Prosthetic Memories of a Refugee Route

Guest post by Randi Marselis, Associate Professor in Cultural Encounters, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University. Her research examines European memory politics in relation to migration. Currently, she is particularly interested in how migration memories are remediated through social media platforms and museums’ digitization projects. This is the second instalment of Border Criminologies themed series on ‘The Memory Politics of Migration at Borderscapes’, organised by Karina Horsti.  

I am feeling a little dizzy standing here. I can hear seagulls and waves, but I cannot see or smell the sea. I hear the wind, although I do not feel it on my skin. The sky is blue and I am staring at huge piles of discarded lifejackets. Most of them are orange and grey. There are no people in sight, but the lifejackets are proof of the many who hoped to reach EU shores safely as they sailed towards Lesbos.

I am actually standing in an old building in the centre of Copenhagen wearing a Virtual Reality headset. Together with my son I am visiting the exhibition Flight for Life (På Flugt) at The Royal Arsenal Museum, which is part of The Danish National Museum. Through a second 360-degree video we are virtually transferred to a refugee camp in Northern Greece. I am looking into a tent, where a man is sitting on the floor. He is colouring a pattern on a large piece of paper. I watch his family as they talk to their neighbours. The last video then shows life inside a temporary tent camp in Thisted, Denmark, which was set up to accommodate the large number of refugees in the fall of 2015. It is summer. Men are playing volleyball or walking around talking on their cell phones. I feel a bit bored with this video, and perhaps that is exactly the point. As the exhibition text says: ‘Time passes slowly as you wait for a decision on your asylum application’.

Flight for Life provides insight into the experiences of refugees on their route to Denmark; in their words, that is:

Leaving what you know. Living in uncertainty. Travelling from place to place risking your life. On the way to an unknown future. Perhaps in Denmark? This exhibition takes you in the footsteps of the refugees.

The exhibition mainly displays objects and stories collected during 2016 in Greece and Denmark. The museum has chosen a long-term collection strategy that acknowledges the wars, conflicts and resulting refugee situation of the 2010s as future, collective memories. The objects have all been carefully preserved and will be kept as part of the cultural heritage collection of the Danish National Museum. Among those exhibited are a rubber dinghy, lifejackets and clothing collected on the beaches of Lesbos. Objects illustrating the different ways that the Danish population responded to refugees in their country are also included. For example, one installation contrasts a pushchair and a teddy bear donated to a refugee family with a false road sign showing the way out of Denmark and back to Syria. 

The tense political climate and increasingly harsh political rhetoric against refugees and asylum seekers in Denmark makes exhibitions like Flight for Life inherently controversial. To avoid criticism over its political stance, the museum explicitly states, ‘Flight for Life is not an exhibition about the refugee debate and does not want to promote a specific agenda. We leave that to the individual visitor’. This apparent neutrality diverges from the more partial art exhibitions on displacement and migration produced by the Copenhagen-based art space CAMP. Nevertheless, the sensory experiences of encountering collected objects, stories and representations of refugee routes may still create empathy and stimulate reflection.

In her book Prosthetic Memory, Alison Landsberg examines how museums may serve as experimental sites, where the visitor acquire memories of ‘a past event through which he or she did not live’. In addition to providing information, experimental exhibitions invite the visitor to take on – as prosthesis – a personal, deeply felt memory of the events. Prosthetic memory is not based solely on emotional identification with people who have suffered. The empathising position also implies ‘an intellectual coming-to-terms with another person’s circumstances’. Landsberg describes prosthetic memories as creating “the conditions for ethical thinking precisely by encouraging people to feel connected to, while recognizing the alterity of, the ‘other’.”

Landsberg states that new technologies of memory, especially if they ‘are experimental and involve the senses’ may enhance our ability to experience empathy. Her book is from 2004 and she does not mention the possibility of including Virtual Reality experiences in museums. However, the technology obviously fits her ideas of how sensory museum experiences may promote empathy. The virtual experience of visiting the places on the refugee route is intense, and the prosthetic memories installed are personal and influenced by our personalities and prior experiences. Although I am curious, I feel a bit like an intruder while viewing the 360 degree video of the Greek refugee camp. I am even embarrassed about not being able to talk to the Arabic speaking children, who seem to be looking at me (or rather at the camera). But my 7 year old son, who reluctantly came along to the museum, is perfectly happy about the experience and exclaims: ‘Mom, these children want to play with me!’ The exhibition text tells us that using the VR-headset will be ’Like being there yourself’. My son and I may have reacted differently to the virtual experience, but we share a sense of having briefly visited a refugee camp in Greece and encountered some of the refugees. We also both carry a prosthetic memory of standing in the wind among piles of discarded lifejackets on the island of Lesbos. However, neither of us had to flee our home or cross the Mediterranean in an unsafe boat. As the exhibition makes me more aware of the plight of refugees, it also makes me reflect on my privileged position both as a middle class mother in Copenhagen, as a Dane and as an EU citizen.

Note: The Royal Arsenal Museum is part of the National Museum of Denmark, and the exhibition Flight for Life can be seen in central Copenhagen until June 11, 2017. The VR installation was produced in collaboration with the production house Khora. During the following years the exhibition will be shown at local museums in other parts of Denmark.

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How to cite this blog post (Harvard style)

Marselis, R. (2017) Prosthetic Memories of a Refugee Route. Available at: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2017/06/prosthetic (Accessed [date])