A Revised Manifesto of Futurism

Elian Stefa

We have been up all night, my friends and I, in front of screens as bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on lush astroturf, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and hammering on our keyboards with demented code.

Our hearts filled with an immense pride at finding ourselves quite grounded whilst far-seeing, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, reaching for an army of inspiring stars encamped in their virtual bivouacs. Across from the make-shift engineers in the spontaneous workshops of forgotten industrial palaces, alone with the bright spirits which rage in the belly of metal foundries, alongside the global network of technophiles beating their wings against fake walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker buses that went leaping by, surrounded by lights of villages celebrating their festivals, which the canal suddenly seems to connect, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, floats towards the sea of collective creativity.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint call for help of the old canal and the structures of forgotten palaces by it, suddenly the mechanised tools roared beneath our windows.

‘First let’s organise and think!’ we said. ‘How we can surpass the current banality and hopelessness that the geo-political and global economic panorama presents, in design and not only; in our corner of the world and not only; through small but powerful individual revolutions of thought which become beacons of inspiration in an ever-increasing suppression of creativity and income generation.’

To fight the bombardment on ideals and escape this post-truth reality, emphasis must be urgently placed on self-empowerment and actualisation. We deeply felt that the antidote for the current marginalisation of the soul and the diminishing opportunities presented to us was through a philosophy of minding and creating our own business, critically distancing from distracting theatrical news, and pushing for individual self-sustenance through creativity, solidarity, and real vision.

Nothing equals the splendour of the dynamic human spirit which refuses to submit, even to itself. So let us leave “good sense” behind like a hideous husk and let us continue to hurl ourselves into the immense mouth and breast of the world, together! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the possible!’

We find ourselves repeating the same words of those who came before in the spiral pendulum of history, but with a starkly different tone.