FUTURISTIC DRAGON is an independent arts and culture platform from cultural strategist JOHN-PAUL PRYOR devoted to the people, ideas and creative practices shaping our world. Through long-form conversations with artists, photographers, filmmakers, writers and cultural mavericks across generations, we offer a counterpoint to the noise of algorithmic culture: slower, deeper and resolutely human. Beyond the screen, Futuristic Dragon brings its conversations into the physical world through artist-led dinners, collaborations, exhibitions and intimate cultural encounters.
KEEP IT HUMAN.
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LAXMI HUSSAIN
The British artist on matrescence, autonomy and the flux of female identity
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REGINA KIM
The Korean artist on traversing the surreal landscapes of the mind
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GORDON CHEUNG
The British-Chinese artist on control and the invisible apparatus of existence
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JOSÉ PARLÁ
The Cuban abstract artist on the healing energy of light and surviving a coma
“The painting becomes its own engram: a record of experience that isn't complete until another consciousness encounters it and begins to reconstruct its meaning”
– José Parlá
The Cuban abstract artist JOSÉ PARLÁ explores an interplay of form that blends the strange calligraphy of optic nerve stimulation with painterly abstraction, asking us to consider the phenomenological beauty in the unconscious apparatus of being.
Read our full INTERVIEW on FUTURISTIC DRAGON to find out how he was fundamentally changed by a brush with death, and why he has hope that one day the species will transcend beyond a perpetual state of war.
“Looking back at my work over the past 25 years, it has become increasingly clear to me that everything I’ve made has been an exploration of the human condition”
– Kasper Sonne
ART & IMAGE: For Danish artist KASPER SONNE the mysteries at the heart of the human condition have provided inspiration for more than two decades. In his latest show People Are Strange at MARUANI MERCER he presents haunted, solitary figures adrift in elusive landscapes that seem to mirror their troubled psychological states.
In a rare interview with FUTURISTIC DRAGON the artist talks candidly about solitude and belonging, the seductive unreality of images, and tells us what painting might might still reveal about the nature of being
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NICK WAPLINGTON
The renowned artist and image-maker on the nineties, Mizrahi and Alexander McQueen
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WILLIE CHRISTIE
The legendary photographer and filmmaker on surreality and artifice in image-making
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CHAZ GUEST
The American artist on energy, divinity and seeking the hue of humanity
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NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
The American artist on his iconic album cover for The Rolling Stones
“Creating the album cover for The Rolling Stones is an artistic honour – a dialogue with one of the most enduring forces in cultural history”
– Nathaniel Mary Quinn
STYLE & CULTURE: American painter NATHANIEL MARY QUINN is a leading contemporary artist whose deconstructed portraiture has been chosen by The Rolling Stones to grace the cover of their much-anticipated forthcoming album Foreign Tongues.
Read our EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with the artist on FUTURISTIC DRAGON to discover why his own past reads like a narrative of the blues, and explore the process that led to the creation of the iconic album cover.
“Everything was imagined by someone before it was real – your jumper, your coffee cup, your headphones. It’s an act of creative thinking that creates the world around us”
– Charlotte Colbert
PEOPLE & SOCIETY: Multimedia artist CHARLOTTE COLBERT is celebrated for sculptural and celluloid interventions that probe feminist critique, modern womanhood, psychological archetypes and the power of collective imagination.
Read our exclusive INTERVIEW on FUTURISTIC DRAGON to discover why she creates all-seeing portals for transcendence and has a quietly radical faith that imagination, exercised collectively, will remodel our future.
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MERYL MEISLER
New York photographer Meryl Meisler on excess and beauty at Studio 54
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ANNE VON FREYBURG
The Dutch textile maestro on femininity and challenging art world hierarchies
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DEREK RIDGERS
The legendary image-maker on shooting intimacy on the fringes of society
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RANKIN
The acclaimed British photographer on the creative paradox of AI
“The best relationships creatively are the love-hate relationships, because they're the ones that really challenge you”
– Rankin
STYLE & CULTURE: The renowned photographer, publisher and provocateur Rankin has been capturing the cutting edge of pop culture in the eye of his lens since the early 90s, when he co-founded the style magazine Dazed and Confused, reshaping contemporary portrait photography.
Read our full INTERVIEW with the iconic image-maker at FUTURISTIC DRAGON to find out why he has been an enthusiastic adoptee of AI.
“Art is the closest thing we have to a time machine. And it shows how indebted we are to the past and the future”
– Maria Kreyn
ART & IMAGE: The New York painter MARIA KREYN creates tempestuous and masterful canvases that invite us to step into metaphysical contemplation of existence in a stream of cosmic time without beginning or end.
Read our exclusive INTERVIEW with the artist on FUTURISTIC DRAGON to find out why there are stranger things in heaven and earth than we can imagine.
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VON WOLFE
The masterful British painter on reimagining the role of the artist
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STACEY GILLIAN ABE
The African artist on womanhood and reclaiming traditional symbolism
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ROBY DWI ANTONO
The Indonesian artist on dream creatures and creative transcendence
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GERED MANKOWITZ
The British photographer recalls shooting The Rolling Stones at home in the sixties
“Truth has always been mediated, by the press, by propaganda, and by the selection of what is recorded and what is forgotten”
– Von Wolfe
ART & IMAGE: The British painter VON WOLFE utilises artificial intelligence as a creative pathway in the painstaking creation of huge oil paintings that shake the very foundation of what one understands to be the conceptual role of the artist.
Read our exclusive INTERVIEW with the artist on FUTURISTIC DRAGON to find out why his embrace of generative technologies is an experiment in humility.
Get up close and personal with artists from all over the world and unlock the mysteries of the creative mind.
Read in-depth interviews with the most exciting cultural movers and shakers shaping the creative landscape.
Discover the actors, authors, designers, mavericks and entrepreneurs at the bleeding edge of cultural life.
