A first gathering towards Bergen Assembly 2028

Date: 11-12.09.2026
Time: TBA
Place: Korskirken, Nedre Korskirkeallmenningen 20
Host: Bergen Assembly


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A Machine as Complex as the World Itself

11–12 September 2026

In September 2026, Bergen Assembly will take the first steps towards its 2028 edition, convened by Filipa Ramos and Lucia Pietroiusti. Conceived as two days of collective orientation, A Machine as Complex as the World Itself gathers artists, musicians, scientists, storytellers and other thinkers to open lines of inquiry and concerns that will guide the development of Bergen Assembly 2028.

At the heart of A Machine as Complex as the World Itself is the wish to rethink technology beyond the horizon of computation. Rather than conceiving of technology as a synonym for the digital, the project returns to the term’s broader meanings as tool, technique, faculty and capacity for transformation. It asks how humans, animals, plants, spirits and machines make and adapt worlds, share emotions, transmit knowledge, foresee change and alter states of being. An exhibition, a symposium, a performance, a ritual, a song, a map, and an assembly itself: all can be understood as technologies – ways of convening people, things and ideas, and of making relations perceptible.

Bergen offers a precise and resonant ground for this inquiry. Its histories of navigation, cartography, maritime exchange, geological and zoological collections, and geographic education connect to questions of seeing, mapping and spatial imagination. The city holds a central place in the history of meteorology, through the Bergen School of Meteorology and its legacy in climate science, and opens onto the many ways societies attempt to negotiate uncertainty: through forecasting, divination, modelling, weather lore, astronomy and creating experiences of transcendence. One of the lines of inquiry explores Bergen’s cultural and geographic relations to oral memory, song, storytelling and Northern cosmologies, and how these can allow memory to be approached as a technique that is stored, performed, repeated, and reactivated.

Across these exchanges moves a transversal force: ecstasy, which is embraced as a state that interrupts the day-to-day operations of the self, exceeds usefulness, alters productivity and allows feeling and intelligence to meet in unexpected ways. Ecstasy appears without announcing itself: through music, ritual, hypnosis, movement, theory and moments of shared observation. It is a way of asking what knowledge becomes when it is not only produced but felt, sung, moved, weathered and transformed.

The event will take place at Korskirken in Bergen and is free of charge. Keep an eye on our communication channels for more information on the full programme and how to reserve a spot.

Read more about the 2028 edition here.