Today is Our Tomorrow is an annual transdisciplinary festival, initiated in 2019 by PUBLICS. The festival, taking a different form and location each year, supports intersectional ecologies and diversity of thoughts, of practices, of identities, and their experiences through its collaborative methodology and co-productive commissioning approach. Today is already our tomorrow, and now is the time when we need to take care of one another, to share our many dreams, and to look after our collective future imaginaries.

This year, three Baltic organisations The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Narva Art Residency and NAC of Vilnius Academy of Arts in collaboration with PUBLICS have co-commissioned three new works with artists Agnė Jokšė, Sandra Kosorotova, Anni Puolakka and Marta Trektere, available at PUBLICS and through various online platforms. Each of these works explore cohabitational practices, and ways of living and being together, giving shape and form to a more cooperative, compassionate, and just world.

WEEDS FEED! is a tactile publication compiled by Sandra Kosorotova. From an in-depth study on food capitalism and land stewardship, to fermental health and the possibility of feeding each other, Sandra’s work encompasses ideas of care-taking as an artistic practice; how we can transform excess energy into a rewarding co-existence of humans and other-than-humans.

Unconditional Love by Agnė Jokšė is a video work and an ongoing inquiry into entangled cross-generational family relations and their role in the claim of kinship. It consists of several interlinked chapters, exploring themes related to care, compassion, and love through the lens of intergenerational relations that are constituted in parallel to the societal and political changes taking place in Lithuania around the 1990s when transitioning from the Soviet Union and its economic and ideological models into the independent state of today.

Oestrus Youth is a collaborative performance by Anni Puolakka and Marta Trektere who have worked jointly since 2018 supplementing, interacting, supporting and curating each other’s work. The performance will take place through Instagram stories of PUBLICS (@publicsfi), LCCA (@latviancentre4contemporaryart) and the artists (@annipuolakka & @pradagloves) and will mash-up two performances – Oestrus and Painless Youth – in which both artists are involved in each other’s work as a visiting performer and a supporter. Oestrus Youth explores collaboration, trust and hybridity as meaningful tools to cope with the human condition.

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) is the largest institution of contemporary art in Latvia that curates and produces contemporary art events of national and international scale. As of 1993, it has researched and curated contemporary art processes both in Latvia and abroad to provoke critical reflection on issues topical for contemporary society. LCCA is recognized for the annual international contemporary art festival SURVIVAL KIT, regular exhibitions at the Latvian National Museum of Art, as well as Latvia’s representation at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, São Paulo Art Biennial, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Rauma Biennale of Contemporary Art, etc.

Narva Art Residency (NART) is a cultural platform founded in 2015 facilitating residencies, art exhibitions, events and educational workshops. It is located in Narva city on Estonian-Russian border at the historical Kreenholm area. The international artist-in-residency programme aims to generate creative exchange between practitioners and to strengthen links with the local community. NART is operated by the Estonian Academy of Arts in collaboration with Narva Gate and is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture.

NAC of Vilnius Academy of Arts offers space to professional artists and practitioners for focused and undisturbed work in Nida, a remote UNESCO World Heritage Site. NAC is surrounded by the unique landscape of the Curonian spit: forest, sand dunes, and the sea. NAC opened in 2011, it runs an international residency programme, the annual Nida Doctoral School, and initiates art, education, and research projects in Nida and elsewhere among them the Lithuanian pavilion, Sun & Sea: Marina, at the 58th International Venice Art Biennial in 2019.

PUBLICS is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Vallila, Finland. The first edition of Today Is Our Tomorrow took place in 2019 and was co-organised in collaboration with 10 different institutions and included over 50 artists and collectives.

The project is co-funded by The Baltic Culture Fund.