Mediating ´difficult´ histories: old prisons as cultural heritage
Grete Swensen
Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning, NIKU grete.swensen@niku.no
Abstract
This paper has special relevance to the two first sub-themes in the “dark heritage” session:
What makes a heritage site dark? Can dark heritage sites lose their ´darkness´ and how?
The process of defining and selecting cultural heritage is marked by ambiguity. The paper will focus on a group of historic buildings with a particular “dark” social history attached - prisons. As part of major reforms in the legal system in Norway, decisions were made by the young national state in 1857 to build a network of district prions throughout the country. They aimed at protecting society from unwanted harm as well as reforming individuals who had been led astray. A majority of the buildings which were erected in the following years were based on drawings from some of Norway`s most recognised architects, and the prisons were designed in a functional, but partially symbolic form, signalising hierarchy and political power. Gradually, the old prisons are now being replaced by more functional buildings.
In the process of filling empty monumental buildings with new functions, new stories are created. The paper will present three old prisons which have been filled with new functions and analyses the messages that are mediated about the buildings` former history.
Questions raised are: What processes are activated when buildings originally built to maintain justice and carry out punishment are assessed as heritage value and transformed to other purposes (museums, restaurants, hotels etc.)? What act of selection - inclusion and exclusion - of stories are taking place when old utility buildings are turned into cultural monuments?
Heritage is profoundly affective – a quality that can be put in motion. But where should the boarder go between turning ´difficult´ heritage into commerce and into empathy? What ethical implications are involved when the heritage site involves both examples of atrocities and injustice?
When analysing the messages and images the new use of prisons are conveying, it will be discussed to what extent we find that museums and galleries make use of their potential to function as “memory activist” and mediate aspects of social history generally unknown to the public. ‘Memory activists’ is a concept originated from historian Carol Gluck and is used to describe “those who break silences and change the boundaries between what can and cannot be said” (Winter 2010, p.12).
The paper will discuss the heritagization processes which are taking place in view of central concepts such as “silencing” (Assman 2010) “dissonant heritage” (Tunbridge &
Ashworth 1996) and “domestication of history” (White 2003).