FutureYou2020 is an art-research installation encouraging audiences to think about how they imagine the future. The installation normally includes visual representations of Patrick Alexander’s decade-long research interest in how young people are socialised through schooling into particular imaginings of the future. This includes drawings from research participants, partial interview transcripts, personal statements for university, and more. The installation also includes a soundscape consisting of original musical composition and excerpts from research data, sometimes performed live. Finally the installation involves activities through which audiences can engage directly with the research themes. The most popular activity in the installation is the FutureYou letter writing activity, where participants write themselves a letter in the future, expressing, hopes, fears, or dreams for what their lives will look like beyond the present. Patrick stores these letters without opening them, and then sends them back to participants years into the future, as a kind of exercise in time travel.This activity is replicated here in digital form. Future You2020 has been showcased across a number of venues from 2017-2020 including the Ashmolean Museum; Bodleian Library; Pegasus Theatre; Oxford Festival of Ideas; Oxford Science Bazaar.
FUTUREYOU2020: A Film by Mark Jones
In 2018 Patrick began an art-research collaboration with filmmaker Richard Jones, who shares an interest in representing people’s perceptions of life, meaning, and the future. The film FutureYou2020, showcased here, is the first in a series of films in progress that will explore the concept of the future and how people imagine their place in it.
The film was recently showcased at the Oxford Science Bazaar (Feb 2021)
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