For many around the world, 2020 was a year zero. Not just for the decade but for humanity. We are no longer approaching tipping-point, we’ve arrived. Our economic, political and cultural systems seem bereft of the solutions to the problems they have created. For centuries, our dominant settings have been singular, linear and binary. Unsurprisingly, our species is in deep conflict with itself and the earth on which its continuity depends.

How do we move forward with care and respect for the earth? How do we live in the world without causing further damage? How do we live today to create better tomorrows? If the old ways are incapable of providing solutions to problems or, as Elizabeth Kolbert says, made worse ‘by people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems’ then we must look elsewhere for inspiration.

For artists, scientists and technologists, it is an extraordinary time. Art is built on the act of imagination; science demands unflinching curiosity in the space between fact and fiction; technology embraces the impossible. Our global, interconnected ecology means our actions have multiple consequences, not just in other disciplines but in other sectors, communities, societies and systems. It has always been so, but never so palpable.

To create futures for the human and non-human worlds that are fair, just and sustainable, we need a multiplicity of new ideas, ways of thinking, strategies and sensibilities; we need new frames and behaviours, new discoveries, new points of entry. ANAT SPECTRA 2022: Multiplicity speaks to the urgency of this challenge and a provocation to the ‘possible’ at the nexus of art, science and technology.

Foregrounding Australians working at the edge of experimental and anti-disciplinary practice, the program is presented online and in real life. ANAT SPECTRA 2022: Multiplicity comprises an artistic offering of moving image, performance, visual and sound art in dialogue with a discursive program in symposium and assembly formats. It will provide a space for the joy and pleasure of the contest of ideas, research and creation, deliberations of their impacts and meanings for future societies and the generation of new artworks that might help us get there. Our gathering will be intersectional, intergenerational, interdisciplinary and reciprocal.

Everyone is welcome.

ANAT SPECTRA 2022: Multiplicity is imagined by artist, curator and writer, David Pledger, in conversation and collaboration with Yorta Yorta/Wurundjeri actor-director, Tony Briggs, social impact producer and art-maker, Alex Kelly, artist-writer-director Robert Walton, Barkandji researcher and storyteller, Zena Cumpston and Art & Science researcher, curator and artist, Nina Sellars.

Tony Briggs, company founder of Typecast Entertainment will be curating a moving image program based around Indigenous Futures, the Assembly for the Future Program will be co-curated with Alex Kelly and feature Zena Cumpston as a First Speaker and Dr Robert Walton joins ANAT SPECTRA as the Co-Chair of the Symposium Academic Committee. They will jointly and individually provide critical advice on the developing Multiplicity program.

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ANAT SPECTRA: Multiplicity celebrates and acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation on which SPECTRALive takes place. We also acknowledge our digital online gatherings reach many unceded countries. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present.

ANAT SPECTRA 2022 is proudly presented by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) in partnership with the Science Gallery Melbourne and Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne and together with program partners The Things We Did Next (TTWDNext), Typecast Entertainment, RMIT University and Leonardo.