September 1–October 1, 2016
Venues: Bergen City Hall, Bergen Kino, Konsertpaleet, KP10; Bergen Kunsthall; Entrée; Bergen Gamle Hovedbrannstasjon; Hagerupsgården; Kunstgarasjen; Sentralbadet; St. Jørgen’s Shelter; USF Verftet
The 2016 edition of Bergen Assembly offers three distinct propositions by artistic directors Tarek Atoui, freethought and PRAXES. The September programme of events launches with an opening weekend (September 1–4) of exhibition openings, screenings and performances, as well as freethought’s Infrastructure Summit.
freethought
Formed in 2011 by Irit Rogoff, Stefano Harney, Adrian Heathfield, Massimiliano Mollona, Louis Moreno and Nora Sternfeld, freethought is a collective working in public research and in curating concepts of political urgency. For Bergen Assembly 2016, freethought are working collaboratively with invited curators, artists, researchers and educators including Vali Mahlouji, Mike Berlin, Isa Rosenberger, Phil Collins, Anne Marthe Dyvi, Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, Arjuna Neuman, Paul Purgas, Hugo Glendinning and Wu Tsang. Focusing on infrastructure in a large-scale investigation that has so far included public seminars, guest lectures and artist projects in Bergen, the work now culminates in a programme of installations, discursive platforms and artistic commissions.
For the opening weekend of the September programme, freethought present The Infrastructure Summit, a two-day discursive event complemented by food, film, performance and music with renowned writers, curators and artists investigating the nature of infrastructure in times of economic disparity, ecological catastrophe, expulsion and forced migration. The Summit runs concurrently with other projects, screenings and installations, as well as the ongoing events programme at The Partisan Café.
PRAXES
Within Bergen Assembly 2016, PRAXES is episodically inhabiting different venues around Bergen with a year-long programme centering on the unassociated artistic practices of Lynda Benglis and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. Running from February to December 2016, this experiment is the second chapter of PRAXES, co-founded in 2013 by Rhea Dall and Kristine Siegel in Berlin.
Tracing ideas of suspended fluidity and mushrooming masses, the group exhibition Adhesive Products opening at Bergen Kunsthall in September presents works by Lynda Benglis, Nairy Baghramian, Olga Balema, Daiga Grantina, Sterling Ruby, and Kaari Upson, accompanied by lectures by Dieter Roelstraete and Judith Tannenbaum. Simultaneously, On Screen, focusing on three of Benglis’s iconic video works from 1973, is on display at Entrée.
The second part of a new commission, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd’s The Cell Group (Episode Two) on September 2–3 is a live act in a former bomb shelter, thriving on telepathic conversations for a paranoid age, while the exhibition Cocaine & Caviar at Kunstgarasjen speculates in long-term connections in Chetwynd’s film work and performance-related objects. Additionally, an ever-larger number of the artist’s Bat Opera paintings accumulate in Bergen City Hall.
Tarek Atoui
The musician and sound artist develops WITHIN, a project initiated in 2008, drawing on conversations with teachers and students from the Al Amal School for Deaf Students in Sharjah City and in collaboration with Paris-based curators Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman (Council).
In a series of public rehearsals, performances and sonic experiments, composers and musicians will activate new musical instruments. Councils’ exhibition Infinite Ear expands on the project’s years of research into the transformations of hearing and how deafness can influence and expand the way we understand sound performance, its space and instrumentation.
Composition and performance: BIT20 Ensemble, André Bratten, Espen Sommer Eide, DJ Jade, Myriam Lefkovitz and Valentina Desideri, Trond Lossius, Pauline Oliveros and lone, Alwynne Pritchard, Gerhard Staebler Instruments: Daniel Araya (Electronic Music Studio Stockholm), Johannes Goebel, Mitchell Karchemsky, Mats Lindström (Electronic Music Studio Stockholm), Jeff Lubow (CNMAT), Thierry Madiot, Perrin Meyer (Meyer Sound), Greg Niemeyer (Berkeley Center for New Media), Julia Al Sarraf, Kari Sundet Sound recordings: Eric La Casa, Chris Chafe, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Jacob Kirkegaard, LIGO, Thomas Lilly, Gareth Lee Patterson Mathieu Saladin, Minoru Sato, Chris Watson Works: Robert Ashlay, Douwe Jan Bakker, Maria Barnas, Antonia Carrara, Andrew Fisher, Aurelien Gamboni and Sandrine Teixido, Dora Garcia, Joseph Grigely, Alexandre Guirkinger, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Christian Marclay, Alison O’Daniel, Baudouin Oosterlynck, Simon Ripoll-Hurier Scenography: conceived with BAS Students, advised by Jeffrey Mansfield.
For a complete list of collaborators and venues, please visit the website.
Contact:
Victoria Trunova
Head of Communications
T +47 906 22589 / victoria@bergenassembly.no
