across, with, nearby

What does it mean to cultivate a sense of neighbourliness nearby and from afar? In what sense can love act as a public force, capable of countering social, ecological, economic, and political injustices? How can we challenge pedagogy that flattens diverse worlds, cultural differences, forms of knowledge, engagement, and ways of being?

The fifth edition of the Bergen Assembly invites you to participate alongside others in approaching these questions and to share in processes of learning across, with, and nearby. We intend to cultivate a series of collective and intimate responses to the paralysing uncertainties and cruelties inflicted in our time. By embracing curiosity and a spirit of collaboration, guided by new and abandoned insights alike, we seek to forge paths through the abyss into reflective and creative kinds of uncertainty.

Carried in the aforementioned questions is the diversity of practices that interweave in this edition of the Bergen Assembly, convened by Ravi Agarwal, Adania Shibli, and the Bergen School of Architecture (BAS). These inquiries—some of which emerged through encounters in the Cross Course programmes already initiated by the convenors—invite you to join, expand upon, and carry them forward as you engage with the triennial’s upcoming programme. This edition will be experiential: a communal, living, and evolving process of artistic and knowledge formations through practices of sharing rather than showing.

across, with, nearby lays an aspect of its foundation in the idea of mutual care. It brings together visual and audio artists, authors, archivists, activists, architects, and other practitioners that seek relational processes for shared learning. If knowledge can move through lived experiences and reciprocity, it is vital to acknowledge any accompanying uncertainties, intimacies, and fragilities. We therefore propose situations of engagement based on trust and mutuality as a way of co-creating. These unfold in the shape of works that can be viewed and listened to, and which also take the form of invitations to collaborative performances and spaces of hosting, gathering, and neighbouring.

The convenors have sought forms of knowledge that are in motion and in relation to one another—forms which, in their complexity, might recall what the poet and author Aimé Césaire called “poetic knowledge.” This approach foregrounds a kind of learning that resists categorisation or exclusion, and which unfolds over time across places, humans, and more-than-humans. It invites you to allow a space for what is there, though unacknowledged, as well as new shapes of understanding and ways of being, both in Bergen and beyond.

With: Ken Are Bongo and Joar Nango, Susan Philipsz, Koki Tanaka, and Jana Winderen at Bergen School of Architecture. Vikrant Bhise, Marcus Coates, AgriForum (with Gram Art, Kåre Alexander Grundvåg, and Matskogen), Clara Hastrup, Iver Jåks, Sajan Mani, Gruppe 66, Karen Werner, Singing Wells, and Karan Shrestha at Bergen Kunsthall. Tomas Espedal, Tora Sanden Døskeland, Leander Djønne, Shahram Khosravi, Lars Korff Lofthus, Maaza Mengiste, Einar Økland, Christine Otten, Elsebet Rahlff, Agnes Ravatn, Philip Rizk, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Layli Long Soldier, Elin Már Øyen Vister, and the Hardangerfjord community at Literature Boat Epos. Nepal Picture Library: Dalit Archive, Feminist Memory Project, PARI Archive (Grindmill Songs Project), and Queer Archive Bergen at Stranges Stiftelse. Nabil Ahmed/INTRPRT at Bergen Public Library. Monica Ursina Jäger at Grand Hotel Terminus, Amundsen Bar. Maasai Mbili Artist Collective at Entrée. Floating University at Kristiansholm. Builders’ Hut at Rommet, USF. Communist Museum of Palestine, Tenthaus Art Collective at Bergen Cathedral School. Lapdiang Artimai Syiem, Monica Ursina Jäger at Nonneseter. Al Borde at Bergen Assembly Open Office. Jakkai Siributr at Textile Industry Museum. Sarah Kazmi and Prabhakar Pachpute at sites across the city.

Also appearing across: Vinduet, Klassekampen, and Cabinet Magazine.
 

Bergen Assembly is jointly convened by

Ravi Agarwal (India, 1958) is an artist, environmental campaigner, writer, and curator. He addresses entangled questions through an interrelation of art, research, and activism, focusing on the subject of nature and its futures.

Adania Shibli (Palestine, 1974) has written novels, plays, short stories, and narrative essays. Shibli has also been engaged in academic research and teaching including at Birzeit University, Palestine (2012–2018).

Bergen School of Architecture (BAS) was founded as a pedagogic alternative to architectural education at the time. Its curriculum is grounded in Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s ideas about Open Form and the didactic methods developed at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from the 1950s to 1980s. Open Form encourages inclusive processes and ambiguous designs, developing spatial and temporal situations with diverse forms of collaboration and collective action.