STAVANGER
SECESSION
2026
TO LIVE
AND THINK
LIKE PIGS
SECESSION
2026
TO LIVE
AND THINK
LIKE PIGS
OPENING WEEKEND
10-11.04.26
EXHIBITION UNTIL
25.04.26
10-11.04.26
EXHIBITION UNTIL
25.04.26
Stavanger Secession 2026 – To Live and Think Like Pigs takes the pig as its point of departure: the animal endowed with a refined sense of smell, but also the insult; the vilified mammal; the cyborg body genetically modified by globalized agro-industry; and the cartoon figure with synthetic pink skin. The pig is a world-being, carrying a truth not only about the obscuring power of modernity and its violence, but also about humanity’s capacity to inscribe its most unbearable traits onto the bodies of others: greed, gluttony, impurity, excess, and filth. This edition is inspired by mathematician and philosopher Gilles Châtelet’s eponymous book, in which he describes the cognitive livestock that the average Western citizen has become at the dawn of market democracies—satiated by comfort, abundance, and cathodic 24/7 entertainment. To live and think like pigs is to exist at the intersection of industrial automation, the mass management of bodies, anthropocentrism, and the process through which the other is rendered abject.
Photo Milly Cope and Plaster magazine
Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein 2024 Photo Sandra Meier
Photo Zarina Kodzaeva
Photo Ziga Koritnik
Photo Paloma Lum
Photo Tore Sætre
Photo Petri Summanen
Photo Festival Cinéma du Réel
Photo Eline Mugaas
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General View of the Union Stock Yards, 1901. Sanborn Perris Map Co. Ltd., New York
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Porcile, 1969. Courtesy Movie-Time and MoMA
Deborah Stratman, In Order Not to Be Here, 2002. Courtesy the artist
General View of the Union Stock Yards, 1901. Sanborn Perris Map Co. Ltd., New York
Program Schedule
Fri, 10.04
Sat, 11.04
Fri, 17.04
Sat, 25.04
Stavanger Secession wishes to thank all its supporters, sponsors, and cooperation partners, without whom the festival would not be possible.
Main support
Public support
Private support
