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A first gathering towards Bergen Assembly 2028
23.06.2026
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A Machine as Complex as the World Itself
11–12 September 2026In 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.
Lucia Pietroiusti stewards research and experimentation in art, ecology, and systems. She is Head of Research & Emergence at Hartwig Museum, Amsterdam, opening in 2028; and the curator of the 6th Autostrada Biennale (Prizren, Kosovo, 2027). She founded Serpentine’s General Ecology project (2018-2025); and curated Sun & Sea by Rugile Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė (58th Venice Biennale and tour, 2019-2025). Pietroiusti is Chair of the Board of Trustees at Forma, London.
Filipa Ramos, PhD, is a writer and curator whose long-term research investigates art's relationship to ecology. She is particularly interested in animals and time-based media. Ramos teaches at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel and is Curator of the 2027 edition of LIAF. Her most recent book, The Artist as Ecologist (2025), discusses the ways in which contemporary artists embrace environmentalism.