Parklife
Lyt til et uddrag af PARKLIFE I
PARKLIFE is three original, audience-engaging audio performances in three different parks in Copenhagen: Ørstedsparken, the Kings Garden and the Assistens Cemetery.
Parklife 1: The Lion was created by Public Performance/Erik Pold for the Kings Garden, Parklife 2: This is not a line but part of a very large circle was created by Sarah Thom and Simon Will from Berlin-based arts collective Gob Squad in 2023.
Now the event is back with PARKLIFE 3: Garden on the Grave by the finish artscollective WAUHAUS
Premiere on May 15 at 20.00 in the Assistens Cemetery
Bring you own smartphone and headphones and go to: www.parklife.nu
Garden on the Grave is a gathering, a guided group wandering and a slowly unfolding mirage. The site-sensitive audio performance invites the audience to an urban cemetery, a vibrant ‘living place’, where cultural and ecological processes are inseparably intertwined. The performance celebrates how the living and the dead are bound together in the constant processes of vital regeneration. It draws attention to our relations and interactions with the environment and gently questions notions of individuality, exceptionalism, and what we perceive as natural.
Garden on the Grave gives time and space for contemplation. The performance subtly guides the audience’s perception and invites the participants to engage in simple actions both alone and together. It is partly an audiowalk, partly a death meditation tape.
On May 26 – 30 you can experience all 3 PARKLIFE audio-performances during CPH STAGE 2025
NB: Artist Talk with the artists behind PARKLIFE on May 27 from 19.15 – 20.15 at Literaturhaus.
“The movements of our bodies set something in motion that can perhaps best be described as heightened attention. An attention to the scents, structures and textures of the surroundings and to each other as a group. The group of strangers who, for a good half hour, are together to give the story a physical expression. More cheerfully in Kongens Have, more quietly in Ørstedsparken, but with a common attention to connections and being part of something bigger that we may neither be able to nor need to oversee.”
ISCENE.dk/ Anne Liisberg
“The constrained park meets becoming the park in Liminal & Gob Squad’s double audio walk PARKLIFE … this is where we begin to understand that we are one with nature, and that every time we hold someone else’s hand or touch a tree, we are not just standing on a line – we are all part of the universe, part of the great circle of the universe.”
Sceneblog / Anne Liisberg
“A hilarious micro-examination of the structures of power and our own imaginations … Thoroughly enjoyable.”
Dagbladet Information / Anne Middelboe Christensen
About Parklife
The audio events are a mixture of flash mob meets guided tour, in which audiences are invited to participate in being guided around parks and fulfill particular tasks. The experience is active, political, critical, entertaining and surprising.
Come and join us as we explore the public parks of Copenhagen and discover what they have in store for us in terms of history and possibilities.
PARKLIFE I
THE KING’S GARDEN:
THE LION
By Erik Pold / Public Performance
Lions, gods, powerplay and nonbinary fairytales. Public Performance directs us in a straight line into The King’s Garden. Here, nature is under control, beautiful straight avenues and trimmed flower beds are strictly and symmetrically disciplined, and visitors are normally expected to be well behaved, while they feel themselves wrapped in the presence of history, greeted by kings, queens, princesses and princes in the middle of neat flower beds and sculptures that elevate man over nature. But as we proceed, we slowly realise that the presence of history has lost some momentum over time.
Which forms of power do we accept today? Royal power is beginning to seem a bit like a fanciful decorative construction, a folly garden. Let’s move away from the usual straight paths of the park and challenge its hierarchy. In THE LION, the princess is non-binary and we may have to fight dragons, lions and our own ego.
Duration: 40 minutes.
PARKLIFE II
ØRSTEDPARKEN:
THIS IS NOT A LINE, BUT PART OF A VERY LARGE CIRCLE
By Sarah Thom and Simon Will / Gob Squad
“Urban living has always tended to produce a sentimental view of nature. Nature is thought of as a garden, or a view framed by a window, or as an arena of freedom”.
The White Bird, by John Berger
The park, and parklife has given us city folks a quaint view of nature. We prefer it in a frame, landscaped and aesthetically pleasing and at the service of our need to escape the urban grind and concrete. Perhaps we once believed that if we surrounded ourselves by a Garden of Eden, we would ourselves become pure and innocent as the founders of humanity we believed in.
Gob Squad will lead you into the picturesque idyllic setting of Ørstedsparken which melts from the city into the park landscape. In this charming landscape, clues will reveal themselves and speak to us about the more chaotic, fearsome and unbridled sides of nature and humanity in which our desires do not conform to the ideal standards of beauty and the common good but rather splurge between attraction and repulsion, between uncertainty and fleeting encounters. The audio walk will be fun and playful, but also dive you into a world of surprises and secrets, of longing, encounters and departures.
The title references a piece from Yoko Ono and speaks of life cycles and the perception of seeing only a small part of something gigantic and greater than us.
Duration: 40 minutes
PARKLIFE III
ASSISTENS KIRKEGÅRDEN:
GARDEN ON THE GRAVE
By Samuli Laine and Jussi Matikainen / WAUHAUS
Garden on the Grave is a gathering, a guided group wandering and a slowly unfolding mirage. The site-sensitive audio performance invites the audience to an urban cemetery, a vibrant ‘living place’, where cultural and ecological processes are inseparably intertwined. The performance celebrates how the living and the dead are bound together in the constant processes of vital regeneration. It draws attention to our relations and interactions with the environment and gently questions notions of individuality, exceptionalism, and what we perceive as natural.
Garden on the Grave gives time and space for contemplation. The performance subtly guides the audience’s perception and invites the participants to engage in simple actions both alone and together. It is partly an audiowalk, partly a death meditation tape.
WAUHAUS is a Helsinki-based multidisciplinary arts collective that was founded in 2016. Their works are situated between different genres of art and have taken place at various venues, such as gallery spaces, small black box venues, urban sites, large stadiums, and the main stages of established theatre houses. WAUHAUS is known for their comprehensive audiovisual stage aesthetics and methods of shared authorship. The members of WAUHAUS are scenographer Laura Haapakangas, director Juni Klein, scenographer Samuli Laine, sound designer Jussi Matikainen, choreographer Jarkko Partanen, sound designer Heidi Soidinsalo, and managing director Julia Hovi. The collective collaborates with other artists and institutions both in Finland and abroad.
Duration: 60 minutes.
PARKLIFE I
THE LION
Idea, text, and speak
Erik Pold / LIMINAL
Composer and sound designer
Jens Mønsted
Artistic sparring
Adelaide Bentzon
PARKLIFE II
THIS IS NOT A LINE, BUT PART OF A VERY LARGE CIRCLE
Idea, text and speak
Sarah Thom and Simon Will / Gob Squad
Composer
Sophie Fishwick
Sound design
Jens Mønsted
PARKLIFE III
THIS IS NOT A LINE, BUT PART OF A VERY LARGE CIRCLE
Concept, Directing and Design
Samuli Laine and Jussi Matikainen / WAUHAUS
Performance Dramaturgy
Tuomas Laitinen
Research Assistance
Paula Sasse
Voice-over
Heidi Soidinsalo
Illustration Garden on the Grave
Samuli Laine
Producer
Minttu-Maria Jäävuori and Julia Hovi / WAUHAUS
Support
Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation
PARKLIFE
Concept
Erik Pold
Website and interaction design
Henrik Øvad
Illustration PARKLIFE
Jes Brinch
Producer
Ann-Jette Caron and Anne Mai Slot Vilmann
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