Vesterbro Christmas

Transforming a tradition :: Create transition cultures.

A tradition. Tree without roots, upraised fixation. Not only Frederiksberg Rådhusplads every december.

Christmas is perhaps one of the traditions, that provoke most ambivalent feelings among us.

On one hand it is the feast of birth and love and live.

On the other hand it has the taste of our society lost in hypocrisy, consumerism, and dancing around millions of green Christmas trees raised on monoculture plantations and treated with weed pesticides, with the illusion of wild nature in our homes … .

“The trees wait patiently, until humans are far enough developed to be able to understand their message.” (Hundertwasser, 1977)

How rootless can we become?

H.C. Andersen wrote a fantastic fairy tale about the impatient short-sighted growth obsession, telling the Christmas story from the view of a little fir tree in the forest, that wants to become a Christmas tree!

This fairy tale is part of our Christmas trees building sessions with the oldest children in Træstubben. (H.C. Andersen 1845 “The fir tree”)

2012–2016 film documentations

From decoration of green Christmas trees to full Christmas tree installation. Documentary in Danish of the first realisation of a evolving local tradition. Vesterbro Juletræsfest 2012

Guldgraver Jul 2015, by Liva B. Linnet,

A film by Mitte Scheldeman and Valentini Sampethai. Made in collaboration with the Floating City collective in Copenhagen, as part of Visual Anthropology in Practice 2014, University of Copenhagen. “That's Christmas Lights”

Here you can see the time lap of the Christmas feast in 2014.

Remake Christmas by Thomas Dambo

A photo selection of Christmas trees made of waste materials, co-produced with children groups:

See more pictures on the Vesterbro Juletræsfest facebook.

After party, local re-circulation of materials

“Localogisk” as a supplement to the Danish “Økologisk”(ecologic).

Some examples:

Recyclable tableware from the Christmas party are deposed in a Hügelbeet by Træstubben as nutrition for the plants.

Can you recognize the spoons?

They are from the rice porridge of the Christmas party! —

Public event — mixed trash bin. Pretended good will is like: two steps back and one forth!

If we do not compost it, the recyclable tableware from big public events just end in the incinerator, together with all other waste, plastic spoons, etc. …

After the month of December in the park, around 250 bird houses were distributed among local institutions and and set up on public play grounds.

“Fuglejuletræ”, 2013 — The bird house Christmas tree, made in collaboration with Thomas Dambo.