Forward! Go Deep Into Tomorrow
03 PM – 08 PM, Sat 31 Oct 2026
EMASI Nam Long
No. 147, Street no. 8, Nam Long Residential Area, Tan Thuan Ward, HCMC
Language: Vietnamese and English
Registration link
From the organizer:
To a brighter future – we, the futurists, march ahead!
To an omniscient future that unfolds every answer– we march ahead!
To an unbounded future that unshackles us from the past and present – we march ahead!
The apocalypse is the exhaustion of tomorrows, a world devoid of reality. Beyond our imaginative and scientific attempts to envision the end of the world, the apocalypse – and its widespread ramifications – is oftentimes reduced to a monolithic Hollywood trope: a single spectacle-driven event of world collapse and human survival. Yet, as Wyndham’s rule – a term coined by Wolf-Meyer – suggests, “the apocalypse is never singular; it is always multiple. In its multiplicity, the apocalypse is unimaginable.” How can one imagine the unimaginable? How can one localize the act of imagining away from the already-scripted imaginaries?
Curated by Vinh Son, ‘Forward! Go Deep Into Tomorrow’ plays with this (im)possibility by sampling the speculative potentialities of the mutating futures and apocalypses we may already be progressing into. By placing us within spatio-temporal alternatives, apocalyptic imaginings decouple us from our immediate actualities – what appears to be a divergence from or catastrophization of reality is, in effect, what renders that very reality graspable and imaginable.
Presenting a selection of films and moving-image works by artists Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, Ho Tzu Nyen, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Maithu Bui, Maria Estela Paiso, Nguyen Trinh Thi, Truong Minh Quy & Freddy Nadolny Poustochkine, Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, this screening program centers on apocalyptic imaginings rooted in contemporary Southeast Asian conditions and unresolved past conflicts. Though set at a speculative end of time, these futurities do not signal a singular event that brings about the end of history. Instead, they reveal the apocalyptic potentiality already latent and loaded within the past and present: a doomsday already at work, fully functional within the routines and textures of the everyday.
*The screening program’s name is inspired and borrowed from the poem ‘Travel Diary’ by Bei Dao
**This event is part of ‘Within and Beyond: A Taxonomy in Exhibition-making’ and ‘Mạch Ngầm [counter-place]’ exhibition.
About curator
Born and raised in Nha Trang, Vinh Son is a writer, translator, and curator-in-practice. Holding a B.A. in Art & Media Studies from Fulbright University Vietnam, his interest centers around historical fabulation embedded and enacted beneath everyday (un)realities. His writings and translations have been published and featured in ArtReview, Nguyễn Art Foundation, Galerie Quynh, and the Dogma Prize.
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