Bergen Assembly 2025
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Bergen Assembly 2025: 11 Sep – 9 Nov
Bergen Assembly 2025 is jointly convened by Ravi Agarwal (artist and researcher), Adania Shibli (writer and visual culture researcher), and the Bergen School of Architecture (BAS), an alternative educational institution. Together, they are shaping Bergen Assembly 2025 as a living, evolving process, developed over the past few years through a wide range of courses and collaborations.
Join us from Thursday, 11 September – Sunday, 14 September for the opening days of Bergen Assembly 2025! This weekend marks the beginning of Bergen Assembly with the opening of exhibitions in venues across Bergen, accompanied by a program of parties, readings, concerts, performances, guided tours, boat trips, and much more.
Bergen Assembly 2025: Cross Courses
As a starting point for exploring questions central to the upcoming edition of Bergen Assembly, in 2024, the joint conveners drew on an existing format at Bergen School of Architecture - the cross course. These courses were a platform to look into new methodologies, knowledges and forms of being and creating together–intended as spaces for collective exploration and new ways of learning-with, that would reverberate long after these four days.
Each cross-course had both a sharer and a tracer. While the sharer shaped and formed the course, the tracer reflected on the course process from the perspective of their own practice, discovering traces that carried forward in different forms towards Bergen Assembly 2025 and beyond.
Held over five days in February and October 2024, and February 2025, the cross-courses brought together students, artists, and researchers to share ideas, questions and practices on a diverse range of topics: from Sámi architecture or the complexities of urban development explored through comedy, to the ecological significance of houseplants, disrupted radio signals and unearthing archival material.
You can read more about each round of cross courses below, and by following the link for the full program and details of each course.
> Cross Course Program 04.02 - 07.02.25
In the most recent round of cross courses in February 2025, participants explored a range of topics from neighbouring cultures through acts of care and conversation, to reflections on how to proceed after destruction, beyond the idea of reconstruction. They learned about the Sámi practice of leaving no traces, shifts in language across borders, urban planning, made their own paint and immersed themselves in artistic practices reclaiming ruins and leftover materials.
> Cross Course Program 29.10 - 01.11.24
A second round of cross courses took place 29. Oct - 01. Nov. The October courses were offered to a broader audience, who engaged in a range of subjects: turfing and Sámi architecture, unsorted archive material, explored sites in transition, listened to fish, got to know the individual trees in the ancient Havrå forest, explored the potential of discarded hospital garments, uncovered stories hidden in everyday life, and got friendly with house plants.
> Cross Course Program 20.02 - 23.02.24
The first cross courses took place from 20. - 23. Feb, with 10 courses running in parallel alongside broader public lectures. These were open to students and faculty at BAS, as well as to specially invited groups, including students at the Art Academy – Institute for Contemporary Art, Skrivekunstakademiet, and other smaller groups and initiatives in Bergen (such as the African Student Union and the Sámi Association in Bergen).
Ravi Agarwal (Delhi, 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. His work has been shown at major museums in solo and group exhibitions, and at international biennales. He has co-curated large public art exhibitions, including the Yamuna-Elbe project (Hamburg and Delhi, 2009) and Embrace our Rivers (Chennai, 2018). More recently he curated New Natures, A terrible beauty is born at the Goethe Institute and CSMVS Museum, Mumbai, and Imagined Documents at the Les Rencontres d’ Arles 2022. Agarwal is also the founding director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link and the founder of The Shyama Foundation, which engages with art and ecology practices in India. He has both written and edited books and journals, including The Crisis of Climate Change (Routledge, 2021), and Marg Journal of the Arts – Art and Ecology (Mumbai, April 2020)
Adania Shibli (Palestine, 1974) has written novels, plays, short stories and narrative essays. Her novel Tafsil Thanawi (Minor Detail) was published by Al-Adab in 2017. Its English translation, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions (US), was subsequently nominated for the National Book Award 2020 and the International Booker Prize 2021. She is currently the writer-in-residence at the Literaturhaus Zürich and Stiftung PWG. Alongside her fiction writing, Shibli is engaged in academic research, teaching and lecturing. She received a PhD in 2009 from the University of East London in the field of Cultural Studies. She has collaborated as a curator of artistic projects with institutions such as the A. M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Germany.
Bergen School of Architecture (BAS) began in 1968 as a nomadic teaching model providing informal seminars, lectures, outdoor workshops and studio courses. This was formalised in 1986, with BAS gaining full rights to award Master’s degrees in 1990. 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. Over the years, BAS has created an important relationship with the North Western Coastal landscape and its building traditions. Situated in a former grain silo, the building is a testament to the school’s experimental approach to architecture and learning. Alongside hosting faculty and students, the silo also acts as a cultural arena for larger audiences, programming public events and exhibitions
Conveners:
Ravi Agarwal
Adania Shibli
Bergen School of Architecture
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