If you could write a postcard to 2041, what would you say about the view from here? Vivienne Westwood, Marina Abramović, Rema and more cultural futurists write a postcard to the future

Welcome to A Future World – Dazed's network, community, and platform focusing on the intersection of science, technology and pop culture. Throughout April, we're featuring conversations and mission statements from the people paving new pathways for our planet: activists, inventors, fashion pioneers, technologists, AI scientists, and global youth movements, alongside in-depth editorial exploring the new realities for our future world.

VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, DESIGNER AND CLIMATE ACTIVIST

From: Vivienne Westwood

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Dear world of 2041, this is my plan of operation to save you, I hope it worked. 

Don’t Buy A Bomb! 

Stop War. 

Be specific. 

Stop arms production. 

War is the biggest polluter, the greatest killer.

War production makes war. I am working with the NGOs – this has to be done. Speak with 1 voice. It will save us. 

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that time flies.

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ, ARTIST

From: Marina Abramović

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Dear human being from 2041,

Are you human? 

Are you post-human?

Are you half-robots or completely robotic?

Do you feel love?

Do you feel pain?

Are you happy?

Greetings from a performance artist from 2021,

Marina Abramović

MAISIE WILLIAMS, ACTOR AND WWF GLOBAL AMBASSADOR FOR CLIMATE AND NATURE

Dear future,

I like to believe that you’re doing well, or at least better than we are right now in 2021. 
This is a pivotal year for the planet. We are working on becoming ‘conscious consumers’. Our supermarkets have promised to stop pumping our fridges full of single-use plastic. Our fashion designers are improving the impact of their industry on the environment. Positive change is happening, but there’s still so much that needs to be done, especially when it comes to protecting our world’s oceans.  
Did any of it work? I feel truly optimistic that it did. Either way I won’t give up.
Love, Maisie

LEGACY RUSSELL, CURATOR AND AUTHOR, GLITCH FEMINISM: A MANIFESTO

From: LEGACY RUSSELL

To: 2041

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Babe! GET. IT. TOGETHER. I want you to do better, feel better, care more. I want you to pay attention and listen actively. I want you to delight, surprise, transform us. I want you to make me laugh! Goddamn, I’m so sick and tired of feeling sick and tired—aren’t you? I want you to let us rest when we need to. I want more vulnerability, tenderness, joy, playful risk and risky play, because risk doesn’t have to be dangerous, it can be gorgeous and should be our right to experiment, explore, expand ourselves cosmically. I want generative and constructive cybercultures. I want new systems and ways of being that commit to abolition, reparations, sustainability as a throughline, and a bottom-line. I want Black femmes to be more than our visibility; I want us to be seen and held and really represented. I want you to let us live a whole life, one that is not measured by our metrics but by the ways we learn to bravely love one another. I want you to bring the freedom we’ve all been fighting for. Will you?

In Solidarity —

Legacy

REMA, MUSICIAN

From: Rema 

To: 2041

Write your message below:

2020 was a tough year, we youts are tired.

In 20 years time, I want all my people to be fed and to be treated with respect and equality. In the future, I want to see the people in power act with love not greed, corruption and brutality. Nigerians have experienced so much pain that I know our time and joy is around the corner. The youts are fighting back and my generation will not let this carry on. Our children will know different. We are protesting in any way we can not only for equality but for children to be fed. I write to ask that in  20 years time no yout will go hungry, (but) I pray to see this in my lifetime.

PERFUME, J-POP ARTISTS

A-CHAN

From: A-Chan

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Dear Daito Manabe (Rhizomatiks) in 2041 –

How is everything over there? Are you having fun?

I’m sure all the technology has dramatically evolved since now. Maybe there’s a better balance of digital and analogue in the future.

By the way, can people fly in your world? I’ve always wanted to fly. Not by hanging from the ceiling, or in a vehicle. I want to fly by my own will. I want to be able to fly freely. 

If people are flying in 20 years, that would be amazing! I’m sure you need strong core muscle to fly, so I’ll be working out.... You might have to declare your weight when flying so I’ll try to stay fit! LOL. 

I hope that the dreams of Perfume and our team have come true in the future. And I hope that I’ll still be sitting right by KASHIYUKA and NOCCHi to see their smiles.

From a-chan in 2021

KASHIYUKA

From: KASHIYUKA

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Dear 2041,

Are we still continuing to challenge yourselves, overcoming distance, to enjoy the excitement of trying something new? I hope we are still enjoying performing together, no matter how old we are! Right now, the world is facing big challenges and trying to transform into a new era. 

I’m sure the world has gotten bigger and technology has advanced so much, but I think you are still longing for expressions and warmth only humans can create. After all, both the sender and receiver of the messages remain us: the humans. We’ve always treasured that connection and I hope our hearts are even closer as technology evolves.

I’m not worried about our future because we’re able to enjoy ourselves anytime, anywhere as long as we’re together! Let’s enjoy it!

From KASHIYUKA in 2021

NOCCHi

From: NOCCHi

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Dear 2041,

How are things over there in 20 years from now? When you open up the curtain of your window, do you see us singing? Maybe I can meet our fans just by a blink of my eye. In the past decade, technology has brought Perfume and fans closer. But I’m sure where you are, lots of surprising new technologies have been invented and that love has grown along with them...

From NOCCHi in 2021

JOZ FREEMAN, DATA ARTIST

From: Joz Freeman

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Heeeey. Thought you’d like a snapshot from a very agitated world. Things are pretty damn biological right now; our microbial earth dwellers are teaching us about respect and complacency as a viral pandemic. Yet, they are also giving us hope – sustainable energy production from microbes is something you probably have built into your house already but it’s only just gaining momentum now. Microbes you pee on to charge your devices is definitely an all round win – look after yours and they’ll look after you. The other good news is that *finally* people are beginning to understand that online activities have a carbon footprint: yep, digital is dirty. Crypto capitalism and machine learning extravagance are causing a surge in power consumption but we’re pushing for change because we need an invisible cape around this planet. So, yeah, some of us are trying to look after things for you future bods. I hope we do a good enough job.

ANIL SETH, NEUROSCIENTIST AND AUTHOR OF BEING YOU

From: Anil Seth

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Hey future. One of the strange things about life, these days, is that we know that all conscious experiences – every thought, every emotion, every perception – depend on the electrified pâté inside our skulls, on our wonderfully complex brains, but still we act like this isn’t the case. This is particularly evident for what people persist in calling ‘free will’. We know that both our ability to make voluntary actions, and the experience of these actions as being voluntary, depend on the brain – but we still go about our lives as if there were some immaterial essence of ‘me’ in charge of it all. I wonder whether in twenty years this has changed, and whether our deepening understanding of the biology of consciousness will lead to us seeing ourselves in fundamentally different ways. 

JOHN ALLEN, BIOSPHERE INVENTOR

From: John Allen

To: 2041

Write your message below:

We managed to luck through, maybe you will too! I think it’s beyond thinking about. I mean thinking involves assumptions, and I think 2041 is beyond what any assumptions today are capable of assuming. For example, the 1960s were distinguished by higher states of consciousness... but the future, hopefully, will (lie) in higher states of creativity.

HANS-ULRICH OBRIST, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, SERPENTINE GALLERIES

From: Hans-Ulrich Obrist

To: 2041

Write your message below:

To, as Alighiero Boetti said – the 41st year of the first century of the 3rd Millennium!

Twenty years from now have we found ourselves in Édouard Glissant’s formerly unrealised and now realised all World Museum? An archipelago that houses a network of inter-relatonships. A museum that not only points to urgent issues but finds the agency to respond to those issues. A quivering place that transcends established systems of thought and enables the utopian point where all the world’s cultures and all the world’s imagination can meet, and listen to one another. 

“The world needs togetherness, not separation. Love not suspicion. A common future, not isolation” – Etel Adnan 

London 11/04/21

MARINE SERRE, DESIGNER

From: Marine Serre 

To: 2041

Write your message below:

Hi all from 2041,

Here it’s 28.04.2021, we are living in a world where we have learned to think and feel that the human body is the center of the world. Today we have hard time to feel, to see, to trust, to observe, to be patient, to introspect, to share, even to be happy. We see nature as something different than us, we are disconnected.

We are working into relinking with our primitive form, nature. It’s a difficult path where a lot of societal structures must be broken and changed. 

Things and forms we see look different in the world so it’s hard for us to consider all as one.

But if you see in the same tree, we see leaves, flowers, fruits, branches, sap, and roots all different from each other but all are one, being understood in the word Tree. Thus, all things, all bodies, all organisms, come from the same source and are activated by a single vital principle.

And you what do you see, feel?

Embrace.

GAIKA

From: Gaika

To: 2041

Write your message below:

I write to you with the  blank dreams of a broken hearted bastard

this body without adequate command of it’s digits

I got sick and my hands went numb,

My system is nervous

so my writing is probably  weird and rigid.

After all it was the end of the world. You  know.

it’s been twenty years since the planet made its play for a liccle more  life

But what did we discover ?

holding court with the pistols cocked and thinly concealed,

Still waiting for Godot

We are literally gassed rn.

we truly overstate our value. I think.

there is no mandate from heaven

What is left but each other’s memories, committed in the image of ones chosen deity or its inhuman chaotic face.  

some say the passing of time is a question of destiny  or purpose or power or repute

I think that the acquisition of these things are untrustworthy endeavours in the end.