The Big Picture invites you to Oslo Innovation Week’s first-ever exploration of sustainability & decoloniality. We’ll take a critical, humbling look at sustainability practices & explore the narratives that shape them.

Who actually benefits from sustainability and sustainable development?

What lens are we using when we talk about “sustainable” practices?

How can we recognize harmful patterns that perpetuate sustainability practices?

Can we imagine a tipping point for a restorative, just & equitable future?

Spoiler: we don’t know all the answers. Join us on this quest on decolonizing sustainability.

 

This highly nuanced and complex topic is one that cannot sensibly be confined to a single conversation. What we hope to achieve at this event is to start igniting awareness of the colonial influence and impact on what we have considered to be ‘sustainability’ today. Taking a position of honesty, humility, and humor, rethinking ‘Sustainability, Inc’ with a critical lens toward coloniality will hopefully offer a new perspective and radical shifts from the current ways of doing things. Expect to be surprised, to be uncomfortable, to have more questions than answers.

 

This event is organized as part of Oslo Innovation Week 2023.

Our presenters are:

Rahul Ranjan
Rahul will present about colonialism and its legacy in climate change, sustainability, and sustainable development, as well as approaches to decoloniality particularly from academic and Indigenous perspectives.

Rahul is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo. His research expertise is in Indigenous ontologies, postcolonial/decolonial theories, climate change and colonialism, anthropology, political ethnography, environmental humanities, resources conflict, nature-society interactions, and the Anthropocene. Rahul’s book: “The Political Life of Memory”, is recently published by the Cambridge University Press.

For more information on Rahul’s work, click HERE

Liisa-Ravna Finborg
Liisa-Ravna Finborg is an Indigenous Sámi scholar, duojár, curator, writer, and editor from Oslo/Vaapste/Skánit who is currently an Associate Researcher researching the relationship between museums, Sámi identities, and duodji (Sámi aesthetical practices). Liisa-Ravna will talk about perspectives of sustainability as a concept and extension of colonialism, the possibility of moving away from sustainability, and systemic changes that need to be done in decoloniality from her perspective as an Indigenous scholar and storyteller.

For more info on her work and activism, click HERE

Thandi Dyani
Thandi has worked in the last 20 years in social justice, equity, diversity and belonging, development issues, social entrepreneurship, and ecosystem building in Denmark, Northern Europe, and Sub- Saharan Africa in government institutions, NGOs, as founder, consultant, manager, and CEO.

Thandi will provide insights into high-level sustainability practices and decoloniality.

For more info on Thandi’s work, click HERE

Adrian Minkowicz
From the mountains of Ecuador, befriending anti-mining indigenous activists, to the waters of Galápagos Islands, swimming with sharks and a death in the Amazon, this is a sharp and humorous insight into (de)colonization!

Adrian Minkowicz is an Argentinean comedian, writer, published playwright and lawyer based in Oslo. He is a political satirist that has worked on NRK 1 on the niche show “Satirks”. He recently premiered the last part of “Brown Privilege”, a trilogy about decolonization, in the UK. The trilogy is supported by Kulturådet and Fritt Ord, and he performed the first part of it as a speaker in an International conference at the University of Cambridge. In Norway, he is the recipient of the prestigious Statens Kunstnerstipend as a dramaturg. He was appointed by the Argentinean ambassador in Norway to be a member of the “Commission for the Dialogue on Malvinas”. He regularly tours his performances in both English and Spanish in the biggest venues and festivals in Europe, Asia and America.

 

The event is free and open to the public. You can register here

There will be no live stream or recording.