Against the background of the Bergen City Council’s plans to establish a biennial for contemporary art in Bergen – Norway, the Bergen Kunsthall is organizing an international symposium to study and discuss the status of the biennial as an exhibition model, and also to launch a debate on the plans for a biennial in Bergen. The Bergen Kunsthall has invited
Elena Filipovic and Marieke van Hal to co-curate this conference together with Solveig Ovstebo, Director of the Bergen Kunsthall.
The aims of the Bergen Biennial Conference are to identify and explore existing ‘biennial knowledge’ from different regions of the world, and to incite new critical thinking and writing on recurrent large-scale art exhibitions, their history, socio-political and economical contexts, as well as their impact on artistic and curatorial practices.

The Bergen Biennial Conference, a combination of symposium and think tank – made up of lectures as well as seminar style workshops with young and established professionals in the field, has taken research as its starting point and will be completed with a two volume reader. The 1st volume will be based on an open call for seminal existing texts on biennials from around the world, and a 2nd volume will be compiled of newly commissioned texts and a report on the event.

On the occasion of the Bergen Biennial Conference, the archive on international biennials that was conceived as part of the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial and constituting the most comprehensive documentation source on biennials anywhere, will be present and available for consultation in the Bergen Kunsthall. The Bergen Biennial Conference takes place from
17-20 September 2009.