While we await the vaccine and a return to life as we know it, we wanted to dedicate @documentjournal F/W 20 to exploring what counterculture looks like in this particularly turbulent moment. As we set forth to create an issue in the midst of the biggest cultural shift of our lifetimes, we found ourselves debating the definition of what it was we were searching for. This question has taken us across the globe and to the deepest corners of the web, through the history of protest, and inside temporary autonomous zones. Throughout history, insurgent forces have sprung from various geographic, social, and informational conditions. With today’s tech-dominated landscape comes new challenges: Information proliferates in real time, collapsing the space between the popular and the fringe. In the absence of a monolithic mainstream to be countered, new methods of interrogation are required. Did the internet kill counterculture, or just force it deeper underground? When algorithms reward the controversial, what is truly rebellious and what does meaningful resistance look like? We embarked on this issue looking for fringe communities, niche subcultures, and people visibly opposing the mainstream, but emerged with a new understanding of counterculture that bears little resemblance to that of the past. Rather than a single community or movement, we found that counterculture is a way of looking at the world around you, engaging with others, renouncing dogma, and welcoming reinvention. photo @emily.lipson