November 9–13, 2022
The Only Lasting Truth is Change is an expanded symposium investigating current and future configurations of art, technology, nature and power and examining what an artwork can do and what an artwork can be in the ever-changing world. Taking place in Bergen, Norway, and online on November 9–13, 2022, it is organised by BEK—Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts.
With contributions from: Catherine Malabou, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Susan Schuppli, Ingrid Burrington and Ann Chen, Rehana Zaman, Seán Elder, Nat Raha, Daniella Valz Gen, Hanan Benammar, Martin Zeilinger, Matti Aikio, Toril Johannessen, Rian Treanor, Eduardo Williams, Helle Siljeholm, Ng Tsz-Kwan, Ioana Vreme Moser, Andrea Spreafico and others.
Borrowing its title from the seminal science-fiction writer Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the 2022 edition is built around three intertwining thematic threads: Anarchy, Traces, and Mountains. Exploring new readings and manifestations of anarchy, the symposium brings together artists, scholars and the public to discuss and learn from contemporary forms of decentralisation, autonomy, interdependence and solidarity. Collecting and exercising investigative ways of reading the world around us, the symposium examines how art can make visible and intelligible the imprints of the major developments of our time: the technological infrastructure, the fallout of war and of ecological devastation, and the collapse of large political systems. How do biases and power asymmetries imprint themselves into cutting-edge technology? Can art, by manipulating traces and shades, give us tools for reclaiming the social and political agency, as well as for dealing with trauma? Can current forms of anarchy and mutual aid offer new roads to social justice and bring about lasting changes?
From the receding glaciers of the Himalayas to data-chip manufacturing on Gourd Guardian Mountain in Taiwan, from sacralised street corners in Hong Kong to military zones in Northern Norway, from occupied territories in Western Sahara to social currencies of field farming in Scotland, and from procedural polyrhythmic pattern making in Kampala to somatic experiencing below the mountains of Bergen—join the symposium programme of talks, performances, screenings, exhibitions, concerts, reading rooms, workshops and hikes in Bergen and the surrounding area.
The Only Lasting Truth is Change is organised by BEK in cooperation with Northing, Hordaland kunstsenter, Ekko, Østre, Nuts And Bolts, and Entrée.
