A joint effort: Building Platforms for equity, discourse, and artistic activity

Cameroonian-Finnish artist Sonya Lindfors is returning to the festival this year with her new work One Drop, after presenting Noble Savage and We Should All Be Dreaming in 2019.

This seminar starts with a keynote presentation from Lindfors about her work setting up the platform UrbanApa (https://urbanapa.fi/). In conversation with social anthropologist Michelle A. Tisdel, Lindfors expands on her work on decolonization and anti-racism.

Tisdel has worked with CODA and Bærum Kulturhus to put together a panel of artists and academics based in Norway. Moderator Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor explores how to work collectively collectively on building platforms for equity, discourse and artistic activity, in conversation with artists Ayesha Jordan, artist and academic Deise Faria Nunes and artistic director of TextLab, Shanti Brahmachari.

How do we engage with communities that are not historically centered in Norway and performance art?

What does it mean to work in the community and expand the reaches of artistic dissemination?

How do we deal with sustainability of artistic practice and ongoing solutions in the relations between artists and institutions?

Sonya Lindfors

Foto: Tuukka Ervasti

Sonya Lindfors  is a Cameroonian- Finnish choreographer and artistic director that also works with facilitating, community organizing and education. In 2013 she received a MA in choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki. Lindfors is the founding member and Artistic Director of UrbanApa, an inter-disciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices.  She makes her own and collaborative works such as performances, curated programs and performative actions. In all her positions Lindfors pursues creating and facilitating anti-racist and feminist platforms, where a festival, a performance, a publication or a workshop can operate as the site of empowerment and radical collective dreaming.

Michelle A. Tisdel

Michelle A. Tisdel is a native of Houston, Texas. She holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from Harvard University (2006). Her research interests include heritage production and discourses of belonging in Cuba and Norway. In 2020, she founded Lift Every Voice (LEV), a documentation project about antiracism and civil rights in Norway. Tisdel works as a research librarian at the National Library of Norway.

Jessica Laursen Elizabeth Taylor

Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor is an artist, filmmaker, writer and community organizer. Her roots are in the Southern United States, born in Mississippi and bred in Florida on former Timucan land. Taylor’s work manifests through text, dialogue and video. Her work centers on themes of ritual, Black literature, critical theory and identity mythology of Black and Indigenous folks.

Ayesha Jordan

Ayesha Jordan is a multidisciplinary performer and creator currently based in Oslo, Norway. Her current research has been based in applied permaculture studies, regenerative communal/ecosystem formation and adaptation, event curation, and how these can be explored through performance, or how they can inform performance methodologies. This research is presently being explored through a new work-in-progress titled Shasta Geaux Pop presents: Shasta Greaux Crops.

Websites: www.ayeshajordan.com and www.gatherground.org

Shanti Brahmachari

Foto: Tale Hendenes

Shanti Brahmachari has extensive international experience as a stage artist, dramaturg and pedagogue. She has developed, directed and produced her own productions, participated in over 50 other new performances in institutions and the free performing arts field. She founded, and is currently artistic director of TekstLab (2008), which is an art arena to engage a diversity of children, young people and artists in developing and creating distinctive artistic expressions. She has a background as an artistic director from, among others, the Royal National Theater (RNT), Kiln Theatre, Royal Court in London and Black Box Theatre, and was a performing arts consultant for the Norwegian Culture Council, and manager at the British Council and the Norwegian Actors’ Center in Oslo.

Deise Faria Nunes

Born in Brazil, Deise Faria Nunes is an artist-researcher with a particular interest in performance, rituals, and audiovisual. She is currently a PhD candidate in the program Art in Context at the University of Agder, Norway. Nunes also holds a certification in documentary filmmaking from Kino-Doc, Portugal. Based in the Nordics since 1999, Nunes has worked for almost 20 years as a performance artist, dramaturge, producer, writer, and teacher. She co-authors the historical anthology New Daughters of Africa (2019), edited by Margaret Busby, and is the editor of the coming anthology series Afro-Nordic Perspectives on Performance I: Territories, Geographies, Localities (2024). In 2020 and 2021, Nunes led the National Theatre Committee at the Arts Council Norway. From 2018-2020 she worked as a performing arts expert for the Nordic Culture Fund. Since 2017, Nunes has focused on the research, production, and dissemination of Black women’s activities in the arts.