In his work, he addresses performative and embodied aspects of photographic materiality and time. He uses the body as a device to capture images; through the construction of an experience, often performative and over time.
Audience gets invited through different projects and hybrid formats into a journey of lecture performances, site specific interventions, installations and book projects. What he is most known for though, are his Walk Pieces in which participants are taken in silence through the physicality and infrastructures of built environment.
From 2012 onward, Bergé began working with the archive of photographs taken by August Klipstein and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who would later come to be known as Le Corbusier) during their ‘Voyage en Orient’ from 1911. Two installations and a book negotiating the production of documents from this historic trip slowly uncover an early twentieth-century desire for spatial understanding, rather than photographic representation.
David Bergé’s work has been presented at various international art centers including Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp (2018, 2015, 2016); SKD, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden (2018); Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art (2018); Out of Sight in Antwerp (2019); Z33 / Atelier Bouwmeester in Brussels (2017); CAC in Vilnius (2015); STUK arts center in Leuven (2017, 2013); SALT, Istanbul (2011); KCB Belgrade (2013), NETWERK Center for Contemporary Art, Aalst (2019, 2015, 2012, 2009); Maison Particulière, Brussels (2014); Gati New Delhi (2011); TanzQuartier Wien, Vienna (2010) and Kunsthaus Muerz, Muerzzuschlag (2012).
During the first lockdown, he founded kyklàda.press a publishing initiative in Athens and has also published books with MER. Paper Kunsthalle (2015), Jap Sam Books (2020) and others.
David Bergé has been invited to artist in residence programs around the world, such as Pivô (São Paulo), The Cape Cod Modern House Trust (Wellfleet, USA), Beta-Local (San Juan, Puerto Rico), geoAIR (Tbilisi), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, curator: Andre Lepecki) and the Saari Residence of the Kone Foundation in Finland.
Since 2009, Bergé has been teaching and mentoring at a number of different institutions, including Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore (IN); Beckett University in Leeds (UK), the Architectural Association in London (UK), Ghent University (BE); UdK, University of the Arts in Berlin; LUCA school of the Arts, Brussels, and many others.
Bergé has also produced set designs in the form of projections for artists Trajal Harrell and Marc Vanrunxt of which results were presented at Kaaitheater, Brussels (2009), MoMA, New York (2013) and The Barbican, London (2017).
David Bergé currently lives in Athens and Brussels and holds an MA from the Dutch Art Institute (2017) and an MFA from LUCA Brussels (2005).
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