GLOW Eindhoven is one of the biggest light art festivals in Europe, reaching its 15th edition i 2021. There was something old, something new, something recycled and something cold flickering blue.
 |
| Lights! Colour! Prepare to be amazed! Water Wall by Aquatique Shows |
The city as a venue does mean a lot to the overall ambience of the festival and so does the route. Eindhoven does have a place in history of lighting, since it’s The Philips City and you should visit the museum. But it is not the prettiest city of the Netherlands. The route did, however, show different and quite interesting areas of Eindhoven. This year, the artworks were scattered all around the city, in three main clusters with a couple satellites added. I had three nights to spend, and I do say it was not too much – even though I skipped most of the satellites. There was some extra walking (and, occasionally, fence hopping... a friend told me), since the map didn’t show which areas were fenced and where to get in. There is some room for improvement there.
The bold buildings of the city were used well as material for artworks. My absolute favourite was Eye of Atlas by a team led by Philip Ross and Max Frimout. The existing lighting system of the Atlas office building was programmed for light to breathe, linger and slide in the building, with an immaculate sense of rhythm. The Rainbow (a tad obvious name, I'd say) by Rik Verschuren and Tim van Stiphout was a beautiful display of colours, but a less daring bet in the inhouse light game. In this case the colour scheme was an argued decision, not just running through the whole colour spectre because you can, I'm happy to say.
 |
| A chord in the Eye of Atlas symphony |
 |
| A colour variation of Rainbow |
Laser tag war with a church
As with pretty much every festival, GLOW had a large façade projection mapping show. The canvas was a church, a very popular choice in projection mapping. Domus Luma by Yann Nguema had quite an organic flow in the animations, which made a big difference compared to the usual engineery punctuality of most projection mappings. Even though there was fair share of flying bricks and crumbling walls, there also was some unusual stuff, like lasers combined to projection. It’s much more fun to see a church falling apart, when it’s done with lasers! Another trend I’ve noticed in projection mappings: a human-ish character appearing for no apparent reason. Here it was a shiny hunk with a huge banana on his shoulders.
 |
| That must be one heavy banana. |
Topical lanterns
Self made lanterns forming a collective artwork have, indeed, become quite inevitable in light art festivals. I feel really at home here, since I curated the Lantern Park of Lux Helsinki festival for six years. So, guilty as charged. Of course, Lux Lanterns is the bestest of best lantern collection, but it is nice to see other people doing just as crazy stuff elsewhere. In Eindhoven, however, I was getting desperate not to find any lanterns at all, but finally found some – in a bar! How suitable, since the lanterns have been made by students. Points to Eindhoven for placement and a supportive theme!
 |
| The New Mutants lantern project was led by Har Hollands |
From big and bold to blunt and blue
I remember seeing my first colourfully lighted town square in Pécs’s Zolnay light festival some years ago and I remember thinking wow this is something different. I was wrong, of course. Many festivals have their own version of this theme, and I cannot complain, it is very nice indeed. In Eindhoven the square was huge and there was a building to go with it and there was a colourfully lighted industrial space as well! Overwhelming!
Footprint at Ketelhuisplein was a project led by Hugo Vrijdag, with kids of Eindhoven, who drew the images seen covering the area. The artwork is a comment on the Dutch ecological footprint, and I'm sure the electricity needed for the piece is produced by windmills. In a weird way, Footprint managed to be cheerful and dystopian at the same time. It must be the combination of flowers and eerie green light.
Ode to Light (oh, come on, have some imagination with the names!) by Daniel Margraf was more evidently merry. Bright colours, fairytale characters and tropical birds transformed the industrial space into an enormous eye candy store. What a stark contrast was the next artwork, Falsche Frage by Charles Vreuls! With its blunt blue-white warning lights flickering almost violently in silence, it certainly was not pretty. But it was impressive.
 |
| A green Footprint |
 |
| Industrial hall in bloom |
 |
| These lights would probably scare the moths away |
Christmas is coming
The line between decorational lights and light art is blurred, especially at light festivals, especially before Christmas. Valerio Festi's Porte Celesti, with 25 light gates around the city are very much based on the baroque aesthetics of abundance and ornamental. I would rather call them decoration, with a strong skill in craft. Mind you, decoration is not a bad thing, when done properly. Here it most certainly is.
 |
| A good example of meticulous craftmanship |
Different kinds of site-specifity
The Window Expo was a great idea to involve local organisations and businesses, I think. Since the artworks were often quite small, it became a kind of treasure hunt to spot them in the shops' windows. The artistic level was varied, yes, and often the artworks didn't quite stand out from the usual window display, but that was maybe not the main point here. Muziekgebouw's Hahaha (by Marijn Smits, Laurie Roijackers, Isis Boot, Luuk Thijssen and Mandy Ouderland) was one of the tops of this entity, I think.
Gijs van Bon's Ping is a product of GLOW Eindhoven 2018, now renewed and replaced to the worksite of Nanjing Pavilion. Whether the worksite of the venue is genuine or specially staged for Ping, it matches very nicely with its board constructions and makes the artwork even more site-specific than originally. The artwork first hit me like what the hell is this raving hodgepodge? But while wondering that, I grew quite liking the invisible high speed roller coaster, roaming around fiercely, hitting the wall like flaming Harry Potter, very late from the Hogwarts train.
 |
| Smiles of Endhovians in Hahaha |
 |
| Light hitting the wall in Ping |
Moving strictly and broadly at the same time
All in all, the festival was pretty much what I expected and what light art festival usually are: things of beauty, joy and amazement. The search for WOW effect was evident: most of the adjectives in media material were likes of stunning, incredibly impressive, huge scale, gigantic, beautiful effects and images, wonderfully enchanting and so on. You get the picture.
The slogan for the year was "Moved by light". Yes, there were some artworks that encouraged actual moving, and yes, light moves us also on emotional level – but that goes with all light, not just the artworks in GLOW. This is an issue with themes: if you have a specific one, it might prove difficult to stick to it and if you don't, the exhibition may end up amoeba-like mishmash. Not that anyone cares, except some deranged curators maybe. Often, I think, the themes are picked just because you have to have one, without really thinking about the content.
But this is material for another article entirely.
 |
| People moving vigorously |
No comments:
Post a Comment