Experience the museum as a lively and immersive backdrop for diverse art practices as we bid adieu to the summer season. Featuring live musical acts Japanese Breakfast and Ought, an immersive artist project by The WasteShed, tarot readings by Damascena Healing Arts, performances by Empress Darling Shear, an interactive video installation by Nick Briz and Anna Russett, and delicious food and drink, #FutureSelf offers attendees myriad opportunities to dance, explore, engage, and define for themselves the promise of tomorrow. Prime Time: #FutureSelf takes over the MCA in the last few weeks of the exhibition I Was Raised on the Internet.

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HAPPENINGS:

Tarot

Take a moment to consider the forces shaping your future in one-on-one Tarot sessions with readers Diana Rose Harper, Sarah Luczko, Rebecca Schoenecker, and Alia Walston. Single-card quick reads and 15-minute scheduled sign-ups are available. Readings are free but tips are encouraged. Co-organized with Diana Rose Harper of Damascena Healing Arts

Emperial Chamber of Secrets

Experience transformation inside and out with Empress Darling Shear. Enjoy conversational performances representing time moving into the future, drink tea, and be styled by the Empress in the lounge throughout the night. Performances at 7:30, 8:15, and 9 pm.

The Future of Objects

Search and repurpose reusable materials provided by The WasteShed to divine your goals and set your sights.

current.tube

Float away with YouTube videos before the algorithms sort them for you in this interactive video installation by new media artists Nick Briz and Anna Russett. Throughout the evening audiences can play games based on the most commonly uploaded types of videos on the platform.

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FOOD AND DRINK
Chilled Sesame Noodles (vegan)
Charred broccoli, candied cashews, chili, and lime

Chicken Tinga Taco (gluten free)
Pico de gallo, queso fresco, and cilantro

Veggie Taco
Roasted poblano peppers, grilled squash, and blistered corn

Fried Shrimp
Served with Thai melon salad

Perfect Daiquiri
Appleton Estate V/X rum, demerara sugar, and citrus

Patrons are encouraged to bring cash to Prime Time. Credit card check out only available at select locations in the museum.

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About the Artists:

Nick Briz is an internationally recognized new media artist, educator, and organizer. His work focuses on digital culture by investigating the promises and perils of living in an increasingly digital and networked world. He is an active participant in various online communities and conversations including glitch art, net art, remix culture, digital rights, internet ecology, and digital literacy. He’s an adjunct associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the creative director of the digital agency Branger_Briz, a collective of artists, strategists, educators, and programmers specializing in conceiving and developing custom innovative digital projects for a wide range of clients. His work has been exhibited internationally at major festivals such as FILE Media Arts Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the Images Festival in Toronto, Canada, as well as major cultural institutions such as the Museum of Moving Image in New York City, El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Tate Exchange in London, among others. His work has been reviewed and discussed in international print publications and online platforms such as Neural Magazine (Bari, Italy), Rhizome.org (New York City), and Furtherfield (London) and in an array of art and design publications including VICE, Fast Company, Art Slant, and Complex.

Diana Rose Harper is a tarot reader, reiki master, teacher, bodyworker, and educator based in Chicago. Her practice centers on the concept of integrity: making life more sound, more whole, and more true through multifaceted modalities. As such, her approach to tarot is much less about fortune telling and much more about fortune making; by asking better and deeper questions, she helps her clients see their own magic and agency in creating a more satisfying life. She draws on a lifetime spent reading mythology, fairy tales, psychology, nature writing, and speculative fiction and has recently begun bringing her deepening study of astrology into her tarot readings.

Sarah Luczko is a poet, dancer, performance artist, bookstore owner, and Tarot reader. At once fully present and down to Earth, while still keeping one foot in the other world, Sarah grants her querents the power, autonomy, and focus to produce their own reading through storytelling and collaboration in working with the cards. She embraces the sideshow vaudevillian tradition of party readings and prefers to read in loud bars, outdoors, in a garden, at art openings, or anywhere away from more traditional settings. You can visit her at Space Oddities bookstore and gallery in Humboldt Park, Chicago.

Hijo Pròdigo is the sound identity of the Philadelphia-born/Chicago-based DJ Justin Ignatius Mitchell. The sound Hijo Pròdigo cultivates through their DJ work spans sub-cultural club music movements shared across the world. Experimenting with themes of dissonance, euphoria, destruction, redemption, and rebirth, Mitchell’s work serves to contribute to a sonic and physical dialogue regarding queer spirituality, communal catharsis, the folly of masculinity, and the nihilism of nightlife. Hijo Pròdigo is currently working on new ways of existing and has found a platform to access their potential in the Chicago-born FUTUREHOOD indie music label and artist collective.

Anna Russett is an online creator who creates video, photography, text, and code to share vlogs, tutorials, internet art, and social media content that encourages young women to be critical of and take part in shaping the world around them. Her work is heavily informed by her online community of young girls and their feedback, as well as her background in fine art photography, video, and new media—having received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Her passion for social media led her to join Havas Chicago, where she currently works as a creative director. Her work has been written about by Adobe, NYLON, and the Huffington Post, and included in the Rhizome Net Art Anthology. She has spoken at conferences in cities around the world including London, Warsaw, Berlin, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Russett also works as a social influencer, collaborating and consulting with brands like Capital One, Nike, and e.l.f. Cosmetics.

Rebecca Schoenecker reads Tarot under the name Laughing Eye Weeping Eye. As Laughing Eye Weeping Eye, Schoenecker channels information from the ethereal into physical form. Schoenecker also creates Tarot and Oracle decks. Rebecca’s readings and handmade decks share divinatory messages, offering guidance, insight, hope, and inspiration that explore archetypes within the collective unconscious.

Empress Darling Shear is a mixed media artist whose practice consists of fashion, movement, and therapy. Shear’s fashion career spans over seven years and includes designing original clothing lines A.Squire and Knigaroshi. Shear has styled for national and local television, working with The Green Room Agency based out of Atlanta from 2009 to 2011 and contributing to content with NBC, FOX, Bravo Network, and Turner Broadcasting Network. Shear’s dance career, focused on classical jazz and modern contemporary, spans over more than 15 years and includes work with many great choreographers such as Bubba Carr, artistic director to Cher for 12 years and counting; Rhonda Henriksen, soloist with Hubbard Street and Twyla Tharp; Tracy Vogt, former Philadanco dancer; Hinton Battle, the original Scarecrow from the Broadway production of The Wiz; and Lauri Stallings Hubbard, street soloist and founder/artistic director of gloATL.

Alia Walston is an intuitive channeler and educator, with her practice focusing primarily on tarot and astrology. The intention of her work is to help liberate us from old paradigms of victimhood, scarcity, and fear. As a reader, she provides guidance without judgement, helping people separate their feelings, emotions, and brain chemistry from truth so that they can make informed choices for themselves. Through this intention, she hopes to teach folks the tools to learn through our painful experiences into a more joyful and empowered way of living. Her healing practice centers on intuitively channeled conversations with clients in order to give them the tools to make informed choices in alignment with their soul’s purpose.

The WasteShed is a nonprofit creative reuse center and nexus for artistic fomentation located in Humboldt Park. Since 2014, The WasteShed has diverted over 33 tons of art materials away from the landfill and back into Chicago’s creative and educational communities, as well as hosting workshops, events, and art activities to lure the unwitting into unconventional and resourceful explorations of stuff.

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Tags: Alia Walston, Anna Russett, Chicago, Damascena Healing Arts, DIANA ROSE HARPER, Empress Darling Shear, Hijo Pródigo, Illinois, Japanese Breakfast, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Near North Side, Nick Briz, Ought, Prime Time: #FutureSelfPrime, Rebecca Schoenecker, Sarah Luczko, The WasteShed