TALK

We Dream in Futures: Another World Is Possible Opening Symposium

We live in a time suspended between crisis and potential, where the stories we inherit are colliding with the futures we long for. We Dream in Futures gathers artists, futurists, designers, worldbuilders and storytellers to ask: what kind of world do we desire, and how do we imagine our way toward it?

Across lectures, lightning talks and panels, we explore the transformative power of narrative to question the present, shift perspectives and dream up futures that are alive with possibility. Drawing on diverse disciplines and lived experiences, this symposium honours storytelling as a radical act of futurity — one that invites vision, and also agency. Whether through design, fiction, memory or myth, the voices gathered in this programme show us that not only is another world possible, it is already being seeded through the stories we choose to tell.

We invite you to imagine it together, and dream alongside us.

Speakers include Liam Young (speculative architect and director), Honor Harger (Vice President of Attractions and ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands), Kelly Tan (Acting Director, Industry at DesignSingapore Council), Darius Ou (art director and designer), Torlarp Larpjaroensook (artist), Joshua Lau (Assistant Curator at ArtScience Museum), and more.

Image credit: After the End, 2024, Liam Young and Natasha Wanganeen. Courtesy of ACMI and the artists.

PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
2pm – 2.10pm	Opening Address by Honor Harger (Vice President of Attractions and ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands) The symposium opens with reflections on the conceptual grounding of Another World Is Possible, connecting speculative storytelling to imagination, agency and action.
2.10pm – 2.30pm	Curatorial Presentation by Joshua Lau (Assistant Curator at ArtScience Museum) An exploration of the exhibition’s thematic architecture, its selection of artists and works, and curatorial strategies that resist linear or extractive visions of the future.
2.30pm – 3pm	Keynote by Liam Young (Co-curator and Speculative Architect/Director) A keynote on fictions as infrastructure and telling the future into being, provoking a visceral sense of the near future and how it might be built through collective imaginaries.
3pm – 3.20pm	Talk by Kelly Tan (Acting Director, Industry at DesignSingapore Council) Design as both mindset and method: the principles and values guiding DesignSingapore Council’s vision of future-making, and the social, strategic and ethical potential of design in addressing tomorrow’s challenges.
3.20pm – 3.35pm	Talk by Zi Hao Wong (Artist, Designer, Educator and Co-founder of Superlative Futures) Community-centred design fiction as a way to disrupt assumptions, cultivate hope and open spaces for reflection, critique and agency in shaping more-than futures.
3.35pm – 3.55pm	Conversation with Halogen Youths A reflective co-imagining session with Videep Agarwal, Goh Yu Na and Luo Chang, articulating the futures they envision and the values they believe should guide the worlds to come.
3.55pm – 4.10pm	Joint Talk by Darius Ou (Art Director and Designer) and Samantha Yap (Writer and Curator) How fiction, myth and the soft power of publishing can reimagine systems of meaning and memory, while considering how new technologies might democratise access.
4.10pm – 4.30pm	Conversation with Torlarp Larpjaroensook (Artist) On the possibilities that emerge when play, repair and the textures of everyday life become tools for imagining futures — drawing on Thai culture, ecology and local wisdom.
4.30pm – 5pm	Panel Q&A: Storytelling as Worldbuilding A moderated conversation with Liam Young, Torlarp Larpjaroensook, Darius Ou, Samantha Yap and Joshua Lau on how design, fiction, myth and memory influence the stories we tell and the futures they make possible.

About Another World Is Possible Exhibition

Another World Is Possible is an exhibition on the future, exploring the practice of world-building across cinema, architecture, design, and speculative fiction.

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