albertine i politilægens ventevlærelse, 2006,
240 min video + 10 min sound live mix
With the video work Albertine at the Police Doctor's Waiting Room, Ulrike Solbrig centers on the exceptional painting by the Norwegian artist Christian Krohg. First shown in 1887, it documents a case of police misconduct in connection with Norway's Contagious Disease Act. Literally focusing on the painting over the period of an entire day at the museum, the production itself takes on a performative dimension, as the visitors rushing to Edvard Munch's paintings, irritated by the video shoot, have their gaze redirected to the focal point of the camera. On a linked audio piece, heard with individual headphones, the ambient museum sound playing on loudspeakers, is simultaneously mixed with Solbrig recounting the story of her historical research and comments she gathered from people in Oslo.
Krohg's painting appeared about a half year after the publication of his naturalistic novel Albertine , which detailed the painting's background story. The novel and painting were a cause célèbre at the time and inspired a wave of political protest which added to the early revocation of the Contagious Disease Act. Solbrig's installation references Krohg's naturalistic style, as in her use of “real-time” in the long uncut video sequence and sound mix of the museum's day. Krohg's initial impulse, to give a neglected social injustice a public airing, is echoed here by reclaiming this explosive part of political art history for a contemporary audience. Alan Marsik
The video installation has been presented at: SEXWORK, Kunst Mythos, Realität at Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, Katalog.
Artist insert for the Swedish Feminist Magazine bang 2005:
The Case of Albertine
In this issue of bang, Gry Ulrichsen and Ebba Moi, who are collaborating on the project “New Meaning”, have chosen to present the German artist Ulrike Solbrig. They came in contact with Solbrig during her residency at the OCA studio in Oslo (which equivalent to the Swedish institution IASPIS) where she did research on “Albertine at the Police Doctor’s Waiting Room”, a painting by Christian Krohg, which belongs to the National Gallery. What distinguishes art is the use of conversation as a method of artistic exploration. Because she spoke no Norwegian, it was necessary for her to talk to people to find out more about the subject. This opened up the project to chance encounters like the one reflected in the following transcript of a conversation between Vrinda Grover, Moi and Solbrig which took place in Olso this past June.
Vrinda Grover (lawyer, Delhi), Ebba Moi (visual artist, Oslo) and Ulrike Solbrig (visual artist, Berlin).
VG: I’m a lawyer in New Delhi in India and have been practicing law since 1989. I was part of a feminist street theater group in my University days. Presently, most of my cases deal with human rights and in particular women’s cases, campaigns for changes in the law.
US: Which is, in a way, what the painter Christian Krohg, who was also a lawyer, did when he started his Albertine project in November 1886 by publishing the novel, “Albertine,” and some months later, showing his painting “Albertine” at the Police Doctor’s Waiting Room”, first in Oslo, and then touring with the huge painting through off-spaces and theaters all over Norway and Copenhagen. I had just come to Oslo to research all this, when I heard that you had experienced a fascinated encounter somewhat like mine, with his painting, in the Nasjonal Museet in Oslo. What was it like, Vrinda? You were the one person among the three of us who was completely taken by surprise, without any prior knowledge of what to expect.
VG: I arrived in Oslo because Amar Kanwar, my husband, received the Munch Award for contemporary art and it was therefore natural that we view Munch’s paintings. I found the display in the Nasjonal Museet very non-conformist. In India, we present things in a very conservative, rigid format. But here nothing was classified by time periods or artists, so we started to look at paintings other than Munch’s. This was perhaps the only painting in the gallery that wasn’t just a single image, or idea.
The painting intrigued me as concealed within it was a tale. As I stood and looked at it, I could sense a palpable tension amongst the characters of the painting, which involved some women, one of whom had been either arrested by the police or was being taken to court. I could see from their attire that the women belonged to a variety of classes. The first thought that struck me was that maybe this woman works as a housemaid, because there also were rich women standing there who looked more confident and not disturbed by the situation. Maybe she is being arrested for some kind of petty theft. That happens very often in India. If people misplace something, the first person to blame is the domestic help, because they are the most powerless in the system.
We were kind of conjuring up all kinds of things on our own, without having a clue what the painting was about. Then we noticed a woman, standing on a bench in one corner of the painting, who perhaps had some affiliation or relationship with the other young woman there and was concerned and also did not seem from a rich background. This set us talking about how easy it is for the police to arrest women who are not socially or economically powerful. That’s when I ran into Ulrike.
US: I was introduced to the story right away. I found it was extremely powerful, partly because I had never come across it, though as an artist and as a feminist I wouldn’t have overlooked it. When I realized what the painting was about, I was impressed that somebody managed, here in Norway, with this subject, to claim such a prominent space. I was puzzled that it had never entered the mainstream canon of European art history.
EM: Since I’m from Sweden, I can’t say when I first got knowledge about this painting. For me, in a Nordic country, it’s just there. Maybe I read about it in school. When I talked to Ulrike, it got fresher for me: its subject matter and power. Before that, for me, it was just another painting from one of the Nordic artists. When did the gallery buy the painting?
US: In the early 20th Century they bought it back from a private owner. In art from later periods, you only have prostitutes’ milieu painting, which is voyeuristic, although sometimes critical, but unable to shake off the clichés.
VG: This painting deals with the power dynamics and place of prostitutes in society. Later paintings perhaps are silent on this aspect.
US: Many of the Naturalists were quite political and they introduced many issues into painting that are still critical today: workers’ rights, public health, class issues, cruelty to animals, destruction of nature. As the economic situation gets more difficult, parallels between globalization and industrialization become apparent. Industrialization already made workers international, or global, since they were forced to leave their countries to look for jobs. When the novel was banned, it was re-published in Minnesota, in a Norwegian and Swedish version.
The painting at first glance looks like some ordinary historic painting. Impressive in size, but then you start to wonder• As I sat in front of the painting, I could see people going back and forth, looking at different aspects of it, or children demanding answers from their parents. You stated that you see it is a great painting for children.
VG: I think children see many things that as adults we can’t see anymore, so accustomed have we grown to hierarchies and oppression. I’m all for children seeing the power dynamics of gender in society; I think they should learn about it right from the beginning. There is no point in concealing these things from children.
US: You recently had cases in India.
VG: The first case that highlighted this issue was in 1980, when two policemen raped a 16-year-old tribal girl, Mathura, in the vicinity of the police station. The Supreme Court acquitted both the policeman since Mathura had not raised any alarm and since there were no visible marks of injury on her body. It said that she was habituated to sex because she had already had a relationship with a young man, therefore, there was no reason to believe that she was raped, she may well have consented to sexual intercourse in the toilet, with her whole family waiting outside, with two completely unknown men. It was very clear where the notion came from: if women exercise their own sexuality, they are not protected anymore.
There were strong and successful protests across the country. Since then, in cases of custodial rape, once the fact of rape is established the burden of proof shifts upon the accused. But these legal amendments can't purge the system of the prejudice that is inherent in the entire judicial system. Therefore the law continues to be interpreted against the women.
This April, in Mumbai, the finance capital of India, a police constable forced a young girl into a police booth and raped her. Subsequently right wing religious forces published articles saying these kinds of incidents are on the rise because young women dress provocatively. Rape is being described as a consequence of the introduction of Western culture into India. Ironically, in the ancient Hindu text, Mahabharta, a woman draped in a sari is disrobed by men who have vanquished her husband.
US: A concept for what constitutes rape seems to be difficult to establish. But is it really so hard? I talked to Ingvild Krabbesund (who is part of the Norwegian DJ team, Ovary Action), who has written a paper because she was furious to find abstracts on the newer editions of the novel “Albertine” that say Albertine had been seduced by a police officer, when she had actually been raped.
EM: It almost seems that even after the story is more than a hundred years old, rumors are still spread about this woman - even though she is just a character in a novel.
VG: It’s commonly said in India that 90% of women who lodge rape cases are lying – which in a society like India would be equivalent to committing suicide: it’s actually the victim who is seen as the guilty party and there are not many convictions in rape cases. Until last year, it was legally permitted, to discuss the past sexual history and the girl's character as evidence in a rape trial. Which for a sex worker means the chance of securing justice is over. Only last year, they changed the law of evidence. You are now prohibited from discussing the sexual history of the rape victim.
The rape law as conceived in India is based on a completely patriarchal definition of rape. If you are assaulted, abused, penetrated by an object, it is not rape. Only if there is sexual intercourse, penile penetration of the vagina, is it recognized as rape. Because the whole business of sexual intercourse and penetration is how patriarchy establishes ownership and control over women’s bodies, children and sexuality.
Another very drastic case occurred in a village in the 80’s, involving a Dalit woman, which is an outcast in the Hindu hierarchy. Working in a government-funded project it was part of her mandate to try and stop child marriages. When she tried to prevent the village headman from getting his one-year-old daughter married, that was completely unheard of – a Dalit woman setting norms for social relations of the upper caste. To put her in her place, she was brutally raped. The trial court had acquitted the four men who did it, arguing that it was impossible that upper caste men would touch a Dalit woman, let aside rape her – when it is actually very well known that Dalit women are frequently sexually abused by upper caste man. One interesting spin-off of this is that since it was part of the Dalit's woman's work duty, the entire law on sexual harassment at the workplace has emerged out of this case. For the first time, sexual harassment guidelines have been introduced in India.
US: The Albertine case involves the question of class too. Even though the Contagious Disease Act entitled the police to force any women under suspicion of prostitution to undergo the police doctors’ examination, they could have never done that to a bourgeois woman. The women that look like upper class in the painting are actually the established prostitutes, who could afford expensive outfits.
EM: Who was running the court case and what was the assault?
US: The Albertine case was related to Krohg by a model. The actual case never went to court. The novel tells us that a police officer raped this woman and subsequently summoned her to an examination at the police doctor’s, thus establishing her as a prostitute. The banning of the book clearly was related to the questioning of the morals of the police. Krohg defended his case against the banning in court.
VG: He engaged the public, rather than just confining the issue for determination within the courtroom. US: In the courtroom he quoted from the book, which was not allowed. The newspaper he was writing for, the “Dagbladet”, the next day reported that he had quoted from the book in court. The police tried to get hold of all of the newspapers and the following day, the paper made mockery of this. It published the previous day’s issue as an insert, with all the censored passages left blank.
All this was widely discussed in the newspapers. The banned book was read aloud in the workers’ clubs. A demonstration against the banning of the book took place. It was a surprise to me that the working class in Oslo at the time associated with an issue regarding prostitute’s rights.
EM: Did you hear what happended now, in a recent case against Lithuanian pimps in Oslo? The pimps were accused of gang-raping Lithuanian prostitutes and forcing them to work for them, their lawyer suggested that one should be allowed to make a distinction between “worthy” and “unworthy” victims – that what a prostitute experiences in her job is similar to rape anyway. The lawyer for the pimps, then goes on to propose what amounts to the abolishing of basic human rights protections for prostitutes.
VG: Across continents the same battles are still being fought.
The work was supported by or presented at:
International Studio Program, Office of Contemporary Art Oslo, Norwegen, 2004, 2005
Sexwork Kunst Mythos Realität, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2006, Katalog Publikation
Through Women's Eyes des Performing Art Centers Skopje Maccedonien, 2007
Ulrike Solbrig, Germany: Chausseestr. 110-I, 10115 Berlin, call: plus vier neun eins fünf fünf sieben vier drei fünf sechs fünf sechs drei ulrike@solbrig.de