P R O J E C T 1 0 0 +
"…We are in the first instance a society that begins in deep time...if we would accept it, rather than spurn it, we might discover so many new possibilities for ourselves as a people.”
Richard Flanagan, National Press Club Address, April 2018.
Since the beginning of the millennium we have seen the development and launch of a small but growing set of long-durational artistic and cultural works across the world that are projected to unfold over anywhere between 100 years to over 1B years. They include for example: Future Library in Norway (100 years); the Ok Glacier Memorial in Iceland (200 years); Letters to the Future in Vietnam (1000 years); Centuries of the Bristlecone (5000 years) and the Clock of the Long Now (10,000 years) in the USA; and The Last Pictures in geosynchronous orbit around Earth (1 billion + years) . These works provide much needed counterpoints to today’s accelerating culture. They invite us to stop and slow down, think on different time-scales, consider more deeply our role as ancestors and encourage us to cultivate care beyond our own lifetimes.
Project 100+ is a curatorial platform which supports the development, commissioning and launch of a comparative long-durational artistic and cultural work in Australia. Unfolding over a century or more, and enabled by multiple generations throughout this time, the commissioned artistic and cultural work will stand on the shoulders of giants. This includes a 65,000 + year living legacy of stewardship and care-taking born on this land and nurtured by its First Peoples. By supporting the creation of a long durational artistic and cultural work in Australia, Project 100+ is an invitation to participate in and continue this tradition of caring for the long-term for many generations to come.
Launching in 2023/24, the project will begin by featuring the small but growing constellation of long-durational artistic and cultural works unfolding across the world. Partnering with the artists, producers and communities behind each of these works, this star map of initiatives will provide a central repository for this nascent form of cultural production. These works will be documented through short films, essays, stories and more, providing visitors with a virtual pilgrimage. This will also become a learning resource for people interested in exploring this form of creative practice while providing further context for the commissioning process overall. In parallel, a curatorial vision and roadmap will be authored to guide the commissioning process which will be launched in 2023. This will lead to the selection and public launch of the commissioned long-durational artistic and cultural work in 2024/25.
Recently, Project 100+ has been supported by research undertaken throughout the Community Transmissions Artist Residency (funded by both the Australia Council for the Arts and the City of Melbourne). The project was later awarded seed funding from Arts Northern Rivers through its Your Big Idea platform which supports ambitious ideas ready to be developed into contemporary arts projects. This has enabled some initial conversations about the project in Sydney with curators and producers including: Emily Sullivan (Curator, Kaldor Public Arts Projects), Daniel Browning (Host, The Art Show, ABC Radio) and Sebastian Goldspink (Curator, 2022 Adelaide Biennial).
Project 100+ is the culmination of a decade-long inquiry into how we might engage culture and the arts to help nudge ourselves closer to making long-term thinking and action more accessible and common rather than obscure and rare. To date, this inquiry has unfolded on the lands of both the Wurundjeri and Arakwal people, with acknowledgment of their Elders and communities past, present and future.
