Against the General Good/Contra el Bien General: A Lecture with Artistic Duo Bergman & Salinas

Join Artspace New Haven and artistic duo Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas for a lecture within their series “The Commons: towards reclaiming collective power.” Artist duo Bergman and Salinas will discuss capitalism, using their work and research as case-studies on the assumptions of values such as privatization, and competition. 

The artist lecture “Against the General Good/Contra el Bien General” is part of the series “The Commons: Towards Reclaiming Collective Power,” conceptualized by Bergman & Salinas as attendant works within their exhibition Against the General Good/ Contra el Bien General, on view September 17–December 3, 2022. For in-person programs, Artspace encourages mask-wearing and social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within our community. Please register for this program here.

Aeron Bergman (b. Detroit, USA) and Alejandra Salinas (b. La Rioja, Spain) are an artist duo. The pair founded the artist-run space Institute for New Connotative Action: INCA and the independent art publisher INCA Press. They have lived in New York, Toronto, London, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Oslo, Seattle, Portland, and are currently living in Detroit. Bergman and Salinas have shown work internationally at institutions such as the 4th Athens Biennale; 1st Bergen Assembly Triennial; 2007 Turku Biennial; 1st Struer Tracks Sound Art Biennial; Steirischer Herbst 2013, Graz; Fundação de Serralves, Porto; Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK; Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; Kunsthall Aarhus, Denmark; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; ICC Tokyo; IASPIS, Stockholm; Lincoln Center and DAC in New York City; e-flux and Berlin Film Festival in Berlin; Center for Contemporary Art Glasgow; Edinburgh Film Festival and Dundee Contemporary Art in Scotland; MOCA Novi Sad; Taipei Fine Art Museum; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Centre George Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen; Henie Onstad Art Center and Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, MUDAM Luxembourg; Ruler and HIAP in Helsinki; The Luminary, St. Louis, The Ski Club, Milwaukee; and Poor Farm, Wisconsin; FUEGO, Mexico City among many others. Their sound art has been broadcast on radio such as the BBC and Resonance FM, in London; WDR Cologne; R2 Madrid; SV2 Stockholm; Radio France; CBC Canada; WFMU New York; and Taipei Philharmonic Radio. The pair won an award of distinction in digital music at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. Their work has been written about in BOMB Magazine, Temporary Art Review, Afterall, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Times among many others.

Bergman and Salinas were Senior Artists-in-Residence at the University of Washington 2013–2017, professors and chair at the Pacific Northwest College of Art 2013–2022. Bergman was professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts 2007–2013.