UNFOLDING THE LIVØ MEMORIAL: PART II

Recently, a new public monument – a memorial in paper – was launched on the island of Livø. Situated in a fjord 65km from Aalborg, the island appears as a scenic oasis covered in lush forest and rolling hills. Despite its natural beauty, in the 1900’s it housed an institution that imprisoned men who couldn’t fit into Denmark’s “work state” and were considered dangerous to the working population. Many of these men were detained on the island for reasons such as mental health issues, alcoholism, petty criminality, homelessness, sexual orientation, and epilepsy – often indefinitely and without any legal rights.

This is the second part of a two-part article series on artist Jakob Jakobsen’s project “Memorial for the 743 prisoners on Livø from 1911 to 1961”. Read the first part here. In this concluding part, the socio-political questions around the denial of Livø’s history, artistic censorship, and the violent legacy of Livø that still persist in Denmark through mistreatment of marginalized groups such as immigrants and refugees emerge. Questions around rethinking public monuments, roles for art in public space, and more collective processes as forms of resistance within the project are also discussed. This is all as we await for Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s upcoming apology for the atrocities on Livø that is scheduled to happen in 2022.

The memorial was officially launched August 7th, 2021 on Livø by Jakob Jakobsen as part of the primary program of f.eks. – an artist-run contemporary art initiative based in Aalborg organized by artists Scott William Raby and Rikke Ehlers Nilsson. The memorial in paper and its launch event on Livø were part of a larger socially-engaged, collaborative artwork as a public campaign to distribute and communicate the memorial in paper at libraries, museums, art centers, and community centers across Denmark.

This text encapsulates an in-depth reflection initiated by f.eks. project organizer Scott William Raby in conversation with artist Jakob Jakobsen.

Scott and Jakob. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Scott William Raby: The present state of the island of Livø showcases different layers of history. Livø is a beautiful island in the middle of the Danish Limfjord in Northern Jutland. It’s also a sustainable island that produces its own green energy and has an organic farm, but this is underlyed by and framed around the architecture and planning of the former mental institution and prison buildings, which are now reconverted to support touristic activities. Currently, Livø is activated as a happy-go-lucky island destination to recreate, camp, and host family picnics at the former buildings where the inmates were housed. There’s also a commodification through a touristic lens of specific aspects of the history of Livø that seems to be in conflict with your objective to explore the history of the mental institution, and what happened there from the prisoners’ perspective – a sort of Howard Zinn or Chris Harmon’s “people's history” approach to understanding Livø. From my perspective, those two ideologies clashed and this is what produced the censorship in relation to the power dynamics of how the island is partially subject to commercial interests.

Visitor information: Here you can read about The Keller Anstalt. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Visitor information: Read about Livø’s “fascinating nature” and the holiday center. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Another perspective, is seeing how what is “censored” is politically charged in an imbalanced and contradictory way in Denmark – illustrations of Muhammed, or some of the hateful performances that have happened by Danish “artists” recently in Copenhagen and Poland – these are defended by the political right with the idea of protecting free speech, regardless of whether it denigrates racial minorities or causes trauma to marginalized groups. In our case, a more fact-finding approach to understanding underlying Danish cultural history and trauma in which it has subjugated marginalized groups, produced censorship from a different perspective for us throughout the project. Do you think there are any strategies for progressive approaches to political art, is this something that just happens, or do artists need to find new ways to deal with imbalances in relation to censorship?

Jakob Jakobsen: Understanding the violence in the welfare state – or the work state – is the main point for me in these situations. The denial of the violence of the welfare state in Denmark is still present. We can clearly see this in present day treatment of asylum seekers. The treatment of refugees and non-ethnic Danes in Danish society is built on some level of violence, which is often justified through this weird lens of helping them. That’s also why it is so strange that Danish politicians from the Social Democratic Party were instrumental in setting up Livø in the first place, and have continued to be very instrumental in othering people of color, asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants in Danish society. The current Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen is intending to make an apology around Livø and related institutions as if it was a story that ended, but it hasn’t – it's just taken on different forms and subjugated different groups over time. The paradox is that Mette Frederiksen is from the Social Democratic Party.

Also, the Danish work state is fanatically based on this economic rationale of production. It’s a very intricately fine-tuned machinery. Children are taken care of by the state from when they are one year old, and the poor people or the people in the so called “ghettos” are forced to put their kids in state institutions so they can be educated in democracy and western values. Everything is finely tuned in relation to a certain kind of social production.

The apology allows the government to imagine they are washing their hands, but at the same time they still want to place rejected asylum seekers on islands. Currently, they’re kept in cells, stripped of their rights, and placed in camps in the countryside without any money, prospects, or possibilities to move on. Their confinement is a form of imprisonment – Kærshovedgård, Sjælsmark and Ellebæk are not so far from present day versions of Livø.

Building from the former Keller Anstalt. This building is from 1911, which is the same year as the Keller Anstalt opened on Livø. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Memorial event on Livø, 7th of August, 2021. Photo: Rikke Ehlers Nilsson.

SWR: What became clear during the project was the history of violence on Livø, and how parallels can be drawn in how this practice has continued at refugee camps in Denmark. The refugee camp in Denmark could be seen as a new version of Livø – a Livø 2.0 – in terms of how vulnerable groups are currently being treated by Danish authorities. In relation to this apology, there will be effects though… As it becomes a state admission of guilt, there is a legal impact, which is usually socio-economic, but can also extend into creating access to new rights. Since there will be an admission of guilt, a grievance can be formalized by people and their families who have been traumatized. In terms of how Denmark treats migrants, do you think this apology will have an impact on the future of how the Danish government will continue to treat marginalized groups? Is this purely symbolic?

JJ: I think it is a symbolic gesture. In relation to the censorship we were just speaking about, I wanted to connect the censorship we experienced on Livø with what is happening in Denmark today, as there is a denial of the fact that the Danish welfare state is based on violence. It is the same argument made towards other groups – “we can’t afford to have refugees” is the claim. At the same time, Denmark is sending barbed wire to Lithuania to fortify borders and financing patrol boats in the Mediterranean to push back refugees, and the argument is the same as with Livø and the desire to annihilate these people through eugenics – again, “we can’t afford to have these people in our society”. The same thing goes for asylum seekers that have been through an extremely punitive process in Denmark, have been rejected, but can’t be deported unless there is an agreement with the place they escaped from, e.g. Syria, so they are kept in a camp indefinitely.

This idea of othering or pointing out those who are not productive or capable of reproducing Danish society, is still happening and is based on the argument for the “business” or the “factory” that is Denmark.

Jakob Jakobsen, “Mindesmærke for de 743 fanger på Livø fra 1911 til 1961”. Photo: Rikke Ehlers Nilsson.

Sometimes from the United States there are these jokes about the Danish welfare state as being sluggish, but time and time again, when measuring productivity in different countries, worker productivity is always through the roof in Denmark compared to the more neoliberal free-market societies. However, Danish productivity is very high because the whole of society is adjusted to production. There’s a social factory and the Danish society is made into this almost ideal, or utopian productivity hub.

That is why censorship comes when you say there is violence in the Danish work state as well as naturalized descrimination and racism that occurs against people who are unwanted. This is also happening in the formerly named “ghetto areas” – which are now called “areas of special interest” – where they want to tear down peoples homes or forcibly evict people with non-western backgrounds so they are not living in clusters. This is all based on this idea of productivity and trying to get people into the labor market. But maybe people just don’t want to work…

SWR: Attached to this, there seems to be both a socio-economic and socio-cultural idea or ideal of Danishness. The superiority of the Danish ethnic position in relation to this work state seems prevalent…

JJ: It's Danish for the Danish worker – it's always been like that. Denmark is only for the white Danish worker…

Jakob Jakobsen, “Mindesmærke for de 743 fanger på Livø fra 1911 til 1961”.

SWR: Another notable aspect of the Livø memorial project is that it is a really dynamic, multifaceted artistic proposition. There were elements of installation, socially engaged aspects of the project, participatory practices, and an artistic newspaper as an immaterial monument highlighting the history of Livø. The newspaper was a new take on the monument – a dematerialized, or a more socially engaged memorial – all of these physical and social aspects of the project reinforced perspectives related to health, mental health, and art’s relationship to understanding these problematic histories, but also enacting and finding new methodologies in relationship to mental health in society vis a vis artistic practice.

From my perspective the project allows for new possibilities to reflect upon the past, but also prototype new ways of thinking about the present in context – this is one of the core value propositions of the project. How can art and new perspectives between art and mental health create novel exchanges through experimental processes that the public can experience?

JJ: It is fascinating how contemporary society is relating to the social trauma that is inherited from the past and embedded in the present. The denial of the violence of the Danish welfare state (or work state), was interesting to manifest and bring to the surface. To make a monument for something that was a traumatic history – to make a monument for the 743 men that highlight the violence that is experienced in a so-called functional society – becomes an important gesture, rather than erecting a singular person on a plinth that manifests the story in some manner.

I thought it would be interesting to bring forward the story and history of Livø in a political way. We saw the denial, and in a way this is the same denial experienced today – there is a normative sentiment that “we have the best possible society we can have in Denmark, and we shouldn’t look at what is going on in other countries – our country is working in a very special way” but it has its costs. It is not enough to just understand the way in which Danish society works, but also to examine its preconditions that exclude the people who are not able to partake in the social factory that is Danish society. This is also a part of the health system. I have experienced the Danish healthcare system from a psychiatric ward, and you can imagine it might be different if there was more of a story around the patients and poverty, lack of resources, or lack of social networks as opposed to the normative story of madmen and being “crazy” in an individualized way.

Also, I want to disturb the bizarre self-image in Denmark that society always does things with the best intention. It is a myth that needs some kind of disruption, and that is a perspective I wanted to open up in the first place. I am also very focused on this national apology that is coming up that needs to be countered by pointing out that these mechanisms on Livø are still alive and functional in the Danish welfare state, which was in many ways established by the Social Democratic Party.

Also, after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when so many monuments were kicked down, turned over, or toppled, it made me think about how to make a monument or a memorial that somehow worked another way. It wasn’t so much about how to depict the marginalized group of Livø prisoners in a representational form, but how to deal with questions of lost collective memory and make telling their stories possible.

Jakob Jakobsen handing out the memorial in paper. Photo: Scott William Raby

SWR: What we (f.eks.) found really interesting as a self-organized initiative working with you on this project is the similarity in questioning assumed norms and values of the art world. Your Livø project implicates, enacts, and personifies what f.eks. is trying to do as an artistic platform to find not only more ecologically, but also more socially, economically, and politically sustainable ways of working. That was really fascinating about the monument in paper, which is really the key “object” that you produced.

The edition of 5000 artistic newspapers that are beautifully, but simply designed, capture a lot of different perspectives on Livø from artists, poets, historians, and yourself as well as the many different opinions of Livø that you encountered. Many different objects, old photographs, and ephemera that escaped the historical account from the Keller period, you documented and assembled into this delicate newspaper, that ultimately spawned a series of social interactions around it. The Livø monument became a social process of unearthing a history – one that even many Danes are not familiar with, let alone an international audience. But this was a key aspect of the project – rethinking the monument and making the memorial in a dematerialized, temporary, and discursive production. What about this type of monument was interesting for you or helped carry forth some of the criticisms or ideas embedded within the broader Livø project?

JJ: It is a very fragile monument – it's not in bronze or stone. It is also printed on quite thin, and not very refined newsprint paper. The “mindesmærke” or “memorial” is made in a way that appears as a folded newspaper, but it falls apart and becomes a collection of posters and sheets of interviews and images. I wanted to make a fragile monument. “As fragile as life itself” was the language that came to mind in the early stages of conception. Of course, the project becomes much more focused on the social relations – going around to the local libraries, culture houses, and other places and explaining the project, and giving them a stack of the “memorial” to show to their users and distribute if they’re interested. It has been an ongoing conversation about how to launch this memorial, and it's still ongoing how we thought about it as a monument going into people’s homes.

People took it with them into their living rooms, into their everyday lives, instead of a monument that was mounted on Livø somewhere in the landscape seen on a visit to the holiday center. The paper memorial has gone to many places, and is going to reappear in many shapes and forms, but of course it's not going to last forever. Of course, that is a very important point – I’m sure the next generation will have another take on this history, and it is critical that each era can create their own memorials.

You can see all of the useless sculptures of the past that people don’t know what to do with. Every year we should go around with a bulldozer and clean up the public spaces, because there are so many stories that are indifferent, violent, or suppressing people with imbedded histories of war, death, white supremacy, and all of these aspects of the past that we should regularly get rid of. In a way we should be happy this memorial won’t last.

SWR: It carries somewhat of a Gustav Metzger spirit of auto-destructive art doesn’t it? The paper also highlights this wonderful collaboration that we’ve been able to create, in terms of producing it, but also in terms of carrying out the event, and involving many people in Northern Jutland who can see their present day selves reflected in the historical account of Livø's past. For example, you involved a lot of artists and historians as well as people who had vacationed to Livø as children with first hand experience and are now in their 80’s. They came to the island to re-experience the space and your project. In addition to these different groups, there are many locations involved in the project as well – cultural centers, libraries, kunsthals – not just in Aalborg or Northern Jutland, but throughout the country, that have agreed to distribute stacks of the monument in paper.

There are many generative aspects of this collaborative, coproductive, cooperative process – which despite some of the challenges and censorship – produced benefits through this methodology and experience. How did this process carry the project forward in a more interesting way?

JJ: It is very important that the Livø project was anchored in a community. Through the different people involved in the project, who supported the project, helped out, and collaborated, it has been a collective process, which is very important. That way the project isn’t just reproducing a narrative of an artist making a monument, but actually, so many people have helped and participated in the production of the monument. It has been a social process.

There’s a whole page with lists of people credited in the memorial newspaper. The collaborative project has also shaped what is still unfolding – people are bringing the paper around and talking about it, and I think the monument creates social relations around these stories. Embedded in the nature, structure, idea, and concept of a memorial is that it is a collective effort. You can also say that it is still happening, that people are bringing the paper home, and continuing to unfold it – it is still taking shape and being distributed. Not just between the group of people that worked specifically to make it possible or who produced the memorial meeting on Livø in August, but many others are still “unfolding” the newspaper in their homes at this very moment, even though we will soon be running out of them…

List of places to find Jakob JakobsenS “Mindesmærke for de 743 fanger på Livø fra 1911 til 1961”:

Aalborg:

Kunsthal Nord
Nordkraft
Huset i Hasserisgade
Aalborg Public Library
1000Fryd
Casa Anne Maries Vej
Råt&Godt

Northern Jutland:

Løgstør Public Library
Livø Historical Museum w/Naturstyrelsen
Vesthimmerlands Museum
Frederikshavns Kunstmuseum

Copenhagen:

Statens Museum for Kunst
Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Det Lilla Rum
Møllegades Boghandel

Other Locations:

Aarhus: Kunsthal Aarhus
Slagelse: Danmarks Forsorgshistoriske Museum
Svendborg: Forsorgsmuseet and Svendborg Museum
Vejle: Kellersminde Museum
Viborg: Viborg Kunsthal and Viborg Museum.
Online: Order copy here (Shipping: 60kr. in Denmark).

For any inquiries regarding the project, please don’t hesitate with getting in contact with f.eks. at f.eks.contact@gmail.com

In 2021, idoart.dk has received funding through Viden, dialog og debat by Statens Kunstfond. Throughout the year, the funding will go to the production of articles with a special focus on making space for nuances and new voices. The article you’ve just read has been realized thanks to this grant.

JAKOB JAKOBSEN & SCOTT WILLIAM RABY

Jakob Jakobsen (b. 1965) is an artist, activist, writer, and organizer who graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine arts in 1995. He has been pioneering numerous critical, socially-engaged, and radical pedagogical forms of artistic practice for decades.

Scott William Raby (b. 1984) is an artist and arts organizer who was a practice-based researcher in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, and graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in 2012. Spatial politics, ecological questions, post-capitalist strategies, power dynamics, and experimental organization are focal points of his current practice.