Join us for an intimate discussion that peels back the process of why, who and how we create the future.
The way we speak, connect and shape our worlds can often be traced back to the imaginations of filmmakers, artists and creators. What seemed wild and weird at the time has often proved to become a blueprint.
Across 2024 and 2025, ACMI will commission a series of world-leading artists dedicated to exploring vibrant future worlds, including South Korean visual artist and filmmaker Ayoung Kim and multidisciplinary artist and musician Serwah Attafuah (Sydney), alongside ACMI Curator Jenna Rain Warwick.
Executive Director of Programming Keri Elmsly will host a discussion illuminating the challenges, questions and ideas of forward-thinking creators working across new technologies and new ideas to delve into what kind of culture we can expect, and on whose terms.
Artists
Ayoung Kim
In her multifaceted practice, Ayoung Kim synthesizes the outcome of far-reaching speculation, establishing connections between biopolitics and border control, the memory of stone and virtual memory, ancestral origins and imminent futures. These narratives take the forms of video, moving image, VR, sonic fiction, game simulation, diagram and text, and are exposed as exhibitions, performances and publications.
Kim idiosyncratically synthesizes geopolitics, mythology, technology, and futuristic iconography, and retroactively collects the speculative time to infiltrate the present. Her interest in synthesis, hybridization, and the coexistence of heterogeneous time led to an interest In all kinds of intersections, transfers, transpositions, and interchanges of time, space, structure, and syntax.
The speculative fictional world of Ayoung Kim is a pathway for the artist to re-recognize reality, reveal critical thoughts, and imagine a futuristic vision. It is not a fictional narrative that fictionalizes a utopian or dystopian future but reconstructs the meaning of history and reality within the domain of archaeology, ancient mythology, the real world, and digital technology, and simultaneously reimagines the possibilities of the future.
Serwah Attafuah
Serwah Attafuah is a multidisciplinary artist and musician based on Dharug land/West Sydney, Australia. She creates surreal cyber dreamscapes and heavenly wastelands, populated by afro-futuristic abstractions of self with strong ancestral and contemporary themes.
Serwah has collaborated and been commissioned by clients including Mercedes Benz, Nike, GQ, Microsoft, Adobe, Paris Hilton and Valentino. Notable achievements include her participation in Sotheby's 'Natively Digital': A Curated NFT auction, 'Apotheosis': a live motion capture experience with Soft Centre at The Sydney Opera House. and a TEDX talk in Sydney on The Metaverse and Afrofuturism.
Jenna Rain Warwick is a Proud Luritja woman, born and raised in Queensland she now resides in Melbourne Victoria working as a curator for ACMI. As a writer (fiction), filmmaker and curator her passion lies in supporting First Nations storytellers, to realise ideas and promote critical reflection, prioritizing community centred relationships. Concerned with the construction and distribution of national identity on screen, her research interests intersect broadly with video and film from around the globe. Her curatorial projects hope to present thought provoking and unexpected comparisons, challenging how we might think about identity and cinema.
Projects & Partnerships
We have been working closely with the screen sector and small-to-medium creatives since 2015, providing access to a range of resources, programming and connection to industry.
