A re-membering podcast series
Listen to stories about performing arts traditions, contemporary dance, performance art, and poetry by Kalaallit and Inuit artists in conversation about schooling, remembering, rooting, moving, decolonizing, and indigenizing.
Kuluk Helms lightening the qulleq. Photo © Asge Matthiasen
In March 2025, the seminar on Kalaallit Inuit Performance. Isumasioqatigiinneq eqqaasitsisoq – A re-membering seminar brought together younger and elder Kalaallit and Inuit artists and academics to remember and present together on their terms: from the existence and banishment of Indigenous traditions during and after Danish colonial rule, over the Tuukkaq theatre in Fjaltring and festivals in the Arctic, to contemporary decolonizing performances. The purpose was to gather different practices and traditions, reflect on how they have been taken up from different sides, and how they can be remembered in decolonizing ways – in academia and beyond.
Composed and edited by Sirì Paulsen, the tree podcast episodes document the conversations, storytelling, and performances from the seminar, with commentaries from Paulsen and her co-organizers of the seminar Naja Dyendom Graugaard and Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt.
EPISODE 1: rehearsing, remembering, schooling
A conversation between actress Makka Kleist and Vivi Sørensen, artistic director of Nunatta Isiginnaartitsinermik Ilinniarfia, on training and rehearsing Inuit traditions and beyond.
INTERMEZZO: dancing
Work demonstration of Uaajeerneq, mask dance, by actress and dancer Elisabeth Heilmann Blind.
EPISODE 2: rooting and moving (coming soon)
A conversation between performance artist and author Jessie Kleemann, choreographer Sarah Aviaja Hammeken and performing artist and cand.mag. Sirí Paulsen on working artistically as a ’bastard’ in a colonial relationship.
EPISODE 3: archiving and organizing
A conversation on decolonizing strategies for remembering embodied memory and indigenous knowledge with Kuluk Helms, artistic PhD Student at Université Paris-Saclay, Elisabeth Heilmann Blind, actress and dancer, Dine Arnannguaq Fenger Lynge, daily manager in Dáiddadállu – Sámi Artist Network, and Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen.
Makka Kleist, Elisabeth Heilmann Blind and Jessie Kleemann. Photos © Asge Matthiasen
On an academic note, inspired by practices on indigenizing academia (Dankertsen 2024), the intention of the seminar was to facilitate a collective knowledge assembly of “pluriversal storytelling” (Guttorm, Kantonen, Kamvig 2019) and center the notion of the repertoire of the embodied experience (Taylor and Townsend 2008).
Background
The seminar was organized by Sirí Paulsen, Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt. You can see the full program of the seminar here.
The seminar and podcast production was supported by: Forsøgsstationen, Malmö Theatre Academy – Lund University, Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES), the Nordic Culture Fund, the New Carlsberg Foundation research centre “Art as Forum” at the University of Copenhagen, and the research cluster Nordic Models at Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
References
Dankertsen, A. (2025). Avkolonisering av akademia fra et samisk perspektiv. Slagmark – Tidsskrift for idéhistorie, (86). https://doi.org/10.7146/slagmark.v86i.153300
Guttorm, H. & Kantonen, L. & Kramvig, B. (2020). “Pluriversal stories with Indigenous wor(l)ds creating paths to the other side of the mountain”. Dutkansearvvi dieđalaš áigečála , vol. 3:2, 149-170.
Taylor, D. and Sarah J. T. (2008). Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Theatre and Performance of Latin America, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1-29.