The Future of our Pasts festival features a line-up of eleven multidisciplinary projects created by a pool of young artists and cultural advocates, showcasing a range of art forms that reimagine Singapore’s history. Organised by Yale-NUS College, TFOOPFest takes place from 16 February to 17 March 2019 in various locations around the city.

Engage with interactive installations

Discover the hidden histories of some of Singapore’s most well-trodden places through a series of interactive installations.
Did you know that Orchard Road used to be a valley with a natural stream? Drop by the Orchard: A Stroll Between Valleys public installation or join a walking tour around the iconic shopping belt to uncover Orchard’s hidden drainage pipes and topography.

Get ready for a throwback as Singapore’s oldest flea market springs to life again with Remembering Sungei, an exhibition featuring artifacts and video interviews of vendors from the renowned Sungei Road Thieves Market.  Journey through Singapore’s housing history with First Storeys, a theatrical installation accompanied by forums and a workshop for kids that explore urban planning and untold stories of residents resettling from kampungs to HDB flats from 1950s to the ‘90s. 

Feast on visual treats from films to graphic novels

Follow the tale of a mother-daughter pair exploring their Eurasian heritage, culture and identity in Boka di Stori’s new graphic novel Ki Sorti. Immerse yourself in the Kristang community over a jam-packed weekend of activities, including a language crash course, trivia night, film screenings and board games.
Catch one-time-only screenings of four feature-length documentaries as part of the festival’s Reimaging Histories film series, which interrogates the national histories of Ireland, USA, Cambodia and the Philippines. The documentaries explore how histories (and films) are lost and recovered, how personal stories intermingle with national events, and how fictions often reveal greater truths than any official set of facts.

Check out MEANTIME, a zine that houses a collection of Singapore’s historical places and love stories from the past. For more tales about love, don’t miss Rojak Romance, a documentary following a couple as they navigate their differing religious and cultural backgrounds and how to exist as a mixed-race couple in CMIO-centric Singapore. 

Tune in to music and conversations

Whether you’re into groovy beats or soothing tunes, drop by music performances by Sarong Party for original compositions that spotlight Singapore’s colonial history and legacies, or Project IDIOM, which honours local Classical music through limited shows and a web repository of film and interviews and profiles spotlighting some of Singapore’s celebrated and emerging composers.

Join in conversations with historian Nurfadzilah Yahaya, local writer Alfian Sa’at and conservator Kate Pocklington in talks around Singapore’s historical milestones and the intersection of art and history. 

This is just a snippet of the many more things that festival-goers can see, do and experience at TFOOPFest! 

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