River’s Magic Garden contemporary art fest to explore futurology in 2021 edition

An exploration of visions of future will bring this year's edition of River’s Magic Garden contemporary art festival to life starting this Friday, with works by 20 Georgian artists, discussions, screenings and audio performances comprising the event.

Organisers have prepared an expanded programme for the third running of the festival that was started with a proximity to the confluence of Mtkvari and Vere rivers in Tbilisi, on a previously neglected river bank location.

The 2021 edition will focus on a group of Georgian creatives bringing their installations and works to the location to explore futurology and science fiction concepts.

This topic seems particularly relevant in a transformative, post-soviet reality, where each and every shift is painfully evocative of the powerlessness the people see in the creation of their own future

- exhibition organisers

They will delve into the subjects of exploring society's imaginations of the future, projections of "the evolution of disciplines and social patterns", and subsequent experimentation enabled by these, through their site-specific works.

• See the full details of the 2021 edition of the festival

The week-long event will then switch over to a series of talks at the Tbilisi-based Center of Contemporary Art, where writers, artists and academicians will discuss themes ranging from the genre of science fiction to the Georgian scene of the literary fiction. These will run between October 23-28 at the CCA venue.

In the third section of River’s Magic Garden, video and film screenings organised by the Georgian Video Art Archive project will bring works by filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, journalist and photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and other creators to visitors of the event.

Both the screenings and the final element of the festival - a series of audio performances - will run between October 22-29, also at the CCA space, located at 10 Dodo Abashidze Street in Tbilisi.