The Séance is a walking simulator that combines speculative storytelling with gamification to tell the hidden stories of Vietnamese women’s experience with intergenerational trauma caused by wars, violence, and social upheaval in Vietnam in the 20th century. Users are invited to play the role of a Vietnamese person in a distant future who found the digitized consciousness of one of their ancestors in a machine with all their memories and buried family secrets.
By telling the stories of women in my own family, I hope to help myself and young Vietnamese people of my generation understand the lived experience of our foremothers in a more empathetic way.
By experimenting with speculative storytelling, I also want the audience to think about the legacy that could be lost to time as women continue to be left outside of the archive, and their voices are silenced.
https://mlinhle617.itch.io/the-seance