with over 25 years of experience in contemporary experimental art, kelli mccluskey is an award winning artist who co-founded pvi collective in 1998. based in boorloo, kelli is a passionate advocate for emergent artforms and socially engaged practice, regularly speaking on national and international panels and symposia, kelli facilitates playfully participatory discussions on the critical role of arts in society. kelli is a climate champion for better futures australia, a creative australia peer, a member of #feminist educators against sexism [feas], and an advisor for pica’s immersive arts program, boorda yeyi. most importantly, kelli is a trouble maker at heart, good trouble that is. 

how has collaboration across disciplines shaped your work and/or practice?
collaboration is everything to us. it’s a fundamental part of how we learn and grow as practitioners and as humans. our new mixed reality work, the booster protocol, which just had its first outing at perth festival, was created with some of the most incredible artists, cultural knowledge holders, activists and academics from around the world, each sharing stories of hope and resistance and collaborating with us on how audiences could respond ‘in solidarity with’ their past actions in the present day, as a means to boost a sense of hope for the future. 

for the booster protocol, we were blown away by the generosity and openness of movements like the chipko forest defenders in india during the 1970’s, who literally hugged the trees to prevent loggers from decimating parts of the himalayan rainforest [chipko meaning ‘to hug’]. peruvian artist and activist claudia coca shared with us her experiences of leading the lava la bandera and cosa la bandera [wash the flag, sew the flag] mass street actions, which ultimately led to the fall of the fujimori regime during the 2000’s. south african performance maker sethembile msezane revisted her iconic intervention during the rhodes must fall campaign in cape town 2015. when students were tearing down colonial monuments and challenging entrenched racism within the education system, she imagined what might replace those monuments and enacted a stunning durational performance in the midst of the protests. american disability advocate jennifer keelan-chaffins recounted her experience as an 8 year old with cerebral palsy taking part in the capitol crawl demonstration in washington dc in 1990, where she and 60 other activists abandoned their support devices to crawl up the 83 stone steps to capitol hill, illustrating the barriers that many people with disability face everywhere, everyday.

collaborating with award winning musician, cultural leader and Butchulla Songman, Fred Leone was also pretty bloody special during the booster protocol. Fred is a descendant of a great Garrwa warrior named Garrinjamaji [AKA King Peter], who was one of many who held the line against colonisation in the north of australia for decades. as a cultural custodian and musical activist, Freds voice carried the whole work, as boosters ‘time travel audio guide’ for audiences. Fred also connected us with Dr Gary Foley, a major figure behind the legendary aboriginal tent embassy, which is the site of the longest protest for Indigenous land rights in the world. It was an absolute honour to hold space for Dr Gary Foley’s voicing of the beginnings of the tent embassy and ongoing struggle for land rights, First Nations sovereignty and self determination.

we had so many generative conversations that shaped, guided and deeply informed the work. its very much a collective effort and the joy of building relationships, making connections, sharing ideas and knowing that we were lucky to be in the orbit of these incredible people, was a reminder to us of how foundational collaboration is and how we need to hold it with care.

which film, book, exhibition or moment shifted the way you see the world?
so many!

hospicing modernity [vanessa machado de oliviera] is a recent recommend that has stayed with me. as a non indigenous person, there is so much wisdom and depth education in this book for coming to terms with not just the violent history of colonisation, but encouraging active accountability for continuing to perpetuate colonial thinking. I love how she suggests that we need to “say goodbye to this expired story [colonialism] and move forwards together.

who would be your dream collaborator and what would you want to create together?
I love this question! thank you for asking it and giving permission to dream. 

I would love an opportunity to collaborate with christiana figueres – architect of the paris agreement on climate change, now founder of global optimism, which focuses on social and environmental change. her energy just jumps right off the page and screen to me in ways that I have found so nourishing over the past few years. to be reminded of the need for optimism as fuel to keep going, that lands so powerfully for me at the moment.

francesca albanese, I mean, wow what incredible moral courage and leadership she is showing. I love this quote from her new book, ‘while the world sleeps’;

“if you want to achieve change, first of all you have to be change, and that you cannot change anything if you do not change yourself.”

im totally fangirling now, but vandana shiva, scholar, physicist, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and totally inspirational human.

it would be amazing one day for pvi to do a residency at the australia institute, just putting that out there as I think we could be interesting playmates 🙂

kumi naidoo and the global artivism movement. laurie anderson, rebecca solnit, pussy riot, theres so many!

what’s next on your horizon, a project, an idea, a wild experiment?
a brand new work in development at pvi right now is ‘hummm’ which is in very early days but is looking into urban heat and urban cooling as well as working with wearable haptics. 

we are assembling a kick-ass team whose practices centre around protecting Country, plant knowledge, urban heat and trans-disciplinary research into biophillia and green infrastructure. im hoping it will be both wild and experimental in all the best ways!

what do you think of when you think about anat?
I think about the quiet kindness and solidarity that anat have extended to pvi over the years. we are extremely grateful for it, thank you. having been around for nearly three decades now and anat since 1988 [congratulations!], I feel as though we have both experienced and experimented with some massive developments in the realms of arts and technology. 

heres to many more experimental laps around the sun.