Listening to the city

About the project

Maj Hasager & Ask Kæreby: Att lyssna till staden (Listening to the city), 2025

Att lyssna till staden (Listening to the city) is a public artwork for the neighbourhood of Klostergården in Lund, Sweden. The work consists of three parts and was developed by artist Maj Hasager and composer Ask Kæreby in close collaboration with Kulturskolan Lund, a music school in the city, and associations and citizens in the Klostergården neighbourhood.

Through a series of workshops at the music school and at Klostergården, a group of music students developed their abilities to listen to, capture and recreate the city’s many sounds. The process, which consisted of exploring, discerning, collecting and interpreting the area’s scattered sonic environment, resulted in a joint composition.

In June 2022, a performance of the composition was held at the splash pad in Klostergården. The piece of music – which reproduces an interplay between various sound fragments taken from Klostergården and was performed by the music school students – has a unique expression far from traditional orchestral music.

Documentation from the workshops and the performance were compiled by Hasager into a video installation, which is screened at Klostergården’s library – in a window that faces the square. In addition, the artists interviewed local residents about their relationship to the site, and together with the music students’ various sound fragments, their stories are included as part of a soundwalk, which can be accessed online, including via QR codes placed by the splash pad and the library.

The soundwalk’s starting point is a sculpture, placed by the small splash pad in the neighbourhood, depicting a music stand, which simultaneously serves as a reminder of the collectively created artwork. The entire artwork, with all its different elements, is documented and described in detail in the accompanying publication Att lyssna till staden / Listening to the city, Lunds konsthall, 2025.

The artists:

Maj Hasager is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen. Her art practice involves a research- and dialogue-based approach, working primarily with text, sound, video and photography.
Ask Kæreby is a Danish composer based in Copenhagen. His artistic practice is interdisciplinary and research based, involving experimental composition, soundscape and electroacoustic music.

Participants:

Webdesign
oncotype.dk
Sound & montage
Ask Kæreby
Script
Maj Hasager
Interviewers
Simona Dumitriu, Maj Hasager, Ask Kæreby
Photographs
Henrik Lund Jørgensen, Petra Bindel, Simona Dumitriu, Maj Hasager
Film editing & colour correction
Henrik Lund Jørgensen
Copyediting
Jaclyn Arndt

Participants in the public artwork:

Yasmin Alsalim, Mary Al-Suhaili, Gunilla Andersson, Klara Piculell Appelros, Ako Aref, Rouhieh Akale Dibo, Sedad Elmi, Ann-Christin Fast, Ola Fornling, Nathalie Dispagne Gunnarsson, Alma Holmberg, Paula Ingers, Hossein Karbassi, William Kazemzadeh, Karl Kotarsky, Nina Lindström, Sima Nasizadeh, Annika Nilsson, Hampus Nygren, Sara Pihlsgård, Pardis Pirzadeh, Parva Pirzadeh, Maxim Platonov, Amanda Ideberg Shah, Kelvin Ideberg Shah, Anna-Lena Smith, Gunnar Stensson, Eva-Gunilla Svederberg, Anna Svensson, Vincent Svensson, Gabriel Teku, Camilla Ringius Thomsen, Alfio Tota, Bahár Wallström, Selma Wollinger, Dani Ghazwan Zuhair

Curators for public art, Lunds konsthall: Simona Dumitriu, Caroline Lund, Emil Nilsson

Partners: Inter Arts Centre, Lund University, Klostergården’s library, Klostergården Group, Klostergården’s School, Lund Cultural School, Klostergården’s meeting place, Church of the Holy Spirit

Thanks also to: Behnaz Alebouyeh, Alvida Andersson, Sofia Bernro, Terese Bergström, Ramona Dima, Olof Fürst, Neel Kæreby Hasager, Berit Hedman, Malena Kjellstrand, Karoline H. Larsen, karin Lithman, Frida Mattsson-Carlgren, Isis Meander, Åsa Nacking, Agneta Rangin, Elin Wrede.

The following sources are cited in the script of the soundwalk:

Contact:

lundskonsthall@lund.se