THE BIG FLAT VS.
ETHNOFUTURISMS FOR A NEW DARK AGE

Okay, so Joerg Koch, Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of a self proclaimed "evolving content platform, think tank, and apparel brand" is visiting Sterling Ruby´s artists studio in LA. He is obviously amazed and inspired, so he writes in the Editorial of 34the issue of 032c, because he comes up with a four word claim in capital letters:
THE BIG FLAT NOW.

What follows are 12 theses on this new pardigm.

These 12 so called theses are a wild inedible mixture of floating thoughts, ideas, references mixed together half-cooked, they do not really make sense at first glance and maybe they do not make sense at second, third glance or ever but they are layouted in a cutting edge style manner by Jonathan Castro who by the way has done very similar looking work for Boiler Room recently. It all seems to underline the point being made: It looks and feels contemporary, arty and a bit over the edge. Perfectly suited to fuel the needs of the industry, media and professionals overwhelmed by all that stuff happening all the time. 

They love it. And they eat it directly from the hand of the caregiver. How to build a hype brand, asks the Finanical Times: Planning to launch a white hot fashion label? We asked the experts to tell us how it’s done. Then they actually leave the stage to Koch. And Koch alone. The self-proclaimed "leading digital authority on the global fashion industry" Business of Fashion publishes - guess what - an Op-Ed piece. It is called The Big Flat Now.

What else? There is an exhibition. At Ssence – an international fashion platform that sells products from a selection of independent, luxury and streetwear designers. Joerg Koch became its Editor-in-Chief in 2015. In order "to expand the site’s already lengthy global reach even further." 

Okay, and then what? Well, let´s talk about the mystery that still surrounds a new interdisciplinary festival called REFERENCE BERLIN. A launch dinner with Gucci at the prestigious Axel Springer Journalists Club, the event will take place at - guess what - Berghain and one of the Co-Curators will be the Jack of all arts Hans Ulrich Obrist.  

Well played. If only the underlying train of thought would be more convincing. Of course Koch has studied the global success of K-HOLE´s work, most notably everything circling around the term Normcore. This term and everything that happened after K-HOLE presented the trend report Youth Mode: A Report On Freedom as part of the 89plus marathon at the Serpentine Gallery obviously paved the way for more pr stunts. The media and the industry is incredibly thirsty. For anything.

All this is so annoying because at the same time there is urgent need for a political discourse, for thoughts about a new dark age, migration, reality-systems, the future or futures while a german migration scientists speaks of a pre-facism phase in germany. Pre-Fascism. In 2018. This obviously semi-ironic punk infused No Future talk by Koch speaks from a saturated commanding place. Its only purpose is to gain reach, attention and to earn money. And it is so annoying because somewhere in this cluster of words there are grains of ideas that should be debated, some could be condemned or looked ahead. Is there a debate? Do you debate?

And - by the way - there very well is a future. There are futures. And we should spent more time investigating them. 

Actually i planned on reflecting a bit on various views on the future(s) because i recently bought Retrotypes. And i wanted to add a pinch of Fredrico Campagna, talk about Bridle and present slices of Golffuturism: The desert of the unreal. But i ended up complaining about something else. My bad. 

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes: the future does not exist, you have to make it happen. All that really exists is past futures, the ones set in train by times other than our own. (Bublex, During) 

Reality-systems are contingent conglomerates of metaphysical axioms, and that their modification is always possible. Indeed, we are always able to modify our own reality-settings beyond the diktats of our social context, even when history tells us that we are powerless and stuck. (Frederic Campagna)

Der Anspruch zum Hier-und-Jetzt zu gehören, wird inhärent verfremdet, da die Gegenwart durch das gestaltverschiebende Gefüge von Chronopen strukturiert wird, die aus der Zukunft kommen und „gleichzeitig“ ein Widerhall der Vergangenheit sind. (Avanessian / Moalemi)