The RIXC Art Science Festival symposium will take place on 22–23 October at the National Library of Latvia in Riga, featuring three thematic sessions, workshops, presentations, showcases, and discussions. Participation is free of charge, and those interested are encouraged to register in advance.

Free registration here: https://ej.uz/rixcfestival2026tickets

On 22 October at 16:00 in the Conference Center of the National Library of Latvia, Philippe Sormani will deliver the festival’s opening keynote, “Rewilding the Lab”. Sormani is a Senior Researcher at the STS Lab at the University of Lausanne and the Immersive Arts Space at Zurich University of the Arts. His research and publications address experimentation in and across different fields of activity, ranging from experimental physics to artistic experiments and technology demonstrations, including artificial intelligence and extended reality. In his keynote, Sormani will revisit a series of experiments, making explicit the circumstances and multiple contingencies that shape their seemingly independent results, and will explore alternative aesthetics of experimentation and other kinds of sociotechnical arrangement.

The keynote respondent will be Ainārs Kamoliņš, a philosopher, curator, and doctoral researcher at the Latvian Academy of Culture, whose work bridges philosophy with the natural sciences, biotechnology, and media art. As a long-time collaborator of RIXC, he focuses on the intersection of biological processes and technoscientific practices. Kamoliņš will complement Sormani’s perspective with a Latvian and Baltic viewpoint, examining how the relationship between nature, technology, and scientific experimentation changed during the 20th century – from hydropower and ecological thought to environmental movements.

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.

More information on the festival website:

https://festival2026.rixc.org/keynote-by-philippe-sormani/