The 17th edition of Survival Kit, the international contemporary art festival organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), will open in Riga on 27 August with a programme of performances and a Healing Nightclub experience. Survival Kit 17, “Arrow of the Wind: On Artists and Healers”, will take place from 28 August to 27 September 2026 at Riga Congress Hall (Krišjāņa Valdemāra iela 5, Riga).
Curated by Elena Sorokina and Simona Markel Dvorák, together with the Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care, the festival explores the shared terrain between art and healing — spanning therapy, incantation and ritual, physical and mental healthcare, and spiritual restoration.
Throughout the festival, the Survival Kit 17 exhibition is complemented by a series of events, including performances, conversations and discussions, mediated walks, and exhibition tours.
The Survival Kit 17 opening programme has been developed in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou. On 27 August, from 18:00 to 20:30, three events will take place at Riga Congress Hall, bringing together art, ritual, healing, and the transmission of knowledge.
Two singular figures from the international performance landscape will come together in a moving dialogue: musician and composer Naima Nefertari and choreographer Zora Snake. Their performance will unfold as a dialogue between Nefertari’s music and Snake’s dance, intertwining their practices in a multilayered ritual gathering. Meanwhile, Maya Minder will invite visitors to share a meal in which eating becomes a multisensory experience and a way of sharing knowledge, exploring fermentation and the interdependence between humans and microorganisms.
The opening programme will continue from 21:00 at Kaņepes Kultūras centrs (Skolas iela 5) with Healing Nightclub, an interdisciplinary artistic project by Timo Tuhkanen that brings together dance, sound, music, and healing practices in a shared nocturnal experiment. The evening will open with Tuhkanen’s performance, emerging from research into the connections between music, medical hypnosis, daseinanalysis, and touch. At 22:00, Mo’ong will perform with his signature custom electro-acoustic instruments, reconnecting and reinterpreting sounds from his Indonesian heritage through ancient and contemporary ideas of trance and shamanism. The evening will conclude at 23:00 with a set by DJ Bunuel, a pioneer of Finnish DJ culture. The Survival Kit 17 opening programme at Kaņepes Kultūras centrs requires a ticket for entry.
On the first day of Survival Kit 17, 28 August at 17:00, artist Zaiga Putrāma will invite visitors to take part in a healing movement practice based on the principles of tango communication.
As part of the White Night contemporary culture forum, T.I.E.’s performance Veins of Daugava / Uterine Waters will take place at Riga Congress Hall on 5 September at 21:00. The artist will approach water as a space of memory, transformation, and continuity, with the Daugava River becoming a symbolic and sonic axis where Baltic pagan cosmologies meet diasporic embodied practices. Through voice, sound textures, and embodied gestures, the performance will explore the connections between body and environment, past and future.
From 18:00, the Survival Kit 17 White Night programme will continue with the project “Appendix – A Turn into the Side Layers”, which will address current questions of coexistence, belonging, and inclusion in Latvia through a movement performance by Latvian women artists and women from third countries living in Latvia, led by Viktorija Fomenko, followed by a public discussion.
As part of the festival’s public programme, on 12 September at 14:00, writer Agnese Krivade will lead “A Walk in an Ugly Landscape”, a practice of presence inspired by the publication “Relational Landscapes: Navigation” by the Fabula Collective. On 17 September at 18:00, the discussion “Art Education as a Form of Care: Value, Sustainability and Institutional Change”, moderated by associate professor, literary scholar, and media theorist Ilva Skulte, will address the concept and practice of care within art and educational institutions. The discussion will bring together representatives of former and current art organisations.
Art mediators will be present in the exhibition throughout the festival on Thursday and Friday evenings from 16:00 to 20:00, offering visitors an opportunity to explore the artworks and ideas presented in Survival Kit 17 through conversation and shared experiences. The programme is supported by VV Foundation. Individual and group tours led by art mediators, as well as tours for schools, can also be booked.
More information about Survival Kit 17, the festival programme, and visiting the exhibition is available here.
Organised and supported by
Survival Kit 17 is organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art
Partners: Signet Bank and the Performing Arts unit – Centre Pompidou
Logistics partner: DHL Latvia
Supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Riga Investment and Tourism Agency, Institut français in Paris, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, VV Foundation, Goethe-Institut Rīga, SIF, Flanders State of the Art, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, Danish Arts Foundation, The Icelandic Visual Arts Fund, the Ministry of Culture, Innovation and Higher Education of Iceland, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), Finnish Cultural Foundation, BGSW / Baszta, Kultivator, Art Space "Studija", Göllner Spedition, Ramirent, Kaņepes Kultūras centrs, Kalve Coffee, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Riga This Week, Neighborhood.
