Patricia Domínguez. “Matrix Vegetal”, 2021–2022.

This week, on 22–23 October, the RIXC Art Science Festival will take place in Riga and online, bringing together international artists, researchers and cultural professionals. The festival offers artistic experiments, participatory workshops, discussions, an opening keynote and two exhibitions, which together explore how art and science can expand our climate imagination.

The festival’s central event – the exhibition “Climate Imagination” – will open on Thursday, 22 October, at 18:00 at the National Library of Latvia. Featuring works by fourteen emerging and internationally acclaimed artists from Latvia and abroad, the exhibition invites visitors not only to observe, but also to listen and interact – from discovering the hidden life of a forest ecosystem and experiencing the rhythm of ocean waves to getting lost in time or even briefly transforming into a human-fly hybrid.

Among the exhibiting artists are the pioneering Swiss media art duo knowbotiq, collaborating with Colombian artist Pablo Torres; Chilean artist Patricia Domínguez; Japanese artist Ryu Furusawa; and German artist Benedikt Terwiel, whose work features a soundtrack created in collaboration with singer and artist ANOHNI. The exhibition also features Marcus Maeder (Switzerland), the artist duo kennedy+swan (Germany), Anne Duk Hee Jordan (Korea/Germany) and Pauline Doutreluingne (Belgium/Germany), as well as Latvian artists Maija Demitere, Mārtiņš Ratniks and Jurģis Peters in collaboration with Laura Beloff (Finland).

On Friday, 23 October, at 18:00, the latest exhibition by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, “Prompted Evolution”, will open at the RIXC Gallery. As climate change challenges biological adaptation, the work imagines possible continuations of evolution: new forms of hybrid agency emerging between plants, algorithms, environmental data and human presence, expanding our climate imagination. Both exhibitions will be open to the public until 12 December.

The festival symposium, taking place on 22–23 October at the National Library of Latvia, will form the conceptual and theoretical framework for both exhibitions. Participation in all festival events is free of charge; visitors are invited to register in advance for the symposium via Eventbrite.

Exhibition “Climate Imagination”

The exhibition explores climate imagination as a cultural and scientific field where art, technology, and environmental research intersect. From microscopic organisms, plant worlds and botanical science fiction to ecological symbiosis, artificial life and hybrid systems, changing landscapes and environmental memory, the artists explore imagination as a critical capacity for sensing and rethinking our relationships with the Earth at a time when climate change is reshaping planetary ecosystems, infrastructures and everyday life.

In the installation “TUMBLE_needs – let’s play syncretic abundance”, the Swiss artist duo knowbotiq, in collaboration with Colombian artist Pablo Torres, turns to invasive plants and organisms. From their molecular perspective, abundant and uncontrolled proliferation is not disruption, but rather the activation of sentient spaces, opening up multispecies convivialities.

In the video installation “Mid Tide #3”, Japanese artist Ryu Furusawa invites viewers to give themselves over to the succession of waves. Using custom-developed software, he turns footage of waves breaking against the rocks of Japan’s Pacific coast into a three-dimensional structure in which time becomes depth, revealing the slow shifts of light and tide that the eye usually overlooks.

In the video installations “Matrix Vegetal” and “Interview to Amador Aniceto”, Chilean artist Patricia Domínguez proposes a restoration of communication between the human and the more-than-human, drawing on experimental ethnobotany and her experience as an apprentice to Amador Aniceto, a healer living in Madre de Dios, Peru.

The film “Brakfesten – La Grande Bouffe” by Berlin-based artists Anne Duk Hee Jordan and Pauline Doutreluingne follows the intimate relationship between elm bark beetles, fungi and trees in Swedish elm forests threatened by Dutch elm disease. What appears as destruction gradually reveals itself as part of an intricate cycle of transformation.

In their series of augmented watercolours “Mixed Signals”, German artist duo kennedy+swanmerge the tactile with the digital, asking how artificial intelligence – often associated with our alienation from nature – can help us listen to and communicate with non-human beings.

In Swiss sound artist Marcus Maeder’s installation “Imeall an chosta. A coastal listening post”, visitors navigate through various locations, ecotones and time periods on Ireland’s West Cork coast, exploring a coastal ecosystem affected by climate change through sound.

German artist Benedikt Terwiel’s video and sound installation “Land before Last”, with an audio track of sound and text created in collaboration with the artist ANOHNI, was filmed in the digital terrain model of the Netherlands. All human development, vegetation and any life are erased, so that the landscape appears as a vast archaeological site. It is precisely this complete emptiness that calls us to reflect on what this seemingly unreal, but by no means fictional, landscape tells us about our present.

The interactive installation “The Black Fly” by Latvian artist Jurģis Peters and Finnish artist Laura Beloff gradually transforms the viewer’s reflection into a hybrid form of a human and a fly. Rather than striving for a harmonious symbiosis, the installation highlights a quiet and inevitable coexistence with the “undesirable” elements of our ecosystem. In the installation “Symbiotic Microbiome”, artist Maija Demitere presents a phytoremediation system in which a plant and the microorganisms in its root zone form a natural, self-renewing atmospheric filter for urban environments. In Mārtiņš Ratniks’ video work “Not to outlive the Sun”, the split fieldstones of his great-grandfather’s house, carried by glaciers from Scandinavia and approximately 1.5–2 billion years old, become a point of departure for reflecting on the incommensurability of a human lifetime and cosmic time.

Exhibition artists: Maija DEMITERE (LV), Patricia DOMÍNGUEZ (CL), Ryu FURUSAWA (JP), Anne Duk Hee JORDAN (KR/DE), Pauline DOUTRELUINGNE (BE/DE), kennedy+swan (DE), knowbotiq (CH/AT) in collaboration with Pablo TORRES (CO), Marcus MAEDER (CH), Jurģis PETERS (LV/FI) in collaboration with Laura BELOFF (FI), Mārtiņš RATNIKS (LV), Benedikt TERWIEL (DE) in collaboration with ANOHNI (US).

Curator: Raitis SMITS (LV)

The presentation of the artworks is provided by technology partner LG Electronics. “Contemporary art and technology help us see the relationship between people and the environment in a new way. LG Electronics is proud to support this dialogue, which aligns with one of our core values – sustainability and responsibility towards the environment. At this year’s festival, LG provides its most advanced televisions, whose outstanding colour accuracy and detail allow artworks, extended reality projects and data visualisations to unfold in all their diversity and reach visitors exactly as intended.”
Sergejs Samoiļenko, Head of LG Electronics in the Baltic States

Exhibition “Prompted Evolution”

In their new exhibition, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits explore how plants might evolve under rapidly changing climate conditions. Wild Andean lupines, growing in extreme mountain climates, are an example of recent and rapid plant species diversification. With evolutionary botanist Colin Edward Hughes (University of Zurich), the artists digitised 100 herbarium specimens and trained a generative AI model to explore their transformations. In Prompted Evolution, AI-generated forms regain three-dimensional bodies as interactive virtual organisms. Responding to human gestures and environmental data – light, temperature and humidity – the virtual point-cloud plants continually change shape, light and colour intensity and behaviour, expanding beyond their biological forms. The title plays on prompt as both an impulse for transformation and an instruction to AI.

The exhibition consists of three interconnected artworks developed through the research process: the video “From Herbarium to AI-Generated Evolution”, the series of digital prints “Four Ways of Being Lupin – Stages of Transformation” and the interactive wall projection “From Prompted Evolution to Hybrid Agency”.

Both artists work at the intersection of art, science and immersive media. This autumn, their works are also on view at Kunsthalle Mannheim, the MO Museum in Vilnius and Skanstull metro station in Stockholm.

Symposium

The symposium consists of three thematic sessions that interweave artist presentations, workshops, showcases and discussions, bringing together invited artists and researchers as well as participants selected through an open call.

On Thursday, 22 October, at 13:00, sociologist Philippe Sormani will lead the first thematic session, “On Artistic Experimentation”, inviting participants to explore the question: “Where does an experiment begin in artistic practice?” At 16:00, Sormani will deliver the festival’s opening keynote, “Rewilding the Lab”, exploring alternative aesthetics of experimentation and other kinds of sociotechnical arrangement. The keynote respondent will be philosopher Ainārs Kamoliņš. In their discussion, both researchers will consider scientific inquiry not as sterile, isolated laboratory work, but as a practice that is ecologically embedded, environmentally consequential, and interestingly contingent, raising the question of what expertise is adequate in times of polycrisis.

On Friday, 23 October, at 12:00, artist and researcher Maija Demitere will lead the second thematic session, “On Sustainable Digital Productions”, held within the framework of the European Media Art Platform (EMAP). At 14:30, Rasa Smite and Canadian artist Jane Tingley will lead the third session, “On Extending Climate Realities”, featuring SensUs XR showcases. The Friday sessions can also be attended online with advance registration via Eventbrite.

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The festival exhibitions will be on view until 12 December.
Opening hours:
Exhibition “Climate Imagination”: National Library of Latvia, Exhibition Hall (Mūkusalas iela 3, Riga), Monday–Friday 10:00–20:00, Saturday 11:00–18:00.
Exhibition “Prompted Evolution”: RIXC Gallery (Lenču iela 2, Riga), Wednesday–Saturday 12:00–18:00.

Admission to the exhibitions is free of charge. Groups are invited to book their visits in advance by writing to rixc@rixc.org.

More information about the festival programme is available on the website:https://festival2026.rixc.org/

Registration for the symposium via Eventbrite: HERE

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The festival is produced by the RIXC Center for New Media Culture:
Festival Curators: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits
Festival Producer: Agnese Baranova (agnese@rixc.org)
Festival Coordinator: Lelde Gūtmane (rixc@rixc.org)
Symposium Coordinator: Daina Siliņa (daina@rixc.org)
PR Strategy Coordinator: Līva Siliņa (rixc@rixc.org)

Supporters and partners
State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Pro Helvetia, the European Union’s Creative Europe programme within the project “EMAP Expanded”, Nordic Culture Point, LG Electronics, Liepāja 2027 Foundation, Reverie, Arts Council Tokyo.

Media partners
Arterritory, We Make Money Not Art, Satori, Echo Gone Wrong.

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For press enquiries:
Lelde Gūtmane, Festival Coordinator, +371 28365323
Agnese Baranova, Festival Producer, +371 29635167
Līva Siliņa, PR Strategy Coordinator, +371 25358541

Contacts
RIXC Center for New Media Culture / RIXC Gallery / Festival Information Center
Address: Lenču iela 2, Riga, LV-1010, Latvia
E-mail: rixc@rixc.org
Phone: +371 26546776 (office)
www.rixc.org | https://festival2026.rixc.org/

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Annex 1

PROGRAMME
THURSDAY, 22 OCTOBER — ONSITE ONLY
10:00 | Press Conference, National Library of Latvia, Exhibition Hall (onsite only)
13:00–15:30 | W1 — On Artistic Experimentation(onsite only)
Workshop with Philippe Sormani.
16:00 | Opening Keynote — Rewilding the Lab (onsite only)
Philippe Sormani, respondent Ainārs Kamoliņš
18:00 | Exhibition opening — Climate Imagination (onsite only)

FRIDAY, 23 OCTOBER — ONSITE + ONLINE
12:00–14:00 | W2 — On Sustainable Digital Productions (onsite/online)
EMAP workshop with Maija Demitere.
14:30–16:30 | W3 — On Extending Climate Realities  (onsite/online)
SensUs workshop with Rasa Smite and Jane Tingley.
16:30 | Outlook — Extending Realities: Liepāja 2027 / Baltic Art STS  (onsite/online)
With Rasa Smite and Philippe Sormani.
18:00 | Exhibition opening — Prompted Evolution(onsite only)
Artists: Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits