Field studies at the Danish Arsenal Museum, Copenhagen, Summer 2013

At the Danish Arsenal Museum in Copenhagen, the exhibition “The Distant War” (running since 2011) constitutes a significant attempt to communicate central aspects and experiences from the ongoing war in Afghanistan, as seen and felt through the eyes and bodies of the Danish soldiers deployed there. Over the summer of 2013, Mads Daugbjerg conducted field studies at the museum, following and interviewing visitors in the exhibit environment and talking to museum staff, planners and decision makers.

The exhibition, breaking radically with the museum’s traditional “glass case” paradigm, revolves around a number of full-scale reconstructions of milieus and structures from Afghanistan, including parts of ISAF troop camps, an Afghan compound, and an original Eagle IV utility vehicle damaged by a roadside bomb. Through its alternative design, its use of lights and sound effects, as well as the utilization of oral eyewitness descriptions from war participants, the exhibition aims to “remove the visitor from the museum ”space”, taking them as close as possible to an Afghan context”, in the words of one of its makers. While in several ways “moving” visitors, both physically and mentally, the exhibition also raises a number of complex questions regarding the difficult representation of “distant” wars at home. These include:

• The links between armed conflict, death, security, duty and feelings for the homeland
• Portrayals of Afghanistan and (various) Afghan groups as both victims or development recipients as well as potential or existing threats or enemies
• The (re)production of (specific and localised rather than universal) systems of ethics and morality implicated in war museum practices
• Questions of authorship and authority in the relationship between museum academics and veterans from the conflict involved in the exhibition design

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Danish Arsenal Museum, 2013. Photo by Mads Daugbjerg ©