SELF-INSTITUTIONALISATION For good and ill the process of institutionalisation has become internalised says Jakob Jakobsen 

Art Monthly 2006
 
'I began to use the concept of ‘self-institutionalisa- tion’ during 1998 and 1999 in relation to the establish- ment with Henriette Heise of a project space, Info Centre, in East London (see review in AM224). For us this was the start of a series of practical experiments with the construction and use of institutions. Info Centre was a combined exhibition space, archive and bookshop. The first ‘info sheet’ of the Info Centre stated: ‘We are committed to an understanding of art practice that is not exclusively related to the making of art works, but also includes the establishing of institu- tions for the experience and use of art and generally the making of institutions for human life.’ - Jakob Jakobsen 2006

 

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'We saw this self-institution as a parallel to other institutions in society, particularly art institutions. But inevitably we soon found that our institution made materially more sense to us in our everyday life than most of the other institutions we encountered. We were not interested in being perceived as an anti-institution, because we had no interest in positioning Info Centre in relation to mainstream institutions or the dominant culture, which are usually so closely tied together. And we did not view mainstream institutions or the dominant culture as necessarily being in opposition to us; we simply refused them in their totality. The construction of an institution was not intended as a critique but instead as a means to take control of both production and distribution. It represented an escape from oppositional institutional critique through the total refusal of the dominant institutions’ monopoly of power'.'

 

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Traditionally institutions deal with confinement or detention, for example, hospitals, prisons, schools, barracks, the family – and the art museum. Michel Foucault described societies characterised by these kinds of closed institutions as disciplinary societies – a form of society that dominated during the 19th Cen- tury and the first half of the 20th Century. Institu- tions in disciplinary societies operated as closed systems: their primary function was the production of normality: they made everything cohere, they organ- ised time, they organised space and they established a specific public sphere. Thus in the disciplinary society institutions had a normalising function and this oper- ated mainly through physical constraints: they isolated unfit people from the public sphere by means of con- finement in mental hospitals and prisons, and like- wise they kept art, education, upbringing and work within very specific frameworks. When growing up people move from one closed system to the next: first the family, then the school, the military, the universi- ty, and the factory, and so on. In the same way the white cube of the modern art museum represents a similarly closed system. The institutions of discipli- nary society had a suitably robust and conservative architecture – they were brick-based institutions.
  

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After the Second World War discipline started to break down as new powers slowly entered the frame. New systems of dominance came into force, as Gilles Deleuze described in the 1990 text Postscript to the Con- trol Society. In this text – which this analysis draws upon – he writes: ‘We’re in the midst of a general breakdown of all sites of confinement – prisons, hospi- tals, factories, schools, the family.’ Here we would add art museums: ‘These institutions are in more or less terminal decline. It’s simply a matter of nursing them through their death throes and keeping people busy until the new forces knocking on the door take over.’ 

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When we as consumers move through daily life our behaviour is increasingly being observed and recorded as we take part in electronic transactions: when we use our mobile phones, when we use our credit/debit card, and when we use the internet. An electronic logbook recording many of our activities is gradually being produced. The control is not solely external, existing in the public sphere, it also pervades the body and the mind and unfolds through language, communication and social rela- tions. As Cornelius Castoriadis has described it in World in Fragments, 1996: ‘Individuals become what they are by absorbing and internalising institutions. This internalisation ... is anything but superficial: modes of thought and action, norms and values, and, ultimately the very identity of the individual as a social being are dependent upon it.’ The institutional system is becoming like a gas we inhale.

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Self-institutionalisation can be viewed as a kind of exorcism, a kind of externalisation of this internalised control. This is perhaps one way to describe the ambitions lying behind many of the new self-organised institutions which continue to emerge in various cultures around the world.
At least it was the ambition that encouraged Heise and myself to found the Copenhagen Free University. We did not want to base our institutional building on a direct opposition, but on a refusal of the dominant institu- tional mode of production, an evacuation of its basis through the construction of an alternative. The con- struction of this alternative was based on taking power – but also on a refusal to become government.