21 Minus

This Saturday, I had the opportunity to go and attend 21 Minus at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  I was really excited because this was a youth event and I was going to be able to see a few of my friends.  The first thing I saw when I walked in was a boy buried in a bed of dirt.  Around him was flowers.  He asked me, " Do you want to plant one?"  Sure enough I did plant one.  It really got me excited for the rest of the event.  I began to talk to this flower man about the Teen Creative Agency (TCA) at the MCA.  It is a group of artists and thinkers under the age of 21 years old who meet weekly at the MCA to discuss, explore, and curate, contemporary art.

At 4:30, I got to watch a performance by Tim Tsang and Qadash Troutman about our relationship to technology.  It was a very interesting dance performance and explored how attached we have become to our technology.  They asked to put our phones away and just watch and experience their message.  I thought this was extremely interesting in contrast to this inquiry strand because it really tackles the question of the other side of technology.  As someone who is a huge advocate for it, it is always interesting to enrich yourself with a diverse opinion.  I really enjoyed 21 Minus, and I really respect how the MCA really let these kids take full creative control.  I loved seeing kids my age leading discussions and performances, it really was inspiring.

What I pulled from this event is the power of community.  It was so amazing to seeing kids that were all ages participating.  I really think that kids are asked to act like an adult, but treated like a kid.  This program really enables kids to pursue their opinions and their free thinking.  I didn't think a performance like this about technology would even be possible until this event.  I hope to be able to attend next year!

Prose

A couple of months ago, I attended a lecture on prose writing  at DePaul.  His name was Dr. T.R. Johnson, and he is a professor at Tulane University.  He was extremely passionate and was an amazing speaker.  He was a total rebel to the standard university education and claimed that universities cradle their students too much.

He began to talk about a consumerist culture that we live in today.  He gave a shocking fact that substance abuse of 18-24 year olds doubled between 2000 and 2010.  This idea of consumerism is parallel to universities not letting their students follow their passions through creativity and innovation.  I was shocked with these statistics and assumptions that I really went into researching prose to see if it really had this power.  The word prose comes from the Latin word meaning straightforward.  Straightforwardness it pretty much what the writing is like.  The structure of it is also the beauty of it.  It often times contains metrical structure of verse, much like poetry.  Prose is extremely famous because of the persuasiveness and beauty of it.  It has the ability to move people and inspire young and old minds alike.

I unfortunately didn't get to spend a lot of time at this event, but from what i learned I really did enjoy it.  I am hoping that I get to expand my writing style into writing prose because it really does seem like an amazing thing.  I hope to one day meet Dr. T.R Johnson and thank him for his words.