The Future Tense
From the case study on the designers’ website:
The Future Tense is a sound installation by the American artist Russell Perkins which took place at Les Réserves du Frac Île-de-France in Romainville for 24 hours from 19 to 20 June 2021. The artist worked with the first movement of Johannes Ockeghem’s requiem (1420–1459), the oldest surviving polyphonic funeral mass. With the help of artificial intelligence and GPS movement data recorded during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the piece, and with it the labour of grieving, got extended indefinitely, without ever reaching a harmonic resolution. Perkins’ highly conceptual artwork is made accessible through the publication which includes two essays by Anabelle Lacroix and Lucas Morin and was published in English and French by Fondation Fiminco. The design of the publication, in particular the experimental typesetting, reflects crucial themes within Perkins’ sound installation by referring to cathedrals, polyphony, fragmentation, repetition, choirs, and space for mourning.
The book is designed using a combination of Suisse Int’l, SangBleu Republic and Suisse Int’l Mono, all of them available from Swiss Typefaces. In 2022, it was awarded one of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books of 2021.
