The perfect future game is a play in seven acts, in which two men play seven hands of poker. As a closet drama the play is a philosophical dialogue; designed to be read rather than performed live on stage it does not concern itself with theatrical action. The poker game introduces an element of luck but also of design, where there are only two alternatives: choices based on the hand that’s been dealt, or the embrace of a love of fate that allows chance or probability to direct the future.



Seven paintings depict seven memories of a fictional character, the artist, who has returned to document the site of each remembrance. As dislocated moments they are wedged in a cleft of time, like screen memories, except they’re not concealments, it is only that memory’s return continually devours the future, thwarting time’s progress. With the present being split in two directions at once, our encounter with the past remains irresolute (as it does with language and the future perfect tense). The perfect future game manifests a promised emancipation: liberation through an unfolding of the past into the future, as the card game assigns each of the seven memories to a date in the 2007 calendar year. A formula has been designed by a mathematician that encompasses 365 days of the year, as the sum of all the pips in a pack of cards is equal to 365 (with the inclusion of the joker as a value of one). Wagering with one hundred 2007 calendars, the players steal time. And while scrutinising the individual memories they expose the accountancy that incarcerates time within human constructs like language, clocks and the calendar.



The perfect future game is a propositional piece; it can be performed and played by anyone and the artist’s memories substituted with those of any other person. The poker game was live at the Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces performance, the actors instructed to make their own interpretation of the script.

Lily wishes to express her sincere gratitude to Don Bridges and Drew Tingwell for their inspired performances, Brian Furness the card dealer, Dr David Odell and his perfect future formula, Justin Clemens, Anton Ostoja, Jack Hibberd, and Harry Evans & Sons Billiards Tables.