Image Credit: ‘Dreaming with Flamingos’ by Yinka Ilori. Google Arts & Culture. Part of Creative Intelligence, 11-13 September at the Southbank Centre. southbankcentre.co.uk

Keri Elmsly and Jazia Hammoudi are cultural instigators in the best sense: curators and strategists drawn to the places where art, technology and human imagination collide. Keri’s beginnings were gloriously DIY – her late teens and twenties spent among artist collectives, squatting warehouses, travelling and putting on festivals across Europe and the US. It was there she discovered her talent for recognising excellence in others and connecting people, disciplines and possibilities. Jazia’s route began earlier and more contemplatively: encouraged by her father to observe beauty, an encounter with El Greco at the Met aged 11 helped her realise that somebody had made it possible for her to encounter that artwork. Later, Mona Hatoum crystallised a conviction that “curation is first an act of care.”

Those instincts converge in PACT – Planetary Art Culture Technology, founded by Keri, with Jazia among its members: a collective of artists, curators and inventors interested not in technology for technology’s sake, but in imagination as an agent for change. Its terrain is deliberately hybrid and collaborative – what Jazia calls the “grey zones” – while Keri talks about artists building worlds, prototyping possibilities and thinking at planetary scale.

That thinking lands spectacularly in London this September with Creative Intelligence, the Southbank Centre’s new festival of art, ideas and technology, curated with PACT from 11–13 September. Across the site, Peckham Digital, the SORI collective, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Google Arts & Culture, Liam Young and a sprawling cast of artists, thinkers, coders and experimenters ask something more interesting than what can AI do?: what kind of future do we actually want to make?

As Keri puts it, their work is about “continuing to imagine in public: our work is where the future is an act of creation through collective imagination.”

So come and join the experiment. Grab a ticket, get your hands dirty with some creative tech, argue with an algorithm, listen, play and imagine something better. Then join the PACT mailing list and stay close to Keri, Jazia and their growing ecology of creators, visionaries and provocateurs – because the future isn’t something we simply inherit. It’s something we get to build.

Let’s start with Keri…

You’ve described discovering that your real strength wasn’t necessarily being the artist in the room, but helping artists, ideas and disciplines connect. When did that become clear to you – and what did the creative world around you look and feel like at the time?

I spent my late teens and twenties living in artist collectives, a dynamic environment where we lived on the road, squatted in warehouses and put on festivals and shows all over Europe and the US. That hybrid, DIY culture relied on a multitude of skills, tasks and talents. The excellence of the lead sculptors, designers and musicians – who were honing their work, shaping their set, and always elevating what the audience was experiencing – was the quality I learnt to look for. This became crystal clear through those early years and built my understanding of the critical role of the curator and producer.

I put that spirit into practice as I developed my career and it remains a foundational belief. Always looking for the connection, deploying lateral approaches and never stepping back from what could be possible. Importantly, always learning and looking for the signals of excellence in others, whether they be a curator, an entrepreneur, or an artist, and creating an invitation to grow, be expansive and build together.

Image Credit: Keri Elmsly, founder of PACT and curator of Creative Intelligence. Photographed by Peter Tarasiuk.

Your career has moved across museums, festivals, immersive entertainment, architecture and emerging technology. From that vantage point, where do you think the cultural sector is still thinking too cautiously – and where are artists already moving faster than institutions?

Artists have always been frontrunners in culture, and that won’t change; it’s one of the critical values of artists in society. What I see now is that artists are focussing on their ownership, building off-platform and constructing their own tools, not waiting for existing structures and systems to invite them in. Building their own infrastructures to replace what is being ripped away from public investment. Some examples: Solange’s Saint Heron Library, Restless Egg’s incubator, Jenn Nkiru’s MOTHERSHIP, Dark Forest OS, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s AI Protocols.

And at the same time the attention economy and its platforms continue to surface new talent and movements like the cyber deck movement – we are presenting Annike Tan (Ubeboobey) and her cyberdecks at Creative Intelligence – she started on TikTok and only started building with tech in March. This will be the first time she presents live.

Caution is inherent in institutions, and you can’t dismiss that for so many reasons – especially when there is accountability to the public as it’s taxpayers’ money. What you can do is flip that and think in risk strategy; leadership of an institution can take risks – through strategic bets and choices – and be ready for them. There is such a thing as good risk, like structural investments in new programme approaches, prototyping new ways of working. The Southbank Centre was born of this spirit 75 years ago during the Festival of Britain, which is the catalyst for Creative Intelligence – to embrace innovation and experimentation in response to massive upheaval in society.

Image Credit: Part of Peckham Digital’s Get Your Hands-Dirty with Creative Tech showcase at Creative Intelligence, Algorave is hosted by UK-based AlgoRhythms. Photo by Mati Granica.

PACT describes artists as engines for imagination, agency and change. What can artists perceive or prototype that governments, corporations and conventional institutions often cannot – and how do you turn that imaginative power into something with genuine influence?

By prevailing, by continuing to imagine in public: our work is where the future is an act of creation through collective imagination. World building, prototyping and daring to work at planetary scale and for the long term, not just the now. Liam Young’s exhibition at the Barbican ‘In Other Worlds’ (until Sun 6 Sep) and its vast collaborative network of stories is a series of six possible worlds, built from and with the science and technology that is already here. Katie Paterson’s 100 year project ‘Future Library’, and Ayoung Kim’s ‘Delivery Dancer Series’, where she explores non-linear time, labour rights and mythical battles are all ways the artists in PACT are actively doing this.

From a research and technology perspective, K Allado-McDowell’s long-term collaboration with artificial and natural intelligence (they co-founded Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence group in 2017) has led to ‘The Known Lost’ – a deconstructed opera where the vast language of extinction, both known and unknown, is sung to recognise and honour all species that have ever lived and gone extinct on Earth. They are leading thinkers in neural networks and creativity.

PACT exists as a coalition of the willing, and is a lens to the wider ecosystem of our members. It’s not a sealed system; it’s an ecology of relationships through institutions and organisations too – for example, Jazia is a curator, producer and serves as mentor, advisor and jury to multiple arts organisations and prizes; both Katie and K are on the council of The Long Now. Eric Alba and I are long-term mentors at New Inc.

This influence is not limited to art and culture, PACT member Lauren Bowker is a world first inventor, right now in the beauty industry, but that’s just now – her vision is beyond one industry. She has multiple world firsts under her belt, and her new brand EXIST launched this year. A totally plastic free brand, with ingredients grown in space.

Image Credit: Still from “The Deer of Nine Colors” directed by Andrew Thomas Huang. Part of Creative Intelligence, 11-13 September at the Southbank Centre. southbankcentre.co.uk

You’ve called Creative Intelligence a public prototype for arts and technology, with human agency, embodiment and process at its centre. What did you and Jazia want audiences to feel or understand differently by the end of the weekend – and what would make this first edition feel like the beginning of something bigger for London?

That the people who come take away for themselves some answers to their urgent questions and doubts around Artificial Intelligence, and more importantly our own intelligence; their relationship with ‘the machine’ and their own power and autonomy. That the incredible talent in the programme wants to come back and bring their friends. That audiences have actually demoed things, had their say, seen themselves in the work and the people behind the work, and spent time with this vast spread of ideas and possibilities. If someone comes to listen to the magnificent Jeanette Winterson, that they will also spend some time with demos and the installations from the wild foray of talent being curated by Peckham Digital in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer.

That the academics who are bringing their students to demo their inventions are rewarded by public interactions. That other institutions and organisations in this converging sector have something to say and want to join in for next year.

A prototype inherently has open learning built in and we see this as an opportunity to create the possibilities for others next year. And from a foundational perspective, that we honor the spirit of those bold innovators who built the Southbank Centre from the rubble of a world war to envision and build what needs to come for the future. That is the critical role of art and culture in society.

Image Credit: ‘World machine 2026’ by Liam Young. Part of Creative Intelligence, 11-13 September at the Southbank Centre. southbankcentre.co.uk

Please recommend three cultural places in London that continue to energise, surprise or restore you. They might be institutions, independent spaces or somewhere less obvious – what makes each one special?

Coming up in October: 3 Evenings – Celebrating Somerset House Studios turning 10 with three nights of experiments in performance and technology at East London’s Wapping Hydraulic Power Station.

London’s lidos, especially Brockwell Park and London Fields – there is nothing better for my idea of culture than a swim, staring at the sky and dreaming on the concrete of an outdoor public swimming pool. In LA, I strongly recommend Roosevelt Pool in Boyle Heights. Speaking of concrete and brutalism, spending time on the lakeside terrace by the fountain at the Barbican and in the roof garden at the Southbank Centre are favourites. I find public spaces carved into urban architecture, where time stretches and we are immersed in London’s unique mix of nature and iconic architecture, so valuable.

The Wallace Collection in Mayfair – I first visited here only last year. It’s a perfect capsule of a museum experience with flair, flounces and glamour included. I especially love the old leather coverings on the cases that you flip up to discover the collection underneath, and the suit of armour for a horse. Perfect for a morning with out of town visitors.

Image Credit: Photograph of Jazia Hammoudi, member of PACT and co-curator for Creative Intelligence.

Enter Jazia…

Your path has taken you from art history and museums into immersive media, spatial storytelling and experimental technologies. What first drew you towards art – and was there a particular encounter, place or person that changed your understanding of what a curator could be?

My love of art came early from my father, who always encouraged observation and an appreciation of beauty as a refuge for the mind and spirit. I’ve wanted to be a curator since I learned the word. I remember seeing El Greco’s “View of Toledo” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC around age 11 and realising “Oh my god, someone put this here and now I get to see it”. Encountering Mona Hatoum’s work in college radically altered my understanding of what art could be in relation to body and self, philosophy, and politics. The ways that she and her work were curated, written about, and (mis)characterised really galvanised me – I became convinced that curation is first an act of care.

You work closely with artists using XR, AI, game engines and virtual production, but the strongest projects often begin with very human questions. How do you distinguish between technology used as spectacle and technology that genuinely creates a new emotional, political or imaginative experience?

It’s a good question. First, I try to avoid binaries, they’re so often a trap: Good technology vs. bad technology, spectacle vs. authentic experience etc. We use our tools and they use us, and while tools are never neutral, it’s up to us to shape that use. Something really interesting is happening among artists using advanced technologies. The universe of co-creation is getting larger and the affective experience that many artists are having within their process, creatively and practically, is becoming so layered and intimate. You can see this intimacy up close in Kevin Peter He’s performance work “Vestige”, which will be at Creative Intelligence. Kevin brings the push-pull between subject and object to life through technology – with a little showmanship to keep us enthralled.

Image Credit: ‘Unthinkable’ by Justin Spooner. Part of Creative Intelligence, 11-13 September at the Southbank Centre. southbankcentre.co.uk

Your work moves between cultures, geographies and artistic languages, from Morocco and London to New York and beyond. How does that international perspective shape your role within PACT – and what kinds of voices or ways of knowing do you feel future-facing culture urgently needs to include?

I’m truly a third culture kid, which fits really naturally within PACT. As a collective, PACT is all about working in grey zones, nurturing hybridity, and making space for a multiplicity of perspectives. Most importantly, PACT’s builder ethic is always tethered to community. Our challenger model isn’t about “disruption”, we’re not cowboys. It’s about nurturing other modes of thinking and being through creative culture.

Within Creative Intelligence, strands such as Living Mythologies and Generative Spirit & Live Worlds explore memory, identity, touch, heritage and alternative futures. How did you approach bringing those works into conversation – and which questions running through the programme feel most personal or urgent to you?

The questions of mythologies – the stories we tell about the past present and future – feel particularly urgent to me. As we look with uncertainty about what this century will hold, I feel deeply compelled to uplift artists telling stories that can guide and bind us.

Image Credit: ‘Vestige’ by Kevin Peter He. Photographed by Ryan Muir. Part of Creative Intelligence, 11-13 September at the Southbank Centre. southbankcentre.co.uk

Please recommend three cultural places in London that you feel a real connection to. They could be galleries, performance spaces, cinemas, community-led projects or hidden corners – what does each reveal about the city at its best?

I love London so much! What a privilege it is to come back.

Sir John Soane’s Museum in Holborn – the south drawing room is painted in Turner’s patent yellow, which glows as if lit from within in the afternoons. It’s breathtaking.

Arebyte – the kind of contemporary arts institution making real space for artists from all walks of life. The organisation’s grounding in community and creative rigour is so meaningful.

Golborne Road for Moroccan food – The second best place for Moroccan food besides Morocco. Much better than in NYC (sorry!)

Find Keri Elmsly at elmsly.com

Find Jazia Hammoudi at jazia.org and @jaz.ia

See their work → planetaryact.com and @planetary.act

Creative Intelligence
~ The new ideas, art and technologies shaping our future
Curated with PACT – Planetary Art Culture Technology
Southbank Centre
Fri 11 – Sun 13 Sep 2026, various times

Info & Tickets → southbankcentre.co.uk