WHEN: Thursday 27 October, 6–7.30 PM
WHERE: Møllendal paviljong, at Møllendal Allmenning located between the KMD building in Møllendalsveien and Puddefjorden.

This lecture will centre how Indigenous archives, libraries, and other sources of knowledge are not necessarily founded on books and written works.  Instead, it is spoken words, practices, and aesthetics that form archives of knowledge. Nevertheless, while Indigenous and non-Western practices of record keeping are valued and honoured in their source communities, the sad reality is that they are not always valued equally in Western contexts. As such these archives of [perceived] invisibility may be challenging to work with as sources of knowledge within the context of Western academics and traditions.

So how do we work with archives if invisibility; how do we maintain and honour practices of record-keeping that may not be viewed as such from a Western (and colonial) perspective? More to the point, how do we shape our style of academic writing (with multiple sources) without losing the mark of academia? How do we create in line with Indiegnous and non-western ways of being (ontology), knowing (epistemology), and doing (methodology), yet managing to get our point across in a more traditional Western context? How do we recognize and use archives of invisibility, incorporating them in our practice of writing?

Dr. Liisa-Rávná Finbog is a Sámi scholar and duojár (Sámi storyteller and knowledge-holder) from Oslo, Vaapste, and Skánit in the Norwegian part of Sápmi. As a long-time practitioner of duodji [Sámi practices of aesthetics and storytelling], her PhD in museology combined her practice with an Indigenous research focus which looked into duodji as a Sámi system of knowledge; the devastating effect of the colonial epistemicide on the practice of duodji; and how Sámi communities today work to re-remember practices within duodji and in the process negotiate Sámi identities; and lastly, how museums with their vast collections of Sámi heritage objects play into these processes.

Her written works include contributions to collective works such as ‘Research Journeys In/To Multiple Ways of Knowing (2019), articles in Nordic Museology (2015) and in the digital platform “Action Stories” (2021), as well as several upcoming works, including her first book, “It Speaks to You – Making kin through people, stories, and duodji in Sámi Museums” (2022).

This lecture is part of the workshop “The Community of Writers”, organised by Curatorial Practice at The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen. “The Community of Writers”  is part of the research project Interweaving Structures: Fabric as Material, Method, and Message, a collaboration between the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, The Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design at the University in Bergen and the PhD School at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.