“From the 7th day of my prison stay at Møllergata 19.
Have been in 2 interrogations.
Was flogged. Betrayed Vic. Am weak. Deserve contempt.
Am terribly scared of pain. But not scared to die.”
From the diary of Petter Moen
February 1944.
Left in an isolation cell in the notorious police quarters at Møllergata 19, the Norwegian resistance fighter Petter Moen uses the few things at his disposal to try make sense of his despair and what is happening to him. Letters, words, sentences slowly emerge by meticulously pricking toilet paper sheets with a found pin. He numbers and rolls the thin sheets to finally drop them down the prison´s ventilation shafts.
Petter Moen´s Diary, based on the recovered notes, is but one of many private diaries relaying the atrocious impacts of war and occupation on countless individual fates.
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| Trailer for the Spanish edition of the book "Petter Moen. Diario" A diligent translation of the diary into German is provided by Gisela Schneemann. |
In addition to constituting a contemporary historical document, the texts provide a fragmentary insight into a pained world of thought, which the author hardly intended to be dragged out into the light.
Its fragmentary debris in the form of diary pages and the prison cell reconstructed at Norway´s Resistance Museum have been taken on by the Austrian architect Dorina Dobnig.
Her project “Dagboken / The Diary” explores the notion of the building as a witness of a forcibly bared personal world of hope and hopelessness, self-scrutiny and escalating claustrophobia. The video installation, featuring dancer Kristian Alm accompanied by an acoustic composition by Gerald Krist, employs the body, its distorted movement and repetitive gestures devoid of meaning, as a tool for mapping the prisoner´s physical confinement.
“Dagboken / The Diary” is shown as part of the exhibition at Norway´s Resistance Museum in the same period that is covered in Petter Moen´s diary, February 10 to September 4.
The installation opens on Saturday, Feb 11, 2012, 12:00 at Norway´s Resistance Museum (Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum), building 21, Akershus Fortress, Oslo.
Dorina Dobnig in cooperation with:
image and technical solutions: Arne Langleite
sound: Gerald Krist
dance: Kristian Alm
