Moulding Futures

Presented by S.E.A. FOCUS

Responding to the growing discourse on futurisms and speculative frameworks, this panel brings together three practitioners whose work is rooted not only in imagining futures, but in organising, building, and shaping them to being. Working across artistic practice, organising, curating, and more, Chris John Fussner, Jo Ho, and Lawrence Lek, share how abstract ideas and critical frameworks are translated into worlds, structures, actions, and sustained initiatives in their hands.

Speakers:
Lawrence Lek – Artist, United Kingdom / Malaysia
Chris John Fussner – Founder and Creative Director, Tropical Futures Institute, United States of America / Philippines
Jo Ho – Artist, Singapore

Moderated by:
Clara Che Wei Peh – Independent Curator

Lawrence Lek | Artist, United Kingdom / Malaysia

Lawrence Lek is an artist who unifies diverse practices—architecture, video games, film, and music—into a continuously expanding cinematic universe. Over the last decade, Lek has incorporated vernacular media of his generation, such as computer-generated animation, into site-specific installations and digital environments, which he describes as “three-dimensional collages of found objects and situations.” Often featuring interlocking narratives and the recurring figure of the wanderer, his work explores the myth of technological progress in an age of social change. He was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people working in artificial intelligence and was the winner of the 2024 Frieze Artist Award.

Chris John Fussner | Founder and Creative Director, Tropical Futures Institute, United States of America / Philippines

A multidisciplinary platform exploring the intersections of art, technology, and tropical futurism. Established in 2017, TFI began as a critique of how the tropics are excluded from dominant narratives of the future and has since evolved into a brand that reimagines the tropics through clothing, cultural programming, and collaboration. Past projects include the inaugural Digital Section at Art Dubai, a _cybercafe_ capsule with Goodfight, a 2023 global collaboration with Denim Tears, and most recently a new piece in their psycho-geographic network series for the Singapore Biennale. Outside of cultural labor, Chris spends his time exploring global markets, geopolitics, and edge technologies.

Jo Ho | Artist, Singapore

A media artist working with digital installations and generative systems to examine how technologies shape and often distort our understanding of the body, memory, and meaning. Her practice centers on the concept of digital corporeality, treating the digital not as immaterial but as deeply embedded in systems of flesh, code, and material. Through speculative image-making, she works with fragmentation, reassembly, and visual ambiguity to reflect on how meaning is abstracted and reshaped in increasingly automated environments.

Jo Ho teaches creative coding at LASALLE College of the Arts, the University of the Arts Singapore, has a background in Architecture (B.Arch) and a Master’s degree in New Media Design.

Clara Che Wei Peh | Independent Curator

An independent curator and arts writer from Singapore. Her practice explores the intersections of art, technology and infrastructure, and is committed to creating spaces for underrepresented perspectives. Her curatorial projects have been realised with The Institutum, ArtScience Museum, Delfina Foundation, Tina Kim Gallery, Ames Yavuz, among others. She was formerly Public Programme Curator at Asymmetry, Asia Collection Fellow at KADIST, Curator of Art Dubai Digital, and Adjunct Lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts. She is the initiator of Monday Chatroom, a discussion series on art and technology, and the organiser of Common Protocol, a curatorial platform dedicated to new media practices from Southeast Asia