In a future world dictated by algorithms, four intersecting stories amalgamate to illustrate the unshakable humanity of our communities.
It’s 2043, and it’s a capitalist hellscape. There are mandated audio and visual advertisements that the population is legally required to watch or listen to. Your data, along with the entirety of the world’s, has been collected by Q-Pid, a dating app that uses an algorithm to detail exactly who your ‘perfect match’ is. Life is ruled by money-hungry tech-bros, wielding technology as a means of generating untold wealth for those at the top of the food chain. Our planet is relatively decimated — the sky is no longer blue, our ground has been mined to the point in which it has nothing left to offer, and creatives live in complexes of shipping containers that “probably didn’t carry toxic waste” at one point. In short, it’s an ugly, scary place. Yet, the people that live there still feel the same complex feelings that we do today. Their fears, emotions, dreams, reflect the thing that ties humans together across time and space.
Written and performed by David Head, with Jessica Munna taking on the role of some of the production’s faux AI personalities, Emily 1.0 and Emily 2.0, and directed by Laura Killeen, Distant Memories of the Near Future made its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023. Now, it has made its way to the studio space at Arcola this November. Head is the piece’s sole live performer, serving as narrator and in some ways character, performing four different storylines that all very comfortably intersect with one another. As we progress through the piece, we slowly piece together different notions about the characters and the future world they inhabit. Each scene is bookmarked with one of the mandated advertisements, which tell us an enormous amount about this world.
Head’s performance felt sincere and gracious, with an almost nostalgic quality. The writing is incredibly thought-provoking, with particularly insightful musings on the potential impact of AI. Even in the openly exaggerated version of the future that this production is set in, it doesn’t feel terribly unrealistic. Head cuts to the crux of what our future might very well feel like. It appears to be a scarily truthful concept of where we might end up. Ultimately, the production keeps one thing clear: no matter how far we travel into the depths of AI in a cyber-capitalist future, humans will always be just that — human. While the piece verges on hyper-nostalgic at times, it is within the intention of this production. It somehow inspires hope in a future that seems to be wildly bleak, something everyone could use a bit of.