Nov. 20. Deleting Whiteness Symposium
A hybrid day of performance, presentation and discussion designed to transform, dissect, celebrate, confront, restore justice & enjoy. A wake for, or to wake, Weld’s whiteness by flooding the space with all other shades of discourse.
We hope to balance nuance with fury, and not forget tenderness. Create dialogue between thought and performance. Focus & blur gaze and who owns the power.
With presentation and/or performances from Ola Saleh (Feminist peacebuilding & conflict sensitivity advisor), John-Paul Zaccarini (Professor in Performing Arts at SKH) Tobias Hübinette (Anti-racism researcher), Harold Offeh (Performance & Visual Artist, UK), Marit Shirin Carolasdotter (Choreographer & dancer) and an installation by Anita Honart (Visual Artist and Sculptor).
A light vegan meal will be provided free of charge during the symposium, catered by Ana Bernardino.
Performance & thought dialogue
Performances and speaking will include work from Harold Offeh, who employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. His work has been presented widely throughout the UK & internationally. Upcoming choreographer and performer Marit Shirin Carolasdotter whose work will be touring Sweden in 2022. Marit initiated Humans & Soil, an artistic network organisation that focus on land rights from an indigenous perspective. John-Paul Zaccarini is an award-winning solo artist, poet, queer hip-hop clown, ”drama queen of color” and professor of performance at SKH, Stockholm.
All the artists will be speaking at the event and joined by two more speakers, Ola Saleh & Tobias Hübinette, biogs below.
Tobias Hübinette
describes himself as an anti-racist researcher and activist, that is, he combines the role of researcher with that of political activist. When he started researching at the Department of Oriental Languages at Stockholm University in 2001, this was done on the basis of an anti-racist commitment. Hübinette says that through his research he has waged ”an anti-racist struggle in a certain field of research”. According to Hübinette, the role as a ”research activist” is accepted in countries such as the USA and France, but is considered controversial in Sweden.
tobiashubinette.se
tobiashubinette.wordpress.com
Ola Saleh
A pragmatic idealist whose journey started in 2005 in community mobilizing for legal reform. The journey continued down the path of humanitarianism, development cooperation, and carries on in peacebuilding advising and research. As a practitioner and a person; I am in continuous learning mode about feminist leadership and decolonial approaches to aid and knowledge. Committed to jointly transform powerarchies through fair, equitable, and safe spaces where everyone can thrive and nourish what’s alive in them.
Marit-Shirin Carolasdotter
is a professional dancer and choreographer with Indigenous roots from Sápmi (Hotagen, South Sámi) in Sweden and from Kurdistan, Iraq. She is currently based in Umeå/Ubmeje, the northern part of Sweden, where she is working as a dancer, choreographer and artistic director for her network organisation Humans & Soil. She has been working in Japan since 2017 with research and performative practices, as well as performing world wide starting off her dancing career in Brussels 2015. She has an MA in International Performing Arts from SKH where she is working toward Indigenous bodily rights through activism, decolonizing choreographic methods, international collaborations and co-creation of the piece ”of itself : in itself” that had its world premiere at Norrlandsoperan in 2021, and touring with Dancenet Sweden in spring 2022.
Harold Offeh
is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum, Harlem, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito, Japan. He studied Critical Fine Art Practice at The University of Brighton, MA Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art and recently completed a PhD by practice exploring the activation of Black Album covers through durational performance . He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds, UK where he is currently a Tutor in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art and the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
John-Paul Zaccarini
is a Doctor in Philosophy in Performance Studies, with a thesis based in the use of psychoanalysis in the creation of contemporary circus performance, he is now Professor of Performing Arts at the Research Centre at SKH. He has been a practitioner in theatre, dance, mime and circus with a focus on poetry and the spoken word as both performer and director/dramaturge and choreographer for 32 years. He is currently researching the intersections between art, therapy and activism in his project FutureBlackSpace which is a creative space for BIPOC to work with Radical Healing and decolonizing artistic research in majority white institutions and fields.
Anita Honart
The interactive mask installation Waves of Silence (2021) by visual artist and sculptor Anita Honart will be installed at Weld for the symposium. In Waves of Silence audience are able to see out from and be masked by Persian poetry adorning their face and body. Anita creates multidirectional imaginative work with video and sculpture. With influences from interests in psychology, quantum physics, social rules and problems in society. Born Tehran, graduated BA Fine Art Sculpture, Tehran University of Art and MFA, Konstfack, Stockholm. Lives and works in Stockholm and Tehran, exhibiting in Sweden and internationally.
Produced with curational support from Ola Saleh, Andrea Aja Svensson, and John-Paul Zaccarini.
Initiated by Robin Dingemans.
With support by Weld, the Swedish Arts Council, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Stockholms stad and Region Stockholm