

The harbour at Akaroa

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The only things that were markedly different at Auckland International Airport were the cries of kia ora muffled by masks, a flash new e-gate system (greetings, 21st century!) and packs of rapid antigen tests handed out at security. Those tests, admittedly, seemed mostly for show. While my husband received intermittent emails from the Ministry of Health asking for his results which are self-declared and dont require photographic evidence I received none.

Back home in Christchurch, the contrast between New Zealand and the rest of the world became more apparent. People were more paranoid than I thought it possible for laid-back Kiwis to be.

It gave me a sense of dj vu this was exactly how I felt back in May 2020, when Dubai was coming out of one of the worlds strictest lockdowns and people were learning how to interact with one another again.

Cathedral Square, Christchurch

ALAMY

Mandatory facemask wearing is still a relatively new phenomenon, introduced in August last year to coincide with the initial Delta outbreak. As the rest of the world largely has given up pretending to wear theirs properly, my dad still grumbles about having to tell strangers to cover their damn nose.

While vaccine mandates have been thrown out of the window, indoor and outdoor capacity limits were still in place. The daily Covid case counts and death toll still made the news and a friend made sure we met for coffee outside just in case. Covid still dominated conversations in a way it doesnt back in Canada. All of this was a jarring reminder that New Zealands fight against Covid-19 is still in its infancy.

A week into my stay, on April 13, the country moved to its orange traffic light setting, which scrapped mandatory facemasks in certain locations and capacity restrictions, but it was rare to see people without them in a supermarket.

The most amazing things to do in New Zealand When is the best time to visit New Zealand?

This abundance of caution is a hangover from the rallying cry team of five million, coined by Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, to get everyone behind the elimination of Covid. That shared sense of duty lives on.

I wondered on my visit if there would be any antipathy towards me an outsider but thankfully I didnt experience that at all. Instead, in the absence of international tourism, I got to explore my own country with renewed vigour.

There was no queue for Fergburger in Queenstown, the wildly popular burger chain that is almost more famous than the ski resort itself, and small roadside lookouts werent heaving with tour buses.

One thing, though, that took the shine off was the vastly increased cost of everything. Petrol is NZ$2.89 (about 1.50) per litre. Paying for groceries made me wince. Housing prices are absurd with ramshackle 100-year-old villas fetching 500,000 or, depending on where you live, even more. The price of a flat white a favourite Kiwi measure of inflation is regularly over 2.60, compared with 2 in 2019. Word of warning: if youre planning on visiting, start saving.

I came away feeling more aware than ever of the advantages of being from an island at the bottom of the Pacific, able to seal itself off completely if the situation demands it. But Im also acutely aware of its pitfalls, depending on which side of the fortress walls you find yourself on.

@Ash_Stewart_

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Fortress New Zealand is finally open and it's not cheap - The Times

Amid the scandal, farce and disarray enveloping Boris Johnsons government, one sudden and glaring absence seems to have been rather overlooked. Levelling up was endlessly talked about between 2019 and early 2022. It was hailed as a daring Tory stride into Labour territory, honoured with a renamed ministry commanded by Michael Gove, and somewhat unconvincingly explained in the 330-page white paper that was finally published in February.

Back then, Johnson insisted that levelling up remained his defining mission. But only three months on, ministers barely use the term. It received only the most glancing mention at the tail end of Rishi Sunaks spring statement, and was entirely absent from the pre-Easter government update that Johnson gave to the House of Commons about a fortnight ago, assuring MPs of his regrets about Partygate and his determination to get on with the job, whatever that is. Though the idea is not quite dead, it now seems to have lost so much urgency and substance that it is quickly withering away.

Much of the explanation seems to centre on Sunak and the Treasury, and a battle with Gove that was settled in the chancellors favour. There is also talk in Westminster of other ministers and MPs from the newly empowered Tory right successfully pushing away an agenda that embodied the kind of economic interventionism they are always dead against. For all the mockery thrown at Gove and his new department, some of his ideas and analyses are sound enough, but without money and political support, that does not count for very much at all. Worse still, a prime minister who was never really interested in detail and consistency is now mired in panic and distraction: small wonder that his governments supposed big crusade has shrivelled into a mere afterthought.

Developments that highlight that story are now piling up. From the start, there have been clear signs that even small levelling-up measures have not really been aimed at the places that need them: earlier this year, researchers at the University of West London found that 61% of Englands most deprived areas have not been allocated any money from the 4.8bn levelling-up fund. Two weeks ago, it was revealed that the government scheme designed to replace targeted funding from the EU will leave the regions of England almost 80m a year worse off. The proposed high-speed trainline from Birmingham to Leeds and a new rail link between the latter city and Manchester were cancelled late last year; now, we learn that of 79 areas of England that have applied for money to improve much-needed local bus services, only 34 will receive financial help. The Liverpool City region had asked for 667m, but will get a piffling 12m; although South Yorkshire requested 474m, it is not going to receive a penny.

In the Queens speech due on 10 May, there will reportedly be a new levelling-up and regeneration bill, though no one seems to be expecting much from it. The largely vague missions set out in the white paper pegged to a deadline of 2030, and about regional imbalances in jobs, investment, homeownership and life expectancy are expected to be given somewhat ambiguous legal force, and there are likely to be plans for some new devolution based around mayors. Advance briefings have also promised new laws whereby landlords will be forced to let out retail units that have been vacant for longer than six months: not a bad idea, but hardly indicative of the thorough local renewal that Johnson and his colleagues once hinted at. Beyond small-scale regeneration projects, the most people can seemingly hope for is an anticlimactic utopia of warm words, pop-up shops and new local figureheads who will try to make the most of limited powers, while Whitehall and Westminster retain the whip hand.

Meanwhile, one of our most glaring imbalances of power still cries out for serious attention. With a new financial year freshly started and this weeks council elections looming, Johnson recently told the Commons that everywhere you look at a Labour administration, it is a bankrupt shambles. This is completely untrue (indeed, the first of the small handful of councils to have so far declared themselves broke was Tory-run Northamptonshire, while other Conservative administrations have come close), and also vivid proof that the government will still not take responsibility for the endless local crises caused by 12 years of cuts in funding from Whitehall. After more than 10 years of savings, Tory-run Stoke-on-Trent is now in the midst of 10m of cuts. In Leeds, the figure is 16m; Liverpool is trying to plug a gap of 24.5m. Mention levelling up to most council leaders including Tories and you will usually be met with either snorts of derision or a quiet kind of bafflement.

The rise and fall of levelling up is really a story about Conservatism, Brexit and an increasingly inescapable tension between the people Johnson and his colleagues now claim to speak for and their own ideological tastes. Brexit re-energised their party, brought the prime minister to power, and then won him the support of traditional Labour voters who sincerely believed he might follow through on the boosterism he had voiced before the referendum 350m extra a week on the NHS and all that and change the places where they live after years of decline. But in Westminster, our departure from the EU also emboldened the kind of Tory neo-Thatcherites who saw Brexit as a chance to reaffirm the small-state, low-spending credo they were never going to give up.

A more substantial leader than Johnson may have tried to resolve that tension by facing such people down. But the small-staters won, and any halfway convincing ideas about levelling up were among the casualties. For plenty of Conservative MPs, that is presumably a cause for celebration. But in the disadvantaged parts of the West Midlands, post-industrial Lancashire, the old Derbyshire coalfield and the rest of the so-called red wall, it will probably amount to one less reason to be interested in politics and another boost for the same festering disaffection that led to Brexit. As much as any switching between parties, turnout in this weeks elections will be a useful indicator of how people in such places are starting to feel. Such are the perils of politicians such as the prime minister: cynically raising peoples hopes and then leaving them hanging is deeply dangerous behaviour, which often has consequences for the whole of politics.

Yet there is one glimmer of hope. Even if the government discards its supposed flagship agenda, huge questions about regional inequality, deindustrialisation and where power lies are at least now being talked about. In the right hands, they could be answered with ideas about new green jobs, radically improved transport, thoroughgoing devolution, the reinvention of higher education and much more besides. For the Tories, levelling up may go the way of David Camerons short-lived big society talked up one day and blithely binned the next. Labour, by contrast, could seize the initiative, if only it could banish its current air of smallness and caution, and realise what Johnsons retreat means: a huge, potentially historic opportunity.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Politics Weekly UK LiveJoin John Harris, Lisa Nandy MP, Gaby Hinsliff and Gavin Barwell in a livestreamed event discussing Partygate, the upcoming local elections, the cost of living crisis and more, on Tuesday 3 May, 8pm BST. Book tickets here

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Riven by scandal and division, the Tories have all but abandoned levelling up - The Guardian

The following is from Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim by Brandon K. Gauthier. Before Evil is a narrative, non-fiction work that analyzes the early lives of heinous tyrants through stories about family, education, rebellion, and tragedy. Below we see Vladimir Lenins older brother, Sasha a straight-A student-turned-terrorist hanged for trying to kill Russias Tsar Alexander III. Seventeen-year-old Lenin (Volodia) an extraordinary student with no prior interest in politics struggles to make sense of his brothers death. The journey that follows leads to young Lenins own ideological radicalizationand, ultimately, the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 and the creation of the worlds first communist dictatorship in Russia. Gauthier will discuss his new book at the Concord Public Library on May 10 at 6 p.m. and at the Hopkinton Town Library on May 12 at 7 p.m. Please see BeforeEvil.com for more information.

Then it was time to die. The guards came to get Sasha [Lenins big brother] early in the morning on May 8, 1887. He was taken into the courtyard of his island prison, walking to the gallows just as the sun rose on a beautiful spring morning, dawn offering one last pleasure. The priest put a cross before Sasha. He kissed it. Co-conspirator Petr shoved it away. Up the stairs and across the scaffold went the men. Brusque brevity marked the executions execution. Bodies swung.

Maria [Lenins mother] was on her way to visit Anna [Lenins older sister] when she bought a newspaper. The printed word, blunt as ever, reported Sashas death. Devastation.

A thousand miles away, Volodia [seventeen-year-old Lenin] was finishing high school. Three days before Sashas execution, he wrote a paper on a play by Pushkin. On the day in question, he aced a geometry final. Soon newspapers reported Sashas hanging. Local authorities put up posters publicizing it. Still, Volodia continued his finals, conquering trigonometry, then breezing unflappably through translations of Thucydides.

But the execution was on his mind. The night before one such test, a fellow pupil who had not yet heard about Sasha found Volodia sitting on a bench outside. Are you OK? the classmate asked. Why arent you studying? Silence. Sighs. Volodia tried to speak, but nothing came out. The sympathetic student remarked on the nourishing warmth and stillness of the May evening. They hanged my brother, said Volodia. The peer had no response. And the two sat quietly for a long time, before walking and parting with a handshake.

Volodia graduated number one in his class, giving the school no choice but to award him the valedictorian gold medal. Yet they denied him the honor of having his name inscribed on a plaque with prior award winners. His name would have gone next to Sashas.

Maria soon returned homefrom St. Petersburg. Trauma had frozen her hair white though at least she returned with Anna, whom authorities released under strict conditions. Maria proceeded to sell the familys house and possessions. They were moving.

Volodia had not seen any of it coming. True, his brothers interest in politics had grown markedly over the prior year. But the little brother had never felt concerned, had never dreamed of his big brother becoming a terrorist. A revolutionary cannot devote so much time to the study of worms, Volodia remembered thinking as Sasha worked tirelessly on his thesis. The why of it all eluded the younger sibling he did not comprehend how his brother could have become radicalized so quickly. Volodia could not understand until he grasped the same ideas that had inspired Sasha.

He started with the conviction that Sasha must have felt he was doing the right thing that he had to act like this, that he couldnt act in any other way. If such thinking offered solace by preserving his brothers integrity, it did not hold back Volodias immense curiosity. The determination to understand pushed him to investigate further. When a friend (who had shared an apartment with Sasha) visited, Volodia peppered him with questions. What were Sashas last months like? What had the police asked? What was his trial like? What did Sashas face look like during his testimony? What were his brothers political views exactly? He needed to know.

In the fall of 1887, Volodia went to college. The government would not allow him to attend St. Petersburg University despite his stellar academic standing. He was the sibling of a terrorist a legacy to live down, rather than live up to. Fortunately for the younger brother, a glowing letter of support from good-hearted Headmaster Kerensky (the father of the man Volodia would overthrow in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917) offered crucial assistance. Volodias mother, said the letter, would keep her extremely talented son under close supervision at university. Authorities acquiesced, allowing the younger brother to attend Imperial Kazan University, his fathers alma mater. His family followed to watch over him.

Volodia didnt last a year. Participation in a student protest in December 1887 was enough to warrant his expulsion and arrest. When a policeman took him into custody, reproaching him for the futility of his actions, Volodia paraphrased one of his brothers favorite authors (Dmitry Pisarev), and retorted sharply: The wall is rotten. One good shove and it will collapse. This was no longer Volodia talking this was Vladimir Lenin.

For that budding revolutionary, there was now no purpose to life other than achieving the total transformation of society into a socialist utopia. The aim of creating that new world for new people, of bettering the lives of men and women everywhere, was all that mattered. There was no morality outside the realization of those ends. And what is a good person? Lenin asked ruefully in exile before wincing at the nonsense of the intelligentsia about moral consciousness. Any action regardless of how extreme one might consider itwas acceptable if it helped put an end to class oppression. The stakes were a new world for mankind. No rules in the pursuit of paradise. No room for bourgeois morality. It was with this attitude that the future dictator rejected his sister Annas efforts to help feed the poor during a famine in 1892. Let them die! he argued let the deaths of the poor hasten the collapse of capitalism and the arrival of the revolution! The worse, the better!

This man emerged out of Sashas death.

Brandon K. Gauthier (@bk_gauthier) completed his doctorate in Modern History at Fordham University in New York City in 2016. He is the Director of Global Education at The Derryfield School and an Adjunct Professor of History for Fordham University. He speaks passionately, and loudly. Historical conundrums keep him up at night. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Concord. Before Evil ishis first book.

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Author Brandon Gauthier will host discussions at Concord, Hopkinton libraries - Concord Monitor

Joaqun Torres-Garca (18741949) was a roving messiah simultaneously ahead of and behind the curvea didactic, derivative pioneer who sought nothing less than to beget a common language that could transcend time and culture. He was also great with kids. Combining these qualities, the Uruguayan-born artist established a toy-making business during the interwar years, a pursuit explored earlier this year in an outstanding survey at Ortuzar Projects. Spurs to childrens imaginations on both sides of the Atlantic, his fanciful playthings were, the show argued, key to Torres-Garcas quixotic program of Universal Constructivism, a style that mingled pre-Columbian iconography with strains of the European avant-garde into a novel modernism that aspired to turn America on its head (as demonstrated in his iconic 1943 drawing Amrica invertida [Inverted America]). The movement was his second wind, and in the 1930s and 40s it swept many Latin American artists up in a gust of decolonial fervor.

Working as a schoolteacher and frescoist in Barcelona, Torres-Garca had by 1917 broken with the reactionary classicism of Catalonian Noucentisme and had finally yielded to the spirit of the new. Everything is toys and painting! the forty-three-year-old artist exclaimed in a letter to his friend, artist Rafael Barradas. Under the spell of Friedrich Frbels and Maria Montessoris progressive pedagogy, he designed his toys to be disassembled and, with interchangeable parts, put back together again. (As metaphors for a war-torn world primed for transformation, his reconfigurable constructions sit somewhere between the ill-starred idealism of the Bauhaus and the gleeful nihilism of Dada.) He handmade all his objects from wood, a material steeped in memories of his familys carpentry workshop in Montevideo: The past would always belong to Torres-Garcas future. Ever the dreamer, he called his start-up Aladdin Toys.

In 1920, the Torres-Garca family moved to Manhattan, where they lived for two cash-strapped years before returning to Europe. Despite its hardships, New York proved its own playscape: a teetering grid of verticals and horizontals and mechanized speed. The artist sketched everything (storefronts, bridges, people) and met everyone (Stuart Davis, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney). He drew the city on white overalls and wore them to a gala. He furthered such spatial experiments through his toys, fusing the collage-like geometrization of Cubism with the comic strip. These objects commanded a large white stage at the gallerya miniature carnival of zoo animals, tropical birds, automobiles, and caricatured metropolitans. Among these more than sixty feats of charisma and pictorial economy were a duck with three swappable heads, a pride of jagged lions and leopards, a wishbone-shaped giraffe, a gray-suited man whose blocky silhouette appears lifted from the Manhattan skyline, and a harlequin worthy of the Cirque Calder (which Torres-Garca attended with his son in 1928, when the family lived in Paris). Their modular, frontal aesthetic proliferated across nearby drawings and paintings, such as Formas trabadas con figura humana (Interlocked Forms with Human Figure), 1933, whose rather Lego-like configuration apotheosizes a protean New Man.

Task of childhood: to bring the new world into symbolic space, wrote critic and toy collector Walter Benjamin, to recognize the new once again. Like many modernists inspired by the ideal of the child, Torres-Garca delighted in the categorical contradictions embodied by toys, things animated by creativity and consensus, progress and ritual: universal yet deeply personal cultural ciphers that manage to sidestep distinctions between abstract and figurative art, not to mention art and nonart (transitional objects, indeed). Accordingly, the transformables Torres-Garca produced for children can be understood as totems akin to the masks, anchors, fish, suns, and other primitive pictographs that fill the irregular Mondrianesque grids of his signature canvases la Universal Constructivism, whose South American adherents yearned to revive a pure Amerindian tradition that had been disrupted by colonization. Shadowed by this nostalgic movement as well as by the current war unleashed by Russia against Ukraineeighty-eight years after Torres-Garcas fateful homecoming to Montevideo in 1934, as fascism crept across Europethis shows whimsical creatures walked a curious line between navet and disenchantment, the wide-eyed prodigies of a utopia that never stood a chance.

Zack Hatfield

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Zack Hatfield on Joaqun Torres-Garca - Artforum

It had barely been one hour since I left the confines of my flat. The sun beat heavily, and I had walked along Brixton High Street with followers of the Quran and Socialist Worker all fiercely defending their corner of the pavement, eager for a passer-by to listen. Market-sellers jostled to sell their fish and wares, alongside new-age apothecaries selling everything from incense to muscle oil. I made my way, shoulder-to-shoulder, with fellow Londoners, to the steps of the Tube.

Suddenly, I had delved deep into the rattling underbelly of London. My first experience of the London Underground was the Northern line, recently labelled as the noisiest line in London. I was travelling northbound to Stockwell, to change for the Victoria line. It seemed to groan under the shuddering weight of the capital. I was alarmed by the noise at first, but now it has almost become ritual. It was a proper introduction to the city.

I moved to Brixton in February 2022, after working in two pubs for six months in Derbyshire. Immediately, I knew Brixton was a world away from the sleepy villages of the Peak District, where I would encounter more sheep than people. In the three months I have been here, Ive walked down Electric Avenue, eaten Jamaican food at Rudies, played Squash at Brixtons monolithic recreation centre, plus much more.

READ MORE:'Forget more Tube stations, what South London really needs is Thameslink 2 linking Croydon, Lewisham, Canary Wharf and Stratford'

Im still amazed by the tube and have quickly gotten to grips with it. Im slowly feeling less like a terrified tourist, tentatively gripping the escalator with one hand and Citymapper with the other. That being said, Im convinced there is no shame in embracing the touristic aspects of London. Its full of spectacle and grandeur. Want to visit Buckingham Palace? Go for it. Want to go on a tour of Westminster and various embassies? By all means, do it.

As a Northerner, my stereotypical understanding of London was that it was busy, big and unfriendly. Only the first two of these have proved to be true. Busy, yes. Big, of course. But Ive never understood why Londoners are labelled unfriendly. In the short time I have been here, Ive seen friendliness everywhere. Train stewards are quick to point out its a nice day, and tube-drivers have cracked jokes on the Tannoy. Quotidian acts of kindness are abundant.

Thats not to portray London as some kind of utopia, though. After a busy day, some people might be tired and unsociable, glued to their phones on the tube or train home. But thats like everywhere. For now, Brixton is my home, and it has welcomed me with open arms. It might not replace the north forever, but for now it has. It has far too much to offer, and Im excited to explore it all.

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'My first experience of the Tube left me alarmed at how noisy it is' - My London

Savage released his debut album Utopia in 2021 and plans to drop his second album November 2022.

He currently has one of the biggest songs in the African continent.

Since he released it in November 2021, the title newcomer has been removed from his profile.

In the first week of the release of Confidence featuring Buju, the song was on one million streams.

Nigerian Afro Beats singer Godson Ogaga Essi (26), fondly known as Savage, has won the hearts of many South Africans.

Its my first project, but I didnt expect it to blow up and be this big in such a short space of time, he tells Drum.

It feels great having a huge song that can reach everyone across the world, he says. With all the countries he has travelled to, Savage says Cape Town is his favourite city in the world.

Cape Town is too beautiful and peaceful, he says.

It's calm and I get to have my own space to think and introspect. Johannesburg is very busy and reminds me a lot of Lagos with everyone trying to make it. In Cape Town, I have the peace to come up with new ideas and make music. Although people still recognise me in the street, it is tranquil.

Read more lReality show star Eva Modika gets Brazilian Butt Lift and another liposuction

Last year he released his first highly anticipated 10-track debut album titled Utopia with singles Adoration, reflections on hustle, lust, sensuality, and confidence. He featured Kenyan rapper Khaligraph Jones, Nigerian-born and UK-based Afropop singer Kinda Kudz, Kojo Funds, Mana Gyalis, Victory, and South African Hip-Hop heavyweight Emthembeni Emtee Ndevu.

Working with Emtee was dope, he says.

Although they never got to meet in person, they spoke on the phone and create the song virtually. We did everything through his management team. I still would love to meet up with him. We spoke over the phone and whatnot because I was traveling a lot last year because of the music, he adds.

He also features in the song Feel Like by new artist KashCPTS, who recently released the albumCape Town Radio 2.

I still want to work with more South African artists, he says.For his next project due for release in November this year, he features DJ Mpahorisa and Blxckie.

I have already worked on the song with DJ Maphorisa and Blxckie, he says.

Working with them was awesome. Maphorisa made South African jollof rice for me. He likes to cook. The energy was great. The space was good. We havent given the song a title as yet, but we will do so soon. But working with people with positive energy and vibes is what Im about, he says.

He describes his style of music as Afro-pop with afrobeats touch of Hip-Hop.

Read more lFormer Scandal actor Mbulelo bags first qualification after taking a break from acting

He started making music 12 years ago but decided to get into it as a profession in the last few years.

I come from a musical home and a creative background. I started making music about 12 years ago, I went to a school that had many creatives who did art, music, and fashion. My family has actors, singers, and artist," he says.

"I was born into showbiz and my environment influenced me. But I am the first person in my family to do it to this magnitude and become this famous. But my aunts and uncles hustle and I am grateful to have been the familys breakout star,."

He started making music while at school.

I was first in a band, and we all went to school, and everyone chose different career paths. Before deciding to make music professionally, I was hustling in the street trying to make money. I am a fashion designer; I have had my streetwear clothing line called Savage Space for about four years and its been doing well. But I decided to also venture into music, which I truly love, he adds.

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Nigerian hitmaker Savage a force to be reckoned with - News24

When Feist takes to the stage for four shows over two nights at L.A.s Shrine Auditorium this week, some burning questions may be raised. Like: Where is the stage, exactly? This experimental, very intimate. limited-run tour which, like a forthcoming album, is titled Multitudes has the smallish crowd sitting in a circle around her in a space that (seating charts confirm) is clearly not the main, massive, fixed-seat auditorium of the Shrine. Beyond that lie spoilers, which patrons may or may not already be clued into from handfuls of previous gigs Feist has done in the run-up to coming to Los Angeles. [Warning: some details of the show will be discussed in this article.]

What can be said without fear of giving too much away is that Feist has collaborated with designer Rob Sinclair of David Byrne and American Utopia fame to create a show that plays with the separation between artists and their audiences in all sorts of ways. The singer-songwriter premiered the show in 2021 in Hamburg, then took it to her native Canada, before bringing it to Denver last week, L.A. April 26-27, Seattle on April 30-May 1 and Stanford for a wrap-up stand May 5-7. After that, Feist will release the Multitudes album and most likely follow it with a more traditional show. But for anyone who appreciates artists playing with the concert form in thoughtful ways, these shows may represent some kind of Canadian-American utopia of their own.

Variety spoke with Feist (aka Leslie Feist) via telephone as she prepared to bring the show to Los Angeles, talking not just about the conceptual novelty of the production but the very personal, life-and-death themes of the songs that make up the new work.

So, how do you feel about spoilers? [She laughs.] Most fans have probably done some research and looked up reports from the other cities where youve taken the show. So how much about the nature of the show and how it proceeds are you hoping will still be a surprise for most people wholl be coming to see it in L.A., Seattle and Stanford?

Thats actually a good question. Because early on it felt like that the sleight of hand of this undertaking was to have available to us these ultimate surprises at each step, when these pieces of the puzzle slot into place, and the context shifts. It was all very subtle and felt kind of like turn-of-the-century illusionist stuff, because its all quite simple. But then, after Hamburg, those surprises werent really ours to unveil anymore. It just felt like, OK, well, all bets are off everyone knows now whats going on. [Spoiler ahead.] In fact, I just saw that one of the venues announced: Be on stage with Feist! And I was like, oh shit, OK, well, I guess its not such a surprise anymore! Honestly, I feel that the step-by-step play-by-play feels less interesting than maybe the philosophy behind it. But my manager, who produced the show with me, joked that people know what Magic Mountain is, but theyre still gonna go sit on it because its different to experience it than to know its a roller coaster. [Laughs.]

What Ive said to friends who Ive invited to come is, Look, just imagine some way that the Shrine could be used in a way that youve never experienced it. Is the show going to happen in the lobby? Is the show going to happen in the loading dock? Is the show gonna happen on the floor of the theater? I guess youll have to come and find out. Ive just been cheeky that way. No one comes in the front door. Theyre led in through either a side door or a work door or a loading dock at each of the venues, so the show essentially begins by shifting their expectations from the time they arrive. In different cities, theyd be led through quite a labyrinth, almost as if they were at some sort of Halloween haunted house or something or almost like Spinal Tap being led through the bowels of the theater, before then they come into this massive big workspace. It has the element of a scavenger hunt.

And from a video that was put up of the beginning of an earlier performance, we see some people looking a little bit confused that the show begins with you right among them, with no big intro or differentiation in stage lighting.

We had been trying to develop a show almost the same as this in pre-pandemic times. And it proved to be impossible, just because of the way the economy of touring is built upon the most people you can get in the seats, and the quickest you can get from town to town. My manager phoned me and said, This might be moment to try that thing we were trying to do, because the world is, in a way, asking a way to just dip our collective toes back in. So it allowed me to think completely in a new way and try to rewrite a lot of those fused expectations of what a gig was or what that relationship between performer and audience is. And there was also a thing where it felt like the pandemic was the great leveler. You had more in common with every single person on your block, let alone someone across the planet, than we ever had had before, in that our lives had been stopped in their tracks. And so there was this egalitarian sense that somehow it didnt feel like then or maybe ever again for me was there anything honest in this raised platform of being elevated and extra-well-lit in the dazzle of a spotlight. When you step into a spotlight, youre stepping away from your regular self into a sort of narrator self. And I guess I wanted to reveal what that movement was from a person who goes into the grocery store to buy yogurt, to a person who tells a story about a more universal underpinning of what this collective experience of life is. It sounds grand, but actually it was about chipping away any grandiosity.

Can you think of other performers whove done a similar thing?

Well, I saw Peter Gabriel play maybe 10 years ago I think it was the Us 20th anniversary tour, which was in huge hockey arenas. We universally know that when the lights go down, you start to applaud, because Oh, its about to start. But all of a sudden on the stage, this little man in the distance just wandered across the stage, and everyones like, Thats Peter Gabriel! I remember the non-grandiosity. And then he stood at the center and the mic and said, Oh, hello, hello, kind of waving to get peoples attention because he wasnt using the bells and whistles to do that. And then he said, Oh, hi, hi, Im Peter. The show is one thing, but something that I think that not many people get to see is how we get to this place to make the show youre about to see. And it starts by writing a song. I thought I might just show you what it looks like when Im working on a song with a friend and its not quite written yet. So Im going to go play some piano, and my friends gonna come play bass. And with work lights on, he sat at the piano and just started to sing a song he was in the middle of writing; he basically jammed in front of 25,000 people for five or 10 minutes. And then he went, OK, thank you, and then the show kind of seamlessly began, and all of that beautiful elegance of lights dimming and the scene began, started upon that foundation of complete honesty. And it struck me so much that he wasnt investing in the better-than-everyone-else-ness of live shows. Gabriels music had guided me through so many formative years that it was just such a lovely, honest and humble thing to see him just be a guy working on a song, exposing that and showing the underbelly of the entire thing. And the show after that was one of the spectacles of a lifetime. So I think that took root in me, how unguarded that was.

Its kind of surprising that more artists dont mess with the formula of doing a show looking out into the audience and spotlights with their backs to their band, with all the formalities that come with that. Obviously its worked for hundreds of millions of people, so maybe it shouldnt be shocking. But its always a welcome thing to see someone who messes with that even a little.

Its very collaborative in that sense that the people are very much a part of the show. When we did it last year, it was still a very locked down experience. And now, since then Coachella just happened. [Laughs.] So now Im curious how this next run of shows will feel, because the show was built in a way for that (pandemic) moment. It was sort of a gentle Hey, come back in here. Youll be safe in here, not like jumping into a freezing cold lake but sort of an easing back in. Those subtleties were quite powerful, because already with people sitting next to each other, their bodies were buzzing with self-awareness. And then to feel exposed in the light A lot of people go to a concert and just go into a beta state where theyre soaking it in, and their bodies disappear. Theyre sinking into the velvet seat; they can just take it in. But in this, theyre looking across at one another, theyre looking at me, Im looking at them Its going to be interesting to see how its affected by these new conditions. Because with shows it usually never matters what the outside conditions are you go on tour, you show up and you make a world occur on stage but this one depends so much on the people with me on the stage, and where the world is at.

When multi-media projections eventually emerge in the show, its a mixture of existing footage and live camerawork, right?

The projections are actually entirely in the room. Nothing is prerecorded. Its sort of like closing the four walls down upon us, then finally dropping the fourth wall the way at the end of a Shakespeare play the person steps into the footlights and addresses the audience. So theres a symbiotic kind of feedback loop where they are the show, but Im providing them a show, but theyre providing me a show. Its sort of radiating out in concentric circles of ever-more togetherness. Theres no conceit that were building this upon. Theres nothing thats more important than us being together in this room. This is all that were going to look at and all were going to listen to. And then when those walls drop and the shows over, we evaporate and the experience evaporates and itll never happen again. Theres something beautiful that a normal concert provides in that way, but this one even more so, since theyre the subject of the show. Ive never had more interactivity with an audience. And theres been lots of years where half the audience ends up on the stage with me anyway, just because I invite them up. Theres been experiences Ive had that have felt special over the years that I think I built this show upon times when a concert turned on its heel and became something more Bacchanalian or communal.

Rob Sinclair is a name that automatically creates some intrigue for people who know American Utopia. Is there anything hed done, whether it was that or something else, that made you think hed be a good collaborator on this?

Well, actually he built that Peter Gabriel show I talked about, which I didnt know at the time. American Utopia hadnt happened when we first began speaking with him. I cant remember anymore what I saw that felt like maybe this might be the guy to not to create something for me to climb into, but to make it with me, before designing the show kind of got stalled by it just not belonging in the world at the time, because we werent able to tour it. And then he went on and made American Utopia after that. Hes done a lot of very big productions, beautiful, massive arena shows with lights and video. And so I think for him, this was an escapist art project as well as for me.

In this new material youre premiering, youre dealing with sometimes heavy stuff about, influenced by the birth of a child and a death in the family. Do you think people will be able to take that in or sense it intuitively, when theres so much else to be thinking about with whats going on with the physical show?

Yeah, thats a good question. I cant know how people experience it. But I think Ive just reached a new era of adulthood. IWhen you experience birth and death, then that firmly plants you in the middle of (life being) book-ended by these very unavoidably, enormous, ground-shifting experiences that cant be known until you know them. I remember when I first experienced death through a grandparent that I was really close with, it just felt like a new element, like fire, water, air, and any of these things that life is built upon that you take for granted. And until I knew it, I realized I couldnt have imagined; it was just a word before. And parenthood is definitely a word that cant be understood until youre in it. So between losing my father and my daughter arriving, it was sort of a very fine razor pointed, crystallized moment in adulthood that is incredibly challenging Id already experienced my thirties, where you think, Im an adult now, but theres just some other thing that goes duh-duh-duh like the Jaws theme, and all of a sudden, everything is contextualized by grief and burden and fear and just complete loss of self. It was a couple of years of the ground shifting. I mean, of course theres joy, but its really true mirror is pain, you know? Just more and more of the pain of loss and the joy of arrival that just shows you to be on this conveyor belt of time. And so very much so, theres an arrival of a new sense of time as finite, time as precious, time as how are we going to spend it with one another?

You know, l just saw Rush being interviewed, and they were asked, when are you going to make another record? And Geddy Lee said, Well, if this last couple of years has shown us anything, its that time is not to be taken for granted. And time is a precious commodity that is invisible until its until it starts to run out. And then what becomes most important is how are we going to spend it, and with who, and what quality of relational connectedness? Thats what matters, not when were going to make a record. It was this kind of this grandpa just laying it down so clearly. Like, who cares if theres a record? What we (should) care about is who are we having breakfast with and how kind are we being to them. So yeah, the songs very much are touching into this new conveyor belt moment, and I think that the show was built to make room for those ideas.

And so I think its pretty evident that, without it being morose or anything, theres definitely room for the gravity of what everyone in their own way has experienced the last couple of years. I wanted there to be room for people to be able to maybe allow some of whats been weighing heavy on them to sort of be re-experienceable for them, and let it go, even in the theater, maybe. Who knows. But its not just me singing about my difficulties. I hope I open the space for people to feel their own.

Having just established that there are bigger questions than when an album is coming lets go ahead and ask: Is there a Multitudes album finished?

Yeah, actually just last month I recorded it. We built a studio in a house up in Northern California and we all lived and worked there for two weeks. And its built upon this show; all the same songs from the show are on the record, as well as a few others. Hopefully by the time the summer begins, the records done and well figure out when and how to put it out.

Has this experience spoiled you for touring? Do you think when the record comes out, itll be like, Oh no, I have to go do a normal tour where I stand in front of people in a dark room?

[Laughs.] I dont know. Everything has a time, and it might be that itll be fun again to stand in the old spotlight, or Ill find a new way to do that type of touring and Ill bring a little bit of this experience with me back into that other way. You know, I just saw Nick Cave in L.A., and theres nothing about his show that doesnt feel like youre in the round. Even though its that same old experience, theres a skill of a certain type of person giving you the generosity in how they play that. It was a traditional Shine show, but I was at the very back and felt like I was right in the front. Theres a way that in those shows, you can feel really close together with each other, almost like youre at church.

Read more:

Feist on How Shes Leveling the Playing Field Between Performer and Audience With Experimental Multitudes Shows - Variety

What if you could live two lives at once?

That's the premise of Ben Stiller's Apple thriller series Severance. Employees of a mysterious tech corporation undergobrain operations in which a chip is inserted and divides their work memories from their personal memories.

Once they enter the elevator of their workplace, they become the "work" version of themselves, with no memory of who they are or what they're like in their personal lives.

The show offers one interpretation of the "metaverse," a somewhat-hypothetical digital universe that parallels our everyday lives. Filmmakers and entertainment companies alike have recognized its potential as a narrative trope and as a filmmaking tool. Facebook is also dipping a toe inwith a newly renamed parent company, Meta.

In 1992, writer Neal Stephenson coined the term "metaverse" in his science fiction novel Snow Crash. Stephenson's vision was that of a sweeping virtual world existing in tandem with real life.

Since then, the concept and its definition have swelled, though most go back to Stephenson's idea as a framework.

"It's a vast virtual world, which can be interacted in by millions of users at the same time through avatars," said Wagner James Au, author of The Making of Second Life and founder of the longest-running metaverse culture blog, New World Notes.

Popular metaverse prototypes include virtual world-building platforms such as Second Life and VRChat, as well as gaming platforms Roblox and Fortnite. Roblox alone has55 million daily active users.

"It's highly immersive, it has creation tools, so that virtually any experience can be created and it's connected to the real life economy, generally through a cash-out process," Au said.

In a report by VICE, venture capitalist and angel investor Mathew Ball offers this perspective: If your phone is a computer in your pocketfrom which the internet is always accessible, then the metaverse should be thought of as always being within a computer and inside the internet.

A true metaverse one accessible by a single gateway, in which life persists even in a user's absence doesn't yet exist.

Tapestry53:52Confronting the realness of our reality

But its depiction on screen is becoming more frequent and all-encompassing, giving audiences an idea of what to expect from what experts call "the next stage of the internet."

Beyond Severance, the Amazon Prime black comedy Upload is set in a future where the deceased can pay a generous fee to live on in a metaverse-like afterlife created by a tech company. The characters choose which version of heaven they want to exist in, but it's not the utopia you'd expect.

And the 2021 film Free Guy stars Vancouver-born Ryan Reynolds as a bank teller who discovers that he lives in a metaverse-like game world, where others are at risk of being permanently deleted by the game's creator.

Past films such asReady Player One, The Matrix and Avatar (with the first of four sequels arriving this December) have mined the metaverse, starring characters who enter parallel digital universes using augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) technology.

A common trope in these properties is that they are set in dystopias. In Ready Player One, for instance, characters are plugged into a virtual world called OASIS to escape their real-life environment, which has deteriorated due to climate change and overpopulation. Why so bleak?

"Part of it is a cautionary response that so much of our life is becoming online and digital," said Au. "There's a concern that writers and filmmakers want to express, that we might lose too much of our humanity in the digitization of everything."

But the all-encompassing potential of a metaverse both good and bad has yet to be fully explored on the big and small screen, Au said.

"Every depiction of the metaverse I've seen so far only kind of touches the surface of what using the platforms are like."

Film and television have been depicting the metaverse for decades now. But the use of metaverse technologies in actual filmmaking is becoming increasingly common. Several major entertainment companies have revealed plans to develop some version of a metaverse.

Disney announced in November that it would start developing its own metaverse, which it said would blend entertainment and storytelling elements with new technologies.

Netflix has also made public its intentions to move into the virtual reality space. metaverse prototypes from the gaming industry pose a risk to traditional and streaming entertainment: in a 2019 quarterly letter to investors, Netflix wrote, "we compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO."

Epic, the gaming company behind Fortnite, announced a $1 billion US round of funding to support their vision for a metaverse.

According to one virtual reality filmmaker, users will soon be able to inhabit the worlds of their favourite films think boarding the Millennium Falcon with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo, or journeying through Middle-earth with Frodo Baggins.

With money being poured into the industry, the pressure to turn out a viable product leaves little room for filmmakers and creators to experiment.

"We don't know a lot about how to tell great stories with these capabilities," said Richard Lachman, an associate professor atat Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University)who researches the relationship between humans and technology.

"We know a lot about how to build puzzles. We know a lot about how to build exhilaration and excitement and emotion, but not necessarily great storytelling.

"That's a challenge, and one of the risks with this challenge is there's so much money being put into it now that money doesn't necessarily lead to us figuring out the art."

Oya Media Group, a Toronto digital media firm, has launched an initiative to teach young Black producers and filmmakers how to create compelling stories using metaverse technologies.

"We give them the overview of what immersive media is and how that can be applied to filmmaking, to create content for what hopefully will soon be the metaverse," said Ngardy Conteh George, a producer and co-founder of Oya Media Group.

The projects use AR (in which digital components are transposed over our real-life environment) and VR (which usually requires a headset to simulate a digital environment different from the one we see).

Metaverse platforms give grassroots creators from all backgrounds a powerful opportunity to "compete on near equal terms with the big companies and also [with] people who have more privilege to move through the traditional economy," said Au.

But with great power comes great responsibility: all of the social and financial consequences that we deal with in the real-world can be duplicated in the metaverse. You can lose all of your money in a scam, for example, or fall in love with someone only to have your heart broken by their real-life counterpart. You can also be the target of racism or bigotry.

"When we're thinking about the metaverse and the creation of these new worlds: who is creating them? And then whose viewpoint and whose gaze will be reflected in the end result?" Ngardy said.

"I think it's really important that it's inclusive and non-exclusive, and there is access for everyone to participate in positions of power, in positions of authority and decision-making, so that we're not replicating this world that we currently live in."

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A second life: Welcome to the metaverse, the next frontier in filmmaking - CBC News