Futuress (Web)

A queer intersectional feminist online magazine and community space for design politics, Futuress strives to be a home for the histories, people, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
The editors understand design as an expansive social and political practice, examining the objects, systems, and structures that shape our lived realities.
Futuress contains the sections: „Stories“, „Workshops“, „Events“ and „Community“.

• The section „Stories“ contains a.o. the category „Feminist Findings“. 27 contributions were published in this category so far. Historical journals of women’s movements from all over the world are also presented here (Web).
• The new section „Living Archives“ went online on 8 March 2022. There are currently 4 contributions here (Web).

Futuress‘ History
Futuress was originally conceived for a series of exhibitions in 2019, as a speculative project collecting design books that were “yet to be written.” Anyone could upload ideas for missing design stories onto the beta website, which would then materialize as floating books on the screen.
Then, in the summer of 2020, Futuress was reimagined by Brazilian curator and design researcher Nina Paim, Swiss journalist and editor Eliot C. Gisel, and British-German writer and editor Madeleine Morley. During uncertain and unstable times, the three came together to envision Futuress as a space for togetherness, generosity, resistance, growth, and social purpose.
Futuress was officially launched in November 2020 as a hybrid between an online magazine and a community space. In the months that followed, we have grown into a vibrant platform for design politics, with active members dispersed through five continents. Since November 2021, Futuress is run by the Basel based non-profit depatriarchise design (Web).

Pitch & Submit
The editors are keen to hear about your projects and ongoing research. At Futuress, design is as much artifacts and aesthetics as it is, for instance, the grammatical structure of a language, the infrastructure of a border, or the systems underpinning how food is circulated. The editors are therefore looking for stories on the politics of design and the design of politics, on marginalized visual and political histories, on design’s role in activist causes, and on the impact of social structures and processes on our personal experiences of the world. Read more … (Web)

About the project
At Futuress, the model is two-fold: The editors run online workshops on design research, and they publish original reporting and critical writing. The digital community space seeks to foster transnational networks of solidarity, and the editors’re excited to publish the research of workshop participants in our magazine. They feature nuanced, rigorous, and accessible stories centered around an expanded notion of design—and in this, they’re committed to the power of storytelling to convey untold histories and underrepresented perspectives to a broad audience. Their mission is to hold power accountable, give space to those who are seldomly represented, and make more just futures imaginable.
Currently based in Switzerland, Futuress also casts a critical eye towards its own locality and design traditions. The project was dreamt up in the summer of 2020 by Brazilian curator and design researcher Nina Paim, Swiss journalist and editor Corin Gisel, and British-German writer and editor Madeleine Morley. During uncertain and unstable times, they came together to imagine a space for togetherness, generosity, resistance, growth, social purpose, and emotional support.