Hello, I'm a tourist.: Light Art by Yards in Lumiere Durham

Durham is a city straight out of a nostalgic TV series. Tiny brick houses gather around the towering cathedral, out of proportions for a village this small. The streets in the old part of the town are appropriately serpentine, swirling around the many kinds of yards of the town. Those beautiful yards are what I remember the most from my visit to Lumiere Durham 2021. There were all kinds of yards, the hidden backyards and gardens, the public front yards, the posh courtyards and even a gloomy graveyard. And a meta yard. Even the venues that were not actual yards, often felt like playgrounds, with people climbing on, doodling with and sitting on lights, having a good time together.

A local contribution

Peaceful backyards

The one thing not familiar to light festivals was the calmness of some of the venues, most of them backyards hidden from the bustle. The festival managed to create intimate experiences in spite of its magnitude, especially in the spots further away from the center.

"Well, that doesn't seem like much" was my Mom's response as I showed her a photo of Kaleidoscope by the Northern Butterflies, and that's true, kind of. What really made the difference, was the soundtrack, where people told what the garden means for them. After being told this, my Mom, an avid gardener, approved. So did I. The warmth and humanity of this piece of art went way further than a light show.

The Lines by Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho, with white bright line marking the expected level of water in the future, was meant to be seen from a distance, from the other side of river Wear. Luckily, I got lost, and got to see it more up close. Being alone by the artwork was an intense experience, for artistic reasons, mostly. Also, I was afraid I would slip and fall down the hill and the crowd on the other side of the river would laugh at me. Anyway, this was one of my favourite works: simple, beautiful and political. I've seen other editions of this piece in flesh and photos and I have to say it is demanding of its environment. The darkness and closeness to water were a huge plus, but distance from the (non-lost) audience didn't quite serve the piece. There's a web based art project by Niittyvirta and Aho, called Coastline Paradox, which has a connection to the Lines series. Go, check.

Vegetables, a thing to be taken personally

A tad more sinister garden

Scattered Light by Jim Campbell was another of my favourites. A matrix of tiny bulbs, with a subtle flickering, glowed calmly in the dark like a specimen of starry sky. Every now and then a character made out of shadows fled stealthily through the artwork, but one had to focus to notice that. It was refreshing to see that kind of matrix of lights used to create vague and ambiguous forms instead the usual strict geometrical patterns.

Tim Etchells's Shifting Ground joins the well-established tradition of neon letter artworks. The text in question is the title of the work, installed on top of the majestic (in Finnish scale) Miners' Hall. The artwork is simple, to the extent that there was a person exclaiming to the audience that what we see is all there is, just the text, no flashing to be expected. I have to disagree, though. It was not just the text, but the environment together with it, that made the eerie and impressive piece complete. Especially the building, of course, but also other objects close by. Like the statues, that were quite out of ordinary, basking in the red light.

It was too difficult to have a proper photo of the shadow person,
so here' s a fleeting flesh and blood person instead

"Miners' hall" is a give-away of the themes of the artwork

Insert a red-light-district pun of your choice

Meet And Greet in the Front Yards

Front yards are the place to say hello to passers-by and share the latests gossips, err... news with one's neighbours. There was a bunch of artworks that either handled this theme or made people practise it. The most obvious example being Dominik Lejman's When Today Makes Yesterday Tomorrow, nonchalantly projected on the library's wall, depicting people walking by, shaking hands. In addition to being quite a relieving image in the age of no touching, it also reflected the real people walking by in a most interesting way, becoming a thought bubble or a meta level of a kind for the crowds.

Lightbenches by Bernd Spiecker have some history behind them, as well. One example being Stefan Sous's UVA-UVB, benches installed in a park in Düsseldorf, made of fluorescent tubes (with some extra structure, I believe) in the beginning of the millennium. Also Spiecker's benches have become permanent items, in Durham as well as in London, that I know of. I've been using these benches in my light art lectures as an example of a very simple interaction, meaning basically just sitting on art, but as I monitored people I saw it was more than that. The bench was an item that brought people closer to each other in a concrete way, even if it was just to cluster for a group photo. And sometimes smooching. It was so nice that I forgave the use of the ever-awful rainbow effect in the chancing colour of the bench.

Liz West's Drop Scene shows how light can really make a difference, by a simple gesture of colouring the light pouring from outside of the garage-like tunnel. Now, that's a real magic of light: making people gladly hang out in a gloomy underway!

A town meeting on two levels

A basic interaction about to happen

Respectable people hanging out in a tunnel

Courtyards

Courtyards are places to put on one's best face. To show how culturally sophisticated one is, how well read, and how poised to be charitable and benefit society. The styles in the courtyards of Durham were quite different from each other, though. The Castle was adorned with lines of poetry in Anthology - Into the Light by Amelia Kosminsky and several poets, commenting the current world in a subtle and simple way. In Our Hearts a Blind Hope by Palma Studios, projected on the Cathedral, on the other hand, went full throttle with Covid sentimentality, including a sea of candles and a rising phoenix in the imagery. Chronos by Epsztein and Gross, projected on Ogden Center façade, was a cavalcade of all things scientific, from planets to beating hearts, with an expected soundtrack and lecture-like punctuality.

Light writing on the wall

The spectacle on the Cathedral came as no surprise

University / Universe - can't be a coincidence!

City Center Playgrounds

The most colourful and interactive artworks were centred around the shopping and restaurant area of the town, and fitted the natural hullabaloo pretty well. It was nice to see people climbing objects, doodling on the ground and seeing colours, mostly sober.

Halo by Illumaphonium, I later learned, had a sound element in it, but since people were climbing on the piece, squealing with joy, I totally missed it. Colour by Light by Floating Pictures was super simple: one could draw strikes of colourful light with one's flashlight. The end result wasn't exactly sophisticated work of fine art, but it was super fun to do! The most eager artists were lying on the ground to get a closer touch. A friend told me.

Imminence by Novak is familiar to me from its London run, where it appeared more serious, in spite of colourful and cartoon-like imagery. Reason being less people per square meter, meaning better visibility for the image to be seen, I guess. In Durham, the message of nature getting ruined was somewhat transformed into a colour-bathing experience, which is not a bad thing, either.

A Jetson family playground

DIY abstract expressionism

Paint it anything but black

Finally, I found myself standing in line at a graveyard. This is not a gloomy metaphore, I was waiting to enter a church with an artwork in it. It tells a lot about the festival, that even this felt cosy. But even cosier was City of Light, City of Stories, a project lead by Po Jocock. Local communities had built lanterns in shapes of buildings and created a whole new city. Well, almost new: even though the buildings were described as imaginary, I could recognise some of them. This yard in a yard was, in my opinion, the one piece that best represents the warmth of the festival.