The Occupation Museum

Light and darkness elegantly fight for power at The Occupation Museum

The dark, low-ceilinged, small basement rooms of Gestapo's old headquarters are not really suitable for exhibitions. That's why the lighting of the exhibition at The Occupation Museum in Aarhus was such a tough nut to crack. But lighting designer Jonas Kongsbach has taken advantage of this obstruction to create maximum contrast between light and darkness. It creates a scenographic tension that gets under your skin.

The Occupation Museum is located in Aarhus' old town hall, which later became a police station and which was headquarters of Gestapo from autumn 1944 until the end of the war. The preserved cells and basement rooms, where the German security police interrogated and tortured members of the resistance, form the framework for an exhibition that tells of everyday life, the resistance struggle and Nazi oppression.

Storytelling with light

The museum, a part of The Old Town, underwent a major renovation in 2020, which included lighting of the exhibition. Jonas Kongsbach is responsible for the lighting and technology of exhibitions since 2015 in The Old Town, and he has been in charge of lighting. His background is the world of theatre and he has extensive experience in controlling the mood of the audience and creating storytelling with light:

– I span as far as possible between light and dark at the museum. In the living room I have created a daylight atmosphere. I use the windows as a light source to create a bright and friendly atmosphere, which contrasts with the torture room, where the light is dark and gloomy, with the victim at the centre. My focus is to create a light setting that best supports the narratives.

If you ask the director of The Occupation Museum, Søren Tange Rasmussen, he has succeeded:

– In the dark hallway where a swastika flag is hanging from the ceiling, the white part of the flag is lit up, creating a dramatic tension between light and dark that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. And in the interrogation room, where there is a doll representing a torture victim, Jonas has made the lighting appear as if the sunlight is creating prison streams. It works to perfection.

One lamp - one exhibition

Besides the rooms being very dark, the low ceilings in some places are only 10-20 cm above the visitor's head, called for creative solutions. Jonas Kongsbach needed spotlights small enough not to bump your head against, and in a design that suited the spirit of the place:

– It is important that the equipment has the right look when installed in original locations where they cannot be hidden. I was looking for small, subtle effects that wouldn't steal focus. In these rooms the lamps could easily take up more space than we would accept.

Jonas Kongsbach had very specific requirements for the features of the lamps:

– The lamp should be focusable and allow for light diffusion so that it illuminates only the desired area. The light source in the lamp also needed to be available with different colour temperatures, so I could create both warm light and cold daylight. In addition, the lamp had to be able to reproduce the right colours so that the objects appeared as correctly as possible. Finally, I needed to be able to control it with DMX, so I could create a kind of cycle or movement with the light.

He sought advice from Jens Lind, director of Gobo, a long-standing supplier of lighting technology to The Old Town. Gobo makes lighting and provides lighting equipment for museums and other exhibition venues.

– Jens and I speak the same language because he works with exhibitions himself, and he knows which equipment works optimally to get the effect I want. Jens is not only a supplier for me but very much a sparring partner, and he has helped me find the right solutions for the exhibition.

Jonas Kongsbach had an ambition to use a minimum of equipment but was unsure if he would have enough options with small spots.

Jens Lind recommended small, powerful spotlights from the Swedish brand Ljusdesign. A rail height of 10 mm and a lamp height of max 60 mm would provide headroom, and although the lamps are small, Jens Lind knew they would give Jonas Kongsbach optimal options:      

– If you do not know the lamp, you think it is so small that it cannot do anything. When you have tried to use it in different installations, you know that it can be used in many, he says and adds:
 

– For example, I used it at Glyptoteket, where they needed spots to illuminate the curved gold-painted ceiling in the entrance area, which almost disappeared because there was no light up there. We set up spots from Ljusdesign shoulder by shoulder, and it made the ceiling glow. So, I knew that if they could do it at Glyptoteket, they could do it in the dark rooms of The Occupation Museum as well.

Control system creates life and light

The lamps from Ljusdesign also have the advantage of being DMX-controlled, creating the interactivity that is an important element of the exhibition. That's why the spotlights and the CueCore2 control system from Visual Productions were chosen - all supplied by Gobo.

Jonas Kongsbach has programmed the light to be activated by the Pir Sensor (passive infrared sensor) at the museum. So, when you move towards the projection, which shows a German officer, in the interrogation room, a trigger starts the interrogation and the light sequence. And if you enter the exhibition spaces, a motion sensor activates the light in the display cases.

The fact that the display lights are only on when there are visitors is crucial in a museum, where legal requirements determine maximum lux each museum object can be exposed to. The objects do not tolerate fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and since the lamps are placed in the displays, they were required not to give off too much heat.

Jonas Kongsbach has worked with scenographic display lighting dividing the lighting of signs and objects. All the signs in the stands are backlit with the objects hanging in front of the signs side-illuminated from the front. This creates a 3D effect allowing text and objects to be individually controlled in terms of lighting, so that the objects stand out and the texts can be easily read.

Søren Tange Rasmussen is enthusiastic about the illumination of the museum objects, which he describes as a difficult discipline:

– Jonas has succeeded in creating a good contrast to the darkness of the rooms, where the light consists mainly of the illumination of the museum objects, one is simply drawn towards the objects, which are the focal point of the exhibition.

Lighting up a torture cell

Both Jonas Kongsbach and Jens Lind have worked in the world of theatre from which they have extensive experience of creating lighting in universes built from scenery. But making exhibition lighting in a real location, which has even been Gestapo's headquarters, has been quite special:

– Here we stand in the rooms where the Nazis tortured Danish resistance fighters no more than 75 years ago. The dramatic reality has played a part in the work on lighting, which has made it an extremely exciting task - and I must admit that it has sometimes given me a lump in my throat, says Jonas Kongsbach.

Reality or fiction. Jonas Kongsbach and Jens Lind share a passion: telling stories with light. And with the occupation as a theme, this requires full flare on the scenography in the play between light and darkness.