What does a city do when it wants to reinvent itself? No idea is a bad idea in Aarhus’s case. Denmark’s second largest city is leaving no ideas unheeded to shake off its ‘university town’ image. Playing out in Aarhus is the coming of age story of a small town—reimagined architecture for its apartment buildings some of which are now shaped like icebergs, a new tram line for non-cyclists (no, really, in a country obsessed with bikes, additional public transportation inside a city that is one fifth of Chennai’s urban area is, well, additional luxury), and newly acquired Michelin stars for its restaurants.
It is also the European Capital of Culture this year, an honour handed over to cities by the European Union aimed at, “raising the international profile and enhancing the image of cities.” An environmentally sustainable city is being built—complete with vertical forests, new-age housing, new forms of transport and much more. Essentially, a super smart city that “gives more than it takes from the environment.”
Peeling the layer of the project’s earnestness for the cause, it all seemed directed at some form of neo-hippie exhibitionism. I chided myself for cynical-thinking until I read a news piece in which was a quote by Kim Bisgaard, an innovator and one of the brains behind the project. “If we now want to make a green high-rise that absorbs CO2 using a vertical forest, why not make it so interesting that people come from all over Scandinavia to see it.” Certainly, why not?
People from all over Scandinavia, and the rest of the world, are indeed descending upon Aarhus. The city is far from milling with tourists because Denmark can be prohibitively expensive to travel; still there is a steady increase in the number of tourists, as acknowledged by a manager at the Natural History Museum.
Edgy installations
I suspect the edgy and inventive art installations around the city have a part to play. Don’t be baffled by the car hanging from a stationary crane by the Aarhus bay, water spilling out of it as if it’s lifted straight from the ocean, part of a series of installations to celebrate the culture capital events.
How far do you go for art? A little too far if you’re in Aarhus, actually. An artist, called Katharina Grosse, pruned down a few trees and painted the green meadows surrounding it in bright pink and chalk white. In the process, the surrounding trees also got some paint thrown at them. Environmental activists were naturally ballistic over this and called it out for what they saw as vandalism. The artist’s vision, that her artwork is representational of how humans are intruding with wilderness and nature, didn’t sit well with the environmentalists. The controversy died down though the artwork and her artistic expression stand alongside the bay, as if waiting for an acid rain to wash away the pink and white paints that scar the landscape.
One morning as I walked around on the bay, I see school children visiting these installations with selfie sticks and fidget spinners in their hands. Must be stressful, this little life.
Identity angst
In its art museum, amid the paintings of the 18th century artists, is a startlingly lifelike installation of an Australian aboriginal boy, squatted and saucer-eyed with angst, hiding his face. It is part of the contemporary exhibition that also features artwork to represent Europe immigrant crisis, racial violence in the U.S. in the 60s, questioning the flag as a symbol of Scandinavian identity, a broken Las Vegas signboard as a reflection of the American dream and the myth about the land of endless opportunities. There is a particularly moving exhibit of an artist who went around collecting signs by street beggars all over Europe. The result is a framed portrait of urban poverty all over the continent.
Aarhus has had its share of issues related with the refugee crisis. As if to shake its image of a neo-nordic utopia, there was a gang shooting just in June the police suspect is part of organised crime gangs.
It may be hip and accommodating (Aarhus’ immigrant population is second only to Copenhagen in the country) but its Nordic hospitality cannot seem to contain these skirmishes.
All that is, however, absolved and when you see the city through the rainbow glassed panels, installed above the art museum, on its terraces. What is called the Rainbow Panorama Walkway created by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, what you see when you take a walk along its fibre glass interiors, is the old and new of the city shimmering through the panels, in different colours.
In Eliasson’s words: “I have created a space that can almost be said to erase the boundary between inside and outside—a place where you become a little uncertain as to whether you have stepped into a work of art or into part of the museum.” A little bit like Aarhus itself.
Prathap Nair is happy on the road as much as he is at home, tending to his houseplants that often breed fruit flies. He lives in Stuttgart, Germany.
