Locals on the spot

Ghent Light Festival 2021 showed a glimpse of the life of the Ghentians. And a spaceship.

Don't call the fire brigade, it's just art.
The big fire that never happened by Michael Langeder

Locals are everything

If I had to put what was special in Ghent Light Festival in one word (and I had to, for a presentation), I’d say it was Locals. Of course, there was the obligatory colourfully lighted square, Christmas decoration extravaganza and flashing light cubes, just like everywhere else, but there also was a lot of locals and locality on display, a certain pride of the city, even. That was seen in makers, artworks and making the city as a profound part of the festival. 

Touch of the locals was present in very concrete way in the hundreds of DIY-lanterns, sprinkled around the route, under the title Lockdownlights. The Ghent-inspired lanterns were delightfully motley and unexpectedly designed, just the way I like my lanterns. Also, they are an excellent way of lighting the way of masses indeed.

Another theme that knotted the festival to the city was the illumination of the existing graffiti and murals of Ghent. Illumination is not the best word here, since it was not just about lighting them pretty, but more about creating a new artwork based on the painting. Light-arted, maybe?

Simple and genius idea was to project faces of Ghent people on the trees of Coyendanspark, in Gentse gezichten by The Artpole. Coyendanspark is quite French style neatly cut garden, and reminded me of Peter Greenaway movies to begin with, and portraits of people looming on trees confirmed the ambience. As a Greenaway fan, I enjoyed that uncanny environment a great deal.

Lanterns leading the way

The Island by Klaas Van der Linden and tBEDRIJF shed a new light on a graffiti

Portraiture meets gardening in Gentse gezichten

 

In Eindhoven, the laughing mouths of the locals were displayed, here it was the eyes.
Idipsum by Dagmar De Clercq.

Flashbacks from Eindhoven

The similarity of light art festivals is nowhere more clearly to be seen as in projection mappings. Even though artists and styles were different, some details reoccurred, compared to Glow Eindhoven, the previous festival I visited.

For a chance, Ghent’s large projection mapping artwork was not projected on a church, I repeat NOT a church. I’m amazed already! Quite many other boxes are checked in Supraluminique by Nele Fack & With Other Words: flying bricks, fluctuating façade, growing plants, moving shadows, possibly flames as well. And a huge, weird human-ish character emerging, pursued by naked ladies from antiquity, for no obvious reason. This is not too local a plot twist, since same happened in GLOW Eindhoven as well. Coincidence or Illuminati? Or maybe it’s a thing now? 

On another wall, a spaceship. In the bombastic Go for Launch by Create the spaceship wasn’t nonchalantly passing by like its counterpart in Eindhoven. Instead, we got to see the launch of the first Ghent based spaceship. A park with silos around it was transformed into a space fort that sent the ship on its way, with obligatory countdown. A lot of smoke, flashing lights and animation was involved. Kids seemed to love it.

A moment before the naked ladies appear

It's a reoccurring countdown

Serene Adult Content

The spectacle is always present in light festivals, but there was a good amount of more serene artworks in Ghent as well. 

Exhibit A: The Wave by Studio FAH. Even though I think the beautifully waving beams of light would have been quite enough to reach a seashore in my mind, without the tautology of water projection, I did find the artwork quite impressing in its calmness and vacillating strength. One or my favourites, definitely.

Squa­re Prism by Nathaniel Rackowe was like a surrealist, square poem, pretty far from a spectacle, a fresh breath from the high art world. I for one welcome the finally occurring mixing of festival and gallery art, it certainly invigorates both. 

Another literally poetic artwork was On Blank Pages by Luzinterruptus, embracing some old-school interactivity. A glowing hut, covered with booklets with empty pages, invited people to write whatever they wanted to tell the others. There were some dick pics, obviously, but most of the messages were content for adults instead of adult content.

Make waves for the light making waves!

Fine art in a tree

Here's my companion for the evening, Rita, writing her non-genitals-including message.
If you're lucky enough to know Finnish, love poetic writing and travelling, do check her blog Tällä tiellä!

The City as Venue, Including Useful Bushes

In the beauty pageant of cities of light art festivals, Ghent is a finalist at least. The old buildings and parks are great venues for light art and create a much sought for magical atmosphere. 

Especially Museum of the Moon by Luke Jerram gained from the environment. I wasn’t too excited about it beforehand, a big balloon with Moon print on it doesn’t sound too imaginative, does it? Let alone the artwork being quite the opposite of the word local, since it has been orbiting like every festival ever. But in the middle of the old Ghent buildings, in the perfectly chosen spot, defying the laws of nature, it was such an outlandish sight that I couldn’t help but like it.

Still Entity by Sarah Van der Straeten, Lisa Eisen, Rebecca Ackaert, Melis Deveci, Harm Buyck, Arthur Van den Storme and Kwinten Vermeulen made me look at the city in a quite another way than interactive artworks usually do. In this case, the delicate reflections and subtle chances of colours were the stronger the quieter the public was. The gentle beauty of the artwork might have been missed by many, amongst the more spectacular pieces, I'm afraid. I think it would be a great addition to permanent public artworks of the city, to be enjoyed in more tranquil season.

There was a seven kilometres long route around the city, where people walked quite shoulder to shoulder. I didn’t even consider walking it in one go. It was obvious that locals were used to watch the artworks while walking, so there were not too many bottlenecks. On the con side, this occasionally prevented stopping and watching an artwork for a longer time. For example, I would have loved to dwell in Humanescense’s (by Moni Wespi) cinematic ambience for some time, but stopping would have caused a chaos. In some cases, sidestepping in the offside bushes helped, but in that particular place there was no bushes to plunge into.

My first but not last encounter with Moon. 

Still Entity encouraged people to shut up

Uncritical mass prevented proper art watching

The concept of most light art festivals is pretty similar and the setup of the artworks interchangeable. What does make a difference, is the city itself and the way the artworks are placed. I think Ghent did this really well, and by emphasising the locality managed to have a human, warm final touch. Well done, Ghent!

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Spectacular thanks to Niilo Helander Foundation, that has made possible my Grand Tour of Light Art, including the visit to Ghent.