Seen on Screen: Riget
Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. The new wing, designed by Link Arkitektur and 3XN stands at the front of the image, and contrasts with the glowering main wing that lurks behind (Image courtesy of Adam Mørk/3XN).
Copenhagen’s largest hospital, Rigshospitalet, has a new wing and it’s lovely. Designed by local architects Link Arkitektur and 3XN, it is humanely proportioned, clad in pale natural stone, and brimming with abstract art and light-infused interiors. It couldn’t be further, architecturally, from the hospital’s main wing, which rises behind it like a concrete bogeyman. This hulking monolith, designed by Jørgen Stærmose and Kay Boeck- Hansen in the late 1960s, radiates a malevolence that cannot be extenuated even by a flattering press shot.
Or so it seems to me. I lived in Copenhagen in the 1990s, and watched Lars von Trier’s TV series Riget (1994- 97) at an impressionable age. “Riget” means “the realm” or “the kingdom” in Danish (the show is known as The Kingdom internationally) but it is also a shorthand for Rigshospitalet, where the drama takes place. It’s a hospital show like no other, viewed through a sickening sepia filter and populated by grotesque characters, including Dr Helmer, a narcissistic Swedish neurosurgeon, and Mrs Drusse, a patient and self-proclaimed medium who senses sinister goings-on. The hospital turns out to be haunted, not only by ghosts, but by deeper, chthonic forces, suppressed for too long by a haughty medical establishment enamoured with its own scientific rationality.
Stærmose and Boeck-Hansen’s building does a lot of work in Riget. It comes to represent – no, actually embody – the oppressive rigidity of the doctors’ attitudes to death, so that when the demonic reckoning arrives it is from under and within the building, erupting forth through cracks in the concrete. “Tiny signs of fatigue have begun to show in the seemingly solid, modern edifice,” a mysterious narrator warns in the opening credits of each episode. Aerial shots of Rigshospitalet also come up repeatedly – the shaky proto-Dogme 95 camerawork suggesting a sense of imminent collapse. Reason and scientific progress are built on diabolical deeds, the building seems to say. This all sounds dreadful and a bit moralising, but Riget redeems itself through sheer silliness: relaying the wider thematics is a plot that encompasses exorcisms, demonic pregnancies, attempts at voodoo, and a doctor obsessed with the density of his own poo. Since airing, the show has achieved cult status far beyond its native Denmark.
In December 2020, a third season of Riget, titled Riget Exodus, was announced. Written by von Trier and Niels Vørsel (the original screenwriters), the season will start filming in 2021, and I can’t imagine they will utilise the new wing. It’s just so pristine! Or perhaps it’s the perfect setting for a 21st-century reboot, generating a new form of AirSpace uncanny. Imagine the wards blindingly bright, the mid-century-inspired furniture cracking, the suspended Olafur Eliasson mobile inexplicably crashing to the ground. Hit me up Lars! I’ve got this bold new scenography all figured out.
Words Kristina Rapacki
This article was originally published in Disegno #29. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.