A Sliver of History, a World of Impact: Gaza Time Tunnel Makes Its Mark at ImmerseKL25

This year’s ImmerseKL25 isn’t just a celebration of immersive media—it’s a reckoning. Amid dazzling XR exhibits and next-gen narratives, one installation stands quietly, gravely apart: Gaza Time Tunnel, a VR experience by MAPIM Malaysia. Far from entertainment, it offers an entry point into the unresolved anguish, endurance, and living memory of Gaza.

Presented as a condensed excerpt of the full Gaza Time Tunnel experience, the version at ImmerseKL25 distills centuries of occupation, upheaval, and unyielding spirit into a tightly woven spatial narrative. Visitors don a headset, but what they wear is more than gear—it’s a responsibility. With every scene, they are drawn not only into the streets of Gaza but also into the soul of its people.

eSport Building, MADAD.

The journey begins with echoes of the past—Salahuddin Ayyubi’s liberation of Jerusalem—before sweeping through Intifada flashpoints and the modern siege era. In this excerpted build, MAPIM places emphasis on a few pivotal chapters designed to provoke empathy, reflection, and ethical imagination. Time is compressed, but emotion is not. Viewers find themselves standing amidst rubble, listening to voices erased from headlines, bearing witness in a space where statistics give way to humanity.

This project is more than virtual—it is visceral. Developed as part of MAPIM Malaysia’s broader humanitarian narrative strategy, Gaza Time Tunnel uses storytelling not to aestheticize suffering but to confront silence. The immersive technology here is not the message; it is the medium through which decades of suppressed truths resurface.

And this is just a fraction of what’s to come.

The full Gaza Time Tunnel project—slated for deployment in national exhibitions, humanitarian carnivals, and mosque tours across Malaysia—spans 1187 years of history, interweaving cultural memory with real-time crisis. The version at ImmerseKL25 offers merely a teaser, yet already, its impact is undeniable.

“Gaza’s story isn’t about victimhood—it’s about resilience, heritage, and the unbreakable will to exist,” says Dr Hafiz Hanif, the visionary behind the project. “Our tunnel isn’t digital nostalgia. It’s a demand to remember.”

At ImmerseKL25, visitors won’t just see Gaza. For a few minutes, they may feel what it means to carry its memory.