The questions we ask passers-by — whether through QR codes, in person on the streets, or on our installations — reflect the world and the city around us. Because everything human interests us: what gets you out of bed in the morning, when did you last fall in love, what Stockholm smells like in spring, and what you feel is missing here.

From the answers, we build emotional maps of cities. Where people feel safe and where they’d rather not spend time, which parts of the city hold the most sentimental meaning for them, and where do they find themselves most often.

Themes that keep returning across cities and years: the anonymity of the city, loneliness, a sense of safety, the absence of mutual understanding, the needs of a specific neighbourhood, the boundaries of home.

We collect confessions in public space: on streets, in underpasses, at stops. Because only that way can everyone truly have the chance to respond — and we can hear everyone’s voice. We don’t lock our art, or the possibility of contributing to it, inside galleries. We believe art belongs in public space, and often, when it unexpectedly catches our eye on the way home from work, it’s the response it draws out of us that’s the strongest.

A passer-by lifts their eyes from the pavement. A sticker catches their attention. They scan the QR code, a question opens up. A small moment to pause and think — What gets me out of bed in the morning? And what’s on my mind when I fall asleep?

They answer anonymously, and only if they feel like it. In return, a thank-you message arrives straight away: thank you for being part of something bigger.

Each confession then makes its way into the STOCKHOLM! database. Every contributor also gives informed consent — without it, their confession goes no further. We work strictly in line with GDPR; confessions are anonymous and we never link them to specific individuals.

Only what passes through a double filter is published or worked into art: the contributor’s consent and a curatorial selection. Everything else remains part of the archive — a quiet layer that shapes the overall picture, but never surfaces publicly.

Voices that resonate with one another gradually emerge in the database. Certain themes repeat in different formulations — even when they come from different neighbourhoods, different people, different languages.

Those repetitions are our signal. The selection is made by two curators: a confessions curator, who works with the database as a whole and looks for recurring motifs, and an installations curator, who decides how and where the selected material is returned to public space.

Together, we return what people have trusted us with back into public space — with the hope that sometimes the author of a confession will walk past and recognise their own words, but also with the hope that many others will recognise themselves in those words as well.

Each installation carries its own QR code. It becomes a collection point in its own way. And the cycle continues.

Anonymity isn’t an administrative solution for us — it’s the founding pillar of the project. It gives people a safe space to open up, and we are committed to honouring that. Every confession we share respects that anonymity.

Emotionally difficult confessions inevitably find their way into the database. In moments where we sense that someone needs more than we can offer, we point them towards helplines and draw on collaboration with specialists. For more sensitive topics, we bring in experts even earlier — during the formulation of the questions themselves, and when deciding what to return to public space and how.

We analyze the collected testimonies both qualitatively and quantitatively. We look for recurring themes, emotional layers, and people’s relationships with different parts of the city. The result is a set of statistics, thematic overviews, and emotional maps of Prague that capture where people experience a sense of safety, belonging, loneliness, or tension.

For us, data is not just numbers. It is a way to better understand what life in the city is really like. The analysis also helps us track how moods and needs shift across time, locations, and communities.

The method is currently running in two cities — Prague and Stockholm. What stays consistent across both: recurring resonances — loneliness, a sense of safety, the absence of mutual understanding. What shifts is the language people use to talk about these things, the density of responses in different parts of the city, and the willingness to touch on certain topics.

This dual experience is a key part of our methodology. It shows us what is a broadly urban phenomenon and what belongs to a specific city. And at the same time, it confirms that the principle — anonymity, working with confessions, and returning them to public space — resonates with passers-by beyond its original context.