RAI Sessions

In the aftermath of global protests against anti-Black racism catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a wide range of Norwegian arts and culture institutions made a commitment to address systemic racism and anti-Blackness in their organizations and through the work that they fund and exhibit.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of these commitments have not come to fruition, and momentum and action in the service of systemic change when it comes to representation, decolonizing efforts, and structural organizational changes is waning. 

Through thoughtfully themed 90-minute podcast interviews, RAI Sessions will respond to this waning interest and inaction by examining core topics of Indigeneity, diaspora, gender and sexual identity, coloniality, relationships to land, and community. This will create a space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour artists to relay their own stories and methodologies in conversation with one another.

RAI Sessions will offer the space within which to explore and disseminate narratives that have thus far been obscured, or deliberately silenced, from the Nordic cultural archive, directly from the mouths of those who carry such experiences of resilience and determination.

We look forward to immersion in the podcast medium allows for a level of vulnerability, authenticity, and understanding necessary to broach challenging topics at the intersection of race and ethnicity, artistic freedom, and institutional support. 

While providing the space to speak about their work, the podcast format will also allow for frank and deep reflective discussions on the state of the arts scene in Norway and the Nordics from a diverse range of BIPOC perspectives. Video recordings of the interviews will be made and posted on the RAI website for open access, in order to best reach a broad audience, particularly young BIPOC people interested in entering the arts and culture field. 

Ro Averin, interim director and curator of RAI, will curate, host, and manage the RAI Sessions project, with the generous support of Fritt Ord.