Hallucinating, Computing, Collapsing
November 16–19, 2023
The Only Lasting Truth is Change is a symposium investigating how artistic practice and its methodologies are constantly changing in response to the shifting political, technological and ecological landscapes we live in. For the 2023 edition, the symposium engages notions of “Hallucinating, Computing, Collapsing” to examine how different perceptions of reality arise and collide in our steadily more automated world.
The symposium will take place in Bergen, Norway, and online through November 16–19, 2023.
With contributions from: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, N. Katherine Hayles, Jennifer Gabrys, Haig Aivazian, Jenna Sutela, Damien Roach, patten, Ibiye Camp, Michele Elam, Tung-Hui Hu, Suzanne Kite, Bahar Noorizadeh, Klara Kofen, Magnhild Øen Nordahl, Gabriele de Seta, Nora Al-Badri, Lesia Vasylchenko, and Critical Craft Collective.
We take as our starting point the multiple readings of “hallucination”—from the perception of something that is not really there, to a terminology of glitches within large language models, and to a description of a clash between different epistemologies. We will look for the various intersections between the artificial and the real—between large scale statistics and local knowledge. Can complex experiences and more-than-human entities fit into datasets? How do forests perform computational functions? How can data be decolonized, algorithms overthrown, and standardising forces pushed back? Scrutinizing algorithmic biases and extractivist nature behind AI, we want to learn—whether more-than-human, industrialised or automated—whose hallucination are we living within?
From the dark streets of Beirut, to digitally monitored oceans and farms; from the weaponisation of time to the healing potentials of lethargy; from the sentimental logic of capitalism to obscure nature of mathematics—join the symposium programme of talks, performances, exhibitions, readings and workshops in Bergen and the surrounding area.
The talk programme November 17–18 will be streamed online, with a link available at bek.no.
The symposium The Only Lasting Truth is Change borrows its title from the seminal science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s novel, Parable of the Sower (1993). It is organised by BEK with support from Arts Council Norway, Fritt Ord, City of Bergen, KORO and The Bergesen Foundation. It is part of New Perspectives for Action – a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.
