Introduction

Special events:
September 8, from 8pm: Exotourisme by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Julien Perez.

Convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d’O, the 2022 Bergen Assembly is divided between seven 'characters,' represented by seven exhibitions taking place at various locations in Bergen. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is participating in 'The Tourist', located at Permanenten (KODE 1), Nordahl Bruns gate 9, 5014 Bergen. On view will be the film environment Exotourismeand a new work from the artist's series of chambres.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has often engaged with the idea of tourism as a way of conceptualizing and entering a new landscape or world. Exotourisme, 2002 (made with a soundscape by Christophe Van Huffel) is a film environment that reflects back to viewers their own image, their desires for transcendent encounters, and their desire to get lost in a new or alternate world. Projected within an enclosed room as part of the exhibition 'The Tourist', Gonzalez-Foerster’s Exotourisme provides a cosmic, even existential perspective on the experience and possibility of tourism.

At Permanenten, a new work in the series of chambres, Exochambre (2022), looks like a backstage space—could it possibly even be the backstage area for the band Exotourisme (a collaboration between Gonzalez-Foerster and Julien Perez), who are performing a concert during the opening of exhibition? Presented alongside Gonzalez-Foerster’s intergalactic odyssey film environment, the latest chambre is a liminal zone that exists somewhere between occupation and emptiness, real and virtual space.

Bergen Assembly is a perennial model for art production structured around public events that take place in the city of Bergen every three years. Each edition is guided by a convener who is free to invent new ways of conceiving the event, allowing each iteration of Bergen Assembly to take on a distinctly different shape and format.