Festival as Embodied Encounters: On Kulturhavn in Copenhagen

ABSTRACT

This article is part of a project on Paradoxical Spaces: Encountering the Other in public space which explores how cultural difference is experienced, practiced and negotiated in public space. Specifically, it explores the ‘multicultural’ festival Kulturhavn taking place yearly along the harbour of Copenhagen. Multicultural festivals are seen as places for on-going identity negotiations, where individuals and groups define meaningful concepts of identity along with notions of exclusion. In the paper, we adopt a performative approach abandoning the distinction between bodies and space and embracing ideas of ‘embodiment’ and ‘rhythm’. We explore participant engagement emphasizing bodily practices as well as sensuous experiences, but also differential processes and orientalist images produced in, and through, encounters. Among the range of activities at the festival, we focus on three: food; dance; and taekwondo. The methods are participant observation and different kinds of interviews.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural encounter
• encounter
• intercultural contact
• festival
• body
• multiculturalism
• orientalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kirsten Simonsen is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at Roskilde University, Denmark. She is interested in urban cultures and everyday life, social and critical theory, and the history and philosophy of geography. Her current research on the borderline between practice theory and postcolonialism focuses on ethnic minorities, cross-cultural encounters, practices of identity and racism in Denmark. Kirsten has been active in the debates of critical geography in both the Nordic countries and the international context. She has published numerous articles in refereed journals such as Antipode, Environment and Planning D, Progress in Human Geography, Ethnicities, Cities, Geografiska Annaler and European Urban and Regional Studies, and among her books are Voices from the North (2003, with Jan Öhman) and Space Odysseys (2004, with Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt).

Lasse Koefoed is Associate professor in Social and Cultural geography at Roskilde University and is well known within critical Geography. His research interest relates to urban geographies, cities and ethnic minorities, nation and nationalism, postcolonialism, cross cultural encounters and everyday life. Lasse has been involved in several major research projects and is currently heading the project ‘Paradoxical Spaces: Encountering the other in public space’. He has edited a book on urban planning (2014) and a book on ‘the stranger’ the city and the nation (2010 together with Kirsten Simonsen) and has published widely in international journals like Ethnicities, Cities and Antipode.

Maja de Neergaard is Assistant Professor in Social and Cultural geography at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research interests are urban theory, the relation between the urban and the countryside, theories of practice, the interstices between human and non-human, nature, materiality and architecture. Maja is also interested in ethnographic and experimental methods, alternative forms of writing and philosophy of science.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Danish Research Council [DFF 1327-00077].