The On Distant Keys catalog is an 88-page, full-color publication produced in a limited edition of 100 copies. Designed collaboratively by Jan Šabach, Sandy Litchfield, and research student Bella Donovan, the publication documents two interconnected exhibitions: The Futuring Lab (2023) and Y3K: On Distant Keys (2024). Together, these projects explored speculative design, ecological imagination, and the evolving relationship between art, science, and place. The catalog serves both as a record of these interdisciplinary experiments and as a prototype for the forthcoming book Y3K: Ondacka, a larger project envisioning a sentient archipelago in the year 3000.

Richly illustrated, the volume interlaces exhibition photography, field drawings, and research fragments with reflective essays by Kelly Feeney and Sandy Litchfield. Feeney’s essay situates the work within a lineage of curatorial art practices, while Litchfield’s writing expands on the idea of “futuring” as a form of creative research– a means of imagining new ecological and ethical frameworks for coexistence.

The design merges clarity with experimentation: grids dissolve into organic textures, and text flows amid images like tide pools of thought. The catalog invites readers to engage with speculative worlds where the boundaries between research, storytelling, art, and design become porous, suggesting that the act of imagining the future is itself a vital ecological practice.