Salon Evening: Secrecy, Sound, and the Edge of Experience

## Salon Evening: Secrecy, Sound, and the Edge of Experience

Join us for an evening of stories and sound that explore life at the margins—from growing up in a city erased from maps to navigating one of music’s most intense and misunderstood genres.
This salon brings together lived experience and cultural exploration, pairing an intimate personal account with a guided journey through metal music as an artistic and emotional landscape.

🍷 Free (Cheap) wine but BYOB anything else you may want
Schedule:
🛠 6:30–7:00pm – Setup (volunteers welcome!)
👋 7:00–7:30pm – Mingling
🧠 7:30–8:30pm – Born Behind Closed Borders — Life Inside a Secret City with Maiia Utkina
⏸ 8:30–8:45pm – Intermission
🎶 8:45–9:45pm – Dark Sublimity — A Guided Tour Through the World of Metal with Luc Perkins
🥂 9:45–10:30pm – Socializing

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### Talk 1: Born Behind Closed Borders — Life Inside a Secret City

with Maiia Utkina
What does childhood look like when your hometown officially doesn’t exist?
Born in one of Russia’s secret cities—closed to outsiders and absent from maps—Maiia shares what everyday life was like growing up behind sealed borders. This talk offers a personal, ground-level view of secrecy not as an abstraction, but as a lived condition: how it shaped community, imagination, trust, and one’s understanding of the outside world.
Rather than focusing on geopolitics, this is a human story about how environments of control and invisibility quietly shape perspective, identity, and what feels “normal” long before you realize alternatives exist.

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### Talk 2: Dark Sublimity — A Guided Tour Through the World of Metal

with Luc Perkins
Heavy. Death. Power. Black. Thrash. Doom. Sludge. Stoner.
Metal’s landscape is vast, expressive, and often intimidating—even to curious listeners. In this fast-moving, audio-visual tour, Luc offers an accessible entry point into the genre’s many forms, tracing how metal channels intensity, emotion, rebellion, and beauty through sound.
This is not a lecture for metalheads only, but a cultural map for anyone who loves music and wants to better understand why metal exists, what it expresses, and why it matters.
No promises you’ll leave converted—but no serious music lover should be without this knowledge. 🤘🏼🎸

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### What to Expect

• 🧠 Two engaging, accessible talks
• 🍷 A relaxed salon atmosphere
• 🥂 Time to mingle before and after
• 🌍 A curious, international crowd

Everyone is welcome—whether you’re interested in hidden histories, cultural worlds, music, or simply enjoy thoughtful conversation in good company.
Come for the stories. Stay for the sound—and the conversation.