WHERE DO WE MEET? is the theme for this year’s exhibition, and gathers students of visual communication, interior architecture and furniture design from the Master Programme of design at University of Bergen’s Faculty of Art, Music and Design (KMD).

Human interactions are always influenced and shaped by the medium through which that contact takes place. In our daily lives, our work, our play, our relationships, this medium is words, like these you are reading now. We meet through our language, what we say, what we write, what we read. Our bodies express our internal conditions and psychologies. The places in which we meet are stages upon which our dramas unfold, our interactions sheltered by walls and windows, supported by the things we use together, and by the objects that surround, hold, and carry us.

All of us have spent that last two years with these daily interactions reshaped, reframed, and restricted. Always a companion to modern daily interactions, the screens took over, isolating us, coming to dominate our ability to see the world, and more importantly, to see and connect with each other. Our meeting places became about 400mm wide, crowded with faces arranged in grids. Our meetings became exercises in squinting, asking for clarifications, repeating ourselves, and waiting for solid connections.

There’s no small amount of joy in these candidates in reuniting in a place, together, to express themselves, and re-find those connections. For each of these candidates, their projects are the media through which they have chosen to communicate with you. They reach out to you through their works, explaining their ideas, expressing their beliefs, extending their empathy to you, who is experiencing their works in this way, in this place, at this time. Here, they are saying, here, to you, is my greeting. Here’s where we can meet. 

Johann Sagan, Ph.D.
MA Coordinator
Department of Design