Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead – Bergen Assembly 2019 begins its packed autumn programme with a long weekend (Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon), featuring the opening of the exhibition across five venues – Bergen Kjøtt, Bergen Kunsthall, Entrée, Hordaland kunstsenter and KODE 1 Permanenten – as well as performances, concerts, parties, talks, workshops and walking tours. The second edition of the Parliament of Bodies in Bergen, The Impossible Parliaments, takes place on the evening of Saturday, 7 September. 

There are extended exhibition opening hours during the Opening Days: all exhibition venues are open from 11am to 7pm. 

Get to know the platforms and themes of the 2019 edition and meet the conveners, collaborators and contributors of this year’s triennial!

SCHEDULE

11am–7pm
All exhibition venues are open

11–11.45am
political parties: Julio Jara, Los Mil y Un Cartones (A Thousand and One Cardboard Pieces), 2019
Performance, walk from Belgin to The Church City Mission, Bergen
Meeting point: Belgin

The regular work of Julio Jara, artist, poet and performer established in Madrid since the eighties, focuses on the homeless, on immigrants with drug abuse problems and on transgender refugees. He carries out this work for a religion based institution in Madrid called Martín de Porres. Los mil y un cartón is one of his works based on an open collection of narratives on how individuals spent their first night outdoors.

12–4pm
Chicago Boys
Initiated by Hiwa K, in collaboration with Alwynne Pritchard and Vegard Bolstad
Music performance
Fargeriet Café, Ytre Arna
Free bus shuttle Bergen – Ytre Arna – Bergen, meeting point for departure 11am at Belgin, return from Ytre Arna 2pm (limited capacities)

For Bergen Assembly 2019, Hiwa K initiated a new constellation of the open band and study group Chicago Boys with participants from Årna, a district of Bergen. The process is based on research that sheds light on the beginnings of neoliberalism in the various countries of origin of its participants. Recalling the music of the period, the group compiles a playlist that is then orchestrated and performed.

12–1pm
political parties: Pedro G. Romero and Teresa Lanceta, Gallinero (Chicken Coop), 2019
Conversation
Bergen Kjøtt / Slakt

The Romans gave us the legal system, but whenever a decree was passed in the Senate, a roost of prophetic chickens would have their say on the fate of this or that law. This relationship with magic mediated by chickens has often been parodied. And this is precisely the point of departure for the collaboration between Pedro G. Romero and Teresa Lanceta, an artist who has been weaving rugs for many years. The two had met and laughed about Martin Kippenberger’s Chicken Disco (1953–97). Now they have spent months researching the perception of chickens, the way they understand space and time, in order to weave a rug that will hold them.

1.15–2.15pm
Simon Sheikh, Capital Drawing Group, Daniel G. Andújar: Reading Marx with the Body
Conversation
Bergen Kjøtt / Slakt

2–4pm
Saturday Walk
Guests: Murat Deha Boduroğlu and Banu Cennetoğlu
Starting Point: Belgin

The Saturday walk takes as a starting point the idea of the guided tour at a gallery or museum. For this tour, Murat Deha Boduroğlu and Banu Cennetoğlu from the Bergen Assembly core group will join, offering their perspectives, opinions and experiences to the group and offering the opportunity to listen and learn from the perspective of the ‘maker’. At the end of the walk, we will gather at Belgin for coffee and cake. Sitting together around the table, we will have the chance to gather our thoughts, collectively or individually, reflecting upon our experience.

3–3.30pm
Minna Henriksson, Nordic Race Science
Presentation
KODE 1 Permanenten

Nordic Race Science is a survey of central figures engaged in ‘race science’ in the Nordic countries between the 1850s and 1945: scientists who were measuring human skulls and living people in order to categorise humans into ‘races’ and place them in hierarchical order. During that time, this pseudo-science was one of the best respected and state-supported scientific disciplines in the Nordic countries. Alongside the anatomists, Henriksson’s wall drawing includes collectors of human remains, institutions and patrons, as well as artists who produced images of the constructed white ‘Nordic race’, and the ‘exotic others’.

3.30–6.30pm
the Mycological Twist, Troll Swamp
Gaming Session, limited capacities, for participation please register at gaming@bergenassembly.no
Entrée

Troll Swamp is a large-scale board game for multiple players, based on the formats and characters from the popular tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons. The game has been developed and tested with various groups in Bergen, and utilises role-play and teamwork in order to act out scenarios against online trolling. Through the analogue nature of the game, a playful situation emerges where one plays an imaginary character. Guided by the Dungeon Master (a storyteller guiding the players through the game), each player will face their own online habits as well as their relationship with others. Troll Swamp has the potential to enable its players to regain confidence, rethink dynamics of interaction and reclaim a different space of expression online.

3.45–4.15pm
Nina Støttrup Larsen, Mercurial Relations
Presentation
KODE 1 Permanenten

Mercurial Relations is a research project revolving around a colonial monetary construction, a currency called the Franc CFA, which is the currency union that France had installed in its colonies and which still operates today. What does it mean, when the money used in 14 African states is printed, managed and governed by their former colonial ruler?  The production facility of the Franc CFA is situated in the heart of France, right next to a dormant volcano with a (newly restored) Roman temple dedicated to Mercury, god of finance and theft, of trade and trickery, of borders and lies. What role does mythology play in relation to the narratives that the so-called ‘West’ tells itself about its relations with the rest of the world?

5pm–2am
The Parliament of Bodies: The Impossible Parliaments
A programme of discussions, performances, screenings, and rituals
With Andreas Angelidakis, Antonio Centeno, Laressa Dickey, Eva Egermann, Magdalena Freudenschuss, María García, Göksu Kunak a.k.a Gucci Chunk and Laure M. Hiendl, Jemina Lindholm, Georgy Mamedov, Daniel Mariblanca, Pedro G. Romero, Liz Rosenfeld, Valentine Tanz/Vala T. Foltyn, Mariana Valencia, Jeremy Wade
Curators: Paul B. Preciado, Viktor Neumann  

The Parliament of Bodies (PoB) gathers again in Bergen: Within Bergen Assembly 2019’s opening days, the Society of Friends of Lorenza Böttner calls for an extraordinary meeting to question the idea of artistic and political action as based on strong, virile, healthy and medically normalised subjects. Thus, the PoB mutates into the Impossible Parliaments, challenging the standard model of the assembly as a series of acts of communication between equal ‘able bodies’ destined to achieve consensus.

Taking as their starting point the work of artist Lorenza Böttner (1959–1994), the Impossible Parliaments call into question normative distinctions between sickness and health, and focus on specific knowledges and practices of those historically considered ‘sick’, ‘fat’, ‘dysphoric’ or ‘deficient’.

We invite the city of Bergen and visitors of Bergen Assembly 2019 to join the Parliament for a joyfull celebration of vulnerabilty and somatopolitical dissidence. 

See details and full schedule here

ADRESSES
Belgin, Rasmus Meyers allé 3, 5015 Bergen
Bergen Kjøtt, Skutevikstorget 1, 5032 Bergen
Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5, 5015 Bergen
Entrée, Markeveien 4b, 5012 Bergen
Fargeriet Café, Oleana A/S, Ivar Aasgaards vei 1, Ytre Arna
Folk og Røvere, Sparebanksgaten 4, 5017 Bergen
Hordaland kunstsenter, Klosteret 17, 5005 Bergen
KODE 1 Permanenten, Nordahl Bruns gate 9, 5014 Bergen

OPENING DAYS PROGRAMME
Thursday, 5.9.2019
Friday, 6.9.2019
Sunday, 8.9.2019

DOWNLOAD OPENING DAYS PROGRAMME