ファッションブランド「Gucci」創設100周年を記念し、ベルギー発の雑誌『A Magazine』がキュレーションした "カレンダー" マガジン。リング製本とミシン加工を組み合わせた全132ページからなる本書は、壁にかけてカレンダーとしても、また雑誌として読んでも楽しめるハイブリッドなエディトリアルデザインが特徴的な1冊に仕上がっている。12か月間に渡って12人のアーティストが自らの思想と技巧を通じて未来を占い、2022年とそれ以降の時の流れを様々な文化的視点から探求している。

カレンダーの言語を視覚的に探求すべくそのデザインを担当したのは、パリに拠点を置くデザインスタジオ「Ohlman Consorti」。カレンダーの各ページには、日付を表す数字が放射状あるいは格子状に配置され、誕生石と誕生花に加え各月の名前が英語、イタリア語、フランス語、ギリシャ語、スペイン語、ロシア語、中国語、チェロキー語、韓国語、アラビア語、ヘブライ語、ヒンディー語の12言語で書かれている。

マニフェスト：
「FUTURA PROXIMA」とは未来を垣間見せるもの。いうならば、可能性の地図 - 興味をそそる可能性を問う次元分裂図形的な疑問符である。そのページにおいては、ユートピアとディストピアという2つの極限的な状態が消滅し、その代わりに近くて遠い未来を多面的に探索した12の作品が登場する。美学、建築、文学、生物学、哲学を使って解析した人のかたちの観念的な相互作用を探求しつつ、物理的な現実とデジタルな現実の両方に向けた独創的な構造物からなる非直線的なループを提示している。

JANUARY: エマヌエーレ・コッチャ（Emanuele Coccia / イタリア）
FEBRUARY: サイモン・デニー（Simon Denny / ニュージーランド）
MARCH: ナツコ・ウチノ（Natsuko Uchino / 日本）
APRIL: ベン・エリオット（Ben Elliot / フランス）
MAY: アリス・ポッツ（Alice Potts / イギリス)
JUNE: Aurèce Vettier（フランス）
JULY: ジェレミー・ショー（Jeremy Shaw / カナダ）
AUGUST: ケイティ・パターソン（Katie Paterson / イギリス）
SEPTEMBER: カーライン・ジェイコブス＆トーマス・デ・クレイヴァ（Carlijn Jacobs & Thomas de Kluyver / オランダ、オーストラリア）
OCTOBER: アリア・ディーン（Aria Dean / アメリカ）
NOVEMBER: Manger Manger（フランス）
DECEMBER: Cui Jie（中国）

A Magazine Curated By
：
『A Magazine Curated By』は、毎号ファッションデザイナーをゲストキュレーターとして招き、その世界観を探求するユニークなコンセプトマガジン。編集部とのコラボレーションにより、ゲストキュレーターが革新的である独自のコンテンツを通して、文化的な価値観や美学を表現する。各号では、人々と情熱、物語、感情、好奇心、自然さ、真正性という、デザイナーの理念を讃えている。ベルギー初のファッション雑誌を誇る本誌は、今最も影響を与えているファッションデザイナーの視点を親密に繰り広げられており、国際的に高い評価を得てきた。

記事：デザイナーとともに革新を続ける『A Magazine Curated By』編集長ダン・サーリーの雑誌作り（THE FASHION POST）

A PUBLISHER presents FUTURA PROXIMA curated for Gucci — a spiral-bound, perforated ‘calendar’ magazine conceived on the occasion of Gucci’s centennial anniversary. This 132-page hybrid editorial publication, designed to be hung on the wall or read like a magazine, includes a cross-cultural exploration of the passage of time for the year 2022 and beyond. FUTURA PROXIMA is brought to life over 12 months with 12 artists divining the future through their thinking and their craft.

Designed by Paris-based design studio Ohlman Consorti, FUTURA PROXIMA includes a deep graphic study into the language of calendars, including radial and numeric variants that detail birthstones, flowers, and each month written in a selection of 12 languages: English, Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Cherokee, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew and Hindi.

MANIFESTO:
“FUTURA PROXIMA is a glimpse at tomorrow — a map of maybes, and a fractal question mark of intriguing possibilities. The extremes of utopias and dystopias dissolve in its pages, replaced by 12 polyvalent excursions into the near distant future. Exploring the speculative interactions of our human form parsed with aesthetics and architecture, literature, biology and philosophy, it presents a non-linear loop of creative constructs for our physical and digital realities alike.”

ARTIST NOTES:

JANUARY: Emanuele Coccia (Italy)
FUTURA PROXIMA is initiated by the philosopher and author Emanuele Cocciain in a new essay entitled The Sky Within Each of Us. Serving as a poignant reminder that light and earthly bodies are molecularly intertwined, Coccia reveals the eternal reincarnations of the celestial source. Light navigates through time and space to reach us, but we must remember that it is also found within us.

FEBRUARY: Simon Denny (New Zealand)
Resident 1 (2020) is an original commission conceived by Simon Denny. A quilted rugby jersey assembled from vintage Gucci scarves, inspired by styles worn by Queen Elizabeth II, the artist deconstructs remnants of the British Crown’s influence on contemporary society. Its hybrid jersey-puffer design alludes to the popularity of activewear among business people, and reflects the British Royal Family’s enduring influence on global capitalism and the colonial networks in which the finance sector operates today.
simondenny.net

MARCH: Natsuko Uchino (Japan)
Squid Theory is a recent body of work by sculptor and ceramicist Natsuko Uchino, consisting of bronze sculptures of hypothetical currency photographed by French photographer Marvin Leuvrey. The miniature works are carved in cuttlebone before being cast in bronze, in an alchemical process that evokes the relationship between humanity and labour. The fictional construct of Uchino’s monies points to a techno-futurist vision, complemented here by an excerpt from The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986) by Ursula K. Le Guin which posits technology as a cultural facilitator.
galerieallen.com

APRIL: Ben Elliot (France)
Smartsuit (2021) is a speculative garment and NFT video designed by the digital artist Ben Elliott, envisioning the future of clothing the human body. Minimalist, utilitarian and streamlined for daily use, Smartsuit acts as a true bioskin, fulfilling the body’s needs in a society driven by technology. A projection of future fashion and wearable technology in the next century, this smartsuit prototype is inspired by the form of the Gucci tracksuit, worn by Ben Elliot’s personal 3D avatar. The hybrid logo shifts between the Gucci square ‘G’ monogram and the artist’s own initials - an overlapping ‘BE’ form that is also applied in the metaverse as his own cryptocurrency symbol.
benelliot.io

Editor’s Note: The Smartsuit NFT and video will be released on the occasion of the Paris launch of FUTURA PROXIMA on December 14th, 2021.

MAY: Alice Potts (United Kingdom)
Artist Alice Potts transforms a Gucci ‘Aria’ Horsebit 1955 handbag into a crystalline sculpture in Borsa In Sudore (2021). Grown from her own sweat, the crystals act as a second skin on the sculpture, mimicking its biological function on the human body. Borsa In Sudore brings an archival piece from 1955 into the modern age of health and wellness, crystallising and uniting two separate eras of history. The encapsulation draws attention to this subconscious bodily phenomenon and contemplates what sweat could become.
alicepotts.com

JUNE: Aurèce Vettier (France)
Starlight Dance is a series of artworks by artist collective Aurèce Vettier generated with artificial intelligence. Created through GAN (Generative Adversarial Network Stylegan2 Algorithm), the project is based on photographs and fragrance formulas of the Gucci The Alchemist’s Garden perfume bottles and the interior of Galerie Gismondi, Paris. In addition, the ‘title-poems’ are generated with GPT-3 Algorithm (OPENAI). The series examines the very fabric of our reality and questions the role of humankind within this imminent sphere of synthetic materiality. The artist’s oeuvre, nudging at the precipice of human obsolescence, explores the fragile relationship between nature, man and machine.
aurecevettier.com

JULY: Jeremy Shaw (Canada)
Featured midway through PROXIMA FUTURA are an exclusive portfolio of stills from Jeremy Shaw’s immersive 7-channel video installation Phase Shifting Index, 2020. Inspired by the artist’s research into spirituality and neuroscience, the project offers a glimpse into the 22nd century unfolded through choreography of codified subcultures, ranging from meditative to ecstatic. A synchronised catharsis of somatic and psychedelic rapture is recorded on archaic formats of film, through which Shaw alters reality to narrate disparate culture and transcendence.
jeremyshaw.net

Editor’s Note: Phase Shifting Index is currently on show at KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, through February 20th, 2022. Future locations include the Museum of New and Old Art, Hobart, Australia, from June 10th to October 17th, 2022.

AUGUST: Katie Paterson (United Kingdom)
Conceived by Katie Paterson in the summer of 2014, The Future Library is a hundred-year initiative with one thousand trees planted in Nordmarka, a forest outside of Oslo, Norway. In a hundred years time, these trees will supply the printing paper for a special anthology of books. Every year, one renowned writer will contribute a text, held in confidence, until the year 2114 when the manuscripts will be published. Writers to date include Margaret Atwood (2014), David Mitchell (2015), Sjón (2016), Elif Shafak (2017), Han Kang (2018), Karl Ove Knausgård (2019), Ocean Vuong (2020) and Tsitsi Dangarembga (2021).
katiepaterson.org

SEPTEMBER: Carlijn Jacobs & Thomas de Kluyver (The Netherlands, Australia)
Proxima Centauri is a new visual portfolio by photographer Carlijn Jacobs and Gucci Global Make-up Artist Thomas de Kluyver, taking its name from the nearest known star to our sun. The duo rely on skin and body to express the future of beauty. Styled by Imruh Asha, the series of portraits push the limits of the Gucci Beauty collection to new heights, creating a perception that is more alien than human, playing with antiquated tendencies of conformity and the vivid power of individuality.
carlijnjacobs.com & thomasdekluyver.com

OCTOBER: Aria Dean (United States of America)
Life As Scene is a selection of works and quotations by artist, curator and critic Aria Dean, who engages with virtuality and our behavioral propensity within such matrices. Through installation, sculpture and written language, Life As Scene establishes the virtual sphere as open territory for digital colonisation. The terrain, however, still remains separate from reality and its danger lies in the frequent convolution between what is real and what is an illusion. Dean poetically uncovers this new frontier in physical form as it becomes increasingly blurred.

NOVEMBER: Manger Manger (France)
‘Élan Vital’, a term coined by the French philosopher Henri Bergson at the turn of the 20th century, refers to a hypothetical explanation for the evolution of organisms internally and intuitively brought about by consciousness. In Marie Méon AKA Manger Manger’s interpretation of this theme, the food artist manipulates organisms from the plant kingdom to synthesise an arrangement of edible colours and textures in the forms of powders, jellies and terrines featuring fungi, algae and organic compounds such as charcoal, spirulina, collagen and turmeric. Photographed in a food laboratory in Paris, her creations are presented on elements of the Gucci Décor collection including ‘Herbarium’ ceramic plates produced by Richard Ginori for Gucci, lionhead silverware, and ornate silver-plated serving cloches.
manger-manger.com

DECEMBER: Cui Jie (China)
Concluding FUTURA PROXIMA is Interscapes, a selection of paintings by the painter and sculptor Cui Jie. Her distinct style of artwork is rooted in Metabolism, a post-war Japanese Modernist architectural movement that fuses mankind’s advances in construction with nature’s adaptive and transient structures. Cityscapes and skyscrapers painted by the artist examine the grandiosity of the anthropocene within a metropolitan setting, through her spectacular interpretation of existing buildings spanning cities as far afield as Singapore, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Yaoundé and Belgrade. The future, presented by Cui, is an open question, but ever-connected through the collective progress of global civilisation.
antenna-space.com