What Lies Unspoken

Third Text

ISSN: 0952-8822 (Print) 1475-5297 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20

What Lies Unspoken

Temi Odumosu

To cite this article: Temi Odumosu (2019): What Lies Unspoken, Third Text, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688

Published online: 10 Oct 2019.

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Third Text, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2019.1654688

What Lies Unspoken

A Remedy for Colonial Silence(s) in Denmark

Temi Odumosu

Astrid Holm, Rose Laying the Introduction Table, (detail), 1914, oil on canvas, 97.7 x 79 cm, Statens ﬂ Museum for Kunst In this article I will try to describe and re ect on a project I initiated in Copenhagen last year called What Lies Unspoken: Sounding the Colo- 1 As a collaborative, co- 1 ‘ ’ institutional project, What nial Archive. I write try because the more I think about it retrospec- Lies Unspoken had a wide- tively, the more it expands and loses structure. In truth, the project was ranging team that should be a thought experiment on different modes of colonial representation, named. Lead project ’ facilitators were Henrik approached with particular sensitivity around affect. But the project s Holm, Sarah Giersing, Mette enquiries consequentially revealed the challenges of intervening in insti- Kia Krabbe Meyer and tutions, and of critiquing their ways of knowing and doing. The idea Mathias Danbolt; sound design was by Mikkel Brask was developed as part of my artistic research practice in the Living and Jakob Hvid Amstrup; Archives Research Project at Malmö University, where I had been interaction design at the debating and experimenting with colleagues on archiving processes SMK was by Louise 2 Springborg; exhibition assisted by mobile media, open data, storytelling and performance. design and management at Towards the end of 2015 I was invited by curators at the Statens the Royal Library was by Museum for Kunst (SMK), and Royal Library of Denmark, to discuss Christina Back; and extended education and how to help facilitate a wider public conversation about colonialism outreach activities were by and its imagery. They were preparing for the 2017 commemorative pro- Nana Bernhardt, Jens gramme, a year of events and initiatives marking the centennial of Den- Christensen and Michelle Eistrup. mark’s sale and transfer of its former Caribbean islands to the United

2 Living Archives (2012– States in 1917. 2017) was a major research I had worked with a number of institutions during the UK’s bicenten- project at Malmö University ary of abolition in 2007, and experienced a sense of déjà vu when witnes- in Sweden, investigating ﬁ archives from an sing the concern, anxiety and diminished con dence that was displayed at 3 interdisciplinary perspective a moment of potential discourse transformation. Taking all this on with a dual focus on board, I decided to work countervisually (to use Nicholas Mirzeoff’s performing memory and open data. Living Archives term) with sound, developing a participatory and geographically situated was funded by the Swedish project concept with the aim of calling different voices into the museum

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non- Commercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 3

4 Research Council’s and library exhibition spaces. Initial exploratory questions asked: In digitalised society initiative Danish exhibitions on colonial history, who usually speaks and why? (Vetenskapsrådet). Further What might people actually have to say about colonial artworks, if information about its productions and activities given the space and time to respond? Could the affective resonance of are on the project’s legacy sound nurture the breaks and silences of history? website: http://livingarchives. mah.se/. In the summer of 2016 we made a successful collaborative appli- cation to the Nordea Fund as part of its ‘Historier on Denmark’ initiative 3 For a critical collection of essays on the 2007 supported by The Castle and Cultural Agency (Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen). endeavour, in which I also At the beginning of 2017, with the technical support of sound designers, contributed an essay, see we all embarked on a three-month process in which we hosted discursive Laurajane Smith et al, eds, Representing Enslavement half-day workshops at both institutions, during which we recorded live and Abolition in Museums: responses in front of colonial artworks: paintings, photographs, maps, Ambiguous Engagements, and the 1493 illustrated version of Christopher Columbus’s letter to Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon and New York, 2011; also the king of Spain. Hours of conversation were edited into short compo- the essays on ‘Remembering sitions, which served as interpretive interventions. One set of compo- and Forgetting’ by Marcus sitions was played through headset consoles in the Royal Library Wood, Douglas Hamilton, ‘ Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace exhibition Blinde Vinkler/Blind Spots: Images of the Danish West and Catherine Hall, in Cora Indies Colony’ (19 May 2017 – 3 February 2018), and a longer piece Kaplan and John R Oldﬁeld, could be heard through speakers installed above artworks, in a one- eds, Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, Palgrave Macmillan, room immersive sound installation Ufortalte Historier/What Lies Unspo- Basingstoke, 2010. ken (6 May – 30 December 2017) at the SMK. That is the condensed overview, with many gaps in between. It is important to note upfront that I write about this project with an air of caution. This is, after all, a ﬁrst-person testimony that cannot speak on behalf of my collaborators. Also, the process still feels incom- plete. The project was a bold move for this cultural context, as a co- institutional project of an activist nature, made within a shifting politi- cal landscape in Denmark. The whole experience of collaboration, and of hosting dialogue, took energy and time and was emotive, particularly when set against a public conversation that sometimes lacked sophisti- cation. I’m writing this article in the middle of 2018, and we (the Nordic arts community) have still not had a proper collective debrief about exactly what happened last year, and what comes next. This article will therefore take a less formulaic approach to the project description, providing instead notes on the process, as seen through three of my predominant modes of engagement as the creative lead: witnessing, listening, and intervening.

Witnessing

What Lies Unspoken emerged in response to a series of internal and external provocations. Firstly, there were the strange aftertastes from time spent living in Denmark, and working in Danish arts and cultural heritage contexts that both lacked diversity and shared worldwide problems of access, inclusion and accountability. Then there were the residual haunt- 4 For the discourse on ings from my many years entrenched in slavery’s visual archive, research- countervisuality, see Nicholas Mirzoeff, The ing European artworks that subjected people of African descent to an Right to Look: A invasive and distorting gaze. And ﬁnally, one can add the sensory Counterhistory of Visuality, impressions left from travel to sites of memory and conscience around Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, the former Atlantic world, where colonial residues profoundly 2012 impact contemporary issues of voice, presence/absence, and of who 4

5 For an interesting take on matters and why. I think we need to start here, with the disturbances, for colonial bio-politics, things to make proper sense, because cultural production ﬁltered through the nerves, under conditions of coloniality – separation, bias, asymmetrical power see Nancy Rose Hunt, A – 5 Nervous State: Violence, relations is often work that unsettles the nervous system: work Remedies, and Reverie in gasping for reprieve from that ‘force exercised on muscles and mind’, Colonial Congo, Duke which Ann Stoler has so usefully described as ‘imperial duress’.6 What University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2016. emerges under duress? Since 2012, when I ﬁrst came to live in Copenhagen, I witnessed 6 Ann Laura Stoler, Duress: Imperial Durabilities in things in public and private spaces that highlighted how sensitive the Our Times, Duke notion of representation could be in a Danish context. There were, University Press, Durham, for example, complex emotions that emerged from seeing a black North Carolina, 2016, pp 6–9 child actively avoid or even hide from my own black presence when

7 Barbara Yngvesson, walking down the street with their adoptive Danish parents. Scholars Belonging in an Adopted of transnational adoption attest that such encounters are common, World: Race, Identity, and and that we have to honour (and take care of) the discomfort a child Transnational Adoption, ‘ ’ ‘ University of Chicago might feel in proximity to ethnic likeness, which can sometimes unset- 7 Press, Chicago, 2010, tle the picture’ of a delicate and emergent sense of self. In Denmark, p 127 this would be a sense of self developed in a society that has weaponised 8 For examples see Rikke its reputation for tolerance, insisting on seamless and quiet (no com- Andreassen and Uzma plaints) integration, while concurrently pointing to, even laughing at, Ahmed-Andresen, ‘I Can 8 Never Be Normal: A the colour of your skin. The unfolding media debate on the Conversation About Race, ‘N-word’ (among other pejoratives) has also been particularly brutal, Daily Life Practices, Food ’ primarily because it reveals entrenched views about the use of this and Power , European 9 Journal of Women’s language as an inheritance, and a Danish right to freedom of speech. Studies, vol 21, no 1, 2014, Added to this linguistic hostility is the daily confrontation with stereo- pp 3–8; Karen Wren, typical images of African, Chinese and Middle Eastern figures, which ‘Cultural Racism: Something Rotten in the decorate products in the supermarket and on the high street; ‘retro State of Denmark?’, Social racism’ that has legitimised the demeaning of non-white bodies as & Cultural Geography, vol 10 2, no 2, 2001, pp 141–162; pleasurable commodities. Mira C Skadegård, ‘With The Nordic countries are predisposed to exceptionalism, seeing them- Friends Like These, Who selves as separate from or untouched by the afterlife of colonialism. That Needs Enemies?’, Nordic ’ Journal of Migration said, there is something distinct about Denmark s remembrance of its Research, vol 7, no 4, history as benign that has been difficult not to notice or respond to. A 2017, pp 214–223; and few facts: Denmark was involved in the transatlantic enslavement Mira Skadegård Thorsen, 11 fi ‘Sand Negro’, in Annette trade. It established its rst fort on the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1658 Bilfeldt et al, eds, Social and by 1733 had purchased three islands for sugar production – St Eksklusion, Læring og Croix, St Thomas and St John. Danes have tended to celebrate that Forandring, Aalborg fi Universitetsforlag, they were the rst in Europe to abolish the trade in 1792, even though 12 Aalborg, 2016, the edict did not take proper effect until 1803. After emancipation in pp 168–182. 1848, which came by way of rebellion, possibilities for selling the 9 Key articles in the Danish islands were already being explored. In the interim, local authorities press included Nazila Kivi, immediately instituted a Labour Act to serve planter interests, with ‘Nej, det er stadig ikke okay at bruge n-ordet’ (No, annual contracts binding the formerly enslaved and their families to plan- It’s Still Not Okay To Use tations. Afro-Caribbean workers struggled for an improvement in living The N-Word), Politiken, 20 May 2016; Christian and working conditions. Growing unrest eventually led to a labour Braad Thomsen, ‘Neger er dispute in 1878, known locally as the ‘Fireburn’, where workers burnt da en hædersbetegnelse’ plantations and destroyed property in protest.13 One of the leaders of (Negro Is Then A Title Of Honour), Politiken,24 this revolt, Mary Thomas, known as Queen Mary, has become an impor- 14 May 2016; Nina Grumsen tant historical icon on the islands. Following a public debate and a and Benjamin Krasnik, referendum held in 1916, Denmark finalised its treaty of sale on 31 ‘Hvorfor må man egentlig ikke sige neger?’ (Why Do March 1917 by transferring the people, land and public property of Not You Really Say the three Caribbean colonies to the United States for 25 million 5

Alfred Schmidt, ‘Den rige Mister Wilson’,inKlods-Hans, 1917, Royal Library of Denmark, licensed: CC BY-NC-ND 6

Negro?), Kristligt Dagblad, 25 May 2016; Pernille Dreyer, ‘Hell no, NEJ, og en hel masse !!!: “Vi vil ikke kaldes negre”’ (‘Hell No, NO, and a Whole Lot More!!!: “We Will Not Be Called Negroes”’), Berlingske, 30 May 2016. The debate about the ‘N- Word’ as neutral (the use of which is thus an entitlement) is also discussed as part of a wider discourse on Nordic exceptionalism. For example, see ‘The Politics of the N-Word’, in Anna Rastas, ‘Reading History through Finnish Exceptionalism’, in Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen, eds, Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2012, pp 92–95.

10 See Mathias Danbolt, ‘Retro Racism: Colonial Ignorance and Racialized Affective Consumption in Danish Public Culture’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol 7, no 2, 2017, pp 105–113; Mathias Danbolt, ‘Mediestorm om kolonihistoriens aftryk i dansk visual kultur’,in Jakob Ladegaard and Frits Andersen, eds, Kampen om Anon, Portrait of Louisa MacPherson Bauditz with her wet nurse Charlotte Hodge, 1847, de Danske Slaver: Aktuelle daguerrotype, Royal Library of Denmark Perspektiver pa Kolonihistorien, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, dollars in gold.15 Since then the islands have been known as the 2017, pp 148–166; and Temi Odumosu, ‘Open US Virgin Islands. Images or Open Wounds? In Denmark, this moment of separation has, until very recently, been Colonial Past and Present in held in a strange kind of psychological aspic, preserving a view of the the City of Copenhagen’,in ’ Susan Kozel, ed, Openness: islands as a lost paradise, Denmark s role as more benevolent than that Politics, Practices, Poetics, of other European colonisers, and the colonial project overall as one of A Living Archives past glory.16 Karen Fog Olwig has conceptualised the gradual shrinking Publication, Malmö, 2016, ’ published online at: https:// of Denmark s territory (which over time also included parts of what is livingarchives.mah.se/ﬁles/ now known as Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Tran- 2015/01/openness_ﬁnal.pdf quebar [a town in the Indian state ofTamil Nadu]), as one of ‘deglobalisa- 11 For a recently revised tion’, and something that has had a profound effect on culture.17 historical overview by the head archivist in charge of Nostalgia for what once was has naturally been coupled with the melanch- colonial documents at the olia of loss, perhaps best articulated by a contemporaneous transfer Danish National Archives, cartoon, from 1917, showing Mother Denmark weeping as America see Erik Gøbel, The Danish Slave Trade and Its takes away her Caribbean babies, while father Denmark stashes the sale Abolition, Brill, Leiden, money in the national house. Without a critical mass of US Virgin 7

2017; and for an important Islanders making the consequences of history visible and corporeally scholarly contribution from present on Danish soil, forgetfulness has abounded.18 By this I do not the US Virgin Islands see mean a denial of history in general, rather a turning away from (a block- George F Tyson and Arnold 19 R Highfield, eds, The age of) the human specifics that hurt; the kind of wilful inducement of Danish West Indian Slave amnesia that Stuart Hall described as ‘decisive mental repression’, which Trade: Virgin Islands is ‘one effect of the traumatic adjustment to the very process of bringing Perspectives, Virgin Islands 20 Humanities Council, St Empire to an end’. This attitude becomes most interesting when Croix, Virgin Islands, 1994. viewed through the prism of material heritage – the ‘silver plates’, ‘pic- ’ fi 12 See chapter 9 ‘Transitional tures , furniture, and other movable items in of cial residences that were Period 1792–1802’,in taken back to Denmark as part of the conditions for the 1916 treaty of Gøbel, 2017, pp 151–166 sale.21 Denmark left the US Virgin Islands with things, and negotiated 13 See Peter Hoxcer Jensen, custody of a significant bulk of colonial documents, the rest of which From Serfdom to Fireburn and Strike: The History of were transferred to the United States. Jeannette Bastian has rightly Black Labor in the Danish acknowledged how the removal of this archive represents a profound West Indies 1848–1916, and structural memory loss for the US Virgin Islands.22 In Denmark, Antilles Press, Christiansted, St Croix, however, it is this evidence of intimacies and entanglements, administra- Virgin Islands, 1998; and tive oversight and obsession, with bodies and images of bodies, that chapter 1 ‘Post- foils any attempt to sequester an unruly and unfinished history. Emancipation St Croix 1849–1878’, in Lomarsh Roopnarine, Indian Indenture in the Danish Listening West Indies, 1863–1873, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2016, pp 15–23 In the autumn of 2015 I was approached by four curators asking critical 14 See Clifton E Marsh, ‘A questions: Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer, Mathias Danbolt and Sarah Gier- Socio-Historical Analysis of sing, who were developing a new exhibition together for 2017 at the the Labor Revolt of 1878 in Royal Library of Denmark; and Henrik Holm from the SMK, who also the Danish West Indies’, Phylon, vol 42, no 4, 1981, looked after the Royal Cast Collection. We all already knew each other pp 335–345. Queen Mary through our small arts community, attending similar conferences, net- is the inspiration for a public monument in working seminars and events. We were also members of a stakeholder Denmark, recently network, Nordic Connections, convened by scholar and filmmaker produced by artists Helle Stenum in 2015. This group brought together researchers and Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle, called Iam museum practitioners, and international guests, to discuss practical case Queen Mary. The sculpture studies exploring how colonial history has and could be represented in a was erected in March 2018. Nordic context. It is useful to know here that 2015–2016 was a particu- See Mathias Danbolt and Michael K Wilson, ‘A larly sensitive time in Denmark. A new centre-right government had Monumental Challenge to taken office and introduced a programme of swift spending cuts that Danish History’, impacted the cultural sector as well as universities. This precarity wea- Kunstkritikk, no 26, April 2018, published online at: kened morale, and the anxiety about spending curbed institutional http://www.kunstkritikk. energy when it came to prioritising the 2017 commemoration, with no/kommentar/a- several stakeholders having to change or cancel their proposed plans. monumental-challenge-to- fi danish-history/, accessed 10 Against this particular backdrop, I rst met with the Royal Library October 2018. team – one of the few institutions who maintained their original decision 15 For a key text on the to participate – to discuss their exhibition ideas. They were exploring referendum, only in Danish, alternative methods that could be used to move past the traditional see: Niels Thomsen, ‘Venstremænd i vildrede. mode of colonial storytelling as a singular narrative to instead include con- Vælgerreaktioner ved temporary and Afro-descendant viewpoints. For example, they wanted to folkeafstemningen 1916’,in work with the Danish–Trinidadian artist Jeannette Ehlers, whose video Johnny Leisner et al, eds, ’ Festskrift til Povl Bagge på and performance-based work directly deals with Denmark s colonial 23 halvfjerdsårsdagen 30 history. Another artist, La Vaughn Belle, had also been working on November 1972, Danish this history in St Croix, and had used photographs from the library’s col- Historical Society, Copenhagen, 1972, lection in a photomontage series with the titles Upward Mobility; Learn- pp 349–383. ing To Be; Preacher Man Belle, Obeah Man Brown; and St Croix Pickney 8

(2016). The library has an abundance of silent images taken with varying intentions; thousands of photographs in private albums, stereographs and 16 See Astrid Nonbo postcards that show Afro-Caribbean life ways framed by an anonymising Andersen, ‘“We Have Danish perspective. They include images like the affecting photograph of Reconquered the Islands”: Figurations in Public wet nurse Charlotte Eliza Hodge (seated with her young charge Louise 24 Memories of Slavery and Bauditz), for whom there are at least some biographical fragments. Colonialism in Denmark The SMK, on the other hand, was not preparing for a specific exhi- 1948–2012’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, bition, but it was interested in thinking about how the permanent art and Society, vol 26, no 1, collection (European and canonical) engaged with or expressed colonial 2013, pp 57–76. Nonbo histories more generally. It was difficult to sidestep the irony that one Andersen details the complex politics of part of the SMK collection resided in a separate building constructed remembrance in both specifically to house and administer goods from the transatlantic ensla- Danish and US Virgin vement trade. The Royal Cast Collection of copies from classical sculp- islands contexts, in her recent book, soon to be tures was rehoused in 1984 to the old West Indian Warehouse translated into English: (Vestindisk Pakhus) on Copenhagen harbour. This meeting of histories Astrid Nonbo Andersen, – – Ingen Undskyldning: Western classical aesthetics in white plaster and colonialism was Erindringer om Dansk something that Henrik Holm was bringing to the foreground. Also, in Vestindien og Kravet om June of 2016, during another media storm about the ‘N-word’, the Erstatninger for Slaveriet, Gyldendal, Copenhagen, SMK suddenly decided to change the titles of all artworks containing 2017. this word as a descriptive, where the artist had not specifically 25 17 Karen Fog Olwig, created the title. ‘Narrating Deglobalization: Overall, it is fair to say that this was a period of high tension in the Danish Perceptions of a Danish cultural sector, which was now more publically being held to Lost Empire’, Global Networks, vol 3, no 3, account, under activist and international pressure, for previous insensitiv- 2003, pp 207–222 ities. Amid all of our conversations, one particular question that I had 18 People on the US Virgin been asking myself for some time, rose once more to the surface: Why Islands are, however, part should we (as curators of the past) assume that looking at colonial of the discourse on imagery is an easy act? reparations. For context see Astrid Nonbo Andersen, The year 2017 also witnessed the publication of Tina Campt’s impor- ‘The Reparations tant theoretical work Listening to Images. In this text, she called for a Movement in the United States Virgin Islands’, The different kind of attunement to what/who is held captive in archives and Journal of African the images hosted there. Listening, she writes, is ‘more than visual scru- American History, vol 103, tiny’,it‘is an ensemble of seeing, feeling, being affected, contacted, and – – no 1 2, 2018, pp 104 132. moved beyond the distance of sight and observer’.26 For me, this was a 19 In Stoler, Duress, 2016, see necessary provocation that could serve to unsettle traditional modes of chapter 4, ‘Colonial Aphasia: Disabled Histories viewing and spectatorship by paying more attention to the ways artworks and Race in France’,pp and colonial documents ‘speak’ of their sentient lives, which include the 122–170 traces left by makers, subjects, custodians and viewers. Listening as a 20 Stuart Hall, ‘Racism and research practice also proposed more sensitive negotiations with the Reaction’, Five Views of varying kinds of silence that cultural institutions seemed to be responsible Multi-Racial Britain: Talks ‘ ’ on Race Relations for: the library conditions silence of institutional choreographies; the Broadcast by BBC TV, complicit silencing of voices making exhibitions on colonialism absent Commission for Racial of non-European knowledge productions, and also absent of their pain; Equality, London, 1978, p25 and, critically, the silenced reactions from visitors to asymmetrical, ‘ ’ 21 Article 3.2 of The sales biased historical sources, standing in as testimonies for what once was . treaty of 4th August 1916,I The listening practice offered a way to recalibrate the terms of encounter quote from the original and engagement in cultural work, and I wondered how visitors to an exhi- handwritten version (in English and Danish) at the bition (for example) could be introduced to the complex emotional land- Danish National Archives, scape surrounding images and other records. In particular, I thought Rigsarkivet, The Ministry about what could be made available by the use of recorded sound, as a of Foreign Affairs, E4 Traktater, VII 120 USA means of access to these frequencies, within the visitor experience; and 1916 8 4. whether this medium could materialise some of the structural tensions 9

22 See Bastian’s critical works: that characterise the colonial archive, while simultaneously attempting to Jeannette A Bastian, ‘A disrupt them. Question of Custody: the In total we hosted six four-hour workshops at the Royal Library and Colonial Archives of the United States Virgin SMK with small groups of people (maximum eight) from different Islands’, The American walks of life, who were invested in a conversation about this history. Archivist, vol 64, no 1, Another iteration of this project could include a wider cross-section of 2001, pp 96–114; and Jeannette A Bastian, the public, but we began by focusing on students, artists, cultural activists, Owning Memory: How a curators and scholars. The workshops began with personal introductions Caribbean Community and a clear overview of the recording process that would be embarked Lost Its Archives and 27 Found Its History, Libraries upon. During the first hour I presented my research and the questions Unlimited, Westport, that brought me to the project. I talked about my own affecting encounters Connecticut, 2003 with troubling artworks, and described my increasing ambivalence when 23 See Mathias Danbolt, looking at this material. I then further explored some contemporary reme- ‘Striking Reverberations: Beating Back the Unfinished diations of colonial images in popular culture. This set the tone for discus- History of the Colonial sion, debate and the sharing of experiences. Free-form discussion was then Aesthetic with Jeannette followed by practical exercises, concerned with thinking about how we Ehlers’s Whip it Good’,in Amelia Jones and Erin encounter artworks and documents, and also what it is possible for Silver, eds, Otherwise: them to ‘say’. For example, at the SMK, we experimented with ways to Imagining Queer Feminist expand our engagement with a bronze sculpture in the collection by Art Histories, Manchester University Press, Jørgen Gudmundsen-Holmgreen entitled Neger (1943), depicting an Manchester, 2016, anonymous and naked man, who may have been a life model. The sculp- pp 276–293. ture was brought into the room, and we explored methods such as playing 24 A short biographical jazz music from the period, and contextualising the sculpture with photos summary entitled ‘Who was of black people in Denmark in the 1940s. I also encouraged participants to Charlotte Eliza Hodge of St Croix?’ was written in June describe the sculpture in careful detail, to highlight how easy it is to miss 2017 by United States useful information. Additionally, I asked participants to speculatively Virgin Islands (USVI) fi historian George Tyson, imagine a life story for the subject represented. The nal part of the work- and is available to shops served as the main basis for the sound recordings. In each collection researchers upon request. setting, participants were presented with my selection of artworks and 25 Camilla Stockmann, objects, and were recorded together in discussion facing them. The only ‘Museum fjerner ordene request was to simply respond and say whatever was on their minds. neger og hottentot fra ’ kunstværker’ (Museum Listening was thus embedded in this project s design, from initial dia- Removes the Words Negro logues with colleagues, to workshops, the editing process, and of course in and Hottentot from Works the experience for exhibition visitors. This listening could be qualified, of Art), Politiken, 6 June 2016 however, in two distinct ways that I would describe as listening in and listening (out) for. Although I believed that it was important for these work- 26 Tina M Campt, Listening to Images, Duke University shops to be closed (to enable open and frank dialogue), representatives Press, Durham, North from the museum and our sound designers were always present and listen- Carolina, 2017, p 42 ing in; quietly and without the ability to intervene with their voices, except if there was a technical question or logistical issue that needed to be dealt with. Unwittingly this dynamic of museum and library staff listening in on personal testimonies about collections, offered a profound shift in power dynamics. So often staff see themselves, and are called upon, as experts. In 27 I had already been in email this situation the ‘knowing’ and ‘expertise’ was coming from outside the contact with all participants ‘ ’ and made clear that their institution, and not within. The choreography of listening in also voices would be audio served as a holding space for alternative points of view, where there was recorded, further respectful awareness and acceptance of polyphony that we hoped could explaining how the material created in the workshop later be shared with visitors. would be used. In writing I But what were we listening out for? I had professional support from explained the provision of a two sound designers, who technically edited all the workshop recordings, consent form, which was then signed during the and also shared with me moments in the conversations that they felt were sessions. very impactful on a sonic level, and for audience accessibility. Ultimately, 10

Installation view of What Lies Unspoken, sound intervention at National Gallery of Denmark, 2017, SMKFoto

however, the curation (or composition) of the voices rested with me. Returning to hours of recorded conversation provided a secondary opportunity to hear the varying ways in which artworks and objects resonated with workshop participants. During this curatorial process, I listened out for phrases, words, sentences and affective gauges (pauses, breaths, strains of voice) that communicated the levels of complexity involved in image encounters. Gathering these layered vocal tones was required in order to do the experimental work of ‘sounding’ in the project’s title. Sounding is a maritime term that describes instruments and processes used to measure oceanic depth. In echo sounding, sonic pulses are transmitted into water, and the interval between transmission and return of the sound from the sea bed provides a distance measurement. In this project we attempted to sonically explore the resonance and affective depth of collections, by capturing, through recordings of a dialogic process, the tex- tures of emotional complexity that were the result of considered and lengthy encounters with colonial artworks. As each voice spoke into the museum with personal testimony, they asserted their right to speak and be heard, while at the same time registering historical tensions within the collections. On one level, what returned in the process of sounding the museum and library was emotionally poignant: frustration and exas- peration with institutional rigidity; pain when faced with absences and misrepresentations; confusion about why museums and archives had not already learned lessons; curiosity to learn more about the unexplored and willingness to set things right. This is an emotional landscape 11

Astrid Holm, Rose Laying the Table, 1914, oil on canvas, 97.7 x 79 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst 12

usually edited out of interpretive work, since it points to institutional ﬂaws and weaknesses. In this project, we hoped that the recordings could also transmit this complexity to audiences, thereby offering a space of reﬂection on what it means to be a ‘viewer’ of the colonial past through images.

Intervening

You are standing at the entrance of a large room, facing due west, at the SMK. The walls are a classic off-white colour with wooden ﬂoors in a varnished museum-style pine. Not too light, not too dark. A small bronze statuette of a muscular man stands immediately in front of you, inside a clear Perspex display case on top of a simple wooden mount. There are three paintings, one on each wall, and a small drawing towards the back corner of the room. Another wooden cabinet to your left contains two portrait miniatures, but you will not see them until you walk over there. This is all, a sparse collection of seven unusual artworks.28 You walk to the centre of the room where there are stools and a bench to sit down, and then notice subtle, ball-shaped speakers above each artwork. You stand, you look, you wait. Then come voices leading you to focus your attention on one of the paintings, which depicts a black woman in a pink dress, standing by a table decorated with a large vase of ﬂowers and exotic fruits. It is called Rose Laying the Table (1914) by Danish artist Astrid Holm. The voices talk:

Speaker 1 I don’t have that feeling this is the servant’s dress. This is not the servant’s table. She is laying the table for the one that is going to eat break- fast… It’s not her table. It’s not her story.

Speaker 2 Why is it not her story? If she’s a servant in the house, and that’s her job to arrange this… she’s probably done that a hundred times. Why is it … … ’ 28 The artworks chosen for the not her story? She is She is making that composition you don t think so? What Lies Unspoken sound installation at the Statens Speaker 1 No. Museum for Kunst were: Conrad Sparre, An African, This exchange, taken from the SMK sound composition, is one of so many eighteenth century, KMSst35; Andreas poignant moments that I witnessed as it unfolded live in workshops. What Thornborg, Unknown Man you cannot experience through reading is that the dialogue’s atmosphere called Heinrich Carl was ﬁlled with a mix of longing, loss and tension; a shared struggle to Schimmelman, 1780–1845, KMS4641; Karel van III articulate how an artwork of this kind could be aesthetically beautiful Mander, Head of an and yet unable to adequately delineate an Afro-Caribbean life under African, seventeenth Danish colonial rule. It is an exchange that haunts and has left vibrations; century, KMS4190; David ’ Heschler, African, 1626– quivering traces in the paint, in the walls, in the artist s old canvas, in my 1667, KMS5520; Marcus ears. Later on, in the composition, reﬂections on this painting continued: Tuscher, Family Group on a Terrace by a Villa, Speaker 3 You’ve got this horrible paradox because why has she been Possibly the English Businessman George painted by a white person? Is it just, like you are saying, some kind of a Jackson with his Family, product? Or is it a new way of thinking how to do image? 1737, KMS7116; Georg Achen, A Girl Drinking Speaker 4 The civil servants and their families who went home to Denmark, Coffee, 1882, KKS6095; they would bring this image also mentally back with them… this quiet, calm, and Astrid Holm, Rose … Laying the Table, 1914, serene, beautiful, and exotic also but a moment of good times in their KMS8558. lives… 13

Speaker 5 I wasn’t thinking it was a servant when I looked at this picture. I thought it was sort of the daughter of the family or something, and I’m not sure it’s not. Because why should Rose particularly be a servant just because she’s setting the table? I mean that’s also our expectations of what we think when a Danish painter paints a black person in the Virgin Islands.

Speaker 6 I think it’s a very good point, that, because I think what makes me interpret her as a potential servant is the title of the picture. And of course that says more about me (you know, someone who sets the table it’s the servants)… but of course it could be in your own home. And I think it is a good point not to have these stereotypical ways of interpreting… I mean maybe she was the lover of the painter, we don’t know, maybe they lived together, we don’t know… I also think it’s important to open to these interpretations, which also gives her a much stronger subjectivity.

Hortense Spillers writes of the ‘captive body’ as part of an institutional lexicon forged from flesh, which ‘brings into focus a gathering of social realities as well as a metaphor for value so thoroughly interwoven in their literal and figurative emphases that distinctions between them are vir- tually useless’.29 Is it possible to separate the mysterious painted subject, Rose, from her historical entanglements? To see her simply as a woman with presence, possibility and choice? Sharing a conversation about the strangeness of colonial images, their power and their ambiguity, naturally produced frictions that were a healthy antidote to the academic distancing 29 Hortense J Spillers, of ‘specialism’, which museums and galleries can sometimes lean on when ‘Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American communicating with their publics. This painting could also have been read Grammar Book’, Diacritics, art historically as a colour study in which rose/pink is a signifying tone vol 17, no 2, 1987, p 68 explored by the artist. However, without a biography to place Rose in 30 See Marianne Hirsch, The the embrace of community, linked to kin, these speculative utterances Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture from workshop participants stood in as the missing evidence of her After the Holocaust, quiet agency. At the same time, they necessarily questioned what con- Columbia University Press, ditions brought this painting into being, and thus unveiled its romanti- New York, 2012. Here Hirsch eloquently describes cism. When shared with an audience in the process of encountering the how ‘bodily sense memory’ same artwork, the intervening gestures of speaking back to the subject can be ‘passed on beyond and speaking out into the museum also carried with them the potential the family to those who would witness affiliatively’ to expand/deepen who we understand to be the witness in the space of 30 (p 97). Extending postmemory. witnessing to the work of It is important for me to say something briefly about intervening as it archive professionals, as a form of ‘emotional justice’ relates to the more delicate and complex negotiations between pro- is one of the premises of the fessionals within institutions, but this is not easy to do without getting per- article by Marika Cifor, sonal on some level. With hindsight, what I can say is that I initially set out ‘Affecting Relations: Introducing Affect Theory to encourage two Danish institutions to rethink their curatorial strategies to Archival Discourse’, and also to address how they wielded interpretative power in ways that Archival Science, vol 16, no might be considered colonial. Practically, we developed a counter-action 1, 2016, pp 7–31. to these processes by augmenting traditional labelling practices with the 31 For one inspiring exhibition sound of multiple voices who spoke in support of silenced subjects, but catalogue dealing with 31 issues of viewership also ‘for the sake of the viewer’. The voices inhabited exhibition through the work of artist spaces, spoke to willing ears, and changed the quality of encounter with Lorna Simpson, see Beryl J Wright and Saidiya V artworks and objects. However, intervening as a cultural professional in Hartman, eds, Lorna a project of this kind is multifaceted, and includes everything that is Simpson: For the Sake of said, not said, and done (all impressions and affects) from the moment the Viewer, Universe Publishing, New York, you enter an institutional structure. Forgive the metaphor, but intervening 1992. is much like the perfume you wear, and how it lingers in a room when you 14

have left it. Some people are curious or inspired by the scent, for others it unlocks associations and memories, some just find it too invasive. When the focus is on problem-solving, intervening necessarily requires getting in the way and interrupting habitual patterns. But getting in the way when you are an invited guest in somebody else’s house is counterintuitive under the rubric of hospitality.32 And, when you are a guest with limited time, working with people in established cultural ‘families’ who will be there long after you are gone, you have to accept that there are places in the house that are closed to you. Spatial thinking on hospitality and inclusion has provided a useful way to explore what happens when external actors inhabit museums and other cultural ecologies.33 It has also helped me to process my own experiences of entering the SMK and Royal Library, which are coded institutions framing colonial discourses in Denmark; institutions that professionally have very little ethnic or cultural diversity in general, and none on the level of curation. As an intervention, What Lies Unspoken afforded an opportunity to temporarily address this bias, facilitating diverse voices to take up the knowledge space. However, in its very grappling with the hegemonic Danish canon the project exposed problems of access, exclusiv- ity and blindness that it was simply unable to resolve. Denmark has not created a permanent space to holistically tell the history of slavery and colonialism, and nowhere is the knowledge and experience of enslaved peoples and their living descendants honoured. There has been no truth and reconciliation initiative. Thus, any attempt to inhabit the Danish discourse under these conditions reinforces, in one way or another, these vio- 32 See Heidrun Friese, ‘Spaces lations. This is perhaps the most profound realisation that the intervening of Hospitality’, James Keye, trans, Angelaki, vol 9, no 2, action can bring, that whatever is unprocessed in the culture/discourse/ 2004, pp 67–79 climate, will show up in the project. This is the reason why I reluctantly 33 From a cultural geography conclude that the project was not only flawed, but also that it may have perspective see Nedra come too soon for the context it was inhabiting. Reynolds, Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference, Southern Conclusion Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois, 2007 Twenty years ago, this journal published Stuart Hall’s keynote speech 34 Stuart Hall, ‘Whose Heritage? Un-settling “the from the Whose Heritage conference (1999) held in Manchester, UK, Heritage”, Re-imagining which spoke about ‘selective canonisation’ and ‘operational inertia’, and the Post-nation’, Third Text the inability of professionals in the heritage sector to re-examine ‘their cri- 49, vol 13, issue 49, winter ’ 34 1999/2000, pp 3–13 teria of judgement and their gate-keeping practices . Since then museums have become familiar with the opportunities that interventions from exter- 35 See Maurice Berger and Fred Wilson, nal actors can bring. They regularly call on curators and artists to help ‘Collaboration, Museums, provoke new conversations or, as Fred Wilson says, to facilitate ‘a and the Politics of Display: rupture with our assumptions in order to grow’.35 Yet these activities A Conversation with Fred Wilson’, in Doro Globus can happen without ever changing the core value systems of the insti- and Fred Wilson, eds, Fred tution. How, to paraphrase Sara Ahmed, would the Royal Library, Wilson: A Critical Reader, ‘ fi ’ 36 Ridinghouse, London, SMK, and its publics be modi ed by our utterances? In this project, 2011, pp 154–168 the institutions did not speak back, and this is also the challenge being

36 Sara Ahmed, On Being cast here. What Lies Unspoken was an experiment in truth telling; speak- Included: Racism and ing out about, and back to, colonialism’s visual archive. However, as I Diversity in Institutional have already confessed, it was ﬂawed in a number of ways: because it Life, Duke University Press, ﬁ Durham, North Carolina, was undertaken reactively to ll gaps in the discourse around the 2017 2012, p 56 commemoration, which is why there are no visitor surveys or substantive 15

feedback information; because the voices of living descendants of Virgin Islanders, represented in Royal Library photographs, were not included this time; and because the desire for accessibility required workshop participants to speak in English, which was not everybody’s usual emotional language. But maybe messy interventions that get in the way, or in 37 For a transforming between museums and their publics, might be the remedial pill that has meditation on breakages, see Fred Moten, In the to be swallowed by all of us. An action or utterance, in the Danish dis- Break: The Aesthetics of the course, is better than silence, which has been the chosen institutional Black Radical Tradition, volume. Perhaps the sonic urgency of the speech act is actually the University of Minnesota – – Press, Minneapolis, break(age) a dislocation from inheritance, habit and pride required 37 Minnesota, 2003. for change to enter and take hold.

ORCID

Temi Odumosu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7693-0883