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Audio-walks in Vesterbro

 

Six audio-walks are waiting to accompany you on literary city walks of Vesterbro. Grab your iPod, download an audio-walk and allow yourself to be drawn into all corners of the neighbourhood by the voices of six young writers and artists. Lars Frost, Claus Handberg Christensen, Kristiane Hauer, René Jean Jensen, Johanne Løgstrup and Charlotte Weitze share their views on Vesterbro with you.

Take a literary tour down Istedgade

The writers and artists represent a wide range of views on the Vesterbro neighbourhood. Listen to how Vesterbro has become home for a young man from Jylland through events that take place under the cover of darkness, or join a ghastly ghost tour departing from Sorte Hests Gæstgiveri (The Black Horse Inn) as narrated by the hangman's daughter. You can also travel through time from a young girl's knee-high experience of Vesterbro until she, as a young woman, sees the sun rise above the roofs of Vesterbro while partying in a rooftop apartment on Gasværksvej.

Download an audio-file or borrow the audio-walks

The audio-walks and accompanying route-maps may be downloaded at www.flamingoeffekten.dk. They can also be borrowed on MP3-players from the Museum of Copenhagen. In addition, they are also available in an English version. Both versions are approximately 16 to 38 minutes in length. The audio-walks can also be borrowed as class sets. Audio-walks may be borrowed at the regular admission fee. Should you wish to reserve an audio-walk, please contact the Museum of Copenhagen at telephone no. +45 33 21 07 72.

The idea behind the Vesterbro Site

The audio-walks are aimed at providing the listener with a personal account of Vesterbro, thereby allowing foreign tourists and local citizens to experience an inside-view of life in Vesterbro. Fantasy and reality come together in the audio-walk experience, in a way that is impossible to achieve through the more common "written-literature" guides. One's experience of the neighbourhood becomes both intimate and direct when accompanied by the "sound-literature" guide.

Vesterbro has set the scene for various pieces of Danish literary history.  While Tove Ditlevsen wrote about her childhood in the neighbourhood backyards, Dan Turéll wrote about what took place in its streets.  Through the Vesterbro Site upcoming young writers and artists now have the chance to forward their personal contributions to, and about, the neighbourhood.

Due to the ways in which it has been illustrated in literature, Vesterbro has become a stereotype. Everyone feels connected to Vesterbro in some way, regardless of whether or not they have been there.  It has become a symbol of the lower echelons of Danish society - synonymous with prostitutes, drug-addicts and porn shops, despite the fact that the neighbourhood has changed during recent years and become renewed as a family- and café-friendly neighbourhood.

Behind the scenes of the Vesterbro Site

Curator Johanne Løgstrup developed the Vesterbro Site. Tim Hinman produced and sound-designed.  For further information on the project and development hereof, please contact Curator Johanne Løgstrup at jloegstrup@fastmail.fm, telephone no. +45 60 88 15 40, or www.flamingoeffekten.dk. The project is supported by the Margot and Thorvald Dreyer's Fund, The Municipality of Copenhagen's Local Fund and Adolf Andersen's grant.

For further information, please click on The Museum of Copenhagen's walking-tours.