Founded by editor, writer and musician John‑Paul Pryor, FUTURISTIC DRAGON is an editorial proposition that packs a powerful analogue punch in an era of overwhelming digital static. The new arts and culture platform soft‑launched last month with an exclusive sit‑down with Nathaniel Mary Quinn – the Chicago-born artist who supplies the bruised, soulful visage gracing The Rolling Stones’ forthcoming album Foreign Tongues – and lifted off with an impressive supporting cast straight out of the gate, such as legends of the lens Willie Christie, Nick Waplington and Miles Aldridge, contemporary art-world voices Chaz Guest, Von Wolfe and Charlotte Rose, cultural archivists Meryl Meisler and Derek Ridgers, and the incorrigible fashion iconoclast Diane Pernet. 

What sets FUTURISTIC DRAGON apart, however, isn’t merely the advocacy of a highly curated and instantly recognisable cabal of cultural movers and shakers, but its unique and considered cadence. FUTURISTIC DRAGON is a space that resists the breathless churn of online media, instead offering a place that favours slow attention, and the kind of philosophical and urbane conversation that accrues texture rather than traffic. “The world is a pretty hectic, fast‑moving and confusing place at this point in our unfolding history as a species,” notes Pryor, lightly exasperated. “Our attention spans are ebbing away in an avalanche of algorithm‑driven ‘content’ – much of it seemingly without any need for the involvement of the human hand.”

His remedy is modest and deliberate: a compact counterweight to the noise. FUTURISTIC DRAGON stakes a claim for long-form interviews that let artists breathe, elaborate and unfold ideas naturally in pieces that act less like consumption and more like communion. In an age that rewards speed and spectacle, Pryor’s project favours depth and the virtues of real conversation – the kind that reminds you, briefly and insistently, what it feels like to be alive. “FUTURISTIC DRAGON is intended as a counterpoint to all of the noise you will find on your feed, and all the pretension you will find on most platforms,” he says. “It’s a place for long, thoughtful interviews with some astonishingly creative people that, hopefully, remind us what is great about being a human being.”

At a moment when platforms are engineered to shrink your focus, FUTURISTIC DRAGON makes a convincing case for slowing down and actually listening to real people, resulting in in-depth interviews designed to provide respite from bite-size click-bait overload. The platform officially launches at London Fashion Week and will publish two long-form interviews a week with trans‑generational creatives across art, photography, film, fashion, literature and culture, not to mention bi-monthly shoots intended to re-introduce radical and subversive creativity to the fashion editorial. 

Check out FUTURISTIC DRAGON at www.futuristicdragon.com

Written by Jules Wood