North Star Voices: Brutal Utopias

Join Dr. Morgan Adamson for a poetic exploration of architecture, utopia, and resistance to urban renewal in the 1970s and its aftermath in Minneapolis' Cedar Riverside neighborhood.

In 1968 architect Ralph Rapson was charged with designing one of the largest urban renewal projects in US history, a utopia constructed entirely of concrete. The plan faced one problem: the neighborhood they wanted to demolish was home to a counterculture with its own utopian vision. Tracing a remarkable story of resistance to urban renewal and its aftermath, Brutal Utopias uses archival material, participant interviews, and motion graphics to understand the dreams of modernity—and their violence—at the moment they were starting to crumble. It reflects on these dreams by engaging the current residents of Rapson’s brutalist buildings, the East African refugee community, as participants in the filmmaking process. In revisiting this history, Brutal Utopias grapples with questions we face today: how do we design cities and for whom?

The free event will include a film screening, talk, and Q&A session with the filmmaker. Registration is recommended, but not required. If you're unable to attend, the event is also accessible virtually via Zoom: https://mnhs-org.zoom.us/j/83050938107.

RSVP here: https://www3.mnhs.org/events/29617562774

Dr. Morgan Adamson works at the intersections of non-fiction film and cultural studies. Grounded in archival research and collaboration, her practice animates hidden histories and infrastructures as a form of social engagement situated in place. Her recent award-winning short, Brutal Utopias (2023), is an essay on the struggle to define social utopia through architecture. She is the author of a book on political cinema, Enduring Images: A Future History of New Left Cinema, in addition to numerous scholarly and popular essays. She is currently Professor and Chair of Media and Cultural Studies at Macalester College.

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