Authors
Naja Dyrendom Graugaard and Britta Timm Knudsen
Abstract
In this article, we suggest that memes produced by Kalaallit Inuit (Indigenous people of Greenland), hereafter, Kalaallit, social media actors can be understood as educative decolonial roadmaps, which expose narrative key elements of Danish colonialism as it is experienced in Kalaallit Nunaat—the Indigenous name for Greenland—such as, Nordic exceptionalism, colonial amnesia, discovery tales, the post-colonial imaginary, and the so-called impossibility of Kalaallit sovereignty. Drawing on memes by meme artists: Julie Edel Hardenberg, xoxolilichemnitz, Inunnguaq Reimer, and Jacob Larsen, we ask what forms of humour and playfulness are at play, and how these devices contribute to changing conversations by offering new modes of self-scrutiny in colonial audiences and by introducing decolonial options within the Kalaallit community. Overall, this article sheds light on the anti-colonial work of Kalaallit social media artists and their political decolonizing endeavours in alliance with Indigenous meme-making on a global scale.
Link to article:
Hauntology’, a homophonous pun on ontology coined by Jacques Derrida, presents a framework that, first and foremost, problematises the binaries of ontological being and non-being, the actual and the virtual, pasts, present, and futures (Derrida 1994). Instead, it urges the researcher to engage with the potency, agency, and meaning of that which is seemingly absent or somehow in between the ‘no longer’ and the ‘not yet’.
Hauntological approaches have in different ways influenced a range of academic fields from literary and cultural studies over psychoanalysis, sociology, and anthropology to recent developments in postcolonial and decolonial theory, environmental studies, design thinking, digital arts, and affect theory. Taking heritage and memory studies – a field that works explicitly on past resurrections in the present – as a poignant example, a hauntological attitude implies a structural openness to and curiosity towards voices of the past that affectively appeal to us (Davis 2005). The ghost emerges as a way of returning to “multiple pasts” and our way of responding to ghosts imply an inheritance of the future-to-come (Knudsen 2018, Sterling 2021). The future may in this way become something else than the predictions of a prophylactic prognosis and be capable of furthering justice. Haunting and hauntology have also affected research on health (Shildrick 2021, McCormack 2021, Rojas-Navarro et al 2024). Here, the framework is, for example, used to shed new light on the complex temporal experiences of illness, health, and embodiment as well as the use of technologies in predicting and projecting possible futures (Nielsen and Stage 2023, Stage and Nielsen 2026).
At this interdisciplinary seminar, we address the disruption of linear temporality, the entanglements of bodies, materiality, and technologies as well as the affective, ethical and political potentials of hauntings to evoke answerability and responsibility (Gordon 2008, Isin and Nielsen 2015). In doing so we aim to investigate the plethora of analytical and ethical potentials of hauntological approaches in various knowledge fields. By asking how and why haunting makes itself felt and known within different knowledge domains, the seminar starts an interdisciplinary conversation around the unsettling experiences and phenomena that upsets and questions many taken-for-granted research paradigms
Link to program, abstracts, and registration:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yzNM2JaqwP0AlnVwln4CuzKlFFvRKAQH/view?usp=sharing
Kulturarvens kraft – introduktion til kritiske kulturarvsstudier
Af Mads Daugbjerg, Britta Timm Knudsen og Casper Andersen
Hvordan bliver noget udnævnt til kulturarv – eller ligefrem verdensarv? Hvem bestemmer, hvad der er værd at bevare, og hvad der skal glemmes? Hvordan håndterer vi de dele af fortiden, der ikke vækker stolthed, men snarere skam, skyld eller vrede? Og hvordan kan man, på solid akademisk grund, analysere de kampe, de følelser og den kraft, der knytter sig til sporene fra fortiden?
Kulturarvens kraft indfører læseren i det tværfaglige studie- og forskningsfelt critical heritage studies. Bogen går tæt på de kampe, følelser og magtforhold, der præger nutidens kulturarvsdebatter, fra krav om repatriering af plyndrede genstande til kontroverser om statuer og mindesmærker.
Links to book:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7343171442882007041
https://samfundslitteratur.dk/bog/kulturarvens-kraft
Title of talk: How the Hauntings of Colonial Street Names Become Tangible – To Decolonize Cities/Museums through Immersive Technologies
Panel: Unwriting museums
Convenors: Johanna Turunen & Mari Viita-aho (University of Jyväskyla)
Link to program: https://www.siefhome.org/congresses/sief2025/programme
Link to the Unwriting Museums panel: https://www.siefhome.org/congresses/sief2025/programme#16179
Title of talk: Augmented Reality and the Ghosts of the Past
Panel: (De)coloniality and Humour in the Age of AI
Link to the festival: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/the-kings-festival-of-artificial-intelligence-2025
Link to the panel: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/decoloniality-and-humour-in-the-age-of-ai
Online oplæg af Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
Drop-in time in Århus’ polarforskerkvarter to get introduced to the walk, 14-15.40.
Drinks and snacks at Kalaallit Illuutaat/Det Grønlandske Hus Århus, from 16.30
Panel debate on humour, art, and decolonization with Mimi Josefsen, Inunnguaq Reimer, Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, moderated by Hanne Bjerre Lassen
Activities:
Decolonial and augmented reality walk in Polarforskerkvarteret, Aarhus (Naja Dyrendom Graugaard and Asge Matthiesen)
Filmscreening of Demolition Tour (virtual decolonial walk) by Aysha Amin, at Institut for X.
Participants: Three high school classes, 3. G from Silkeborg Gymnasium, 2.g from Aarhus Statsgymnasium and 1. G from Aarhus Gymnasium and their teachers.
‘Pedagogies of Reckoning’-seminar
Presenter: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
Paper abstract: This paper is based on the experiences of convening with five Kalaallit Inuit meme artists, so-me actors, and researchers at a weeklong workshop in Nuuk, Spring 2024. In this co-creative workshop, we explored the intersections between play, art, and decolonization. Drawing on my current postdoctoral research, this paper reflects on the decolonial potentials of humour and ‘play’ in art and digital interventions (such as memes/lives/reels) as a transformative way to engage with past and present experiences of colonialism in Kalaallit Nunaat. In this paper, I suggest that these playful artistic engagements by Kalaallit meme-makers carry an important role in the current (often heated) debates on colonial Danish-Kalaallit relations and the decolonization process. Much more than ‘mere fun’, I suggest that they decenter Danish imperialist storytellings and provide an important contribution to the creation of alternative, Indigenized knowledge archives. In collaboration with the workshop participants, the paper will incorporate some of the artistic productions, teachings, conversations, and reflections on decolonial meme-work that came out of this co-creation.
AI workshop
Over a week, seven young people from Gellerup were introduced to landscape architecture and mapping tools: Observation, registration, reports and archiving. Over the weekend they were trained to communicate their ideas and reflections of selected sites as visual representations using generative AI.
The course is organised by Aysha Amin and held at Andromeda, 8220
Mentors Meghna Singh, Jeppe Lange
Panel: Mnemonic Practices of Decolonization.
Paper (Britta Timm Knudsen): Playing with Ghosts. Internet Memes as sites of playful decolonial protest and productive disavowal. Paper (Meghna Singh): Playing with Ghosts-Virtual reality and AI generated images as playful de-colonial tools to reconstruct memories and seek alternate realities.
Link to the event and full abstracts: https://msalima2024.dryfta.com/program-schedule/program/detail/51/mnemonic-practices-of-decolonization
Cultural Transformations Summer Seminar 2024
Hosted at the space of the Salon at ARoS Museum, the five day intensive residency brings together diverse Danish artists to learn, experiment and develop playful stories/experiences using creative technology (AI, AR & VR) alongside industry mentors. Over five days at this private workshop, artists will engage in discussions, masterclasses, and workshop their projects while immersing themselves in Artists talks. The project believes that democratizing and decolonising the digital space begins with giving artists access and knowledge of these tools to create the content they want. The nine selected creatives will explore Augmented Reality, VR technology and Generative AI to create experiences using playfulness and humour as tropes for an anti-colonial critique.
Seminar: Playing the Decolonial; Humor, Art, Tech
In two previous seminars, we have explored the concepts of play and playfulness and the role they play in building worlds and alternative realities. In this seminar, we will add humor and treat play and humor as affective drives seriously. Acknowledging that humor is derivative and parasitical to serious and heavy situations, we will look at the role of humor and playfulness in decolonizing endeavors in a range of fields – arts, games, media – and technology practices, education, comedy genres. We claim that playfulness and humor open up a field of practice rather than being just another tool in the critical toolbox. Humor and playfulness inject ambiguity, opaqueness, and dissonance into the fields in which they operate. It also seems that humor and subject-formation belong together, as well as humor and playfulness are engaging with boundary-drawing processes and vectors of inclusion and exclusion. We ask the very simple question: what does humor and playfulness bring to the table in decolonial agendas?
Link: http://decolonisingplay.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Play-Decolonial-Program-color.pdf
Presentation by Meghna Singh under the auspices of the Ethnographic Exploratory and Media Lab, Technologies and the Digital, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
Lecture: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
Panel debate with Inunnguaq Reimer, Lili F. Chemnitz, Qarsoq Høegh-Dam, Vivi Vold, Paninnguaq Pikilak
Facilitator: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, Tech. instruktør: Asge Matthiesen, So-me kunstnere: Inunnguaq Reimer, Lili F. Chemnitz, Qarsoq Høegh-Dam, Vivi Vold, Paninnguaq Pikilak
Workshop: Collaborative, Creative-critical and Participatory Research Methods
Organized by AIAS Associate Fellow Alan O’Leary and The Filmmaking Research, Academic Film and Videographic Criticism Research Unit, in collaboration with Britta Timm Knudsen and Peter M. Boenisch, Directors, Cultural Transformations Research Programme
Link to the event with full programme & bios: https://aias.au.dk/events/show/artikel/workshop-collaborative-creative-critical-and-participatory-research-methods
Talk by Meghna Singh at National Geographic Storytellers Summit 2024, Los Angeles
Seminar: The final seminar of Monica Portzionato around her Ph.d thesis
Lecture: Play and humour in Kalaallit decolonial artistic practices
The historical and contemporary Danish colonial repression of Kalaallit is receiving increased attention in public media, politics, and academic work. The resurfacing of ‘forgotten’ and silenced Kalaallit experiences of Danish colonialism has mobilized renewed public and political calls to revise and decolonize the relations between Denmark and Kalaallit Nunaat. This development has also stimulated – often heated, and at times divisive – debates on the ‘rights and wrongs’ of the colonial history and its current repercussions. While these debates put pressure on colonial ignorance, they also tend to manifest white fragility, settler anxiety, and aversion towards the decolonization process, both between and within the affected peoples and populations.
In this lecture, post.doc researcher Naja Dyrendom Graugaard will present how Kalaallit artists, SoMe actors, and meme-makers employ playfulness as a transformative way to engage with the ‘unfinished business of decolonization’. In the recent movement to decolonize Danish-Kalaallit relations, several Kalaallit artworks, memes, and performative videos have challenged the ongoing experiences of Danish colonialism by using humour, satire, irony, excess, etc. Exemplified by their work, Graugaard will discuss how such forms and modes of playfulness resist dominant structures and stereotypes, subvert power relations and subject positionings. Attending to the (often overlooked) wealth of materials, experiences, and decolonizing strategies that ‘playfulness’ presents, the lecture discusses how Kalaallit decolonial artistic expressions may present alternative modes of unsettling colonial relations today.
Lecturer: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
The lecture is held as part of Forum Lectures organized by Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Art as Forum, Copenhagen University
Seminar: A Conversation on Decolonization in Higher Education and Research
A seminar exploring the complexities of decolonial theory and praxis in academia. This seminar offers engaging presentations, discussions, and reflective exercises. They will delve into their decolonial projects in, respectively, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Latin America, focusing on three key themes: Positionality, colonial relations and the decolonial option. This seminar will encourage self-reflection and explore ways to apply abstract theories within the complex landscape of knowledge production.
Facilitators: Freja Ruby Flejsborg, Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, Hjørdis Joanardóttir Poulsen
The seminar is hosted by the Research Unit Postcolonial Entanglements.
Research Seminar: Forms of play
”If we could accept this meaninglessness of the world, then we could play with forms, appearances and our impulses, without worrying about their ultimate destination”.
– Baudrillard, Impossible Exchange.
According to Baudrillard’s idea of simulation, contemporary societies have all but lost any connection to what used to be considered ‘reality’. Instead, the social have become a place for the accelerated circulation, mediatization and consumption of images no longer pinned down by anything solid or external: it is a realm of play.
Postmodern theories emphasized that such a divorce from ‘the real’ as a guarantee of 'truth' could be potentially liberating because it allowed for a ‘play’ with new social modes and forms, and paved the way for new ways of playful resistance as seduction, excess or hyperbole. Other more materially grounded theories – Deleuzian material philosophy and new materialism – have since widened the scope of the ‘real’ to include the virtuality or fictionality of the real. This means that the imagining, and temporary creation of alternative worlds that question hierarchies and pursue futurability of new modes of community, draws centrally on playful elements in building forms of cultural and social praxis.
At our previous seminar – Playful Attitudes; Popular Culture, Politics and Participation – we focused on play and playfulness conceptually and how it appears in phenomena where you least expect it, and sometimes also in less liberating and inclusive ways. This coming seminar will focus on the ‘forms of play’ in a variety of fields of practice such as Fan Culture, Literature, Activism, Performance Arts and Game Culture. We will focus on which forms – such as rhetorical strategies, tactics, imitative plays, re- and pre-enactments, or the aesthetic uses of matter and sitespecificity – the playful virtuality and fictionality of the real may take.
Organizers: Matthias Stephan, Britta Timm Knudsen, Christoffer Kølvraa, and Claus Toft-Nielsen
Lecture: Kan kunst og dekolonisering være grineren?
Der er i disse år en voksende opmærksomhed på Danmarks koloniale virke i Grønland. En opmærksomhed, der bringer nye og kritiske blikke på historien og dens konsekvenser for nutiden. Og her spiller kunst, humor og sociale medier en særlig rolle! Igennem forskellige kunstneriske udtryksformer – fra malerier til internetfænomener – udfordrer grønlandske kunstnere dansk kolonialisme på nye, kritiske og sjove måder.
Foredragsholder: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
Foredraget holdes som led i SMK Akademiets foredragsrække: ’Grønlandsk kunst i bevægelse’
Link: https://www.smk.dk/event/smk-akademiet-groenlandsk-kunst-i-forandring/
In this workshop, we will examine aspects of coloniality and decoloniality in Arctic research, and begin to unpack how (privileged) researcher positionality, power dynamics, and knowledge regimes affect existing research relationships. By bringing in our own experiences, we will critically reflect on how we – as Indigenous or non-Indigenous researchers, participants affected by research etc. – shape interactions and research encounters. We will explore how reflexivity on our own practices may provide new reflections on ways to unsettle colonial research relations and transform praxis. In this work, those of our engagements, where we sense meaningful communication and equitable relations have failed, also become a site of learning.
Facilitator: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
The workshop is held as part of “A Week of Exchange: Ethics and Methods in Arctic Transformative Research”, hosted by Arctic Governance Research Group at the Research Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam and Biodiverse Anthropocene at University of Oulu.
Workshop: Participation and talk in 'Films, Museums and Kalaallit Nunaat’
A workshop seeking to pose questions about how museums use film to promote, communicate, and research their collections, and how filmmaking form Kalaallit Nunaat can help shape these processes. The aim is to bring together community stakeholders, as well as those more broadly in the filmmaking profession to engage viewpoints from several different perspectives and experiences.
Co-organized by Josefine Baark (Dept. Of Art history, Aesthetics & Culture, Aarhus University) Bart Pushaw (Art Department, University of Tennessee Chattanooga.
Invited participant: Naja Dyrendom Graugaard
Fellow: Meghna Singh
One day workshop for team and associate team: Playing with Ghosts
Participants: Britta Timm Knudsen, Meghna Singh, Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, Aysha Amin and Abdul Dube Zoom & presentation by Ingrid Kopp (co-founder and director of Electric South)
Conference: ‘Nunarput - Land Back’ hosted by Partii Naleraq
The conference will center on colonialism, decolonization, Inuit self-determination, Inuit mental health, Inuit businesses and Greenland’s independence. The purpose of the conference is to give citizens, researchers, professionals and politicians the opportunity to meet, discuss and share knowledge and experiences on the topics.
Panel discussion participant, ‘Colonial atrocities’: Naja D. Graugaard
Aarhus University’s Diversity Lab in Copenhagen
The concept of play or playfulness is once again returning to the center of many academic debates and displaying an astonishing interdisciplinary range across various fields such as pedagogy and didactics, game- and fan studies, anthropology, literary theory, cultural studies, and political science. Ideas and practices of play are now increasingly key both in innovative work in fields which have traditionally been concerned with play and in fields where play or playfulness has not earlier been part of the standard vocabulary.
Indeed, in contemporary societies play seems to be an ever more expansive cultural praxis, and ‘playfulness’ is an attitude increasingly identifiable also in contexts traditionally pervaded by high seriousness. Thought of as the constitution of a space of ‘make believe’ play can temporarily suspend the rules and roles of ‘real life’. The attitude of playfulness therefore shows itself to be a powerful tool for a wider range of actors and processes and can license not just lightheartedness, but also immersive enjoyment, excess, experimentation, and a disregard for the ‘real’ consequences of actions. It pervades contemporary cultural, political, and social practices from mobilizing fan communities to constituting engaged audiences of participatory artforms, from political gaming and playful activism, and from immersive media-consumption to ideological excess.
What this should alert us to is that play must now be examined as it appears in odd contexts, among new kinds of actors and with a much more ambiguous normative agenda than is often assumed. Play today slips easily from the leisurely to the activist, from inclusive values to aggressive bullying, from being lighthearted to going Dark, from heralding progressive experimentation to being insidiously parasitic.
Given this extraordinary richness of the concept, this seminar aims to facilitate a discussion of what might still constitute the definitional core elements of play and playfulness today, and of the various and often ambiguous contexts in which play might be identified as a core dynamic.
Organizers: Christoffer Kølvraa, Matthias Stephan, Claus Toft Nielsen and Britta Timm Knudsen
Contact: Britta Timm Knudsen (norbtk@cc.au.dk)
Institute for Communication and Culture, ARTS, Aarhus University
Grant info: AUFF NOVA Grant 1.6. 2023 – 31.12.2025 (2.489.900 DKK)
Bevillingsnummer: AUFF-E-2022-9-7
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