The Soothsayers of Quarantine
During Covid quarantine, artists were asked to make comics describing their ideal future for an online project called Rescue Party (now a book from Pantheon). How accurate were their predictions?
Jo Aguliar predicts a “Cat Utopia” in which cats plot world domination, making people into pets and the world into a giant litter box.
Caio Calsad spends so much time online that they transcend the shackles of physicality and now exist only as an avatar.
Alice Maia Rezende visualizes a world in which we all get mandatory hazmat suits for daily life, available in a rainbow of colors.
Kana Philip envisions a Lord of the Flies scenario in which the adults don’t make it and only kids are left, playing by their own rules.
Ida Hartmann cocoons herself into a new invention that looks like a hot water heater and emerges as Katniss from the Hunger Games to fight capitalism.
Jesse Simpson and his husband mutate into new people, and strangers who appear visually similar to their old selves move into their house, replacing them.
Kim Laurenti from Florida wakes up to a world where nefarious individuals are making decisions on behalf of a weary public and wishes she stayed asleep.
Nick Forker’s utopia is rent-free, without private property or income servitude.
In Promono Sengupta’s future, wronged women haunt their abusers in their sleep and scare all the men, who ban haunting and persecute the women like witches.
Sofia Unda envisions a future without humans, where machines and nature work in harmony and garbage becomes sentient.
Alyssa Bunce has a metaphysical shower, feels her skin evaporate and begins to speak without language, communicating with light and sound frequencies.
Annie LeFevre befriends a cute, human-sized rat with a bow in its hair, frolicking in the forest, swimming, and relaxing on a giant lily pad.
Heather Loase meets Cat Stevens in the forest and he becomes her boyfriend. They make love and he writes a song about her, but they become ethically non-monogamous with the arrival of her second boyfriend, Michael Imperioli.
Lia Taylor emerges as her best witch self, guided by black cats to go forth and destroy the patriarchy.
Lina Ehrentraut becomes friends with ghosts who teach her yoga.
Check out Gabe Fowler’s Rescue Party here:
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Manus Devito does recreational drugs with his pets as wild animals roam the streets.
Marc Hennes spends his future swimming in a post-apocalyptic water sculpture, where he meets a neighbor who agrees they should tax the rich.
Maria Pinchel envisions a future where you can enjoy your city without going out only to shop and consume.
Maria Lorenz imagines a world populated by coral-like mimoids, formations thrown up by the Solaris ocean, imitating objects external to the ocean itself.
Mark Heinrichs wanders a vast and foreboding temple built by a loving and emotionally intelligent friend.
Masha Mikhailenko daydreams an idyllic hang with a schoolmate in which they buy legal marijuana and blow off studying for a history test.
Maya Durham enjoys a colorful fauvist Zoom party and passes through the looking glass of the computer screen to frolic with creatures on the other side.
Michael Burch sets up a pup tent in the living room and surrounds it with potted plants to create a jungle.
Miranda Louise Nichols relearns the forgotten arts of waiting and listening, giving herself permission to rest.
Or Menaged wonders if the aliens are okay without any people to kidnap.
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Sam Ita is visited by human-sized flies in lab coats who provide him with immunity and offer him a graphic design internship.
Sean Kelly’s crushes all have realized they are in love with him, move into a big house together, and Crosby, Still, Nash and Young come to perform on their stoop.
Tamar Sleven sees a tiny plant growing out of a barren landscape, upon which a tiny man holds a tiny envelope containing a tiny note that says, “Will you be my girlfriend?”
Amy Dyer makes so much sourdough bread that she constructs a city of sourdough houses which becomes a tourist attraction.
Emily McGardle spends her utopia at punk shows spending money on merch, getting drinks spilled on her, and being crushed by a stage diver—and loving every minute of it.
Gavin Mackie reenters the city in awe of the newly blooming plants who invite him to join their ranks, upon which flowers bloom out of his fingertips and he feels nothing but love.
Kathleen Kralowec is visited by five winds who announce a world of true equality, the end of homelessness, the abolishment of war, ecologically sensitive industry, and the empowerment of children.
Harry McLean takes his companion to an old honky tonk where they drink beer and whiskey, listen to sad country songs, make out in the parking lot, and wake up to the light of day.