The Things We Did Next - Demonstration and discussion
Assembly for the Future is a series of participatory, digital gatherings in which the public create new visions for futures that may be realistic, idealistic or utterly fanciful.
David Pledger & Alex Kelly from The Things We Did Next (Australia) will present a provocation from 2029. After the provocation David and Alex will step through the dramaturgy and curation behind the Assembly and welcome discussion of and about the practice. https://www.thethingswedidnext.org/
Alex Kelly
Alex is an organiser and artist committed to social and climate justice based on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, ‘Australia’. Alex has worked in film, theatre, communications and troublemaking in many forms. This includes taking part in blockades from Jabiluka in Australia to la zad in France, collaborating on the Indigenous Language & theatre project, Ngapartji Ngapartji, and curating the Something Somewhere Film Festival.
As a Producer, Director & Impact Producer, Alex has worked on documentary films including Queen of the Desert, THE ISLAND, Island of the Hungry Ghosts, In My Blood It Runs & This Changes Everything.
Alex is currently focused on The Things We Did Next, a multiplatform speculative futures & climate change collaboration. Through practising the art of imagination, Alex hopes to strengthen our ability to tackle the complex challenges we face by imagining more just futures.
David Pledger
David is an award-winning contemporary artist, curator, cultural commentator and thinker working within and between the performing, visual and media arts. He has created interactive media, television documentaries, live performances, site-specific festivals, locative installations and discursive events for broadcasters, theatres, galleries, arts centres, museums and public sites in the context of arts and film festivals, visual arts and performance programs in Australia, Asia and Europe. Awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award and the Kenneth Myer Performing Arts Medal for his work as a director, actor and teacher, he has received fellowships from the Churchill Memorial Trust, the Australia-Korea Foundation, Asialink and numerous production grants from local, state, federal and international arts agencies for his creations, touring, residency and pedagogy. A prolific writer, his play Blowback was short-listed for the Louis Esson Prize for Drama (Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards) as was his screenplay for the interactive film Eavesdrop for the Inaugural New Media Writing Award (AWGIEs). His 2013 Platform Paper, Re-Valuing the Artist in the New World Order, is in a second print-run. He is Artistic Director of not yet it’s difficult (NYID), one of Australia’s seminal interdisciplinary arts companies. He lives on the lands of the Boon wurrung People of the Kulin Nation.
