strand

Life in 2025 feels like a series of reboots. The shiny future we were all promised – one of flying cars which ‘Back to the Future 2’ predicted would arrive in 2015 – never did arrive. Thus, nostalgia has become the vehicle for our escapism – the means by which we may live out a fantasy of some cultural and political present that never came into being.

As the world tilts into economic freefall, social exhaustion and climate crisis, we start to reach backwards. Not because the past was better, but because the future feels like it’s been cancelled.

While our pricey seminars become places of roaring anti-capitalist sentiments, we go back to our over-priced London houses/flats/student accommodations and spasmodically embrace our phones - a device harbouring capitalist vices. Micro-trends, endless advertisements, and dystopian feeds that broadcast genocide and celebrity or influencer opulence simultaneously.