WHAT'S THE STORY
Copenhagen Distortion - Celebrating Street Life and Modern Party Culture - is the craziest annual party cavalcade in Old Europe, with 166+ dancefloors in 166+ different locations and 166+ different hosts. The Distortion fest includes massive Block Party celebrations - in the streets, for free, in the afternoon - and Club Clash events, late at night, in local bars, nightclubs and spectacular Copenhagen locations.
ACTION
Every day 16.00-22.00h, Distortion gathers between 22.222 and 111.111 people partying, breakdancing, cooking, getting naked, singing and crawling in the streets: we call it BLOCK PARTY. It's free and takes place 5 days in a row in 5 different Copenhagen neighbourhoods (the main street events are Wednesday+Thursday+Friday, respectively in Cph City+Nørrebro+Vesterbro).
By night 22.00-06.00h, we call it CLUB CLASH & FINAL PARTY. The Festival all-access TurPas is cheap, the bar is also cheap - and the Distortion dancing man on the logo wall is a guarantee for: absolute party madness + the newest dance music + succulent partnerships with Europa's maestros of contemporary party culture (from Melt! to Vice via Wet Yourself, Das Kompakt and Le Dirty Sound System).
In short: Distortion is like a backyard get-together with 200 friends, followed by a privately held warehouse party with funky DJs - only it's become a gigantic carnival of modern big-city culture, open to all.
BEGINNING
We have been a small "just-for-fun" celebration, for an open clique of Copenhagen party-culture-antifashion-art-disco nerds, since 1998. Between 2003 and 2007, we grew without really growing up. In 2008, we started to pretend we were a serious festival: we opened a company (Nus/Nus ApS), we made a serious budget for the first time, got an office and a trashy black 1982 limousine.
Since we went semi-pro in 2008, things have gone really, really fast. "WOW!" is the typical response we have been getting from people like the world's hardest editors in the party-business (the heads of Modular Records, Fabric London, Vice London, Vice Berlin, Kompakt, Melt!...). In 2011 we entered the event superleague with over 130.000 individual guests. "Hello, mainstream, how you doin'?".
WHY SO SPECIAL
Apologies to dickheads, music professionals, gangsters, esteemed members of the press (mmpfff!), horny teenagers and Italian ginos: there is no vip area. One of Distortion's strict special rules is that anyone must feel welcome everywhere. We have restricted areas for staff, artists and volunteers, but there is zero drinking/dancing there. NOTE: "Secret/private" parties may happen - but they will always be open to anyone who shows up without a knife (if we are ever obliged to make a non-random decision on our audience, we'll only ever rule out people who clearly fit in a category named above). (And make an exception for horny teenagers, we've all been there).
But even more special than the no-vip rule, is the way the festival is 100% mobile. It's a rule that the festival must be moving all the time. The Block Parties move from one neighbourhood to the next each day during the Distortion week - and we always have plenty of bus parties, boat parties, parades and new locations.
We didn't know it originally, so really the Distortion success is just luck, but here is the big secret: the mobile party concept is perfect to make everyone lose control, including the authorities and ourselves.
COLOURS, ITEMS AND SHAPES
Every year since 2000, we choose five colours and five items to represent the five neighbourhoods of our 5-day celebration. In 2008, we started to draw one black shape, that binds the five days/colours/items together and represents the festival itself. Hurray, for FOS + Nis&Nis, and their super colour-schemes. See the fine colour, item and identity chronology:
