Signal the Future

Photographer Georg Gatsas’ Signal The Future unpacks many layers of an important musical era in London. Through portraits, candid shots of clubbers, and architectural investigations of the city, a narrative unfolds of how music both shapes and is shaped by its immediate urban environment. Dating from 2008 – shortly after the British club phenomenon of dubstep received international acclaim – we’re introduced to a music scene in the flush of fame. Ethnically diverse, largely working class, surprisingly close-knit, and a world apart from the country’s acclaimed indie and guitar rock history, the people in this book are united by the city and their love of the music. We glimpse dancers mid-stride, witness their steppers’ communion, and get a sense of their afterhours lives on the empty streets of Brixton in the night.

In a few short years, the tone of electronic music changed and so did the images – becoming brighter, taking place more often outside, and interspersed with the kind of soaring structures that are the hallmark of modernism.The book includes essays by acclaimed writers on music and cultural theory, including the late Mark Fisher, probing deeply into many of the strands that Gatsas visualises: urbanism, community, the ‘underground’, capitalism, networked futurism, gentrification, and more. Anyone not following underground music may be surprised to realise how much is contained within its scope. Gatsas helps bring those complexities alive.

Georg Gatsas is an artist, photographer and freelance journalist based in Zurich, Switzerland. Gatsas uses an interdisciplinary approach to focus on how sound, recollection, and public spaces interact. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Kunstmuseum St.Gallen (2017), Oldenburger Kunstverein (2017), Le Confort Moderne Poitiers (2017), FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais (2015), Museum Bärengasse Zurich (2013), and Kunstraum Riehen (2013). His editorial work has featured in a variety of magazines such as Interview, i-D, Dazed, Beat, Zweikommasieben and Edge.

Signal The Future accompanies the exhibition Are You… Can You… Were You? at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 4 Nov 2017 – 11 Feb 2018.