Philippine Love Songs

This garment was also created after reading "Filipino Folk Foundry" by Hardworking Goodlooking to contribute to championing the research they have done regarding Filipino typography and script research.

"Moving “the future” away from ideologies of dominance and control has become imperative. One promising model can be found in the collective known as the Tropical Futures Institute, founded by designer and gallerist Chris Fussner. Based on the party island of Cebu, Philippines, the “institute” is in fact a decentralized, roaming think tank that produces exhibitions, provocations, talks, artworks, trend reports, music compilations, and some very good T-shirts. 

Their Instagram has been a primary mode of outreach, and it catalogs a variety of research materials, from cultural critic Rahel Aima’s proposition of “warm water solidarity” to images of man-made islands and floating reef hotels, though the collective has since migrated to Discord and is tentatively considering becoming a DAO. Still in process of defining what “tropical futures” really means, perhaps in a way that is ever evolving, the Tropical Futures Institute nonetheless sets down preliminary coordinates from the inside, on the ground. 

In a statement for a symposium they hosted this year, they mentioned: “It is good to talk about the tropics since we’re all from the tropics. Rather than wait for some cultural institution from the ‘center’ to harvest from the periphery once again [or] be a footnote in someone else’s historical narrative.”

"No lie: Saw someone stylish wearing this at a pizza spot last Sunday and had to track it down. The script on the back is so fresh, apparently loosely inspired from a Pilita Corrales Philippine Love Songs compilation album." — Chris Gayomali