Samtale og debatt
Decolonize gender: towards a non-binary future
This fall we invite you to our series of talks, Decolonize Now, where each month we will discuss different aspects of decolonization.
How do colonial structures, practices and narratives form and inform our society? What can society do to liberate its minorities and marginalized groups from historical and systemic injustice? This fall we invite you to our series of talks, Decolonize Now, where each month we will discuss different aspects of decolonization.
What role does gender play in the way we organize our society? Which societies can we look to for an expanded understanding of gender? In Decolonize Gender, we have invited a writer, a poet and an academic to highlight knowledge and narratives that move beyond our traditional understanding of gender and sexuality. The panel will investigate how literature and language can be used as tools to create a non-binary future.
In the panel: Lara Okafor, M. Seppola Simonsen and Clare Zhou. The talk will be moderated by Tuula Sharma Vassvik.
NB! This talk will be held in English.
Welcome!
Decolonize Now is funded by Fritt Ord.
The panel
Lara Okafor (they / them) is a writer, software developer and curator with extensive experience from queer organizations. They are Fotogalleriets curatorial fellow 2024-25. Lara is interested in prison abolition, speculative fiction, queerness, blackness, and how these themes overlap with technology. They have been published in Tidsskriftet Fett, Tidsskriftet Billedkunst, avisa TrAP and Samora Forum, as well as in the sci-fi anthology “En strek gjennom tyngdekraften”. Lara also holds workshops and lectures on themes that intertwine art, activism and their areas of interest.
M. Seppola Simonsen is a Kven-Norwegian writer and artist from Senja in Troms. Their literature thematizes language and nature, as well as queer and kven belonging and identity. The poet currently lives in Oslo, where they are doing their masters degree in political ecology at the University of Oslo.
Clare Zhou (they / them) is a recovering academic with history flowing from molecular genetics research that later emerged with their growing understanding of collective justice and social transformation. These streams have since collected into decolonising in education, first through sciences in class room teaching and later sexual health. They are currently obsessed with body-based knowledge, disenfranchised grief and somatic healing. Clare is an advocate for different ways of knowing, for land back and reparaions, and an end to supremacy cultures including capitalism. They bring with them these lenses and their lived experience as an agender and queer being.