Plant Intelligence
RIXC Art and Science Festival 2025
October 16 – November 23, 2025
Riga, Latvia

Exhibition
October 16 – November 23, 2025
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Sporta iela 2, Riga
RIXC Gallery, Lencu iela 2, Riga

Symposium. Workshops. Performances
October 16 – 18, 2025
Art Academy of Latvia, Kalpaka bulvāris 13, Riga

“Plants are our fellow travelers: humans completely live on them. Before the background of the current wasting of the world, we need to rethink other ways – vegetal ways – of worlding: ways that do not consume the world, but (re)produce it.”

– Yvonne Volkart

This year’s RIXC Festival will delve into the “plant intelligence” theme, exploring ideas such as “learning like a plant” amidst the ongoing climate crises, perspectives of traditional indigenous cultures and the still scarcely unfolded relationships between natural and artificial intelligence.

The festival — featuring significant international partnerships — will take place on October 16–18, 2025, in Riga, exploring its central theme of “plant intelligence”, through collaborations with Swiss researchers of SNSF-funded project “Plants_Intelligence", as well as introducing new perspectives in “resonances of nature”, explored in partnership with French and German artists, supported by Goethe-Institut Riga and the French Institute in Latvia.

In addition to these collaborations, the festival will also feature a diverse lineup of international artists from across Europe and beyond — including South America and Asia — contributing fresh global perspectives to the dialogue between art, science, and nature.

This year’s festival will feature a broad program of events including:

EXHIBITION OPENING

Curated by Raitis Smits and Yvonne Volkart, the exhibition is a collaboration with the SNSF-funded research project “Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant” (2022–2025) (https://plants-intelligence.ch), asking from the perspective of art, whether the recognition of vegetal forms of intelligence might lead to other methods of knowledge generation, coexistence, breeding and ultimately to new, “intelligent” forms of plant and agricultural culture.

The exhibition opening will take place on October 16, 2025, in Kim? Contemporary Art Centre featuring 12 international artworks, 5 of which are the outcome of the Plants_Intelligence research. The exhibition will be open until November 23, 2025.

The exhibition’s conceptual context is based on the “Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant” theoretical framework proposed and developed by Swiss art theorist Yvonne Volkart:

“Current research proves what ancient practices already knew: plants are more complex beings than previously assumed. With reference to this, the research project ‘Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant’ explores the discourse of plant intelligence in the natural sciences, the humanities and the arts. It negotiates the conceptualisation of intelligence and its interweaving with concepts such as mind, consciousness, communication, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, learning, subjectivity. It asks whether this conceptualisation makes sense of the behaviours of vegetal life and whether it promotes new perspectives on interspecies and terrestrial relationships.”

WORKSHOPS AND PERFORMANCES

Co-organized by Goethe-Institut Riga and French Institute in Latvia, in the framework of the "Resonances of Nature: A Cross-Border Sound & Digital Art Experience" project, the workshops, interactive installations and performances will take place from October 16–18, 2025 at the Art Academy of Latvia, in Riga, featuring collaborations by German, French and Latvian immersive media and sound artists.

SYMPOSIUM

From October 16–18, 2025, the symposium at the Art Academy of Latvia will take place featuring keynote speakers, artist and curator talks, panel discussions, and screenings.

Support
The festival is supported by the State Cultural Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Goethe-Institut Riga, French Institute in Latvia and other cultural institutions and funders (to be confirmed).