The future is rhizomatic
The festival’s motto, “the future is rhizomatic,” draws inspiration from nature’s rhizomes. Unlike trees, which grow from singular roots and fixed hierarchies, rhizomes —such as ginger, featured in the festival logo— grow horizontally, through multiplicity, interconnectedness, and continual branching. Rhizomes are metaphors for decentralized, non-linear, adaptive, and collective systems. They spread through relation rather than Subordination.
As a symbol of our futures, the rhizome invites us to imagine worlds where infinite ways of being, knowing, communicating, creating, and loving can coexist and interact without being dominated by any centralized power. It represents the horizons we wish to cultivate: pluriversal, convivial, and interrelated futures in which every being can thrive in their own way.
An Artistic–Scientific Festival
Nijmegen, The Netherlands — Lindenberg Culture House
September 26–27, 2026
Reclaiming Our Futures is a two-day artistic–scientific festival bringing together scientists, artists, activists, and citizens to collectively reflect on and reimagine the worlds we want to inhabit. Taking place at the Lindenberg Culture House in Nijmegen on September 26–27, 2026, the festival will offer a safe and creative space for conversation, experimentation, and connection.
Grounded in an intersectional and pluriversal perspective, the festival seeks to open collective reflection on desirable social, communicational, and technological futures.
At a time when dominant narratives often present the future as predetermined by technological acceleration, political polarization, the rise of nationalism, or ecological destruction, Reclaiming Our Futures proposes instead to reclaim futurity as a shared space of imagination, solidarity, Accountability, Care, and collective world-making.
Through words, images, movement, music, and Craft, Participants will be invited to explore alternative ways of relating to one another, to technologies, and to the living world.
Rooted in anti-oppression, Anti-Colonialism, Anti-Capitalism, and Anti-technofeudalism, the festival asks how we might move beyond critique toward reconstruction.
Across the two days, we will collectively co-create a shared multimodal manifesto laying the foundations for just, convivial, and pluriversal futures.
The festival program will feature parallel activities, including:
musical workshop, craft workshop, speculative futures workshop, hybrid gameplay session, Fiction writing, Maplabs, VR Experiences, etc.
The festival will also include screenings of short artistic / scientific films, alongside an Exhibition running throughout both days featuring Visual Artworks and scientific posters centered on the theme “Reclaiming Our Futures.”
CONTRIBUTE YOUR OWN IDEAS
The first day will conclude with a JAZZ CONCERT by the RIZOM Xprmntl 4tet, while at the end of the second day, all participants will gather to collaboratively draft a Multimodal manifesto inspired by the ideas, discussions, and creations that emerged throughout the festival.
Reclaiming Our Futures is an invitation to voice your wildest ideas in the wildest ways.
An event coordinated by Samira Ibnelkaïd,
Futures of Language Project, Radboud University.
Funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW Trailblazers Fund.