Copenhagen Distortion
| Copenhagen Distortion | |
|---|---|
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| Date(s) | Week of first Saturday in June |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Location(s) | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Years active | 1998-present |
| Attendance | ~300.000 |
| Budget | 10,000,000 DKK (2013) |
| Organised by | The Distortion Foundation / Fonden Distortion København |
| Website | |
| www |
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Copenhagen Distortion is a celebration of Copenhagen street life and international club culture, "A week of Emerging Dance Music and Orchestrated Chaos". With an estimated 100,000 guests per day, it is one of the largest annual gatherings in Europe. Distortion is a mobile festival: the week starts in the streets of Copenhagen - in the Nørrebro and Vesterbro district - and with the Distortion Ø festival, with 8-10 stages per day by the Copenhagen harbor.
The idea of ultra-mobility and the tag-line "Distortion — A Celebration of Copenhagen Nightlife" was born in September 1998 for a one-night party in the nightclub Mantra in Tivoli, Copenhagen, established by Thomas Fleurquin. Distortion became a 5-day mobile festival in June 2000. Since the beginning, Distortion has invited local hosts from the club culture scene in Copenhagen, and different local street hosts presenting all sorts of urban culture. Everyone hosted their own party. The Distortion team would bind them all together in a wild party route. International hosts started in 2004 with colette (concept store in Paris) hosting a radio show on a boat and curating a dancefloor at the Final Party [1]. Since then, some of the world's leading brands of international club culture have hosted Distortion parties: Vice Magazine, Fabric - London, Resident Advisor, Adidas, Ed Bangers, Kompakt, Trouw - Amsterdam, Fact Magazine, Red Bull Music Academy... In the period 1998-2007, Distortion was a small, chaotic, not-fully-legal 5-day party crawl through Copenhagen, mainly for the local underground art scene and club culture professionals. In 2007, after gathering 2.000 guests at a single street party for the first time, Distortion decided to go professional and entered a collaboration with the Copenhagen City Council and the Copenhagen Police: Nus/Nus - the Distortion Secretariat was established. In 2011, according to the Copenhagen Police, Distortion had 80.000-100.000 visitors per day, becoming one of the largest annual gatherings in Europe. In 2012, Distortion established Fonden Distortion København (the Distortion Foundation).
In the daytime, from 16.00-22.00, Distortion orchestrates 40-50 street parties in one Copenhagen district: Nørrebro on the Wednesday, Vesterbro on the Thursday, attracting more than 100.000 people each day, and completely shutting down traffic in the city area. The Street parties are hosted by local sound system: shops, nightclubs, residents, galleries, labels, magazines, bars. Distortion is famous for its intense street-chaos vibe and turning the streets into a giant nightclub, but there are also events for children, pop-up street restaurants and a stage for international classical music. The streets of Copenhagen are literally jam-packed, and transformed by the thousands of guests dancing and loving life and music together. The Street Parties are partly financed by the Gadearmbånd ("Street-Wristband"), a voluntary donation (100kr / €13) to support the production and cleaning of the street parties.
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Wikipedia