Artist-educator Jordi Ferreiro (ES) investigates organisational structures in his work, using performative participation, play and experimental education movements.

In August 2018, he led a two-day workshop with members of Bergen Kunsthall’s young people’s association Unge kunstkjennere (UKK) exploring how Bergen Kunsthall could give space to different voices and actions of young people.

On Saturday 10 November 2018, Ferreiro and UKK led a one-day takeover of different spaces and modes of operation inside Bergen Kunsthall. For one day, together they lead a series of ‘architectural acupuncture’ interventions and actions questioning the norms of access in a public arts organisation and imagining different ways to open up and use the building. These modifications led to closing the main door of the Kunsthall and inviting visitors to use only the accessible ramp entrance on the side of the building, altering the galleries into research spaces, and constructing structures and ramps in order to rethink how, and for whom, the access routes throughout the building are constructed. They invited visitors to help them answer questions such as:

• Who is the Kunsthall designed and made for?
• How do the ’normal’ types of access to the Kunsthall make it welcoming or difficult to come in?
• How do you think an art institution should be designed?

Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) also supports this residency and commission at Bergen Kunsthall through the Programme for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture (PICE), in the framework of the Mobility grants.

Part of ‘Who’s doing the washing up?’ – a programme of live commissions in 2018 at Bergen Kunsthall exploring feminist organisational practices and modes of communication – and the structures that support these. The title of the series is used to address questions that often go unmentioned when thinking of possible futures: Who has a voice in these futures? Who’s doing the work to sustain them? What types of work are valued? And what happens when imagining new ways of organising begins with these questions?

Photo: Bergen Kunsthall