Unheard voices and forgotten places
Exhibition period: October 21, 2009 – February 28, 2010
Never before have they spoken out in this way. The Medical Museum presents stories from the history of people with intellectual disabilities.
In the 20th century, thousands of Norwegians were placed in institutions with collective diagnoses such as “mentally feeble-minded” and “mentally retarded”. Many lived there for large parts of their lives, often far away from family and friends. Through the HVPU reform, the central institutions were dismantled. The people connected to the institutions thus received changed living arrangements, other opportunities for life development – and new challenges.
Through film, photographs and short texts, a number of people – people with intellectual disabilities, relatives of people with intellectual disabilities and employees at institutions – tell stories about institutional life in the past and from the present.
Rune Larsson, one of the voices in the exhibition, will preside over the opening.
The project
Unheard Voices and Forgotten Places is a groundbreaking national collection and dissemination project. The goal has been to bring the experiences of those who actually matter. Since 2007, the project has worked purposefully to find protagonists who tell stories from the care of people with developmental disabilities in Norway.
The project consists of an exhibition and an exhibition catalogue, a website (www.institusjon.no) and a mini-exhibition. The exhibition will travel to three other museums.
Unheard Voices and Forgotten Places is a collaborative project between Sør-Troms Museum department Trastad Collections, Emma Hjorth Museum and Documentation Center, National Medical Museum / The Norwegian Museum Of Science And Technology , Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum and Bergen City Museum.
The project Unheard Voices and Forgotten Places is funded with support from ABM Development and the Norwegian Directorate of Health.
More information about the project can be found at www.institusjon.no
Tellus TV: Film about the project and the opening at Emma Hjorth , September 10, 2009
Catalog
The exhibition catalogue is a collaboration with the organization SOR (Coordination Council for Work with People with Mental Retardation) and is a special edition of their journal SOR Rapport, which is published six times a year.
In addition to snippets from the exhibition and the website institusjon.no, the catalogue contains, among other things, Marte Wexelsen Goksøyr's appeal "I was integrated into kindergarten, the others just started", an article about outsider art and important Norwegian artists in this field, an interview with Jorunn Mjøs who, during the 32 years she has worked at Vestlandsheimen, has experienced the establishment, closure and relocation of the institution, and the article "Are the institutions really gone?" by Jens Petter Gitlesen, newly elected union leader of NFU (Norwegian Federation for People with Disabilities).
The catalogue will be sent to SOR's 3000 subscribers and will accompany the exhibition. It will also be available by contacting one of the five institutions behind the Unheard Voices and Forgotten Places project.
Above: Images from the exhibition Unheard Voices and Forgotten Places (2009/2010).
– I go to the football field and watch, and that's where I like to be. I like getting to know people, I like being with people who are normal, and then they know what I'm like.
Rune Larsson
