BERGEN.- Bergen Assembly moves towards its sixth edition with the appointment of Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos as Convenors for 2028.

Ramos and Pietroiusti have collaborated for several years. Together, they have made exhibitions; co-authored texts; organised concerts, performances and talks; and edited books and magazines. They share a dedication to art and ecology, science and spirit, and have complementary interests in animals and plants, mysticism and science. Pietroiusti and Ramos often engage with questions of consciousness, perception, and coexistence.

“Gardens and winds to tickle them. Feelings and stomachs to feel them. Stories and songs to remember them. Spirits and their animals. Whispers and other transmissions. Clouds and churches made of them. Human and Bird-made maps.”

Jointly, they will devote the Bergen Assembly’s shape-shifting form to thinking through the relationship between what is told and what is presented at the Assembly, and how these are enacted. In the interest of fine-tuning its mission, Ramos and Pietroiusti seek to experiment with different ways of convening people, objects, and ideas. They will bring together historical, biological, material, and philosophical subject-matters, be they planetary or situated, rigorous, speculative, or transgressive.

“Dances and other prayers. Cats and robots. Myths. Snakes. Rhythms or algorithms. Death, tenderness, friction and contemplation. Playing. Crying. The unbearable. Rituals and systems. Sleep.”

They aim to investigate the connection between arts, crafts, words, meanings, and worlds; how ancient mnemonic devices were at times regarded with suspicion, as forms of artifice or trickery; the ways fish draw with stones; the elusiveness of machine intelligence; and the question of consciousness across both living beings and robots. These are some of the topics that interest Pietroiusti and Ramos. From ancient and present understandings of technē to the functioning of ecosystems, from animal play to the prosthetic capacity of the imagination: Bergen Assembly 2028 will propose to demystify, re-calibrate, and re-orient how we think of the present while seeking agency within it.

“Repetition.

Release.

Repair.

The smell of grass.

The feeling of home.

Love. Loss.

ECSTASY.”

Ramos and Pietroiusti’s long-term project, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, developed since 2018, offers a clear expression of their shared approach. Bringing together artists, scientists, and other thinkers and storytellers, it unfolds across exhibitions, seminars, and publications as an open-ended inquiry into consciousness and more-than-human intelligence. In 2025, a publication under the same title emerged from the project, co-edited by the duo. Alongside this, they have curated projects collaboratively including Persones Persons (8th Biennale Gherdëina, 2022), Songs for the Changing Seasons (first Klima Biennale Wien, 2025), and, alongside Marina Otero Verzier and Mi You and under the artistic direction of Andrés Jaque, Bodies of Water (13th Shanghai Biennale, 2020–21).

For Bergen Assembly 2028, Pietroiusti and Ramos will work in close dialogue with the city of Bergen, shaping the edition over time through research, collaborations, and public programmes. Their approach is grounded in building connections between disciplines and practices, and in opening spaces where different forms of knowledge and experience can meet. The research they are conducting towards the 2028 edition will take place, in part, in public. On 12 September 2026, the Convenors will host a Prelude: a gathering in Bergen on matters of technology and ecstasy.

Bergen Assembly works through long-term artistic processes and collaborations to realise an in-depth project in the city every three years. It aims to strengthen the role of art in society and to give space to practices that challenge and examine our present, including practices that may be complex, vulnerable, or under pressure. Each edition is shaped by invited Convenors, who establish the conditions for collective work, artistic agency, and shared responsibility, allowing every iteration to take on its own distinct form.Through collaboration with artists, communities, and civil society, Bergen Assembly contributes to a public sphere for art and knowledge where new perspectives, connections, and communities can emerge—locally rooted in Bergen, in dialogue with the world.

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 sixth 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.