Folkestone Triennial: A Million Miles from Home

Once, Folkestone was a destination. Authors from Charles Dickens to Agatha Christie found inspiration in the town and so popular was it with those with money and leisure that a bar in the Grand Hotel is named after Mrs Keppels, the mistress of once frequent visitor Edward VII. It's hard to imagine its glory days now. Like so many other seaside towns, which fell out of favour in the era of cheap overseas holidays, it's enjoyed better times. The opening of the Channel Tunnel saw off ferries to France and even the Orient Express, which until recently passed through Folkestone on its way to the continent, has ceased to stop at the harbour station. In the past few years, a new (extremely ugly) shopping centre has been built in an attempt to revitalise the declining town centre, and the Folkestone Triennial initiated, aiming to reinvigorate the town culturally.

The first festival, in 2008, installed works by leading artists in prominent places around the town, inspired by both Folkestone's heritage and the cultural baggage of seaside towns – from teen pregnancy to pigeons. Some of the artworks have become permanent, and settled into the fabric of the town – Richard Wentworth's plaques denoting non-native tree species, Tracy Emin's casts of discarded children's items, Mark Wallinger's cliff-top pebbles commemorating the lives of local men lost in the first world war and Richard Wilson's beach huts, refashioned from a former crazy golf course. The second Folkestone Triennial builds on the first, with international artists opening up the town's hidden, deserted and overlooked places (whether through dereliction, decline or obsolescence), from lowly back rooms and storage spaces to a grand Masonic Hall. I went to secondary school in Folkestone, and the Triennial is not just an art treasure hunt, challenging you to find works scattered about the town, but an alternative guidebook, taking you from the West End to the East Cliff and giving a new perspective on the sights in between.

One space usually unseen by the public is a dank, dark deckchair store underneath the cliff-top Leas promenade, where French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira's films play on mismatched video screens around the room in an effective, immersive installation. Her films document two Algerian lighthouses and the sometimes isolated lives experienced by those who work in them. Tucked away in a corner of the south east, Folkestone isn't really on the way to anywhere except France and, watching Sedira's films in a space cut into the cliff, it feels like you're detached from the rest of the world, on an island even, protected from the waves that crash against the rocks on screen. It's hard to forget that Calais is 30 miles from Folkestone – less than half the distance to London, and a number of works dwell on themes of immigration, displacement and cultural alienation. These include a floor of office space in the high street given over to an installation by Israeli artist Smadar Dreyfus, where visitors stumble around different rooms, filled with the sounds of children's classrooms. The total darkness and unfamiliarity mean it's completely disorientating.

Right at the Western end of the Leas is what looks, if you notice it at all, like an unusually large piece of topiary. Hidden below a gently swaying mass of leaves is a Martello tower, one of many solid, round structures that were built to defend the coast against Napoleonic attack. They still stand along the Kent coast in various states of repair, from crumbled ruins to now-desirable house conversions. This Martello tower is so deserted it has gone beyond a ruin to a jungle, and Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias has cut a wavy path up to it through the undergrowth. With leaves above your head, and the foliage multiplied by mirrors and castings of branches, it's like you're walking into a hedge. You emerge into a viewing platform, separated from the Martello tower by a living moat of brambles and nettles, to admire the tower. It might be hidden, but it's still standing after centuries in front of the ancient Kent hills.

The tower's nearest neighbours are mansions overlooking the sea set in spacious, sun-catching grounds. On the same stretch, and slightly further towards the town, is the massive Grand Hotel. With vintage open-top Jaguars parked outside and afternoon tea served to live music on a grand piano, it's one of the few places where it's possible to imagine how glamorous Folkestone would once have been. Yet Brazilian artist Tonico Lemos Auad leads you through the vast, spacious rooms with plush carpets and elaborate wallpaper to a plain back-room with floorboards and old furniture – a part of the hotel that isn't normally seen by visitors. It houses a giant scratchcard which visitors are invited to scrape to reveal images of seaside festivals, from Brazilian carnivals to Folkestone's annual Charivari parade. Auad has also placed work in another sometimes hidden space, down at the harbour – low tide reveals Carrancas, carved figureheads inspired by Brazilian good-luck talismans, attached to poles amongst the boats that have come to rest on the (usually submerged) harbour mud.

At the nearby Harbour station, the train tracks snake right out into the sea on a pier for trains to be loaded onto boats. A sculpture by Paloma Varga Weisz has landed on the tracks, on top of what could be a magic carpet – only it's been grounded and Folkestone's its final destination. The figures on the rug are going nowhere, and neither is anyone else – the station was closed in 2009. The station and pier are decrepit, but have spectacular views over the sea to the White Cliffs of Dover, where cross-channel traffic continues.

By the sea a bell, removed from a church because it no longer fits the tuning of the other bells, is suspended over wasteland, waiting for passers-by to ring it. The surrounding area is also in suspense – once home to the Rotunda fun fair, source of memories of childhood birthday parties and, when we were older, Friday night trips to the rides, it was cleared for redevelopment (a supermarket, casino, leisure complex and housing were all suggested for the site), before the recession and a tussle over opposing plans for the land put development on hold.

The other side of the Harbour, at Sunny Sands, the town's sandy beach, I was sceptical about seeing Cornelia Parker's mermaid sculpture, thinking I wouldn't find much of interest in a sculpture copied from an iconic artwork so associated with another place. In real life though the figure, cast from a local woman, is rather lovely – she stares out to sea, calm and serene on a rock above the crowded chaos of beachgoers with their personal stereos, livid skin and screaming children.

Back up the cliff, in the town, Hew Locke has placed colourfully painted wooden boats on a bright sea of lightbulbs in secluded St Eanswythe's Church. Hanging below the wooden beams of the roof (you realise the nave of the church itself is shaped like an upturned boat), and above antique wooden pews, the boats make you notice the beauty of the friezes and stained glass windows that are already there.

One sign of the town's changing fortunes is the restoration and reopening of the Leas Lift, a Victorian water lift. £1 gets you up or down the cliff – soundtracked by an installation by Martin Creed. I took the Lift up the cliff, and the ascent is matched by a musical composition performed by local string players. It rises like a musical scale, starting off with a low grinding and ending in a high pitch, in a reassuringly smooth transition as the lift stutters and clacks its way towards the Leas.

Other highlights of the festival include Spencer Finch's giant colour wheel and flags, changed daily to match the colour of the sea. Strange Cargo, who have long been doing good projects in the town, complement the Triennial's artworks with plaques drawing your attention to the quirkier aspects of the town's history, drawn from the memories of local people. Perhaps best of all, though, are Ruth Ewan's subtle interventions into the town's timing. She has placed clocks in prominent (and some not so prominent) places in the town, from a pub to a fireplace in the woodlined bar of the Grand Hotel, next to important-looking portraits, to the former town hall and even an entirely new clock on the Leas. The clocks have been changed to French republican time – meaning they only go up to ten, making you do a double take and look again more closely!

It's not often enough you get to be a tourist in your home town. It's three years since I last spent any significant amount of time in the area, but Folkestone's transformation from the place where I grew up has been considerable with new bars, cafes, galleries, independent businesses and venues, and even a University College Folkestone. The Triennial seems to be having a knock-on effect, with its own fringe festival this year – something to explore next time I visit!

Folkestone Triennial is free and runs until September 25.

www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk

The world outside Manchester part 2 - Copenhagen

Scott Walker is the most romantic of singers. In his songs, everything from the regret felt at the end of relationships to rainy days and elusive love affairs glanced through train windows is framed as if taking place in cinematic widescreen. Like silent movies, the accompanying string arrangements and orchestral flourishes say as much as the words, which capture memories of childhood and distant places and people. Copenhagen, from Scott 3 (his prettiest album, containing his most delicate and ephemeral compositions as well as some of the Jacques Brel covers for which he is famous) is one of his most romantic songs of all. Scott's almost perpetually lonely baritone drifts through the changing seasons in Copenhagen, remembering a love affair which he compares to 'an antique song for children's carousels' (maybe he was referring to Tivoli, the famous Victorian amusement park in central Copenhagen). He's at his most relaxed, his voice mimicking the motion of the ride, before the song takes off into an instrumental outro which swirls like a fairground ride.

It would be hard not to make Copenhagen sound romantic. Copenhagen smells of roses, literally - they grow up the side of nearly every building and up from roadside verges. It's a city of bright, dense rows of houses and orange rooftops, the gilded domes and turrets of churches and palaces peeping out from narrow cobblestoned alleys. The city constantly reminds you of its famous son, Hans Christian Andersen, with one of the main roads named after him (and his grave, in Assistens Cemetery is marked by a thick daisy chain and a child's drawing of a princess). The streets are dotted with sculptures, from statues guarded by cherubs in its parks to people carved into wood by the side of the road. Everyone glides around on bikes, children seated in their own little carriages on their parents' bikes. Even in the heat of a Scandinavian summer, you're always close enough to water to find a breeze, from the fountains and lakes of Copenhagen's parks to the wide reservoirs and canals that divide the city into islands. Spring is lingering in Copenhagen - everywhere swans are followed by a parade of cygnets, ducks are surrounded by ducklings and the Canada geese are slowly reaching maturity.

Copenhagen's charm isn't just in its quaint prettiness, though. The city also accommodates striking new architecture, like the Black Diamond extension to the Royal Library, with its huge glass facade looking out onto the waterfront. Copenhagen also has some of the best museums and galleries of any city I've visited, and the Statens Museum for Kunst (Danish National Gallery) is a perfect example of old meets new, with its lakeside glass sculpture hall linking the old building to a new extension. The glass corridor is filled with changing sculpture displays - currently an installation by the Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno, who's filled the space with big biospheres suspended from the glass ceiling. Some are transparent and catch the light like soap bubbles whilst others, spidery, are like seed pods floating on a breeze away from the trees in the park outside. Some have plants growing inside them, with ropes extending like roots, whilst others are weighed down with water, resembling jellyfish. The museum houses work by international artists, but it's also home to a cross section of Danish artists, such as Per Kirkeby.

Several of Copenhagen's museums open for free on Wednesdays, including the Kunstindustrimuseet (Danish Museum of Art and Design), which offers an overview of Danish design and its context in wider social movements, from Lego to fashion to eco-friendly furniture, with displays on designers like Arne Jacobsen, who designed everything from cutlery to furniture, carpets and curtains for Copenhagen's modernist landmark the SAS Radisson hotel. Outside, in the garden, rehearsals are taking place for a play that's going to take place on a stage that looks like a plywood version of something Frank Gehry would design.

On the same street are several smaller galleries, displaying contemporary art - often colourful and collage based, including Galleri Christoffer Egundi, which has a display of street artists. A short walk away is Kunsthallen Nikolaj (Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre), which sits in a tranquil square just off the city's main shopping district Strøget. Here, in an old church, is an exhibition by the French artist Zineb Sedira, which fits the space perfectly. The high, domed ceilings mean her video and sound installations, which are often preoccupied with memory (including films of her parents memories of fleeing Algeria for France) reverberate around the building. Floating Coffins is an immersive video installation about the effect of the west dumping its old ships on the developing world, the audience looking out onto a sandy, rust-coloured scene through four screens as if through a window. On the surrounding walls, all painted white, are screens of other sizes, onto which are projected videos of abandoned buildings, shipwrecks and the sea, in varying degrees of close-up - when people appear, they're anonymous. The screens fade in and out, some panning around like memories and others static like photographic fragments of a story. You can still see the church's organ high above, and sounds are just as important as images - screeching birds, the vaguely industrial scraping of metal, the ominous sound of aircraft. It's like the whole building's rumbling.

About 35 minutes up the coast from Copenhagen in Humblebaek, the modern art gallery Lousisiana overlooks the clear green water of the Øresund strait that divides Denmark from Sweden. Although the gallery houses everything from pop art through Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst, as well as temporary exhibitions (at the moment, the brilliant French artist Sophie Calle, whose works are playful interventions into real-life and the everyday) the most interesting section is dedicated to Danish artists, including a section on colourful, primitive artists like Asger Jorn and their links to the international CoBRA movement. Corridors lead off from the main gallery, filled with light like greenhouses, cutting through the sculpture garden outside, where pieces by Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois look out over the sea from one side and the strange, stunted stone forms of the Danish artist Henry Heerup look in at you from the undergrowth. An Alexander Calder sculpture dominates the view like a primary coloured mobile, swaying slightly in the wind and resembling the ships' flags blowing just below and art is built into the landscape itself - George Trakas' installation Self Passage leads you down to the beach.

A further fifteen minutes up the coast, Kronborg, the inspiration for Hamlet's castle, looks out to Sweden across the Sound from Helsingør, the point at which the two countries are closest. Sweden's third city, Malmö, is a short train ride from Copenhagen across the elegant Øresund bridge, built ten years ago to connect Sweden and Denmark (a striking sight, flanked by spinning wind turbines, from the aeroplane as you descend towards Copenhagen). Malmö's new waterfront area, Västra Hammen, has sandy beaches and jettys for swimming and diving, as well as platforms for evening concerts. It's dominated by Sweden's tallest building, the Turning Torso tower, which consists of nine twisted white cubes