About

Futura Basura is an experimental playground for graphic creation where we create our own content and collaborate with visual creators from all over the world. Futura Basura is a platform open to new experiences in the field of visual culture that explores the limits of the poster as an experimental medium, and the result of an initial and continuous reflection on the transient nature of existence, the value of objects in the context of consumerism and the differences between copy and original.

FUTURABASURA.COM

Futura Basura is both an artistic project and a business challenge. Our aim is to build our own model and to make it sustainable. Selling our work is important, but we also need to do it our way, at our own pace and in collaboration with visual artists, designers and illustrators whose proposals excite us. This approach might seem risky from a commercial point of view, but it’s something that really drives us. More than a shop, we’re a space for ideas and artistic creation where enjoying the process is more important than the result.

At Futura Basura curatorial work is a huge part of what we do, and though it’s great to work with artists who are popular, sell well and have thousands of followers, these aren’t the only things that matter to us. We’re interested in selecting work we connect with in some special way, or working with artists who are easy to engage with and think like us.

THE ORIGIN OF FUTURA BASURA

This concept, which revolves around trash, came to us while walking the streets of Florence one day. We found piles of documents of great visual significance next to some refuse bins which belonged to an architect’s studio that had existed in the street in the 1980s, including drawings, blueprints, letters, stamps, files and official documents. It was a real eye-opener that made us start thinking about the pitiful end of all these beautiful objects so full of potential. They were created to fulfil certain purposes that, decades later, were no longer relevant; so, what was their value? Pretty much zero from a practical point of view, but graphically and visually they were potentially inspirational.

Here at Futura Basura we create objects that might end up in the same situation. They’ll all serve their purpose, mean something, but they might get left behind or disappear at some point, maybe next week or in 150 years, it’s hard to say. What matters is that while on display they convey their value to anyone who sees them, enabling new stories to emerge from such encounters.

WHY FUTURA BASURA

Everything ends up being thrown away, whether deliberately or not. Objects take up space in the world and, as well as being subject to the passage of time, they depend on how people treat them. We live with them, they are part of our lives and, as a result, imbued with a sense of survival similar to our own.

We understand that a poster (a print on paper) has a shorter life span than other art objects such as sculptures and original paintings, objects we care for and protect because of tradition and because of their uniqueness. If something unique is removed, it’s lost forever; but this isn’t the case for a copy or reproduction, which can be replaced. Futura Basura highlights the fragile nature of the object: this is the sensitivity that underpins our way of working.