Sounds are energies and social impulses that defy capture, control, categorization, and inscription. Post-colonial theorists and Decolonial critics of archiving consider large institutional archives and museums in the West as potential sites of conflict for the centralization of the capture and storage of ephemeral experiences. They are recorded, technologically mediated, and objectified with an extractive relation to colonized lands and people as resources. These archives produce stagnant, often inaccessible, repositories of cultural capital through forced collection, quantification, and legislation that reduce experiences to scientific categories. The seminar “Archival Intelligence: Epistemic Shifts from Sound to Listening” departs from this critical position to offer diverse perspectives on the roles of archives, museums, and other institutional spaces of power today with control over narratives of culture and history. Broader questions are posed about the recordability of ephemeral experiences, such as sound as an object, proposing a multiplicity of listening positionalities and suggesting an epistemic shift from sound to listening and from production to reception. The seminar questions the roles of technologies like AI today in shaping cultures, neo-colonial power, and the affordances of corporate AI that extracts data from archives and museums for profit. As former FIAT/IFTA President Brecht Declercq has confirmed, some contemporary AI systems have been trained (“We are neck-deep in digital oil”)— sometimes via large‑scale web scraping — on data that includes materials originating from European institutional archives. This raises important questions about governance, consent, and the public‑interest role of archives.” The seminar emerges from the artistic research assembly Archival Intelligence as a discursive gathering that intervenes in archives of recorded sounds through situated listening acts of transgression, advocating the liberation of incarcerated sounds through participatory storytelling aided by poetic and artistic interventions enabled by media technologies such as AI. The assembly will manifest as an exhibition at Lydgalleriet, Bergen, opening on 22 May and running until 19 June 2026, a seminar at Bergen Assembly on 23 – 24 May 2026, and live acts at Bergen Senter for Elektronisk Kunst on 23 May 2026.
Full programme:
Friday 22/5
Exhibition opening: Archival Intelligence, Lydgalleriet (Strandgaten 195, 5004 Bergen), 17:00
Informal gathering: MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity WP2: Artistic Processes, 19:00-20:00
Saturday 23/5
Seminar: Bergen Assembly
11:00-11:30 - Silent Keynote (Budhaditya)
Session 1:
11:30-12:00 pm: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
12:00-12:30 pm: Moushumi Bhowmik
Lunch: 12:30-13:15
Session 2:
13:15-13:45 pm: Christopher Li
13:45-14:15 pm: Kerstin Klenke
14:15-14:45 pm: Esther Magniere
Break: 14:45-15:00
Session 3:
15:00-15:30 pm: Brecht Declercq
15:30-16:00 pm: Megan Jeanne Gette
16:00-16:30 pm: Elen Flügge
Soundwalk to BEK: 16:30 - 17:00
Dinner & Sound-checks: 17:00-19:30
Doors open: 19:30 pm
Live performances at BEK: 20:00-midnight pm
Performance order
- 20:00-20:30 - Feronia Wennborg
- 20:40-21:10 - Andreas Kühne and Polina Medvedeva
- 21:20-21:50 - Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and Bidisha Das
- 22:00-22:30 - Impossible Territories (Iuliia Sharifullina and Stas Shärifullá)
- 22:40-23:10 - Yann Patrick Martin
- 23:20-23:50 - Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Daiyen Jone, and Knut Jonas Sellevold
Sunday 24/5
Seminar: Bergen Assembly
10:00-11:00 - Sounding-Listening-Reading (Brandon + Budhaditya)
Session 1:
11:00-11:30 pm: Brandon LaBelle
11:30-12:00 pm: Katía Truijen
Lunch and gathering: 12:00-13:15
Session 2:
13:15-13:45 pm: Luz Maria Sanchez
13:45-14:15 pm: Olivier Serge Gabriel Lartillo
14:15-14:45 pm: Arild Fetveit
Break: 14:45-15:00
Session 3:
15:00-15:30 pm: Syma Tariq
15:30-16:00 pm: Feronia Wennborg
16:00-16:30 pm: Andreas Kühne and Polina Medvedeva
Break: 16:30-16:45 pm
Session 4:
16:45:-17:15 pm: Yann Patrick Martin
17:15-17:45 pm: Katarina Dorothea Isaksen
17:45-18:15 pm: Stas Shärifullá
End conversation / round table: 18:15 - 18:45
Monday 25/5
Workshop: MishMash Centre for AI & Creativity WP2 - KMD Seminar Room (Møllendalsveien 61, 5009 Bergen), 4th floor, 10:00 am - 15:00 pm (semi-public)