Futures Festival: Worlds in the Making

Special Event

13 – 15 Nov 2025

   ArtScience Museum

Futures Festival: Worlds in the Making  is an invitation to hold the future open. It brings together the community in a shared exploration of plural worlds emerging from the equator — worlds that are generous, resilient and already in the making.

Against the grain of dystopian imaginaries, the festival celebrates futures that are relational and cautiously hopeful. Drawing from the themes of Another World Is Possible exhibition, it foregrounds imagination as a form of care, generosity as a guiding practice, and attentive co-creation as a foundation for how we shape worlds together.

Through conversations, art and participatory experiences, the festival becomes a living constellation of ideas and experiences: a space to experiment with new ways of thinking, sensing and making together. World-making is tangible, fragile and powerful, unfolding through the collective curiosity and care of everyone present.

Image credit: Frequenseers: Archives of the Amber Sea, 2025, Shiro Fujioka. Courtesy of the artist.

FESTIVAL OVERVIEW

Symposium

The festival’s intellectual core, this day-long gathering convenes architects, scientists, artists, writers, foresight practitioners, policymakers and youth to explore how generosity, resilience and interdependence can shape worlds in the making. Through keynotes and cross-disciplinary conversations, the symposium invites us to think, question and dream in common, weaving together imagination and strategy, speculation and stewardship.

Generous Futures, Woven Together

15 Nov (Sat)

Generous Futures, Woven Together brings together architects, scientists, artists, writers, foresight practitioners, policymakers and youth in a plural conversation about how we shape what comes next. Each voice offers a distinct way of thinking with and through the future: from speculative fiction to strategic foresight, regenerative design to ecological care. The programme invites reflection on how generosity might be expressed through imagination, infrastructure, the stories we tell, and the systems we build.

ArtScience Encounters

What if sound could be a portal to worlds not yet realised? This programme of installations and performance transforms listening into a speculative act. Artists Syafiq Halid, Ichiko Aoba and Louis Quek craft multisensory environments where ancestral memory, myth and frequencies open space for transformation. Experience living sonic worlds that transport you beyond past and present into futures yet to unfold.

ArtScience Encounters: The Space Remembers You by Syafiq Halid and Norhaizad Adam

15 Nov 2025

For one night only, sound and movement converge in a living ceremony. In this collaborative performance, sound artist Syafiq Halid activates his 14-channel installation in Another World Is Possible exhibition with the presence of dance artist Norhaizad Adam, extending his sonic philosophy into the moving body.

ArtScience Encounters: Windswept Adan by Ichiko Aoba

13 Nov 2025 – 22 Feb 2026

Sun – Thu: 10am – 7pm
Fri – Sat: 10am – 9pm
Oculus, Basement 2
Free Admission

Enter the dreamlike archipelago of Windswept Adan, a multi-channel sound installation by singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba. Conceived as a soundtrack to an imaginary film during journeys through the Ryukyu Archipelago, the work invites visitors into a speculative world where music and imagination intertwine.

ArtScience Encounters: Threshold by Louis Quek

From 7 Nov 2025

In Threshold, sound artist Louis Quek proposes futures where boundaries and margins dissolve, existing instead in a perpetual state of endless transitions.

ArtScience Encounters: A Sonic Walk with Louis Quek

14 Nov 2025 (Fri), 8pm – 9pm

What boundaries dissolve when we listen deeply to spaces, to each other, to the unseen?

In this guided walk, sound artist Louis Quek invites participants into a slow, contemplative journey shaped by the textures of the everyday. Drawing on principles of deep listening and sonic poetics, the walk encourages a porous mode of attention, one where listening is more about presence.

As a companion to his installation Threshold, the walk extends Quek’s exploration of dissolving boundaries: between listener and environment, sound and silence, self and other. Each step becomes a practice of attunement, an invitation to notice the flux and resonance that ripple just beneath the surface of daily life.

In a world often overwhelmed by noise and velocity, A Sonic Walk offers a rehearsal for other ways of being and gentler futures that are imagined through attention.

ArtScience Cinema & VR

From the speculative landscapes of The Creator to the virtual city of The Drone Shepherd: A Planet City Graphic Novel in VR, step inside cinematic worlds that subvert the familiar aesthetics of science fiction and expand your sense of possible futures. Whether seated in a gallery or wearing a headset, visitors encounter moving image as a portal — a way of sensing, dreaming and dwelling in worlds still in the making. Dive deeper through curator insights, discussions and behind-the-scenes perspectives.

Visions of the Future

1 Nov 2025 – 8 Feb 2026

Visions of the Future is a screening programme that offers a glimpse of futures shaped by memory, care, and resilience. 

The Drone Shepherd: A Planet City Graphic Novel in VR

25 Oct 2025 – 22 Feb 2026

Follow the Drone Shepherd on a bold, journey to Planet City, a single city built to house 10 billion people. Making its World Premiere at ArtScience Museum’s VR Gallery, this new VR artwork by Liam Young is part of the acclaimed Planet City universe that expands the graphic novel format into an immersive, stylised environment.

Drop-in Activity & Tours

Worlds in the making need your imagination. From participatory activities to curator-led tours, explore stories and ideas in ways that feel personal and meaningful to you and collaborate as an active participant. This stream invites you to move closer and leave a trace of your own vision within the festival’s archive of possibilities. 

Messages from the Future

13 Nov 2025 – 22 Feb 2026

ArtScience Laboratory, Basement 2
Free Admission

Imagine receiving a postcard from decades into the future. What kind of world would it speak of? 

In this activity, visitors are invited to share messages from their future selves on postcards and respond to another’s message. Write, draw, or collage responses to prompts which ask participants to imagine what tomorrow might hold. 

The postcards will come together in an evolving participatory installation of futures that grows with each visitor’s contribution.

Curator’s Guided Tour: Another World Is Possible

14 & 15 Nov (Fri & Sat), 7pm – 8pm

Gallery 0, Level 3
Ticketed Admission: S$5

Delve into the curatorial thinking behind the exhibition and explore exhibition highlights in this curator’s guided tour of Another World is Possible.

Led by Joshua Lau (Assistant Curator, Exhibitions), this tour will explore the themes of futuring and worldbuilding underpinning the exhibition.

Curator’s Introduction of The Drone Shepherd: A Planet City Graphic Novel in VR

13 & 14 Nov (Thu & Fri), 2.30pm
15 Nov (Sat), 7.30pm

VR Gallery, Level 4
Complimentary Admission with VR Ticket

Delve into the comic book visual inspirations and the power of character-driven storytelling in Liam Young’s Planet City universe in this curator’s introduction of The Drone Shepherd: A Planet City Graphic Novel in VR.  

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