Alternative Endings. MDAG Vision and MDAG Industry
April marks the final stretch on the road to MDAG. This year, once again, two integral elements of the festival will take place at the State Ethnographic Museum. As part of MDAG Vision (May 8–17, 2026), XR screenings will explore how what was once science fiction may soon become our everyday reality. The exhibition is free of charge.
The 23rd MDAG will take place from May 8 to 17, 2026, in cinemas across seven cities (Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Łódź, and Bydgoszcz), and online from May 19 to June 1 at mdag.pl!
Experience what’s to come. MDAG Vision
This year’s MDAG Vision exhibition (May 8–17, 2026) invites visitors into a world where visions of the future have become tangible reality. The five featured works examine the need to search for identity and security in times of rapid change. By stimulating the imagination, the artists offer new survival scenarios, using a wide spectrum of media—from artificial intelligence and augmented reality to collective performance. It is an invitation to actively and sensorially step into a world that has already caught up with us.
All experiences are available exclusively in English. May 8–17, State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw (1 Kredytowa Street) – free admission. Opening hours: 4:00–9:00 PM (weekdays) and 12:00–7:00 PM (weekends). During Museum Night (May 16), the exhibition will be open from 12:00 PM to 1:00 AM.
In times of radical uncertainty, speculation ceases to be merely the domain of science fiction – it becomes a form of social resilience. When the foundations of the world we know begin to crack, one of the survival tools becomes our ability to imagine future scenarios. This year’s MDAG Vision exhibition is an invitation to engage in collective speculation – one that is not so much an escape from reality as an attempt to equip ourselves with the emotional and intellectual tools for what lies ahead. All of the presented works share a common quest for a new definition of home – a concept which nowadays ranges from physical sanctuary through digital archive to planetary necessity.
In Liam Young’s visionary Planet City, a hyper-dense metropolis becomes a home, the sole refuge for 10 billion people, representing a radical renunciation of human domination of the planet in favour of its salvation. In Joanna Zabielska’s Postgranicze, by contrast, home and identity are rooted in the whispers of the Podlasie region, where, at the intersection of borders, personal testimonies intertwine with myths, reminding us that landscape shapes our memory just as powerfully as politics. Finally, in Lili, the domestic sanctuary transforms into a space of total surveillance, where a Shakespearean tragedy permeates a dark world of digital resistance, and the audience – taking on the role of hackers – must confront the mechanisms of complicity in evil.
In these speculative worlds, we are accompanied by non-human guides. In a room filled with the scent of earth and moss, we stand before Future Botanica, where ecology is no longer merely a struggle to preserve what once was, but a fascinating project of co-creating new forms of life at the intersection of code and nature. Meanwhile, in Ancestors, the smartphone becomes our guide through time, allowing the audience to take on the role of ancestors to people living two hundred years from now and building a bridge between today’s decisions and our collective future.
“Speculating on What Has Come” confronts us with a situation in which what yesterday seemed a safely distant hypothesis has today become a tangible reality. By engaging the senses in ways a static cinema experience cannot, the exhibition invites us to find our place in a world that has caught up to us – and which demands a new, somatic attentiveness.
– Anna Szylar, XR and MDAG Vision Artistic Curator
This year’s MDAG Vision exhibition (8–17 May 2026) invites you into a world where visions of the future become a tangible reality. The five presented works explore the need to seek identity and security in an era of rapid change. By stimulating the imagination, the artists offer new survival scenarios, utilising a wide spectrum of media: from artificial intelligence and augmented reality to collective performance. The exhibition offers an active, sensory entry into a world that has just caught up to us. All experiences are available in English only.
Future Botanica invites you to co-create an ecosystem that has emerged sooner than we anticipated. In this interactive augmented reality (AR) installation, the physical space – filled with moss and natural textures – serves as a foundation for digital evolution. Using a smartphone as a lens, participants can “sow” unique botanical forms, the DNA of which is shaped by algorithms and interaction with the environment.
Ancestors is a collective experience that challenges our ability to think long-term. Smartphones serve here as guides through scenarios of tomorrow, in which climate change, technological progress and social challenges are no longer distant speculations, but a reality that determines the fate of our descendants.
Planet City is a project that blends film, virtual reality and speculative architecture, challenging the logic of civilisation’s ceaseless expansion. Instead of continuing to exploit ecosystems, humanity decides to take a radical step – retreating into a single, hyper-dense metropolis. This visionary act of renunciation allows wildlife to flourish once more in areas previously ravaged by the global economy.
Postgranicze is a multi-layered world of speculative fiction, built on the foundation of our reality. The story is set in the forests of Podlasie – a place where the borders of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine converge, and the land seems to echo the voices of many histories and languages. The project prioritises poetic imagination over bare facts, creating a space for reflection on how places of memory and cultural fissures define our identity.
MDAG Vision will take place at the State Ethnographic Museum on May 8–17 and May 7–11, 2026, respectively. The 23rd MDAG will be held from May 8 to 17, 2026, in cinemas in Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Bydgoszcz, and Łódź, and online from May 19 to June 1 at mdag.pl. The title sponsor of the event is Bank Millennium ([https://www.bankmillennium.pl/](https://www.bankmillennium.pl/)).
