PIKSEL

SEMINAR.EXHIBITION.HAPPENING.

Perma/Soils invites you to discover how communities from Asia, Latin America, and the North (un)save their soils — through a vibrant program including a seminar, an exhibition, and a happening at the Piksel Festival.

What can the taste of an oyster possibly tell us about the health of a forest? Why on earth do we call it “data mining” — and what is it really mining at all? So, how are other cultures actually healing their soils — and what can we learn from them?

Developed in collaboration with the University of Oslo and based on the Anthropogenic Soils research project, this seminar brings together artists, architects, and researchers to explore how soils—living, stratified, and deeply interconnected—link ecology, technology, and culture.

Soils are archives of care and pollution, witnesses to both human damage and resilience. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, our speakers reveal how the infrastructures that underpin our digital lives are built on the same extractive logics that deplete our land.

Seminar

From agricultural runoff and algae blooms (Ewen Chardronnet) to migration and belonging in Punjab’s soils (Dr. Davina Kaur Patel); from fermentation as ecological healing (Maya Minder) to the architectures of data extraction and storage (Marina Otero Verzier), Perma/Soils maps the porous boundaries between soil and system, nature and network.

The seminar also pays tribute to Shigeatsu Hatakeyama (1943–2024) — oyster farmer, environmentalist, and author of “The Forest in Love with the Sea.” His life’s work reminds us that the vitality of marine life begins inland, in the forests and rivers that feed the sea.

Happening

A seaweed and oyster tasting happening at the festival’s opening day will kick off this reflection through flavor, celebrating the symbiosis between ecosystems, species, and human sensibilities.

Exhibition

At Studio 207, the Perma/Soils exhibition brings together works that explore the entanglements of soil, ecosystems, and technology: Cecilia Jonsson investigates the historic Litlabø pyrite mines and their severe water contamination; sorlar4Rain (NSA Collective, Maite Cajaraville & Gisle Froysland) connects two distant ecological systems in a solar-powered sci-fi narrative of renewable energy exchange; Marina Otero Verzier presents her installation Compost Computacional, recently awarded a Special Mention at the S+T+ARTS Prize 2025, critically examining the environmental cost of digital infrastructures; and the Norwegian premiere of Umi No Oya (ウミノヲヤ) – The Mother of the Sea by Maya Minder & Ewen Chardronnet traces the legacy of British phycologist Kathleen Drew-Baker and her discovery of red algae life cycles, which transformed nori cultivation in postwar Japan.

Perma/Soils places living soil at the heart of our ecological and digital imagination, asking us how we can restore balance, from the soil to the sea, from matter to data. Join us in Bergen. Let’s get to work! Let’s reflect on our roots.

25.piksel.no | November 20–23 | PIKSEL 25 – Perma/Soils

Presentation
Authors of the Future (BE). Re-imagining Copyleft. Constant(BE).

Piksel Fest Spill 2020
6th of June – 18:00

Venues:
Studio 207, Strandgaten 207, BERGEN
Piksel Cyber Salon
Piksel Youtube channel

An online presentation of Authors of the Future, with a focus on the Cinemas Sauvage license. This license shows the pitfalls and fun (im)possibility of coming to an agreement with a bunch of anarchist people who do not want to agree on a rule.
Conventional intellectual property law binds authors and their hybrid contemporary practices in a framework of assumed ownership and individualism. It conceives creations as original works, making collective, networked practices difficult to fit. Within that legal and ideological framework, Copyleft, Open Content Licenses or Free Culture Licensing introduced a different view of authorship, opening up the possibility for a re-imagining of authorship as a collective, feminist, webbed practice. But over time, some of the initial spark and potentiality of Free Culture licensing has been normalized and its problems and omissions have become increasingly apparent. ‘Authors of the future’ is an ongoing research trajectory in which we start re-imagining copyleft together.

Can we invent licences that are based on collective creative practices, in which cooperation between machine and biological authors, need not be an exception? How could attribution be a form of situated genealogy, rather than accounting for heritage through listing names of contributing individuals? In what way can we limit predatory practices without blocking the generative potential of Free Culture? What would a decolonial and feminist license look like, and in what way could we propose entangled notions of authorship? Or perhaps we should think of very different strategies?

Constant is a non-profit, artist-run organisation based in Brussels since 1997 and active in the fields of art, media and technology.

Constant develops, investigates and experiments. Constant departs from feminisms, copyleft, Free/Libre + Open Source Software. Constant loves collective digital artistic practices. Constant organises transdisciplinary worksessions. Constant creates installations, publications and exchanges. Constant collaborates with artists, activists, programmers, academics, designers. Constant is active archives, poetic algorithms, body and software, books with an attitude, cqrrelations, counter cartographies, situated publishing, e-traces, extitutional networks, interstitial work, libre graphics, performative protocols, relearning, discursive infrastructures, hackable devices.
Constant – http://constantvzw.org/

The venues
– Piksel Cyber Salon. Piksel invites you to have a cyber experience and to join us at our hybrid activities. Piksel Cyber Salon will host part of the Copy Paste exhibition, workshops, performances and lectures. Join us!

– Piksel youtube@Piksel Produksjoner

– Studio 207, Strandgaten 207, BERGEN The new Piksel/Borealis space in town for electronic art, experimental music and adventurous listening.

Piksel Fest Spill is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway and ProHelvetia.

22nd May – 21th June | @Studio207 | @Piksel Cyber Salon
Opening hours (Monday closed): 14:00 – 18:00 | Weekends: 13:00 – 18:00
PROGRAM | Copy/Paste Exhibition | Hackteria / Bad Lab / Kiyoshi Yamamoto

The exhibition COPY/PASTE features the work of nine artists and art collectives who all incorporate copying as a core aspect of their work. Taking the form of a physical exhibition at Piksel Studio 207, an online exhibition at Piksel Cyber Salon, two hybrid workshops and a lecture, the exhibition aims to show that copying is natural, an exhibition to re-think the way we create/share/copy and paste.

Along with the exhibition, Piksel is also presenting a DIY bio art program, the “DIY or die – Plant Printing Workshop” on the topic of coloring fabrics with wild herbs and the toxic impact of the textile industry. The “Worship – Dinner Performance” joins performers from Zurich, Kazakhstan and Bergen. It is based on an exchange of food, gesture, rhythm and sensuality threw to an online meeting tool like zoom, jitsi, skype, etc. It is a tangible stretch towards how sensuality is perceived in the digital realm threw media. Due to the travel restrictions brought by COVID-19, these two events will take part at Piksel Spill Fest remotely, from the virtual space, , with base in Gessnerallee Zurich.

Piksel Fest Spill is also premiering the Piksel Cyber Salon, a 3D virtual space where the audience can enjoy a Cyber experience through the virtual activities. Piksel Cyber Salon intends to bring a new realms to the boring but necessary digital tele-presence. Designed by the Mexican artist Malitzin Cortés, Piksel Cyber Salon will be the Piksel Fest Spill neuralgic hub.

Live coding is a performance practice that revolves around the creation and modification of code and algorithms in real-time. This kind of events are also named ALGORAVE, joining the words algorithm and rave. The 29th of May we welcome the artists Antonio Roberts and Alex McLean and their live audiovisual performance, taking place in parallel at the Studio 207 and the Cyber Salon.

COPY/PASTE featured artists: Carol Breen (IR), Constant (BE), LoVid (US), Lorna Mills (CA), Matthew Plummer-Fernandez + Julien Deswaef, Duncan Poulton (UK), Eric Schrijver (NL), Peter Sunde (FI)

Hackteria / BadLAB members: Maya Minder, Anne-Laure Franchette and Corinnna Mattner, Zurich. QWAS artists: Dana Iskakova and Takhir Yakyharov, Kazakhstan and with the collaboration of Kiyoshi Yamamoto, Bergen.

PRESS info: maite@piksel.no gif@piksel.no
PRESS Note + images:

(Text in Norwegian below)

Why Europe should build its own social platform for news;if news is dying, who will safeguard democracy?; how did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social. These has been some of the articles that Hossein Derakhshan has been writing at The Guardian and other international media.

Hossein Derakhshan is an Iranian-Canadian writer, who has been defining, commissioned by the Council of Europe, on the theory and practice of what is known as ‘fake news’ together with Claire Wardle. In 2010, Iran’s Mashregh News reported that the ‘counterrevolutionary blogger” had been sentenced to more than 19 years in jail for “conspiring with hostile governments, spreading propaganda against the Islamic system, spreading propaganda in favor of counterrevolutionary groups, blasphemy, and creating and managing obscene websites.¹

After six years in prison he was pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. No reason was given for the pardon.

As Wired magazine reported, Mr. Derakhshan “figured out a way to combine Unicode and Blogger.com’s free tools to handle Persian characters.” This technical advance, Wired said, meant that “suddenly, blogging in Persian was as simple as it is in English.”

Considered a major influence in introducing the blogging concept to Iran, he was a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and is currently a research associate at the MIT Media Lab. His current research is focused on the future of journalism and also on the theory and socio-political implications of digital and social media. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Wired, Libération, Die Zeit, and Corriere Della Sera.

In Bergen, under the Piksel19 festival program, he will be giving a lecture about how the challenge awaiting journalism in the years to come is to reinvent itself around something other than news, whilst resisting the seduction of propaganda and entertainment. He thinks that post-news journalism will revolve around drama. This means journalists should make various experiments inspired by older artistic forms such as literature, theatre, cinema, photography and even music and dance. Innovation in journalism should not only be about business models or technology, it should be also about radically new cultural forms and representation formats.

Hossein Derakhshan will be in Bergen invited by the Piksel Festival, giving a lecture on Friday 22nd of November at the Bergen Public Library. He will be available for interviews. Please contact Maite Cajaraville (maite(at)piksel.no) or Gisle Frøysland (gif(at)piksel.no) . For mer informasjon: http://19.piksel.no

1. (excerpts from The New York Times)

Pressemelding

Hossein Derakhshan

Journalisme I tiden etter nyhetenes fall: Kunst møter journalisme

Why Europe should build its own social platform for news; if news is dying, who will safeguard democracy?; how did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social. Dette er eksempler på noen av artiklene Hossein Derakhshan har ført I pennen for The Guardian og andre internasjonale nyhetsbyråer.

Hossein Derakhshan er en iransk-kanadisk skribent som på kommisjon fra Europarådet, sammen med Claire Wardle, har hatt en definerende rolle når det kommer til å utforme teorien og praksisen bak hva vi snakker om når vi I dag betegner noe som “fake news”. I 2010 rapporterte en av Iran sine nyhetskanaler, Masregh News, at den motrevolusjonære bloggeren har vært idømt mer enn 19 år I fengsel for å ha konspirert med fiendtlige regjeringer, spredt antiislamistisk propagada, spredt propaganda til fordel for motrevolusjonære grupper og blasfemi. I tillegg til å både opprette og drive hjemmesider med svært upassende innhold.

Etter å ha tilbragt seks av årene I fengsel, ble Derakhshan benådet av Iran’s øverste leder, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Noen årsak til dette ble aldri gitt.

Det gikk ikke ubemerket hen da Derakshan oppdaget hvordan han kunne kombinere Unicode med de gratis verktøyene som allerede var tilgjengelig gjennom Blogger.com slik at persiske tegn og bokstaver kunne taes I bruk. Magasinet Wired omtalte det hele som et teknisk fremskritt som plutselig gjorde det akkurat like enkelt å blogge på persisk som på engelsk.

Betraktet som en helt vesentlig figur når det gjelder å ha bragt konseptet blogging til Iran, tidligere forskningspartner ved Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center og for øyeblikket forskningskollega ved MIT Media Lab. I sin nyere forskning har Derakshan imidlertid valgt å fordype seg I undersøkelser omkring journalismens fremtid og de mulige sosialpolitiske konsekvensene av vår tids utstrakte bruk av digitale og sosiale medier.

Tekstene hans har stått på trykk I både The New York Times, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Wired, Libération, Die Zeit, og Corriere Della Sera.

I løpet av Piksel19 festivalen I Bergen kommer han til å holde en forelsening omhandlende hvordan journalismens virkelige utfordring på vei inn I fremtiden er å gjenskape seg selv, bygge seg opp på nytt etter nyhetenes tid er over og samtidig unngå å la seg forføre av propaganda og underholdning. Selv er han overbevist om at journalisme I tiden etter nyhetenes fall vil dreie seg om drama. Med dette mener han at journalister burde eksperimentere med eldre kunstformer som litteratur, teater, film, fotografi. Ja til og med musikk og dans. Innovasjon innenfor journalismen burde ikke utelukkende handle om forretningsmodeller eller teknologi, men også radikalt nye former for kultur og presentasjon.

PIKSEL19 – e/co,li:bre 21. – 23. november
Med et mål om å ta tilbake kunstnerisk kontroll over teknologien, lar Piksel deg utforske elektronisk kunst og fri teknologi. Du kan få oppleve live koding, eksperimentere med lyd og interaktiv kunst.

Hossein Derakhshan er invitert til Bergen av Pikselfestivalen, og holder en forelesning fredag 22. november på Bergen Hovedbibliotek. Han vil være tilgjengelig for intervjuer. Ta kontakt med Maite Cajaraville (maite(at)piksel.no) eller Gisle Frøysland (gif(at)piksel.no) .
For mer informasjon: http://19.piksel.no

Piksel19 is supported by the Municipality of Bergen, Arts Council Norway, Hordaland County, Community of Madrid, Austrian Embassy, Acción Cultural Española, Inaem, Pro Helvetia. and BEK.