Gitte Bog

Cheer Up a Stranger  

When I received the invitation to apply for the residency the first time I had no plans of being in Copenhagen that week and thought it was a great shame because I really liked the concept. When I later received an invitation to fill in hours that hadn’t been filled I knew that I would be in Copenhagen Monday morning before catching a plane to Berlin in the evening.

As my work often relates to where I am in a certain moment I decided to try to start a project that could travel with me to Berlin and return to Mexico City, where I live, within a week.

Because of winter blues I wrote people in Mexico City asking them to choose songs that they thought might cheer up people in Denmark, the idea was to then ask people in Copenhagen to choose some songs for people in Berlin. During the hours of my residency (8-10am) people was busy taking their kids to school and to get themselves to work so it wasn’t a good time to ask for participation. Instead they got serenaded when passing by Koh-i-Noor with a play-list of very different songs. This variety of personal taste interests me and several Mexicans wrote me that the exercise cheered them up. I have lived a long time in Mexico, where people are greeted with music from the early morning and quite like it and I am wondering if the Danes may have found it cheerful or if they would rather not be “cheered up” on this grey, cold morning. But these cultural different interests me as well. Although it didn’t turn into a “pass the baton” type project, it was worth doing – especially because of the enthusiasm of the Mexicans, who kept sending me songs after I had done my residency at Koh-i-Noor, which I played in Berlin.

I think that the residency was a good chance to try something out and be able to fail because of the encouragement to not feel under pressure.

Cheer Up a Stranger playlist