How will the world look like in 2050?
Imagine flying cars, tall skyscrapers and robots roaming around the city side by side with humans. But in the minds of three creative designers, they envision a futuristic Filipino sari sari store that provides futuristic products.
Sari Suki 2050 is an interactive design installation that gives you a glimpse of what the iconic sari sari store will look like 35 years from now. It is the first solo show in the Philippines of New York-based design research studio VSOON and is held at 856 G Gallery at A.S Fortuna St. in Banilad. The show opened last August 20 and will run until September 10.
The interest in sari sari stores started when they came to Cebu and did residency for two weeks. They were drawn to the cultural and community significance of the sari sari store in that they intended this installation to celebrate these neighborhood stores and the local knowledge of the Pinoy that they foster, enable and house.
“When we were invited to come to Cebu and do like a residency here, we didn’t know what we are going to do so we just played tourist for the first two weeks. Then we decided sari sari store is a good depot to deliver concepts since sari sari stores are everywhere and everyone knows what a sari sari store is. It is also a really beautiful part of the culture. It is an icon in the country,” said Chris John Fussner, one of the creators of Sari Suki 2050.
Among the examples of products they introduced were canned air, personal memory vault, synthetic meat and GMO seeds. They designed these products through research and brainstorming as they project what would happen years from now in relation to technology, economy, climate change and population.
VSOON is a New York design research studio concerned about the future. VSOON’s Chris John Fussner, Noah Emrich and Sophia Callahan are graduates from Parsons School of Design and their previous project Datacafe.biz was shown during NYCxDesign week last May in Brooklyn. Their work often includes ethnographic research, graphic and web design as well as conceptual practices across themes of speculative futures and global networks.
Check out www.vsoon.ru, www.856ggallery.org and www.sarisuki2050.com to know more about Sari Suki 2050.
Maria Celeste Abellana
iSTORYA League of Writers
Celeste is a content writer. blogger. social media addict. learning social media marketing. loves music and coffee. future work-from-home mom. single parent to an awesome boy who is growing up too fast.