Happy New Year!! (still goes right?)
Hope you’ve all been well and had the joyest of joyfullnesses!
Pulled the plug on a lot of things during December, so I haven’t shared this with you yet.
As a part of the StreetHeart Christmas Calender 24 artist were asked to create a piece between the 1st and 24th of December, making Copenhagen just a little more Christmasie and giving the guys and girls of the city something to do while waiting for A: Christmas B: The sun to come back. (Which eventually IT WILL!)
SO! tons of fun in the streets and a lot of great stuff this year.
For some reason I really wanted to wrap something. I decided to do a huge Christmas present, wrapping this otherwise grey, sad and pretty much lame concrete bench.
I wanted to make it useful for the locals, so I decided that the gift should serve as a heated bench, covering it with isolating flamingo squares before wrapping it.
Hence I called it “Bænkevarmer”. Which directly translated means “Bench-heater” which is funny-ha-ha (ha-ha) in Danish, but not really worth explaining …
Using 6 meters of oilcloth, 30 meters of red tape, 7 meters of green gift ribbon, 4 pieces of flamingo, an obscene amount of tape – and the help of some good friends – this is what the huge gift looked like.
Comfy, right?
I really enjoy the whole process of a project like this, but maybe my favourite part is when realising that it actually worked as I intended and that people get it! When I was unwrapping it the other day, one of the local dog-walkers passed by and said thanks, because he’d used it quite a deal during december and really enjoyed the warmth of the pop-up-heated-bench. Awwww … Mission accomplished.
//Ida
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Tags: bænkevarmer, Christmas calendar, colourful interventions, Copenhagen, fun in the city, gaver, heated bench, huge gift, Ida Kinch, indpakning., kæmpe pakke, streetart, wrapping
I’m a cartoon-drawing, postcard-making, freelance copywriter. Huge music-fan, festival-junkie, street art freak. Extremely nice. (really)
“Benchwarmer” is also a thing in English, just FYI ;) (ie. you need to see more football/baseball/basketball etc. :))
Hahaha … I SOOOO don’t need more sports :) I was reffering to the phrase used at dances and balls (no pun intended!) where people who didn’t have anyone to dance with would be called “Benchwarmer”. But I should have guessed that it was somewhat the same in the sports-industry. Thanks! :)