Notes on a Memorial
Information
In 2014, artist Jonas Dahlberg won the government competition to create the national memorials for the July 22 2011 massacre. Notes on a Memorial is a film about the process, debate and politics around the project, resulting in the cancellation of the planned memorials.
The film was last screened on our webpage from 20th July to 20 August 2020, on a separate streaming page.
Notes on a Memorial
How do we commemorate pain and sorrow? Jonas Dahlberg’s work for osloBIENNALEN is a film about memorials that were never built. Dahlberg was selected to create national memorials to the terror attack of 22 July 2011. The memorial to the Utøya massacre was to consist of a cut, 40 meters long and 3.5 meters wide, through a peninsula facing Utøya. It was designed so that visitors would descend to a niche hollowed out on one side of the channel and remember the victims of the terror attack, whose names were to be carved on the rock wall on the opposite side. The stone excavated to create the channel was then to be carved into memorial tablets and placed in the Government Quarter, with the names of the entire population living in Norway on 22 July 2011. But some of the local residents living near the planned memorial did not want any memorial in their neighbourhood. Following an embroiled and tortuous political process, the construction of the memorial site was cancelled. Remembering an evil is a precondition for becoming reconciled to it. At the same time, the culture of the memorial is a complex field of symbolism that impacts on collective experiences and individual feelings in differing ways. Dahlberg’s film from 2018, reflects on the process and politics around the 3-4 years working on these memorials
The film premiered in Norway in October 2019, during the osloBIENNALEN opening weekend. Dahlberg’s film was part of the week-long film programme and seminar, “Where Memories Are Made”, organised in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus.
