The Only Lasting Truth is Change is an extended symposium investigating future configurations of art, technology, nature and power. Collecting all the symposium threads and projects on 19–20 November, BEK invites you to an intensive two-day programme of discussions and performances, radio broadcasts and screenings, recipes and diagrams.

With contributions by Anna L. Tsing, Lucia Pietroiusti, Stephanie Dinkins, Mark Fell & Robin Mackay, Jackie Karuti, Signe Lidén, Geir Tore Holm, Hanan Benammar, Sara Eliassen, Lars Holdhus, Tenthaus, Rian Treanor, Samuel Brzeski, Jenny Berger Myhre and Inish. See links in the programme below for details!

18:00 Doors open
18:15 Introduction/welcome
18:30 Lucia Pietroiusti: More-than-Human (online talk)
19:15 Lars Holdhus: Awne (live talk)
20:15 Break
20:30 Anna L. Tsing: The feral world – with and without us (online talk)
21:30 Geir Tore Holm: The Time Will Show (video screening)

Part 2

Saturday 20 November 09:00 CET – Radio Multe 93.8 FM / 1314 kHz AM, Nygårdsgaten 52

Free entrance, no registration is required

Streamed at http://stream.bergenkringkaster.no:8001/radio-multe

09:00-11:00 Hanan Benammar (live radio broadcast and breakfast)

Part 3

Saturday 20 November 12:00 CET – Kulturhuset, Vaskerelven 8

Free entrance, registration at TicketCo

12:00 Doors open
12:30 Introduction
12:45 Jackie Karuti: How Clouds are Formed (live talk)
13:45 Signe Lidén: Field Mode II: Circumference (live talk/ listening session)
14:45 Break
15:15 Sara Eliassen: Mediating Uncertainties (lecture performance)
16:00 Stephanie Dinkins: On Love, Data and Technologies Rooted in Care (online talk)
17:00 Mark Fell & Robin Mackay: Rewilding Practice (live conversation)

Part 4

Saturday 20 November 18:00 CET – Seminarium Fredericianum, Asylplass 2

Limited capacity, registration at TicketCo

18:00 Doors open
18:30–21:00 Tenthaus: Playful Meal (discursive dinner)

Part 5

Saturday 20 November 21:00 CET – Østre, Østre Skostredet 3

Free entrance with registration at TicketCo. Tickets at the door: 100,-

21:00 Doors open
21:30 Samuel Brzeski: “Yep, that´s the mood.” (performance)
22:00 Jenny Berger Myhre (performance)
23:00 Rian Treanor: Inter-symmetric Workshop BEK (concert)
24:00 Inish (hybrid DJ set)

The Only Lasting Truth is Change

Borrowing its title from the seminal science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, The Only Lasting Truth is Change employs the lenses of Digitalisation, Time, and Justice to examine the potentiality of art practice in an ever-changing world. Together with artists and scholars, the symposium asks what an artwork can be and what an artwork can do in a world that cannot and should not return to ‘normal’ post-pandemic; that is plagued by the climate crisis and social injustice; and is wrestling with the yet-unknown challenges of rapid technological development. How can digitalisation avoid a growing distance towards physical encounters and embodied experience? Can new data technologies be more equitable and culturally attuned? How can art practice change its perspectives of time, sharing, and co-inhabiting? What new communities, infrastructures and economic mechanisms can be envisioned from a position of solidarity and care? From natural farming and agroforestry to radical potentials of the crypto economy, from non-linear self-organising scores to uncontrollable effects of feral ecologies, and from speculative weather instruments to the insuperable void between theory and practice – join us to take part in the inquiry, multiply the questions and map new paradoxes.

Durational projects throughout the symposium

Exploring different ways of contribution and knowledge sharing and searching for new models for production and presentation of art, the symposium includes a series of projects evolving throughout September–November 2021:

Awne — a workshop with Lars Holdhus
Field Mode II: Circumference — an instrument by Signe Lidén
Rewilding Practice — a workshop with Mark Fell and Robin Mackay
How Clouds are Formed — a site-specific installation by Jackie Karuti
Inter-symmetric Workshop BEK — a workshop with Rian Treanor

Curators: Maria Rusinovskaya, Espen Sommer Eide, Åse Løvgren.
Communication and production: Åsne Hagen, Kaeto Sweeney.
Graphic design: Vera Gomes.

The Only Lasting Truth is Change is organised by BEK in collaboration with Ekko, Østre, Aerial, Radio Multe 93.8 FM, and KORO’s project STUDIO. Supported by Norsk kulturråd, Fritt Ord, Bergen kommune, and KORO.

Programme image credits: Part 1 – Lars Holdhus. Part 2 – Hanan Benammar. Part 3 – Stephanie Dinkins. Part 4 – Tenthaus. Part 5 – Jenny Berger Myhre, photo by Thor Brødreskift.