Debat, Interviews, Offentligt rum, Ord, Proces, Publikationer, RejserJAKOB JAKOBSEN & SCOTT WILLIAM RABYNovember 23, 2021Jakob Jakobsen, Scott William Raby, F.eks., Livø, Noah Holtegaard, Anna Reider, Statens Kunstfond, VDD2021, PublikationerComment

UNFOLDING THE LIVØ MEMORIAL: PART I

In the summer of 2021 a new public monument as a “memorial in paper” was officially launched on the small Danish island of Livø. “Mindesmærke for de 743 fanger på Livø fra 1911 til 1961” or the “Memorial for the 743 prisoners on Livø from 1911 to 1961” was emblazoned on the cover in stark white lettering against a matte black background. What appeared to be a newspaper of reflective texts, interviews and poems, folded out into a series of posters depicting images of weathered photos, curious and crude objects, an intimate portrait of an aging man, old hand-written letters and a map of the “Livø Republic”.

The memorial in paper tells the largely untold story of the men who were imprisoned on the island of Livø in the early 20th century. During this time, the Danish state supported an experimental hybrid institution on Livø that was not a prison per se, but rather a facility that de facto imprisoned men deemed “unfit for society”. They were placed on the island by the state – often indefinitely – for reasons such as mental health issues, homelessness, sexual orientation, alcoholism, vagabonding, or epilepsy.

However, the story of these othered men still resonated strongly. The project provoked strong reactions about the contradictions within the Danish welfare state, the dark story of eugenics in Denmark, the denial of Livø’s history, and artistic censorship, among others.

The memorial was officially launched August 7th, 2021 on Livø by artist 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 as part I in a two-part series. (Here’s a link to Part II).

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

Scott William Raby: Many people have perhaps seen images of the memorial event on Livø or the memorial newspaper itself as it has been traveling all over Denmark. Could you give a brief introduction to the project – its aims and what conversation you wanted to spark about Livø?

Jakob Jakobsen: It started with f.eks.’s invitation to make a public artistic interaction in Northern Jutland and I quickly realized that I wanted to work with Livø’s history as a former mental institution and prison. It is something that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long time and thought that it would be a productive project to collaborate on with f.eks. An aspect for me was that if I was going to do something about the history of Livø as an institution, it was critical that the project would be anchored locally. It was an opportunity to have this local collaboration, so the initial point of departure was definitely the invitation.

SWR: We’re really glad you accepted, also since your artistic practice shows such a deep understanding of the ways that art can relate to institutional histories. For example, during the Keller period on Livø from 1911-1961 a hybrid mental institution was established on the island. With your project, there are a few different thematic interests embedded, but obviously Livø and it's former status as an institution is really significant – can you discuss a bit about the Keller period and what happened on Livø during that era?

From research trip to Livø. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Jakob Jakobsen. Research trip to Livø. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Research trip to Livø: Buildings from the former Keller Anstalt. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Scott and Jakob. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

Buildings from the former Keller Anstalt. Photo: Noah Holtegaard.

JJ: It has been an ongoing interest of mine to think about the breaking up of mental institutions in different ways. As such, deinstitutionalization has been a social and critical issue I’ve been pursuing for years. In relation to this, British anti-psychiatry from the 60’s was particularly inspiring. Especially a group of existential psychotherapists and psychiatrists that eventually opened an anti-hospital in east London that was a deinstitutionalized space where people with mental health issues lived. This experimental hospital was called Kingsley Hall, and the roles between doctors and patients were somehow erased as they lived together in a communal structure.

The idea was to have a mental hospital with open doors and without a clear definition of who were the doctors and who were the patients, as it is common that medical staff and patients wear different uniforms. Kingsley Hall used a strategy to bring the space of institutionalization into the city itself – to the east end – into the context of not necessarily treatment, but more in terms of creating a diversity of relationships to understand mental illness between the patients and the localized community as well.

This social experiment opened up a discussion not just about mental health institutions, but many other types of institutions as well. For example, this included rethinking university and educational systems in Britain. It became important to ask what these institutions were doing and seeing them as truly political sites rather than so-called naturally given entities. Sometimes people think that hospitals are neutral, naturally-given, or just provided to the public by society, but of course this is not a de-politicized decision.

Hospitals are political sites that take your body and treat it in a very specific way, with very specific aims. This whole story of building and deconstructing institutions is very interesting because hospitals are not viewed so intensely as places of subjugation or repression. The same goes for art institutions, such as the museum – of course there has been a whole historical lineage and genre of institutional critique, but there have not been very many attempts to actually abolish the art institution or museum itself.

The point is that institutions have a series of impacts on their users’ everyday lives – from cradle to grave – and I was interested in the machines or apparatuses that take bodies and treat, shape, and in a way push them out – often into other institutions. Our lives start out in the kindergarten and move to the school, then to the university, then to the factory, sometimes the hospital or the prison – a long line of institutions are shaping our lives that we don’t often think about or consider the consequences of.

In the Danish welfare context, institutions are essentially the main arm of the state, and as such state institutions are a very dominant part of Danish life. Compared to the United States – where you’re from, Scott – Denmark is organizing and investing a lot of resources into state institutions. There is a lot of money, and really a whole economic sector of institutions that are directly impacting human life. Speaking from my own experience, if I would be so bold to say – my life as a Dane has been shaped by institutions more than by the free market. This has inspired me to look into the radical histories of either experimental institutions – e.g. with psychiatry, but also in education – to unearth these generative histories. And to understand the repressive nature of institutions – like Livø in the Keller period. These are the institutions that shape social life as a mode of productivity, especially in the Northern European context that I was born into and influenced by.

SWR: It’s interesting to think about the Livø memorial in relation to the arc of projects you’ve been doing – to look at the different stages, phases, and histories of institutions. This ranges from the Hospital for Self-Medication almost enacting a new form of mental health institution – perhaps inspired by these radical histories of health institutions in East London in the 60’s – to not forget the more repressive institutions and their histories, as your project highlights. As such, it is important to further understand the institution on Livø, because we each have a different perspective on this, as was also revealed in the memorial meeting. One of the important claims your Livø memorial project makes is that the subjugation of othered men on Livø relates to the early formation of the Danish welfare state. How did the formation of the Livø institution relate to the Danish welfare state and what were the conditions in which the institution on Livø was created?

JJ: In a Danish context, the term “welfare state” originates from the late 1950’s, but the Livø project is very much connected to the history of the Danish welfare state and its earlier foundations. The welfare state in Denmark began to be shaped by the social reforms in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 1929. With the reforms in 1933, the perspective in relation to poverty and how to treat the poor changed. There was a shift in vocabulary toward social rights in relation to which form of support to provide to the public. The people who were able to work were given new rights, but those who weren’t capable of working were basically pushed out, framed as outsiders, or somewhat punished. They were supported only sparsely and seen as a problem. The Danish welfare state is a myth – it is a totally inaccurate description. It is actually a working state, or a work state.

SWR: Isn’t it also a workerist state?

JJ: No, no, it's actually not workerist, because that would be from the worker’s point of view – this is from the perspective of work and productivity. Actually, from the standpoint of production which the Danish welfare state is designed to enhance and facilitate.

SWR: An important point of distinction...

JJ: Denmark is a “work state”. That’s much more precisely defined than the so-called “welfare state.” Therefore, the institutions shaping the Danish work state prioritize producing workers. That’s why a system of mental hospitals was initially developed to handle the people who were not fit for work. Since the early 20th century, the mental health system that was controlled by the state has been increasing in scale, and this system is commonly viewed as a side effect of modernization, but actually these institutions served as a prerequisite to the welfare state. That’s why I call it the “work state”.

The identification and defining of the so-called “useless, valueless” people by society at the time – many of whom were mentally ill, homeless, gay, eplileptic – what Marx would call the lumpen proletariat or the people who were not defined as the working class – was orchestrated through the organization and technology that the institutions utilized to define and identify people who would not be able to contribute to the “work state”.

They were painted as threats to the “work state” and to be rejected by the state to become a part of a system of different types of confinement, where Livø was one of the most extreme examples, but it was working in parallel to the prison system at the time. The Livø institution was a part of the national mental health system, which decided if the patients were kept in a closed or open mental institution. Men were placed on Livø indefinitely by a medical doctor often in correspondence with the police and the judicial system. They could only leave if a doctor somehow saw a reason for releasing them.

Many of the men at Livø were begging to get a proper trial within the legal system so they could at least obtain a time frame for their detention. There was an entire system of spaces within the welfare state for confining people who were not able to work or who did not want to work.

Jakob Jakobsen in conversation with Ib Svenningsen – one of the few living people who experienced Livø during the Keller period as a guest. His grandparents were employed as nurses at the Livø Institution, and he visited them in the summer while the institution was still in operation during the 40’s and 50’s. Photo: Scott William Raby.

Archival material for the memorial in paper. Photo: Scott William Raby.

Jakob Jakobsen documenting archival material for the memorial in paper. Photo: Scott William Raby.

SWR: As an immigrant learning more about the history of the “so-called welfare state” culturally and economically, it seems counterintuitive to imagine this more intense capitalistic focus on productivity in relation to identifying the workers and the “non-workers”. The “Danish work state” breaks down the common mythology of the Danish welfare state as a social-democratic model and places it closer to the less humane Anglo-American neoliberal capitalist model. With that said, outside of the economic aspects, there also seems to be a socio-cultural identity formation, a population purification, or a eugenic conversation in relation to the formation of the “other” in Danish society. How does the Livø institution relate to the construction of Danish ethnic and cultural identity?

JJ: In Europe and in the United States eugenics appeared at the beginning of the 18th century, but it primarily came out of the U.S. and was used to maintain segregation, creating laws against interracial marriage, reinforcing Jim Crow, and fostering rascist repression. This was legitimized through science and eugenic theory inspired by the likes of Darwin, adopting a “survival of the fittest” mentality by suggesting that your faculties were something that were inherited. In this era, there was a lot of discussion about degenerate families, and there was a fear of degeneration within society. People also started to live longer and the argument was “nature was not taking out the weak links – they weren’t being eliminated, so in a way we need to control who was reproducing.” This was eugenic theory coming from the U.S. and being imported into Denmark, Germany, the U.K. etc. The Danish and German programs were quite parallel, up until the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws by the Third Reich in 1935. In Denmark, there was a fear of families that had “degenerate” faculties – homelessness, epilepcy, homosexuality, criminality, etc. – and they needed to be annihilated. This was done by making sure that they didn’t reproduce and have any children.

On Livø, this was a very important part of the story, because many of the men there were othered and those in power reinforcing societal norms at the time didn’t want them to reproduce. Therefore, one of the ways to be released from Livø was to accept being castrated or sterilized. This was the easiest way to be released from Livø, and was clearly based on eugenic thinking. In the beginning of the 1920’s, politicians were more into eugenics than the scientific community, but that changed in the 1930’s when the medical community actually pushed ahead of the political sphere in their advancement of promoting eugenic practices. The background to this might have been that they felt they were getting acknowledgment for their politicized brand of science from the political sphere as they were making sure degenerate families were being pointed out and eventually annihilated.

Of course, with the German eugenics programs they went further, and actually killed hundreds of thousands of people during the second world war. Surprisingly, after the second world war in Denmark, and also in Germany, many of the doctors involved in the eugenics programs were not punished during the Nuremberg trials, because they claimed everything they did they learned from the Americans – which the Americans couldn’t really dispute because it was undeniable. Therefore, many of the doctors that were a part of the German eugenics programs were already back into the international medical community in the late 1940’s. Also, there was a Danish institute of eugenics that existed until the 1960’s in Copenhagen that was paid for by American donations in the 1930’s. It's actually quite a problematic story, but the eugenics programs worked well in relation to the Danish “work state”. It was a way to get rid of people who could not contribute directly toward reproducing the economic values and framework of the state. Another difference between the Danish and the German programs was that the German project was aesthetically based – they had this idea of the pure population that had a certain physical appearance. In Denmark this was different as the program was based on economics. The rationale was based on financial aspects, and the idea was that the state can’t afford having “non-productive populations” around. That’s still the argument today.

Jakob Jakobsen "Mindesmærke for de 743 fanger på Livø fra 1911 til 1961". Memorial event on Livø, 7th of August, 2021. Photo: Rikke Ehlers Nilsson.

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

SWR: This conversation highlights a very problematic circumstance we encountered in organizing the project, where a small group of people actually denied this particular history of Livø. We dubbed them “Livø deniers” – like holocaust or climate deiners. Danish people who weren’t comfortable thinking about the island’s past as an experimental prison-hospital in relation to the history of eugenics projects in Denmark. How did you experience this Danish historical denial while making the project on Livø?

JJ: It was very important that the memorial was produced and launched on Livø along with people that somehow had an interest in the history of the Keller period on Livø. Many people that had been working at former mental hospitals or who were descendants of staff came to the event on the 7th of August, as well as a handful of people working with the history of mental health institutions. Also, there were historians that were more interested in the local aspects of Livø. They combined with the crowd around f.eks. that also brought many different artistic voices and perspectives. Also, poets like Anna Reider, other cultural workers, people who had experiences with mental health institutions, as well as people from the trans community like Noah Holtegaard – they spoke up against this denial from their different perspectives at the memorial meeting.

The launch of the memorial event contained many personal stories as the idea was that people shared their own reflections on Livø in a non-hierarchical way. However, parts of the event turned into somewhat of a debate, which was not the intention as it was supposed to be entirely a collective public testimony. However, during the event on Livø it became clear that there is a widespread denial of the violence that happened there in the past. According to some of the Livø deniers, the Livø institution had a humanitarian aim to help people and keep disabled people on a beautiful island, but the facts are undeniable. The men spent most of their time trying to escape. After the meeting I said “we’re all deniers”. We all gain from the so-called welfare state, as we are implied to be functional because others are pointed out as non-functional. This level of denial in understanding the violence of the welfare state is deeply integrated in our consciousness, whether in the history of Livø or in many of today’s institutions.

It was a bit painful when former nurses and caregivers from these different historical institutions turned up with a very determined aim to somehow fight or defend the legacy of the Livø institution. The fact that we called the men “prisoners” on the cover of the memorial newspaper caused a lot of trouble. In fact, because we used this specific term, it made it impossible for us to gain access to the former buildings of the institution that are still on the island today, which are now used as a holiday center. The holiday center said that if we described the inmates of the Livø institution as prisoners, we couldn’t use their buildings, so we were kicked out and held the event in a barn – despite the fact that the island is owned by the Danish state today.

SWR: Precisely. The historical denial manifested itself in various ways. We did legitimately encounter censorship throughout the production, especially in the planning and launch of the memorial event on Livø. The business that controlled essentially all of the goods and services available on the island wouldn’t rent us a venue, sell us catering services, and denied us access to the historical architectural interiors of the former institution.

Therefore, the phenomenological aspect of encountering the spaces as part of a temporary collective memorial was denied. Further, this reflection on the history by opening up these very horrific – but also unique – forms of architecture, was not possible (Originally we had planned a Livø architectural walk in situ for the audience to experience prison cells with drawings scratched into the walls and different names carved into surfaces of the buildings). In relation to the broader question of censorship – how did this change your perspective on the project as it unfolded?

Peephole in prison cell door surrounded by scratchings. Photo: Scott William Raby.

From prison cell with drawings scratched into the walls. Photo: Scott William Raby.

JJ: At a certain point, it became clear that it was necessary to call the men prisoners in relation to what happened there. They were prisoners. They were kept there for an indeterminate time against their free will, they were placed there by force – clearly they were prisoners. It took some time to feel comfortable using this term, because they were normally called “the guys” or “the pupils”. There were many fear evoking terms used on the mainland about this island filled with “madmen”. Locally, it was called “The Devil’s Island”, and the people there were called “the wild”. There has been a lot of terminology but it wasn’t my invention to call the men prisoners, as they were called prisoners previously by the press and in many other contexts.

SWR: Birgit Kirkebæk, the historian who wrote the most comprehensive books on Livø and Sporgø, used the term prisoners as well. This terminology was used historically, in literature, and in popular culture at the time.

JJ: I wasn’t trying to distort the past, or make a bizarre leap into a new vocabulary. However, the artistic gesture of making a memorial for the prisoners pushed this language. The current administration of the museum at the Keller’s Institution in Vejle that preserves the history of this once largest mental institution in Northern Europe – said they had never heard of the men on Livø referred to as prisoners before my project. This is despite the fact there are old newspaper clippings from the 50’s where the headline “prisoners” is used. This is clearly not only denial, but also erasure of memory. Very typical in Danish society, as details are important in understanding the power dynamics. The discrimination, othering, and denial of the violence of the work state is also always found in the detail. If you call the prisoners “pupils”, it sounds like they were treated well and in the best possible way. The vocabulary is always important and always used in a very subtle way to somehow cover the violence. Simply stated – they were prisoners.

The conversation continues
In Part II, the conversations on the denial of Livø’s history, and artistic censorship are continued and expanded upon to discuss the violent legacy of Livø that still persists in Denmark through mistreatment of marginalized groups and minority populations. Also, practices of deinstitutionalizing art and health, new roles for art in public space, rethinking the monument, and more are discussed as responses. The conversation continues with Unfolding the Livø Memorial: Part II, which you can read via the link below.

Read “UNFOLDING THE LIVØ MEMORIAL: PART 2” HERE

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.