13:00 Cecilia G. Salinas
WHY DECOLONIAL THEORY MATTERS?

In this presentation, I will use decolonial thinking as an entry point to expand the understanding of what is popularly conceptualized as «diversity» in Norway. I will give a short introduction to decolonial thinking; explaining the theoretical and intellectual foundations that these critical perspectives are built on and how they challenge hegemonic narratives, that maintain ideas and perceptions about what kind of difference matters and which do not. I will illustrate this with experiences from my own research and engagement with decolonial theories.

Cecilia G. Salinas holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Oslo. She is also educated at the art school Lomas de Zamora in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and in Norway she has been a student at the Bruchion Art Institute under the direction of Jan Valentin Sæther. Cecilia works in the intersection between art and anthropology. During her fieldwork for the current postdoctoral research Cecilia created a series of digital drawings and short texts that are part of the traveling exhibition 'ARTivisme'. In her artistic practice, she combines words and images to explore various topics including unbelonging, discrimination and trauma. She conceives of art as a way to heal and transform society and the self.

14:15 Sindre Bangstad
ACHILLE MBEMBE AND DECOLONIZATION

Achille Mbembe (b. 1957 in Cameroon) is arguably the most cited and influential intellectual of African origin in our time. A self-styled ‘penseur de la traversee’ (thinker of the crossroads), he has from his adopted home of South Africa been a main exponent of ‘thinking the world from Africa’ since the early 2000s. In this presentation, I will introduce Mbembe’s thoughts on decolonization. I argue that Mbembe takes exception to the notion of ‘delinking’ which is central to the ‘decolonial’ movement (Mignolo et. Al.), arguing instead for an equal right to the world’s intellectual and artistic archive.

Sindre Bangstad is Research Professor at KIFO in Oslo, Norway, and has been central in introducing Mbembe’s thought to Norwegian academic audiences since 2018.

15:45 Nicholas Ssempijja
THE CHALLENGE OF DECOLONIZATION

In this presentation, I examine the process of decolonization within academic discourses, particularly, to what extent decolonization can be achieved. I draw on scholarly contexts from the humanities and social sciences’ disciplines to question the British centered education system and the political undertones that have informed these colonial notions of power embedded in the Ugandan university curriculum. Drawing on my own research and working experience, I propose a contrapuntal reading of decolonization as an approach to recontextualizing the emerging debates mainly centered on indigenizing and localizing approaches to the decolonization process, to enable curriculum transformation.

Nicholas Ssempijja is an Ethnomusicologist and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Performing Ats and Film, Makerere University. He holds a doctorate in Ethnomusicology from the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. He is also a former Fulbright African researcher at the Price Music Center, North Carolina State University. His research has mainly focused on postcolonial music performance practices in Uganda, Autoethnography, and religious music festivals in the reconstruction of a glocal hybrid identity. His most recent studies have focused on historicizing the Performing Arts disciplines and the subject of Ethnomusicology in Uganda.

16:45 Maria Brinch
EXPERIENCES FROM UGANDA

Maria Brinch (b. 1984) lives and works in Oslo. Her practice incorporates the social aspect of craftsmanship, where the exchange of traditional knowledge is a platform for personal narratives and political experiences across cultures, resources, and preconceptions. In recent years, she has collaborated on exhibitions, workshops, and artist book productions with artists in Yangon, Myanmar, and Kampala, Uganda.

Maria combines photography and painting in collage textile wall hangings with sculptural mounting rods that she makes in wrought iron and pinewood. The photographic aspect consists of spontaneous mobile-phone snapshots from her everyday life and staged tableaux. This reflects the contemporary trend to accumulate digital representations of lived experience, based largely on her own material. Brinch connects the physical function of textiles with their emotional dimension, incorporating references to classic ornamental tapestries, urban laundry, and the territorial use of decorative wrought iron gates. Her work also includes worn objects and the annual artist book The Birthday Paper.

Maria Brinch is a graduate from Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her work has previously been shown at Kunstnernes Hus, Kunstnerforbundet, Salgshallen, Format, RAM (Oslo), Entree (Bergen), Myanmart Gallery (Yangon, Myanmar), Uganda Museum (Kampala), NADA Art Fair (New York) and Elephant Kunsthall (Lillehammer). In 2023/24 she will have solo shows at venues including KINDL (Berlin) and Krutthuset KOSA (Maridalen, Oslo).

A seminar in collaboration between COMMONGROUNDS, an exchange project between art and design teachers and students from Makere university and University of Bergen/faculty of Art, music and design and CABUTE with teachers from Makere university, University of Bergen/Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design and the college of Western Norway and CHROMATICS - a pilot project on diversity in the arts related to the postgraduate teacher training programme (PPU) at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD)/UiB.