Aaron Cupples

Composer & Assembly Artist in Residence

Aaron Cupples is an Australian composer, record producer and mix engineer currently based in London, UK. Cupples largely builds compositions using bespoke instruments constructed in his studio using unconventional materials and techniques. His first feature-length composition debuted at Tribeca Film Festival 2018 for ‘Island of the Hungry Ghosts,’ which received Best Documentary at the festival as well as several other prestigious awards including Grand Jury Prize at Mumbai Film Festival. The score was nominated for several awards including ‘Best Music’ at the British Independent Film Awards 2018 and has been described as “otherwordly and experimental” with a “supernatural aura”. His latest feature-length score for The Disappearance Of My Mother recently premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. As a record producer Aaron Cupples has worked with artists such as Spiritualized, The Vaccines, Blanck Mass, Alex Cameron, & his own project Civil Civic. Aaron produced and mixed two albums included in an industry-voted ’100 Greatest Australian Records Of All Time’.

Ahelee Rahman

AFTF 2022 Respondent

Ahelee Rahman is a Year 12 student and School Captain of Melbourne Girls Grammar School. She is the Senior Youth Ambassador, producer and host for the Student Broadcast Network on radio station 94.1FM 3WBC as well as an Ambassador for MS Australia. Ahelee is also a Member of the Youth Advisory Board for Spill The Beans, an organisation that works to empower young people to voice their ideas, stories and inspiration. She is also a passionate advocate of the perspectives of young Australians within our democracy, as a regular contributor and commentator on The Age Newspaper, ABC News Radio and her blog www.aheleerahman.com.

Alex Kelly

Original Concept CoCurator for the Future

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.

Alice Wong

First Speaker

Alice Wong is a disabled activist, media maker, and consultant. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project® (DVP), an online community dedicated to creating, sharing and amplifying disability media and culture created in 2014. Alice is also a co-partner in four projects: DisabledWriters.com, a resource to help editors connect with disabled writers and journalists, #CripLit, a series of Twitter chats for disabled writers with novelist Nicola Griffith, #CripTheVote, a nonpartisan online movement encouraging the political participation of disabled people with co-partners Andrew Pulrang and Gregg Beratan, and Access Is Love with co-partners Mia Mingus and Sandy Ho, a campaign that aims to help build a world where accessibility is understood as an act of love instead of a burden or an afterthought. Currently, Alice is the editor of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century, an anthology of essays by disabled people, coming out June 30, 2020 by Vintage Books.

Alison Page

Designer for the Future, TTWMadeNext

Alison Page is a descendant of the Walbanga and Wadi Wadi people from La Perouse. She is an award-winning creative championing the creative expression of Aboriginal identity in interiors, public art, urban design and film.

In 2015, Alison was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame. She appeared for eight years as a regular panelist on the ABC TV show, The New Inventors and her most recent work is as a producer with ZAKPAGE, making innovative cultural installations, sculpture and film with Nik Lachajczak. Alison is a Professor of Practice in the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is Chair of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, Chair of indigenous research group Ninti Pty Ltd, Councillor of the Australian National Maritime Museum, Member of the Federal Government’s Creative Economy Taskforce and on the Senior Advisory Group for the Voice to Government.

Alison Plevey

Artist-Moderator

Alison Plevey is a dance and physical theatre artist, choreographer, teacher and arts advocate based on Ngunnawal, Canberra. She studied at WAAPA and graduated BA Dance Hons in 2009. In 2016 she Founded Australian Dance Party supporting the growth of professional dance practice in the ACT.

Alison creates choreographic experiences that live in and draw from place, evoking deeper sensorial responses for audiences. Her work communicates contemporary issues often engaging with community and working across artistic and other disciplines.

Her practice is based on her extensive experience in solo, multi-discipline, youth, community and company-based projects including work as Co-Director of Lingua Franca ‘Unsustainable Behaviour’, Right Behind You’ and ‘Mighty’, Adelina Larsson’s ‘No Place’, Not Yet It’s Difficult’s ‘Training Squad’ and Melanie Lane’s ‘Mountain’.

Her award-winning creations/performances include: ‘Johnny Castellano is Mine’ for Canberra Youth Theatre/The Street Theatre (2014), ‘Seamless’ (2018), ‘From The Vault’ (2019), ‘Lake March’ (2020) and ‘LESS’ (2022).

Amanda Anastasi

Assembly Artist in Residence

Amanda Anastasi is a Melbourne poet whose work has appeared on the walls of Windsor’s Artists Lane to The Massachusetts Review. Following her debut poetry collection ‘2012 and other poems’, Amanda engaged in several multidisciplinary collaborations that included ‘Loop City’, a spoken word/music show about Melbourne commissioned by MSO’s Sarah Curro. Amanda is a two-time winner of the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize, and has appeared at the Emerging Writers Festival, the Williamstown Literary Festival and the Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival. Amanda was a recent recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship to work on a series of poems set in the year 2042. She is currently Poet in Residence at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub (MCCCRH), where she is writing poetry to raise awareness on ecological issues and the climate crisis.

Amber Hammill

Moderator for the Future

Amber is a communications specialist with many hats. She has worked and volunteered in a variety of roles across community engagement, health information, publishing, politics, community radio, higher education and research. At present, she is a PhD candidate researching the experience of radio as company with older listeners in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An aspiring gardener, podcast enthusiast and perennially novice knitter, Amber thrives on new challenges and the never-ending possibilities of listening, learning and considering new ideas. To date, Amber has made homes in Australia, Japan, England, Northern Ireland and New Zealand. She cycles, swims, climbs trees and walks in the grass barefoot at any opportunity. She regularly considers a Tank Girl-inspired future replete with female agency, relentless compassion, and a more respectful working relationship with non-human beings.

Anna Cadden

The Planting Recordings

Anna Cadden is a Producer, Cinematographer, Photographer and Visual Artist with over 20 years of experience.

Anna co-created and produced the ground-breaking ABC Indigenous comedy series, 8MMM Aboriginal Radio with Brindle Films and Princess Pictures. In 2019 she produced the documentary Not Just Numbers for NITV and the short film TJ Go Home premiering at the Darwin International Film Festival. Anna produced PAW Media’s Yarripiri’s Journey for NITV in 2018 and was the Line Producer on Brindle Film’s feature documentary Finke: There and Back premiering at 2018 Sydney Film Festival. Anna also works regularly with ICTV including producing the series Our Place in 2015, and 2 seasons of Card Stories in 2016 and 2018.

Anna’s cinematography credits include Strong and Smart (2001, ABC), Aboriginal Rules (2007, ABC), Queen of the Desert (2012, ABC2), Yarripiri’s Journey (2018, NITV), Not Just Numbers (2019, NITV), and feature documentary Uluru and the Magician (2020, Brindle Films). Anna has been working with BighART and Tasmanian communities since 2020, creating the visuals for performance pieces Zinc (2021, Mona Foma) and When Water Falls (2022, Mona Foma).

Anna has facilitated the production of hundreds of films within rural and remote Australian communities and provided film, photography and community broadcasting training in remote locations across Queensland, Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

Anna Madeleine Raupach

Artist-Moderator

Anna Madeleine Raupach is a multidisciplinary artist based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land, and a Lecturer at the ANU School of Art & Design. Her practice spans physical and digital forms to explore how human and machine expression recursively evolves, and to examine how technology shapes our interpretation of the natural world. Anna has a PhD in Media Arts from UNSW Art & Design (2014) and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) from ANU School of Art & Design (2007). Recent projects include an ANAT Synapse Residency (2022) and a Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences research fellowship (2019-2020). She has had solo exhibitions in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Montreal and Bandung, and has been awarded international residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, through the Art Gallery of NSW (2018); Common Room Network Foundation, Indonesia, with Asialink Arts (2017); the University of Southern California (2016).

Anne Manne

Respondent

Anne Manne is a writer, social philosopher and essayist who has been a columnist for the Australian and The Age. Her first book, Motherhood, raised the way neoliberalism and the new capitalism was reshaping society, what we value, and our decisions around love, care, paid and unpaid work. It was a finalist in the Walkley award for best Non- Fiction book. Her 2008 Quarterly Essay, Love and Money: The Family and the Free Market, was a finalist in the Victorian Premier’s prize for non-fiction.  She has also published a memoir, So This Is Life, and in 2014 she published the bestselling The Life of I; the new culture of narcissism, which was a finalist in the Queensland Literary non-fiction book award. Her longer essays on contemporary issues have been primarily in The Monthly magazine, such as The Great Domestic Hoax: Making women’s unpaid work count, and Rape Among the Lamingtons, Tragic Evidence of child sexual abuse in the Newcastle Anglican church.  She is currently writing a new book on institutional child sexual abuse. 

April Phillips

Artist-Moderator

April Phillips is a Wiradjuri-Scottish woman of the Galari peoples. Her arts practice is cemented in digital arts; illustration, VR + AR research and in her role as a peer mentor for the next generation of artists. April leans into character design as a narrative tool to explore empathy, fun and form. Her use of vivid colour and unlikely digital processes celebrates the potential of computer art for a new world.

Barrina South

Artist-Moderator

Barrina South is a Barkindji artist and poet dedicated to writing about topics and themes affecting land, culture, and history. In 2022, she was one of five Australian poets selected to participate in the Invisible Walls: poetry as a Doorway to Intercultural Understanding, an initiative run in partnership between the University of South Australia and Sogang University in Seoul. In the same year, Barrina was published in Rabbit and appointed Writer in Residence at University of Canberra. In 2023, she was published in the special issue of the Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Kolkata, India, Authora Australia and awarded a 2024 Varuna First Nations Fellowship. Barrina is a current member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network and a Director of Us Mob Writing (UMW).

Bhiamie Williamson

First Speaker

Bhiamie Williamson is a Euahlayi man from north-west New South Wales with familial ties to north-west Queensland. Bhiamie is a graduate of the Australian National University, the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; the Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, United States; and the University of Wollongong. Bhiamie is a Research Fellow at Monash University where he leads the National Indigenous Disaster Resilience Project. His PhD investigates the changing nature of Indigenous masculinities as a result of, and in response to, colonisation.29

Bruce Pascoe

The Planting interviewee

Bruce Pascoe has published widely in both adult and young adult literature. He has won numerous awards, including the Children’s Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall Award for Young Dark Emu (Magabala Books 2019), New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year Award in 2016 for?Dark Emu?(Magabala Books 2014) and the Prime Minister’s Literature Award for Young Adult fiction for?Fog a Dox?(Magabala Books 2012) in 2013. In 2018 Bruce was awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.?He has worked as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, fencing contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archaeological site worker and editor.?Bruce is a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man, and currently lives on his farm in Gippsland, Victoria.

Claire G Coleman

First Speaker

Claire G Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays and poetry while (mostly) traveling around the continent now called Australia in a ragged caravan towed by an ancient troopy (the car has earned “vintage” status). Born in Perth, away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Melbourne. During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, influenced by certain experiences gained on the road. She has since won a Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship for that novel, Terra Nullius.

Damien Wright

Designer for the Future, TTWMadeNext

Damien Wright is an award winning Melbourne craftsman working in wood. His practice involves a unique blend of Australian timbers, traditional joinery techniques, organic finishes and contemporary design. Damien seeks to explore the beauty and bounty of the Australian landscape through furniture and sculpture. He specialises in the use of Ancient Redgum, a rare 15,000 year old petrified material. The use and abuse of Australian timbers informs his artistic and political discussion of environment, belonging, design and material culture. Damien is represented internationally in public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and National Gallery of Victoria. As a designer/maker, Damien works on a commission-only basis, either directly with his valued clients or through architects and interior designers. Damien’s timeless pieces include tables, chairs, desks, bookcases, sideboards, low tables, beds, lighting, kitchen fit outs and sculptural pieces. Since 2010 Damien has worked with Bonhula Yunupingu on their collaborative design and making project ‘Bala Ga Lili’ (Two Ways Learning).

Damith Herath

Artist-Moderator

Damith Herath is an Associate Professor in Robotics and Art at the University of Canberra. Damith is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur and a roboticist with extensive experience leading multidisciplinary research teams on complex robotic integration and industrial and research projects for over two decades. He founded Australia’s first collaborative robotics startup in 2011 and was named one of Australia’s most innovative young tech companies in 2014. Teams he led in 2015 and 2016 consecutively became finalists and, in 2016, a top-ten category winner in the coveted Amazon Robotics Challenge – an industry-focussed competition amongst the robotics research elite. In addition, Damith has chaired several international workshops on Robots and Art and is the lead editor of the book “Robots and Art: Exploring an Unlikely Symbiosis” – the first significant work to feature leading roboticists and artists together in the field of Robotic Art.

David Finnigan

Artist-Moderator

David Finnigan is a writer and theatre-maker from Ngunnawal country in Australia. He works with research scientists to produce theatre about climate and global change. David’s 2017 play Kill Climate Deniers was awarded the Griffin Playwrights Award. His series about planetary transformation You’re Safe Til 2024 has been presented at the Sydney Opera House and the ArtScience Museum Singapore. David is a Churchill Fellow, an associate of interactive theatre company Coney in the UK and Boho Interactive in Australia.

David Pledger

CoCurator for the Future

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.

Debris Facility

Moderator for the Future

Debris Facility Pty Ltd is a queer corporate entity formed in 2015 after 10 years of “solo” artistic activity. Usually inhabiting one embodiment, it works to disrupt boundaries of singular and multiple agencies. The Facility’s mobius input and output redeploy the im/material waste from creative industries. Through utilsing organisations as critical spatial practice, we highlight and morph existing exchange mechanisms. Through pedagogical commitments to Liquid Architecture, Victorian College of the Arts and Monash University, we extend our discursive investments.

Declan Furber Gillick

Assembly Artist in Residence

Declan Furber Gillick is an independent, multi-award winning Arrernte artist, musician and educator with a passion for mentoring young artists and writers. His creative practice spans playwrighting, poetry, film, prose and visual arts as well as hip-hop, and rap (performing and releasing music under the name Knomad). Declan completed a Masters in Writing for Performance at Victorian College of The Arts in 2017 and has been a writer-in-residence as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s Next Stage program since 2018. Declan is also an activist, a radio broadcaster with 3RRR Melbourne and a facilitator and teacher, having taught at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. He has had work published with Southerly, Centre For Indigenous Story, University of Queensland Press and Affirm Press. His plays include BIGHOUSE DREAMING, Scar Trees and Jacky, the last of which was commissioned by Melbourne Theatre Company in 2019. He has released his debut EP as Knomad in 2019, entitled Love and Politics Pt. One, and you can find his work on Spotify as well as on Instagram @kno_mad_music.

Dr AM Kanngieser

Respondent

Dr AM Kanngieser is a geographer and sound artist. They are the author of Experimental Politics and the Making of Worlds (2013) and Between Sound and Silence: Listening towards Environmental Justice (forthcoming).Their audio work has been featured on Documenta 14 Radio, BBC 3, ABC Radio National, The Natural History Museum London, Arts Centre Melbourne, Radio del Museo Reina Sofía, Deutschland Radio and QAGOMA. They have facilitated sound events with Live Art Development Agency, Sound and Music and 2 Degrees Festival/Arts Admin. AM’s work looks to the intersections of community organising, self-determination, ecology, and listening; their current projects use oral testimony and field recordings to amplify community resistance to resource extraction, environmental racism and ecological disaster in Oceania. http://anjakanngieser.com/

Dr Jen Rae

Moderator for the Future

Dr Jen Rae is an artist-researcher, facilitator and educator of Canadian Métis-Scottish descent from Treaty 6 Territory, based in Dja Dja Wurrung Country (Castlemaine, Victoria). Her practice-led research expertise is centered around cultural responses to climate/everything change – specifically the role of artists and creative inquiry – with a focus on disaster preparedness, food justice and speculative futures.

Dr Ruth De Souza

AFTF 2020 Respondent

Dr Ruth DeSouza is a highly experienced multidisciplinary educator, researcher and consultant, specialising in cross cultural engagement, cultural safety, and the interface of digital technologies within culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Her background is in nursing where she has extensive experience as a clinician, researcher and academic in New Zealand and Australia. Ruth is a 2020 RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, based in the School of Art and a member of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform (ECP). Her fellowship project aims to engage health professionals in finding new ways to understand, co-design and implement sustainable cultural safety initiatives in a range of health contexts.

El Gibbs

Moderator for the Future

El Gibbs is the Director, Media and Communications for People with Disability Australia. She is also an award-winning writer with a focus on disability and social issues, published widely. Her work is available at elgibbs.com.au. El spends far too much time on Twitter at @bluntshovels.

Eleanor Jackson

Moderator for the Future

Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and community radio broadcaster. She is the author of ‘Gravidity and Parity’ and ‘A Leaving’, both by Vagabond Press. Her live album, ‘One Night Wonders’, is produced by Going Down Swinging. A passionate advocate for diverse and inclusive cultures, she is a former Editor in Chief and now Chair of Peril Magazine. She has previously held roles as Vice-Chair of The Stella Prize and Board Member for Queensland Poetry Festival.

Ella Cutler

Designer for the Future, TTWMadeNext

Ella Cutler (she/her) is a designer, thinker and publisher creating work on Gadigal and Wangal country. A recent graduate, she’s interested in ways design tools can help to navigate small protest ecologies and their complex contexts. Her master’s project and thesis: Just Spaces, seeks to understand the complexity and messiness of safe spaces through the lens of LGBTQI+ women and non-binary identities. As a queer woman, her design practice has always sought to navigate the contested and entangled spaces of a heteronormative world.

Elliat Rich

TTWDNext Designer & TTWMadeNext Curator

Elliat Rich is based in Alice Springs, Central Australia. She works across a broad-spectrum of design for a diverse client base, remotely, locally and nationally. Her practice covers cross-cultural resources, exhibition design, public art and furniture, product development, one-off exhibition and limited run objects. All projects align with an ethical imperative to increase equality between people and across species, now and into the future. Elliat completed her Bachelor of Design at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW with first class honours in 2006. In 2014 her and her partner launched Elbow Workshop, a studio, retail space and workshop that they share with other creative professionals.

Erica Seccombe

Artist-Moderator

Erica Seccombe has 30 years of experience working, teaching and contributing to the arts sector. She is based in the Canberra region, living in semi-rural NSW on Ngambri, Ngunawal and Ngunnawal countries, and is Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Art & Design. Erica’s interdisciplinary arts practice spans traditional lens-based imaging, print media and drawing, to experimental digital platforms using frontier scientific visualisation software. A continuing theme arising in her work and research is the complex human relationships we have with nature and our natural environments, whether through social, cultural, or technological factors. Erica’s practice articulates ways to position her own experiences and concerns as an artist of living at this time of uncertainty where human activity has had a dominant influence on the environment and climate.

Felicity Ruby

Artist-Moderator

Felicity Ruby is an activist and researcher.  She was the first staff member and coordinator of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN), which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. She worked as senior advisor for Senator Scott Ludlam, particularly focusing on internet policy, digital rights, and media reform. While heading the UN Office of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Felicity founded and coordinated the coalition of NGOs that drove the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. She has written for Crikey, New Internationalist, Arena, Open Democracy, New Matilda, Digital Journalism and Australian Foreign Affairs and was the co-editor of A Secret Australia: Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposés.

Genevieve Grieves

Moderator for the Future

Genevieve Grieves is a Worimi woman – traditionally from mid north coast New South Wales – who has lived in Narrm (Melbourne) for many years. She is an award-winning Indigenous artist, researcher, educator, curator, film-maker and oral oral historian who has accumulated twenty years experience across the arts, culture and education sectors. Genevieve has consistently won recognition and awards for the variety of projects she has undertaken throughout her diverse career including online documentaries, film, art and exhibitions.

Gillian Lever

Future Archivist

Gillian Lever is a sound artist and composer working across multichannel sound performance, diffusion and sound installation. Her practice examines the intertwined nature of the relationship between spatial sound, the space it inhabits, and the exploring listener. Gillian completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sound) with Distinction at RMIT University, Melbourne, in 2017, and is a founding member of Starlings Spatial Sound Collective. She is currently undertaking a Master of Design by Research degree in spatial sound at the School of Design, RMIT. Gillian composed the live, surround sound score for Watson’s critically acclaimed Moosehead-award winning show Go To Hell (2017), and for their Jhonsey award winning show Once Were Planets (2013). She has also composed sound for works by choreographers Amanda Lever (Dasein, 2013; Hypnagogia, 2015), Anna Seymour (Distraction Society, 2016; remounted 2017) and Chelsea Byrne (Human Sized Box, 2015). Gillian held a solo exhibition at Montsalvat, Sustain and release, in January 2019, performed at the Tilde New Music Festival 2019 and was a member of a collective producing a finalist work for the 2019 Nillumbik Prize.

Huong Truong

Artist-Moderator

Huong Truong is a community activist, facilitator + artist based in Melbourne’s Western suburbs. She is a former Greens Victorian Parliamentarian, local government officer and union organiser.

Jenna Lee

AFTF 2022 Artist-Moderator

Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Using art to explore and celebrate her many overlapping identities, Lee works across sculpture, installation, and body adornment. She also works with the moving image, photography and projection in the digital medium. With a practice focused on materiality and ancestral material culture, Lee works with notions of the archive, histories of colonial collecting, and settler-colonial books and texts. Lee ritualistically analyses, deconstructs, and reconstructs source material, language and books, transforming them into new forms of cultural beauty and pride, and presenting a tangibly translated book.

Jennifer Mills

Moderator for the Future

Jennifer Mills is an author, editor, critic and activist based on Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide). Her latest novel is The Airways, published by Picador in 2021. Dyschronia (2018) was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Aurealis, and Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. A widely published essayist and a strong advocate for the rights of writers and artists, her key interests include labour, art, climate, ecology, power, gender and the body. In 2022 Mills is pursuing these subjects and more as Artist in Residence at Vitalstatistix.

Jinghua Qian

Assembly Artist in Residence

Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese writer living in Melbourne on the lands of the Kulin nation. Ey[t1]  has written on desire, resistance and diaspora for Popula, Sydney Morning Herald, Overland and Meanjin.

Jordan Lacey

Moderator for the Future

Jordan Lacey is a writer, curator, composer and researcher of sounds, ambiances, and artistic methodologies. He is based in the School of Design at RMIT University. Jordan recently curated the Translating Ambiance exhibition, a hybrid sound-art exhibition-ethnography research event. He is author of Sonic Rupture.

Josh Santospirito

Assembly Artist in Residence

Joshua Santospirito is a graphic novelist, artist, musician and writer who lives in Hobart, Tasmania. He enjoys sitting on his couch and avoiding making art, music and writing. His work is concerned with place, identity and other interesting things like that. He is currently co-president of the Comic Art Workshop, an artist run organisation that workshops ambitious comics. He runs the Moon Shed in Hobart with fellow artist Leigh Rigozzi.

Kathryn Coff

The Planting interviewee

Kathryn Coff is a proud Yorta Yorta woman living on Jaara Country. She is a respected member of the Aboriginal community in Castlemaine and the CEO of Nalderun Education Aboriginal Corporations in the Mount Alexander Shire. She was the Indigenous Practitioner in Residence at La Trobe University (Bundoora and Bendigo) overseeing all Indigenous subjects, but now a consultant and lectures or teaches in Early Childhood, Nexus Program, Outdoor Education, Neighbourhood House Victoria and other organisations. She is currently completing her PhD. Kathryn is a member of the Fellowship for Indigenous Leadership Alumni and is on the Board of KoondeeWoonga-gat Toor-rong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Led Philanthropic Fund.

Kaya Wilson

Artist-Moderator

Kaya Wilson is a writer and tsunami scientist who somehow finds himself in Canberra. His first book As Beautiful As Any Other won the 2019 Varuna Fellowship, was listed by the Guardian as 1 of the 25 best books of 2021, and was shortlisted for ACT Book of the year. Kaya’s day job is working in natural disaster and climate risk and he is always seeking to find the places where science and art come together. He is currently working on a novel, best described as a deeply queer summer read for young adults coming of age in the climate crisis.

Keir Winesmith

Respondent

Keir Winesmith is passionate about finding new ways to use digital to connect people to culture and place. He is Chief Digital Officer at the National Film & Sound Archive, mentor in the Australia Council for the Arts CEO Digital Mentoring Program, and co-founder of the Cultural Data Salon for Sydney cultural workers. His book, co-authored with Dr. Suse Anderson, is The Digital Future of Museums (Routledge, 2020). Keir has led and collaborated on award-winning projects that blend the digital and the physical across the globe. In 2018, he was named in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business for this work. Keir holds hold a Ph.D. in new media and writes and speaks frequently on the intersection of digital and the arts, in particular, the role of digital as an agent for organisational change.

Kera O’Regan

Respondent

Kera Sherwood-O’Regan (K?i Tahu, Te Waipounamu) is an indigenous multidisciplinary storyteller and activist based in Aotearoa New Zealand. She leads social impact agency, Activate , to co-create community-led stories and projects for social change. Kera’s work and activism centers structurally oppressed communities in social change, and crosses the intersections of indigenous & disability rights, hauora (health), and climate change. She is also the Founder of Fibromyalgia Aotearoa NZ , and in her spare time organises for ethical representation in media, and collaborates with many NGOs on issues of climate and disability justice.

Kiri Morcombe

Associate Producer

Holding a BA in Dance (WSU), Kiri is an Independent Creative Producer, Company Manager for Australian Dance Party (ACT), and Projects Officer for Southern Tablelands Arts (NSW) based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in the Southern Tablelands NSW, Australia. With over 20 years’ experience in arts management for performing and visual arts, Kiri has held roles, including: Manager for Ausdance NSW (service organization for dance in NSW), Contemporary Curator and Producing roles across western Sydney: Campbelltown Arts Centre, Parramatta Artists’ Studios and Blacktown Arts Centre and funding programs for Australia Council for the Arts. Kiri’s experience includes creating and delivering diverse creative programs, engaging and empowering community within projects, International artist exchange projects, delivering large scale dance festivals and works, including public art installations, short dance films and commissioned cross- artform works with contemporary International artists. Kiri has collaborated with companies including Zodiak Center for Dance (FIN), Uprise Rebel (UK), Performance Space, Critical Path, Sydney Opera House, Jamestown Collective , Australian Museum, City of Parramatta, FORM Dance Projects, The Powerhouse Museum (Now MAAS), Sydney Festival (all NSW),  Australian Dance Party (ACT).

Krystal De Napoli

AFTF 2022 Respondent

Krystal De Napoli is a Kamilaroi astrophysicist, educator and radio broadcaster devoted to the advocacy of Indigenous knowledges and equity in STEM. Krystal uses her platform as a science communicator to present the ways in which her love for her culture and curiosity for the skies intrinsically intersect. Krystal is co-author of Astronomy: Sky Country, the fourth book in the First Knowledges series available April 26th 2022 which explores the world of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander astronomy.

Lawrence Harvey

Moderator for the Future

Lawrence Harvey is a composer, sound designer and director of SIAL Sound Studios, School of Design, RMIT University.  He has led various ARC and industry funded projects, supervises research candidates and teaches into the Spatial Sound stream of the Master of Design Innovation Technology (MDIT) degree. He is Artistic Advisor to the RMIT Sonic Arts Collection and directs public concerts and exhibitions for the collection on the SIAL Sound Studios speaker orchestra. Harvey has also collaborated in interdisciplinary teaching and research with musicians and artists, interior, digital and industrial designers, and architects. In addition to electroacoustic compositions, he has produced gallery and urban sound installations, spatial sound designs for VR and theatre, and performed around Australia and in Seoul, Huddersfield, The Hague and Vienna

Liam Young

AFTF First Speaker

Liam Young is a designer, director and BAFTA nominated producer who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. Described by the BBC as ‘the man designing our futures’, his visionary films and speculative worlds are both extraordinary images of tomorrow and urgent examinations of the environmental questions facing us today. His films he has premiered with platforms ranging from Channel 4, Apple+, SxSW, Tribeca, the New York Metropolitan Museum, The Royal Academy, Venice Biennale, the BBC and the Guardian. His films have been collected internationally by museums such as the New York Met, Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and M Plus Hong Kong and has been acclaimed in both mainstream and design media including features with TED, Wired, New Scientist, Arte, Canal+, Time magazine and many more.

Lisa Rae Bartolomei

Future Archivist

Lisa Rae Bartolomei is a Melbourne based multi-disciplinary artist and musician working predominately in the realm of spatially based electroacoustic music  for performance and installation. She is currently completing a Masters of Design at RMIT university’s SIAL Sound Studios. She holds a  Advanced Diploma of Sound Production and Honours in Fine Art (Sound Art Practices) from RMIT . Her practice incorporates elements of site-specific field recording, spectralism and experimental musical composition. With over 20 years’ experience as a musician,  she played in bands Tuff Muff and MCFM, performing at venues such as Hamer Hall and The Sydney State Theatre and improvised sets at the Make it Up Club with Japanese avant-guard musicians Tabata Mitsura (Boredems, Zeni Geva , Acid Mother Temple) and Masami Kuwaguchi (New Rock Syndicate).

She is a  member of Starlings Spatial Sound Collective, was sound designer for the La Mama show Missfits (2014)  and contributed music to the sonic surrealist game Little Songs of the Mutilated and the Cities and Memory worldwide sound-art project. She was a co-composer of Containing the Infinite, presented at the Tilde New Music Festival and nominated for the Nillumbik Art Prize(2019). She has performed live sound diffusions at RMIT Galleries New Order Art Party and  Starlings curated events Murmurations: Spatial Sound Festival and Orbits: Traversing the Soundsphere. In 2018, she collaborated with Bonnie Mercer for MMW’s Tunnel/Vision, an quadrophonic installation of Metro Tunnel construction sounds at the ACMI Hub

Naomi Klein

The Planting interviewee

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept. In 2018 she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair at Rutgers University and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021 she joined the University of British Columbia as UBC Professor of Climate Justice (tenured) and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice.

Nina Sellars

Artist-Moderator

Dr Nina Sellars is an artist, writer, and curator whose research area focuses on the contemporary and historical influence of anatomy on our understanding of the human and posthuman body. Her recent projects include Drawing Breath >< Gut Feelings: An Experimental Art Lab for Contemporary Dance (2023) originally designed for University of Melbourne and presented for the anthropology and medical historians’ conference and exhibition Comparative Guts, Kiel University. In 2022, she was a lecturer in Figure and Life and Art in the Digital Age, School of Art & Design, Australian National University; a visiting research fellow at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, Australia and also a curator for ANAT SPECTRA: Multiplicity. Previously, she was curator of exhibitions and programs at the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Melbourne (2019-2021); artist in residence at SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia (2016-2018); research fellow at the Alternate Anatomies Lab (robotics and art research group), Curtin University, Perth, W.A. (2013-2015). Recent exhibitions of her artwork include: The Brain Observatory, San Diego—Brains (2022-2024); Riga Stradins University Anatomy Museum, Riga, Latvia—Anatomy & Beyond (2021-2022); Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts—HyperPrometheus: The Legacy of Frankenstein (2018). Recent authored publications include—‘Fat Matters: Fluid Interventions in Anatomy’, in Fluid Matter(s): Flow and Transformation in the History of the Body, ANU Press, 2020, and ‘Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: a historical guide to navigating contemporary images’, in Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies, 2021.

Pippa Bailey

Moderator for the Future

Pippa Bailey grew up on Wangal Land in Sydney, starting her career as a performer and reporter/producer with SBSTV. Pippa spent many years in the UK. She was Artistic Director for The Museum Of on London’s South Bank and also for oh!art @Oxford House; an Associate Director with The World Famous – innovate company of pyrotechnicians and also produced the Total Theatre Awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007-12. She developed BiDiNG TiME, an international participatory theatre project, to highlight the vital need to empower a diverse range of women and imagine new systems that respond to environmental and economic crisis. Pippa has worked as a producer with extraordinary independent Australian artists including Ghenoa Gela, Nakkiah Lui, Amrita Hepi, Martin del Amo, Branch Nebula, The Climate Guardians and Sandra Thibodeaux while working at Performing Lines and she was senior producer for Sydney Festival 2019. She is on the Advisory Board of IETM – International Performing Arts Network and a board member of Theatre Network NSW. Pippa was Director of ChangeFest 19 and is passionate about culture leading on climate action to create a fair and sustainable future.

Professor Anne Poelina

AFTF 2022 Respondent

Professor Anne Poelina, Chair of Indigenous Studies and Senior Research Fellow Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, is a Nyikina Warrwa Indigenous woman from the Kimberley region of Australia. Chair, Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, Anne is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, and film maker. A respected academic researcher, she holds, Doctor of Philosophy (Indigenous Wellbeing), Doctor of Philosophy (First Law), Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Master of Education, Master of Arts (Indigenous Social Policy). Signatory to the Redstone Statement 2010 she helped draft at the 1st International Summit on Indigenous Environmental Philosophy.  A Peter Cullen Fellow for Water Leadership, she was awarded a Laureate from the Women’s World Summit Foundation (Geneva,2017). She holds membership to national and global Think Tanks. Poelina is a Visiting Fellow with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, Canberra Australia Water Justice Hub; Visiting Fellow Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University; and Visiting Fellow, The Institute of Post-Colonial Studies (Melbourne).

Professor Peter Doherty

Respondent

Peter Doherty is Australian immunologist and pathologist who, with Rolf Zinkernagel of Switzerland, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for their discovery of how the body’s immune system distinguishes virus-infected cells from normal cells. After leading a research group at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania (1975–82), Peter headed the department of experimental pathology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra (1982–88) and served as chairman (1988–2001) of the department of immunology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he still holds the Michael F Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research. In 2002, he joined the faculty of medicine at the University of Melbourne, and from 2014, has been at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the university and the Royal Melbourne Hospital,

Peter is the author of many books, including The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: A Life in Science (2005), Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell Us About Our Health and the World (2012) The Knowledge Wars (2015), The Incidental Tourist (2018) and most recently An Insider’s Plague Year (2021).

Robbie Mcewan

Online Usher

Robbie is a cross-platform producer, filmmaker and assistant director hailing from Aotearoa New Zealand. After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Film and Television he worked producing collaborative media projects in communities nationwide. He’s since produced with Screen Australia and screened films at MIFF, SFF, MQFF and a number of international festivals. Robbie’s audio productions have been broadcast on RNZ National, ABC RN’s 360documentaries & Earshot. For the audio feature ‘Chasing Meteors’ he received a 2017 Kavli Science Journalism Award for Excellence in Audio Reporting from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. With Alex Kelly and Sophia Marinos he produced the 2018 creative development of ‘The Things We Did Next’ at Melbourne’s Arts House. He’s also involved in interpretive planning & experience design. In late 2017 Robbie assisted Museums Victoria staff developing the location-based audio experience ‘Inside Out’. He is currently working as an assistant director in advertising and studying mixed reality experience design in parks, museums, zoos and wildlife sanctuaries.

Roj Amedi

Respondent

Roj Amedi is a writer, strategist and human rights advocate passionate about design, contemporary art, and access to justice. Since migrating to Australia as an Iraqi-Kurdish refugee, Roj has campaigned for refugee, migrant, and LGBTIQ+ rights, and worked with organisations such as GetUp!, Colour Code and Justice Connect. Previously, she has been an editor at Acclaim Magazine and Neue Luxury, and is currently on the board of the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival and Overland Journal. Her life’s work is economic and racial justice.

Sam Wallman

Assembly Artist in Residence

Sam Wallman is a comics-journalist, cartoonist and industrial organiser based primarily on unceded Wurundjeri Country. His work has been published in places like the Guardian, The New York Times, the ABC and SBS. He is a member of the Workers Art Collective, and an artist-in-residence at the Victorian Trades Hall.

Santilla Chingaipe

Respondent

Santilla Chingaipe is a journalist and filmmaker whose work explores migration, cultural identities and politics. Chingaipe is a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper, and serves as a member of the Federal Government’s Advisory Group on Australia-Africa Relations (AGAAR). The recipient of a number of awards, she was recently recognised at the United Nations as one of the most influential people of African descent in the world. Her first book of non-fiction exploring African migration to Australia pre-federation, is due later this year through Pan MacMillan.

Scott Ludlam

First Speaker

Scott Ludlam is a writer, activist and former Australian Greens Senator. He served in Parliament from 2008 – 2017, and as Co-Deputy Leader of his party from 2015 – 2017. Currently working as a freelance researcher and troublemaker, while writing occasional pieces for Meanjin, the Monthly, Junkee and the Guardian. His first book on ecology, technology and politics will be published any year now, pandemic permitting.

Sophia Marinos

Producer for the Future

Sophia is a creative producer living on Gadigal lands in inner Sydney. She has worked in diverse areas of social justice and the arts, both internationally and locally. Sophia was the creative producer of Big hART’s multi-platform Namatjira project from 2009-2018, leading a successful and historic campaign to restore the copyright in Albert Namatjira’s works to his family. Under her guidance the project won 4 awards and generated: an original new Australian theatre work that has toured nationally and internationally; a feature documentary and a social impact campaign out of which she worked with the Namatjira family to establish the Namatjira Legacy Trust. Sophia is passionate about the capacity of art to spearhead positive social change. With Big hART she was National Producer, producing numerous theatrical works, community engagement programs and social impact campaigns, on issues as diverse as slavery at sea, Indigenous languages policy, cultural diversity and Indigenous incarceration. She has also produced Man With The Iron Neck for Legs On The Wall; worked with Indigenous strategic design and technology company Old Ways, New on how Indigenous Knowledges can inform new and emerging technologies; produced monthly singing events for The Welcome Choir; and has worked with Bob Brown Foundation.

Sophie Gleeson

Future Archivist

Sophie Gleeson is a sound artist, audio producer and academic. She teaches soundscape studies and spatial sound production at the SIAL Sound Studios at RMIT’s School of Design. Her evolving research and creative practice concerns listener experience, place and attuning in to the sounds of the everyday.

Sophie Hyde

Moderator for the Future

Sophie Hyde is a founding member of film collective Closer Productions. She lives and works on the lands of the Kaurna people in South Australia and makes provocative and intimate films and television.

Her debut feature drama 52 Tuesdays (director/producer/co-writer) won the directing award at Sundance and the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. She directed and produced the Australian/Irish co-production Animals starring Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat, which premiered in Sundance 2019 and won a BIFA for Best Debut Screenplay. She created, produced and directed episodic series F*!#ing Adelaide, which premiered in competition at Series Mania and screened on ABC Australia. She created, produced and directed (EP4) the 4 x 1-hour series The Hunting, which won two Australian Academy Awards for Best Screenplay in Television and Best Supporting Actor for Richard Roxburgh. Commissioned by SBS, it has become their most watched commissioned program ever.

Sophie’s feature documentaries include Life in Movement (producer /co-director), winner of the Australian documentary Prize, Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (producer) and Sam Klemke’s Time Machine (producer), which both premiered at Sundance Film Festival and In My Blood It Runs (Producer) which premiered at Hotdocs, had a very successful cinema run, and will soon screen on PBS (USA), ARTE (France and Germany and ABC (Australia).

Su san Cohn

Designer for the Future, TTWMadeNext

Su san Cohn is an artist with multiple personalities – jeweller, craftswoman, designer, industrialist, curator, writer. Living in Naarm, Melbourne, she has been making work for over 35 years exhibiting extensively in Australia and internationally. Working across the art-craft-design divide, Cohn’s research-based and collaborative process brings a conceptual approach to her work together with an interest in contemporary culture and technology.

Cohn’s broad understanding of design and making has also enabled her to work as a designer for Alessi and as the curator of the international exhibition Unexpected Pleasures – the Art and Design of Contemporary Jewellery, commissioned by the Design Museum, London. Cohn’s works are held in collections around the world including, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Die Neue Sammlung Design Museum, Munich; The National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. She has received several awards, including the Australia Council 2017 Visual Artist Award; induction into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame (1995) and made an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (2019). Cohn is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.

Tessa Zettel

Designer for the Future, TTWMadeNext

Tessa Zettel works collaboratively between disciplines as an artist, writer and researcher to imagine and enact other ways of living. Her participatory projects respond to the contexts in which they occur, using a kind of fabulist archaeology to make visible contested histories & possible futures. This involves bringing speculative forms of mapping, storytelling, writing, drawing, performance and exchange to overlooked or devalued cultural practices and knowledge. Grown on Gadigal lands, since 2015 Tessa has been transiently resident in artist communities from France, Finland and Estonia to China. She is co-founder of micro-publishing platform Cloudship Press and slow-growth collective Weathering, and a co-director at Sydney’s not-only-artist-run space & library Frontyard Projects. Tessa is also a member of public art/architecture group Collective Disaster and taught for over ten years in Interdisciplinary Design at the University of Technology Sydney.

Tim Baker

Moderator for the Future

Tim Baker is an author, journalist and storyteller specializing in surfing history and culture, working across a variety of media from books and magazines to film, video, and theatre. Tim is the best-selling author of Occy, High Surf, Bustin’ Down The Door,  Surf For Your Life, Century of Surf and Surfari.  He is a former editor of Tracks and Surfing Life magazines, and a three-time winner of the Surfing Australia Hall of Fame Culture Award.

Tim Hollo

Artist-Moderator

Tim Hollo is Executive Director of the Green Institute, where he leads thinking around ecological political philosophy and practice, and drives policy discussion around Rights of Nature, Universal Basic Income and participatory democracy. His book, “Living Democracy: an ecological manifesto for the end of the world as we know it”, was published with NewSouth in 2022.
Tim is the founder of Green Music Australia, was Communications Director for Greens Leader Christine Milne, has been a board member of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, has been a Visiting Fellow at ANU’s RegNet, and has run for election as the Greens candidate for Canberra. With FourPlay String Quartet, he has recorded 7 albums and toured nationally and globally, from Woodford Folk Festival to New York’s Carnegie Hall. Tim established Canberra’s flourishing Buy Nothing Groups, set up a little library, and spearheaded a campaign to keep billboard advertising out of the city.

Zena Cumpston

First Speaker & Moderator for the Future

Zena Cumpston is a Barkandji woman with family connection to Broken Hill and Menindee in western New South Wales. She currently lives in Melbourne on the lands of the Wurundjeri people with her partner and two young boys. Zena is a researcher and also regularly works as a writer, curator and consultant. Most recently Zena produced a free booklet exploring Indigenous plant use that has been used widely by schools and community groups. In 2021 she curated the show Emu Sky for Science Gallery Melbourne (closing July 2022), exploring Aboriginal knowledge and bringing together many community members to share their stories, research, knowledge and art works. She also spent much of 2021 working on the Australian State of the Environment Report as a co-author, writing across several chapters. Zena is passionate about truth-telling and undertaking projects that directly benefit and provide opportunities for her Aboriginal community. In her spare time she is a basket weaver and committed plant lover. In 2022 her book Plants, written together with Wiradjuri academic Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher and Professor Lesley Head, will be published by Thames and Hudson as part of the First Knowledges series. In 2023 she will co-curate a show with her sister Nici for Bunjil Place Gallery, gathering together several exciting established and emerging Barkandji/Barkindji and Ngiyampa artists and storytellers.

Zoe Scoglio

AFTF 2022 Artist-Moderator

Zoe Scoglio is an artist of European descent living and working on the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung in Central Victoria. Often working collaboratively, conversationally and ecologically, her practice considers the space of art as a site of community and collective study.  Her current research questions how somatic praxis can help make perceptible the limits of the western imaginary and contribute to processes of deep organising and climate justice.  This has involved (co)hosting reading groups, workshops, walks and events, as well as stepping back a while to listen and learn.