Vinterjazz vs You're Not Alone

Vinterjazz is a nationwide music festival that takes place in February each year.  The festival spans three weeks featuring more than 600 concerts, 150 venues and independent organizers from all across Denmark – from Aalborg, Aarhus, Odense and Esbjerg to the historic jazz capital of Copenhagen.

You're Not Alone is a dynamic work that activates when participants approach and pass each other during the biennial, Struer Tracks. From mobile phones, a version of the verse "You're Not Alone" from the 90s hit by Tim Kellett and Robin Taylor-Firth is played, sung by citizens of Struer. The work illustrates the relationships that arise and exist between people and the technologies we live with. It will be present in various contexts as participants move through publicly accessible spaces like libraries and town halls, shifting between physical and digital environments. You're Not Alone creates space for reflection on communities, identity, loneliness, digital ethics, and connection. You're Not Alone functions as a dynamic and mobile monument that unfolds as participants move between different public, commercial, and private arenas. Everything changes in relation to geographies and time, and my practice moves between the geopolitical landscape and the ultra-local, creating frameworks for dialogue and reflection. The understanding of truth and identity as closely tied to perspective and context forms a central part of my artistic work. The perspective concerns both population groups and objects whose meaning changes depending on temporal and spatial circumstances. The work You're Not Alone highlights the connections that exist between people, as well as the fundamental condition that we are connected — both in close relationships, in society, and in nation states — which unfolds in a reality marked by crises. Struer Tracks is a three-day biennial for sound and listening in public spaces, under the curatorial direction of Jacob Eriksen. With the title 'Municipal Practice,' the fifth edition of Struer Tracks explores how communities are established in different forms and nuances through sound and listening. The biennial will focus on new and unexpected connections, as well as highlighting already existing intersections and encounters. The way of engaging carriers of individual parts of a larger collective work has been developed through several projects, and the afterlife constitutes an essential part of the work, where the immaterial is materialized by bodily carriers of elements that are continued as sensed experiences. Since the Biennial is connected to the outside world, You're Not Alone can spread to the rest of the world and is thus changeable, just as the duration is flexible with a focused execution and an open ending. The work was developed in connection with a research residency at Sound Art Lab in Struer in June 2024 and is developed for the city of sound and the city's special character. In the process, there have been many informal conversations, listening evenings, Struer Open by Night, communal dining, and singing evenings in collaboration with Struer Library. The project is realized thanks to generous support from the New Carlsberg Foundation's fund for temporary site-specific art projects, the Danish Arts Foundation's Project Support Committee, as well as many dedicated local collaboration partners. The work consists of an app created by Holion.dk. Graphic identity: Stine Engelbrecht Nielsen Technological consulting and website: Anders Visti The work shares a title with Niels Lykke Lyhnegaard's public work "Du er ikke alene" (You Are Not Alone) in Struer.