Klara Bjork

A collage of the passage of time from a place by lake Gardiken with photo from the archive at Västerbotten museum from before the damming toned with newly shot image from the same place (Photographer J Berglund 2021, Colorist T Spaanheden).

Klara Björk is a senior lecturer in Film at the Artistic Faculty, Gothenburg University and teaches at the MFA Programme in Film. She is interested in critical pedagogy through artistic research involving visual literacy, decolonial practices, Sami identities; history and politics. As an UmArts visiting research fellow in 2027, Klara Björk will work on a research project that derives from a specific place in Southern Sápmi with a particular local historiography under the influence of settler colonial ideas and ongoing extractivism and the enquiry is into whether the camera and image making can be used to “speak nearby” (Trinh T. Minh-ha) a place to find strategies to build towards sustainable (Sámi) futures, and how that can be done without reproducing “the single story” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) but instead destabilise the colonial myth of authenticity and make place for more diverse experiences to unfold.