In collaboration with The Combine’s 2024 retrofuturistic theme, the Recess Market sets out to define what Retrofuturism means to us. This reminds me of an exercise we did in grade school: draw what you think 2020 will look like. Many of us drew flying cars, spaceships, being one with zero gravity. The Jetsons-esque type of life with robots and chrome and plants in air-tight capsules.
A quick pinterest/google search on retrofuturism shows us exactly what that is:
It’s like a 60s perspective of the future. It makes me wonder why or how any of this is functional. I’m bogged down by systems — what’s the use in flying cars? if we let everyone go anywhere we want, how chaotic would that be?
I also wonder how we would live in this kind of world with organisms. Where are all the plants? Why do we imagine a life disconnected from life itself?
As we discover retrofuturism, we are constantly drawn back to ourselves to define what it means to intersect between past (retro) and future (future).