About

Futura Basura was created as an experimental and playful alternative to a more commercial creative work. This delocalised graphic laboratory was born in 2019, becoming also a publishing house and online shop later on in 2020. The initiative aimed to find a place where create its own content and explore different forms of collaboration between visual artists from all over the world, both online and offline. Futura Basura is a platform for new experiences in the field of visual culture. It explores the limits of the poster as one of the most appealing formats at an experimental level. It is also the result of an initial and recurrent reflection on the ephemeral nature of existence and the value of objects in consumer society.

The concept around the rubbish came up one day while walking around the streets of Florence. Next to some containers we discovered a lot of documents of great visual value that were waiting for the arrival of the rubbish men. They belonged to an architecture studio from the 80s that must have been based in that street. There were drawings, plans, correspondence, stamps, dossiers, official documents, etc. At that magical moment many questions arise about the fatal destiny of those beautiful objects that occupied a space in the world. They were generated to fulfil some objectives and decades later they had lost their original usefulness and, therefore, their value. It seems clear that from a functional point of view, their value was practically nil, but from a graphic and visual perspective they were very usable because of their inspiring capacity. We generate objects that will meet the same fate. They will all fulfil the objective for which they were created, which goes beyond the merely commercial, so that their life cycle will be a success, and they can die in peace in any move, next year or in 100 years’ time, nobody knows. But the real success will be that, during that indeterminate period of time, they will be able to transmit their immaterial value to anyone who meets them and that new ideas will emerge from that meeting.

For a designer or an illustrator, the poster is one of the preferred formats because of the freedom it offers to experiment, and because it is one of the most attractive formats due to its dimensions. Its ephemeral nature is another of its advantages. Unlike the work of art that is conceived to last over time, the poster is not subject to that obligation, it is another type of object, with a very different consumption and scope. The last gesture, throwing it away, does not imply too much of a burden either. Someone else will come and take its place.