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 convenor 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.  

Bergen Assembly originated from the Bergen Biennial Conference in 2009, in response to a proposal by the municipality of Bergen to establish an international biennial for contemporary art in the city. The conference, which discussed the question “To biennial or not to biennial?” with international curators, artists, and academics, was followed by The Biennial Reader (Hatje Cantz/Bergen Kunsthall, 2010)—to date the most comprehensive publication on the global history and practice of biennials or regularly occurring exhibitions and art events.



The first edition of Bergen Assembly, convened by Ekaterina Degot and David Riff in 2013, was titled Monday Begins on Saturday and organized as a narrative unfolding across a series of exhibition spaces. The second edition, in 2016, was led by artist and composer Tarek Atoui, the freethought collective and the collaborative platform PRAXES, who each produced a distinct project. The third edition,
 Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead, convened in 2019 by Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ, explored new notions of political assembly in collaboration with a core group of ten artists, curators, writers and activists. The fourth edition, Yasmine and the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron, of Bergen Assembly took place in 2022, and was convened by the artist Saâdane Afif.