Project / Forward

2049
LAUNCHed 23 February, 2024
Global festival: 25 - 27 october, 2024
PROJECT / FORWARD: 2049
A pop-up global moving image and projection art festival where artists get to plan the future: The Year 2049
What If Artists Planned The Future?

Project/Forward: 2049 is a free, micro, global projection art festival featured in unique public spaces, creating a solutions-based blueprint for a better world .

Project / Forward has been exploding with shattering light shards onto public walls around the world for 3 years in places like Bangladesh, Colombia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Jordan, the Philippines, Nepal, Hong Kong, Italy, Finland, Austria and USA, Newtown, NSW, and most recently, Chiang Mai!

The project aims to be shown in under-resourced spaces that don't usually get to see projection and moving image art. The projection spaces will be a space not usually used for cultural/art activity such as a temple, a bridge, a house, a brick wall, a monument, a laneway.

We launched this year in Chiang Mai. The project will be available throughout the year for festivals around the world, and on 25-27 October, we will create a simultaneous, global event for one weekend with screenings by our hosts across the world.

The Impact
The impact of Project/Forward is through its decentralisation of experimental and new media art forms. It takes moving image out of traditional gallery settings and makes it accessible to a broader audience who don't normally have access to more contemporary and experimental forms of expression. By utilising open and accessible public spaces, it invites people who might not typically visit art galleries to experience and interact with your artistic expression and vision.

Moreover, this festival revitalises and rejuvenates communities by activating neglected or underutilised spaces; shining a spotlight on silenced or dismissed communities. It fosters a sense of belonging and ownership amongst community members, sparking conversations and fostering connections through the shared experience of future imaginings.

See our Project / Forward Page for previous iterations

Project / Forward: 2049 Catalogue (Screen)Project / Forward: 2049 Catalogue (Print)
Upcoming Dates
Project / Forward: 2049 Global Micro Moving Image Festival

Micro Galleries' Project / Forward's free micro moving image festival is happening on:

25-27 October, 2024

For one weekend, simultaneously around the world across a range of unique, unexpected, and accessible sites, audiences can engage with an hour of visual bliss, hopeful envisioning, and blueprints for a better world.

We will also do a live online screening of the video package, which you can register for here.

We have our key hosts, but we are also always excited by new hosts joining us. If you are interested in being a host, click here.

More dates at festivals and events launched regularly.

Launch Screening Locations
What if artists were in charge of planning and imagining what the world would be like in the year 2049?

For one night only, in various locations across the city, Project / Forward was launched in Chiang Mai at these ultra-amazing unexpected venues:

Thapae East // Wall
Pa Rang Art Stay // Wall
Wat Chompu // Wall
SOME SPACE Night Gallery // In -gallery
Jack Yimyaen // Mobile food cart - projection from roof of cart at locations
Newburma Food and Music Festival, Rx Cafe Chiang Mai
Do You Ever Social Club // Large Screen

Project / Forward: 2049 launch in Chiang Mai is a collaboration and co-production with tomorrow.lab and SOME SPACE Gallery.

The Artists: 2049
Beaming at you from around the world
  • Altruit / USA
    Altruit is an A/V collaboration out of MN/USA. The goal of the project is to create unique live video art and music situations for individuals, entities, venues and organizations. Altruit is deeply driven to create positive experiences and improvisational environments that expand creativity and goodwill between themselves and the community and to share in and support the vivid experiences that shape the communities they serve.
  • Ariel Ruby + Remy Philipps / Australia
    Ariel Ruby (born 1993 Hobart) is a so called Australian/Italian artist with deep connections to the places she has called home, and those that she can imagine. She makes lively, moving worlds filled with glittering items and images that explode with narrative and rich emotional memory. Working across a range of mediums spanning analogue and digital, techniques are combined in installation contexts to create experiences for the viewer.
  • Benn Wyldeck / UK
    By day I'm a Television Editor and Animation director. By night I create digital 3d art.
  • Brian Luque Marcos / Spain / Austria
    BrianLM is not your average artist, but a spatial designer with a knack for innovative techniques. From 3D Printing to Laser Cutting and CNC drilling, his creations blend artistry with functionality, and use modern crafting to produce pieces that transcend mere aesthetics to become practical marvels ready for serial production. Brian's flair sits in crafting imaginative real-space experiences. and is the curator of our annual micro projection art festival: Project / Forward
  • Cosmodernism / Poland
    Cosmodernism is my personal intermedia art project that came to life in 2019 in Katowice, Poland. It incorporates both broadly defined abstract video art and photography, as well as original sound design and experimental and performative activities. The main idea of the project is to search for the personal abstract expression by exploring micro and macro observation in combination with specially composed soundscapes of my own production.
  • Dakarai Akil / USA
    A Los Angeles based collage artist and illustrator from Cleveland, OH. Primarily working in collage and design, he has self-published three art books that catalog works created between the span of 2014 to 2021. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibits over the span of 10 years and has worked with brands and publications such as The New York Times, Postmates, Serato, Billboard Magazine, Primark and several more. Dakarai's collage compositions are small windows into the world of Afrosurrealism.
  • Emma Varker / Australia
    Emma Varker is a multidisciplinary artist working across performance, video and digital media. Their live practice has been largely informed by training with La Pocha Nostra [Italy, 2020], ANDRIGO & ALIPRANDI [Italy, 2020] and Vest&Page's Venice International Performance Art Week [Italy, 2020]. They are currently investigating avenues in 3d modeling, motion capture, AR and AI.
  • Eduard Krasilnikov / Russia // Serbia
    Ed is a versatile creative coder and new media artist with expertise in interactive installations and audio-reactive visual effects for performances. With a background in Computer Science and a deep passion for drawing, Ed found his calling in creative coding, blending technical proficiency with artistic expression. Now a freelance creative coder and educator, Ed enjoys the opportunity to create immersive visual experiences and share his knowledge with aspiring creators.
  • Francesco Misceo / Italy

    Francesco Misceo is an experimental contemporary dancer and multimedia artist. He acts in the field of the digital arts and performing arts by creating many forms of art, from stage performances to exhibitions combining real and virtual worlds. He placeses the human body at the heart of technological and artistic challenges and adapts today's technological tools to create timeless poetry through a visual language based on playing and enjoyment, which breeds imagination. His work is acknowledged for the highly holistic artistic methodology with strong digital backgrounds, which considers not only physical elements as dance, but also optical, sonal, sensorial and, above all, spatiotemporal components as part of the choreography.


  • Gerard Mates / Spain // Mexico
    I'm a film director born and raised in Barcelona. Currently living in Mexico City. Specializing in commercials. Now in pre-production of my first feature film.
  • Hadi Moussally / Lebanon // France
    Hadi Moussally is a filmmaker, photographer & performer. In 2020, he founded "Hybrid Wave" with more than 30 hybrid artists from all around the world. He also considers himself an artivist working to dismantle injustice through films, photos & performances with particular focus on homophobia, racism, sexism, and transphobia.
  • Ika Vantiani & Feransis (Indonesia)
    I'm Feransis and Ika Vantiani, from Jakarta, Indonesia. We are both artists who use collage as our main technique. Feransis uses comic and cartoon characters for his works while Ika mostly uses vintage visuals in her works. We both explore collage through animation, murals, workshops, and other formats.
  • Ilham Gusti Syahadat / Indonesia
    I am an architectural designer based in Bali, Indonesia. My works in the field of fine arts explore many aspects, techniques and contexts of architectural design as a medium for creating fine art.
  • Jess Harwood / Australia
    Initially training as a lawyer, I've worked with farmers impacted by coal and gas developments at NSW Farmers Association, on shark conservation at Humane Society International, and most recently on climate change communications in the Australian coal mining team at the Sunrise Project. I aim to blend my legal and communications skills with my art practice to create timely, thought-provoking and informative works commenting on climate change, politics and life.

  • Ju Schnee / Austria
    Primarily delving into oil paintings, Ju Schnee seamlessly integrates the realm of Augmented Reality (AR) into her artistry. Her oeuvre serves as an experimental canvas, exploring the synergies between traditional mediums and cutting-edge technologies. Her fascination with AR, artificial intelligence (AI), and other emergent technologies drives her to push the boundaries of artistic expression.
  • Infratonal / France
    Multidisciplinary artist wondering how what makes us human can dialogue with the algorithm to create a visual and musical hybrid artwork
  • Julian Hespenheide / Germany
    Julian Hespenheide is a Berlin-based Designer working in the fields of creating experiences, flexible visual systems, generative art and new media art installations with the help of creative coding and creative technologies. In his explorations he is mostly going after very typical or mostly cliché "computer" things, such a displays, ways of communication, RAM / Memory, bits and bytes and textmode. HHis work emphasizes on converging the digital with design, art, science and technology to create novel concepts and a better understanding of the future.
  • Laura Piñeiro Atienza / Argentina // Austria
    Vienna-based photographer and multidisciplinary designer with a focus on architecture, interior design, AI design and illustration. Lover of all things design and on a creative pursuit, exploring different ways of self-expression like spatial design, styling, photography, furniture design and architectural visualization. Originally from Patagonia, Argentina, and based in Vienna since 2017.
  • Liam Young / Australia
    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. As a worldbuilder he visualizes the cities, spaces and props of our imaginary futures for the film and television industry and with his own 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.
  • Luigerman / Colombia
    Luigerman is a creator, artist and photographer from Cucuta. He has taken his work to different cultures, participating in artistic projects that allow communities to express themselves and be architects of changes in their spaces, environments and dynamics. He works with JR on the initiative: the Inside Out project.
  • Nadine Kolodziey
    Nadine Kolodziey is a XR artist who works at the intersection of digital and analog with the goal of creating visual experiences. She combines materials such as plastic and pixels to create work that is hand-cut, melted, or transformed into walkable augmented reality environments. . Kolodziey worked for clients like Apple, Uber, Google, Youtube, Page and die Zeit, she is a teacher for contemporary illustration at HfG Offenbach am Main since 2018, alumna of the Studienstiftung, member of the Berlin Artists Network Saloon, Media Art Association Berlin and Virtual Reality Association. She became a creative resident for Adobe and an artist for the Behind the Mac campaign from Apple.
  • Nathan Hackett / UK
    I'm an illustrator baed in Manchester, the unsunny north of England. My work is often laborious but I like to exhaust ideas in in grand compositions that reward the viewer for their longer reading and reflection. My practice is playful and I utilise subversion and humour as a technique to soften criticism with the subjects I am trying to empathise with.
  • Rhiannon Hopley / Australia
    Rhiannon Hopley is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sydney, Australia. Through photography, moving image and installation, her explores the abstraction and stillness of time and place, considering our connection with placemaking, identity and the relationship between nature, the urban landscape, and the human condition.
  • Setthasiri Chanjaradpong / Thailand
    Setthasiri Chanjaradpong is a documentary and multimedia artist based in Chiang Mai. From film festivals to temple fairs, his art connects cultures and creates dialogue.
  • Sonia JM / France // Thailand
    I love recycling/upcycling objects and give them another, colourful life through art. More recently I have started experimenting with Stop Motion animation to find solutions to the myriad of little problems. I am now starting to explore ways to feature global or social issues in short clips. The idea is to use some of these clips as a discussion starter with either children or adults... but also to simply bring a smile on viewers' face.
  • Sutu / Australia
    Sutu (aka Stuart Campbell) uses art and technology in new ways to tell stories. He has been commissioned by the likes of Marvel, Google and Disney to create VR art for properties such as Doctor Strange and Ready Player One. He has also created Virtual concerts and key art for Jean-Michel Jarre, The Weeknd and John Legend. His personal work explores the future of digital culture, identity and perception of reality.
  • Tamara Lee Bailey / Australia
    Tamara is a multidisciplinary Australian-Filipino artist. Tamara performed as a swing on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child from 2022-2023, and made her television debut on ABC kids show 'Mikki Vs The World,' showcasing colourful characters like the Divorce Fairy, Helen Hawk, Octavia and Mumsy for Season 2. Tamara's stage career kicked off at Theatreworks, where she played Ash in Kim Ho's production, 'The Great Australian Play'.
  • Tameem Sankari / Syria / Denmark
    Artist and designer pushing the boundaries of traditional art forms and exploring new avenues of creative expression using code.
  • Tolmie MacRae / Australia
    Tolmie MacRae's art practice explores the multiplicity of existence predominantly through the medium of video. His work has explored themes of meditation, transcendence and immanence by investigating the flow of light and time on people and landscapes generating visual and temporal abstractions. Rather than transcendence and immanence or creation and destruction as binary opposites the artist explores the tension of these seemingly competing states of existence as combined dualities. It is not a political or spiritual investigation for the artist but rather an individual exploration of the state of existence.
  • Targz / France
    Pen Plotter artist exploring the fusion of art and technology.
  • Toma Gerzha / The Netherlands
    Toma Gerzha (b. 2003) is an Amsterdam based mixed media artist specializing in coming-of-age photography. Gerzha first gained public notice on the Internet with her project ".ru" (2023), which included photographic work created using artificial intelligence. Toma has become widely known for her animation-based reels. Currently she studies Art History at the University of Amsterdam. Her works are in collection of Cultural Association MoCA, University of the Arts London, Saint Petersburg State University (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences), Farm Cultural Park.
  • TUTU / Indonesia
    Tutu's work explores important values that are hopefully owned and maintained as personal or collective values: have a courage to dream, decide and take steps towards our dreams; have patience in the process, open-minded and sincere in meeting other people; be careful in deciding and taking sides, because there are many things that we don't know behind everything that we see. In carrying out our role in this life, we must not lose our identity. Hopefully, whatever the circumstances, we can have, maintain and share personal values to make our surroundings better.
I Would Like to Host a Project / Forward: 2049 Event
Artist Callout!

Are you a moving image artist and you would be interested in possibly having your work in Project / Forward: 2049?

We are accepting submissions from moving image creatives (on a rolling basis) who would like their work to be part of our micro moving image festival.

We are considering work that fits into the concept or responds to the concept:

Artists are now in charge.

You've been called up into an exclusive think-tank of creative thinkers and charged with designing the world as it will be in the year 2049.

Everyone knows artists can imagine better ideas, futures, solutions and possibilities where most can't envision them. Your job is to make these amazing possibilities and visions come to life.

How will people live? What will their values be? What will the environment look like? What do people do? What will be important? What would have worked?

You are writing the plan and creating the script, the images and the narrative for the future. Building on the past, on the data we have, on those who went before us to be brave enough to envision a different, better world – what will you create? This is not a moment to predict doom and post-apocalyptic ideas. It is a chance to build a better tomorrow, forging possibilities and alternatives, where no one believes there are any.

Event Host Callout!
Join Micro Galleries in bringing art to unique, unexpected, and under-served places worldwide with Project/Forward!

Be part of an initiative that decentralises experimental artforms, engages broader audiences, revitalises communities, sparks conversations and connections and most importantly - creates wonder, curiosity, amazement and fun.

If you have a projector, some kind of small speaker and a place in your community you would love to revitalise with art, click and apply!
I Would Like to Host a Project / Forward: 2049 Event
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I WANT IN!
If what you see here tickles your creative tootsies, let us know what public program you're interested in and we will let you know as soon as program details are released.