For our final lecture in 2022, Temi Odumosu will look at what a can of potatoes can tell us about the different ways cultures meet and converse with one another.
This interdisciplinary scholar and curator at the iSchool focuses on critical and creative approaches to understanding information technology’s role within society. In particular, she looks at how unfinished colonial histories and their inequalities haunt data, uses of information and technology design. Her research and curatorial work are engaged with the visual and affective politics of slavery and colonialism, race and visual coding in popular culture, post memorial art and performance, image ethics and politics of cultural heritage digitization. Overall, Odumosu is focused on the ways art can mediate social transformation and healing.
The November 3 Scand30: 1 Object takes a can of Yakima Chief Dehydrated Potatoes helps us to do this memory work and explore the different ways cultures meet and converse with one another. Together we will trace the storylines, and specifically consider the relationship between the imagery of a Native American chief on the product’s label and similar figures on “kolonialvaror” product labels in Scandinavia.
Upcoming Scand30:1 Object lectures in 2023
February 9, 6pm
First comes love, then comes marriage? Sex, Labor, and the Fisherman’s Wife
Speaker: Olivia Gunn, Associate Professor, UW Department of Scandinavian Studies
Object: travel document featuring Ingeborg Pedersen (labeled as fiskers hustru) and her children
During the month of sweethearts and heartaches, come hear about the practicalities of pairing off in modern Norway. A travel document for Ingeborg Pedersen, “fisherman’s wife,” is on display in the Nordic America Gallery. What can Ingeborg's title and (love?) story teach us about recent histories of courtship, kinship, and labor?
March 9, 6pm
Nordic War Stories and the forgotten ‘freedom fighter’ armband of 1945
Speaker: Marianne Stecher-Hansen, Professor, UW Department of Scandinavian Studies
Object: A Danish armband from 1945
Marianne Stecher-Hansen sheds light on a World War II artifact at the National Nordic Museum as well as her recent book Nordic War Stories, 2021. She’ll tell the story of the forgotten “freedom fighter” armband worn by her father in Denmark in 1945 and discuss her edited collection about the Nordic countries in World War II.
April 13, 6pm
Dancing on the North Wind: Iceland and Its Ghosts
Speaker: Margaret Willson, Affiliate Associate Professor, UW Departments of Anthropology and Scandinavian Studies
Object: Uggi fish light by Dögg Guðmundsdóttir
This April as spring emerges from winter darkens, come hear about the ghosts of Iceland. An Uggi fish light by Dögg Guðmundsdóttir in the Iceland Collection evokes tales told beside traditional fish oil lamps. What can such stories tell us about these undead specters who routinely inhabited spaces of the living as both an echo and conscience of Iceland’s mortal world.
May 4, 6pm
Over Easy: the Jacobsen Egg Chair
Speaker: Peter Cohan, Associate Professor, UW Department of Architecture
Object: Egg Chair by Arne Jacobsen
Designed in 1958 for the SAS Hotel in Copenhagen by renowned Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, the Egg Chair quickly became the iconic image of Danish Modern furniture. This Scand30 presentation will re-contextualize the chair in relation to the gesamtkunstwerk that is the SAS Hotel as well as Jacobsen’s entire oeuvre as an architect, furniture designer and product designer.
