Instant City@Roskilde Festival

INSTANT CITY@ROSKILDE FESTIVAL pursues this phenomenon in a comprehensive analysis of one of the biggest cultural events in Denmark. Roskilde Festival’s comprehensive program and its physical size justify our perception of it as a new ‘temporary experience city’ with more than 100,000 inhabitants.
The book analyzes the concept of the festival, its mission statement, its physical layout, its urban life and its architecture, and it seeks to define the events that take place at the festival – be they scheduled or unscheduled. The potential of the temporary city to combine its ambitious music program with experimental architecture is the focal point, and the book thus explores the possibilities of promoting new aesthetics and a diverse social life in the city’s official spaces.

The analyses take their point of departure in Roskilde Festival 2009. In advance (2008), research was carried out and interviews conducted with central people in the organization behind the festival. A research team with nine members was at the 2009 festival observing participants at the camp sites, in the agoras, in the public spaces of the city and in the concert areas. Many hours’ worth of interviews and numerous city tours have been conducted, and in excess of 3000 day and night photographs have been taken during the eight-day-long festival. Subsequently, the authors have analyzed and interpreted the numerous urban space analyses and visitor observations in addition to conducting further interviews. In 2010, a small team was present again; this time in order to verify information and photo-document themes that were not covered the previous year. A lot of work has gone into the project, but it has also been a fantastic experience during which we have met many committed festival planners and a whole lot of festive guests in the camping areas and during the numerous concerts that the team managed to attend.