Light Art about Lausanne

At Lausanne Lumières 2021, it's all about the city.

For a couple of years, Lausanne Lumières festival has included mainly façade projections in its programme, which practically makes it more of a video art festival than light festival. But nevermind that, since the light art might make a come back anytime. I’m not sure if I hope that, I’m surprised to say, since there are not too many this cozy projection festivals. Usually, it’s all about spectacles on cathedrals, but in Lausanne, it’s all about Lausanne.

The festival of is egocentric in a healthy way. Many of the artists are lausannians, the artworks are made for Lausanne, premiere there and/or usually even the topics are related to the city and its buildings. Also, the festival makes one really look at Lausanne as a city: not only the most striking buildings, but also the not so pretty or noticeable. Even the size of the festival favours the city. It's not too large artwork- or areawise, but leaves plenty of time and energy to admire the city and have a cup of glühwein while doing that.

Coloured squares are all the rave these days

The oldest buildings with most ornate façades got the most vivid projections to adorn them. The Zoological Museum is one of the museums Palais de Rumine hosts, and one can easily see a connection to the imagery of projections of Diving in the Sea of Colors by Daniel Margraf. They include an intensively staring fox, birds, plants and other stuff less easy to recognise, but no doubt belonging to the zoological realm. Another highly decorational artwork was Montfalcolor: Act 3 by Patrice Warrener, colouring the gate of Montfalcolor of the Cathedrale of Lausanne. The colours added to the bunch of statues in row reminded me of the ancient Greek statues, supposedly being fully coloured originally. Just like illustrations of those statues, the holies of Montfalcolor became interestingly cartoonish as colour was added. 

Animal kingdom, in and out

One of the least coloured scenes

Another colourful and vivid work, La ville étoilée, needs a middle weight pons asinorum to Lausanne, since connection between the city and Vincent van Gogh is not universally known. Probably because there isn't one – except for an immersive van Gogh show visiting the city and an amount of copyrights in the depths of lausannian vaults. Anyhow, wall-sized van Gogh is never a bad idea and projecting it on a wall of a bank gives it a certain Swiss je ne sais quoi!

Art and money meet

Not all the artworks in Lausanne were bursting with baroquesque colours and details, there were quite a few more straightforward and contemporary projections to see as well - on more modern façades to fit. Tempo by Rocío Eggío and Elisa Ciocca made wonders to the office building of Retraites Populaires, covering it with 70's style graphic shapes, flowers and record cover imagery. Such a boring building, such a great canvas! 

Horde approached the city of Lausanne from a typographical angle. L-A-U-S-A-N-N-E examined the letters of the name of the city and a font type named after it. As a lighting designer and a graphic designer I fully appreciate. An example of quite a niche idea giving interesting results (at least for people of my background).

Futuristic-renaissance style imagery of Random Access Stories give the Bel-Air tower a brave new look. Pronounced, angel-like characters, god's fingers and inevitable babies glide across the façade in clips designed by alumnis of Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, commenting the ubiquitous media, flickering in our networks.

 

Simple shapes for a simple building

Typographical light art

There will be a massive fingerprint stain in that window

No light art festival is complete without an interactive artwork. In Lausanne it was Big Pac, a wall-sized Pacman game. Camille Scherrer with Sigmasix are not the first ones trying out this idea, it has been tested previously by artists and commercial ventures alike. But this was the first time it was done in Lausanne! And what a labyrinth the façade of Maison Mercier was! Luckily, the interface for playing the game was in a not so observable place, since my days as a celebrated Pacman champion of my youth were long gone. But it was still a great fun!

A most fun public humiliation

The exception to the projections-only-rule was the artwork Comets│Sublimation by Atelier Schlaepfer-Capt & Int Studio. Even in it, the projection played a big part, but it was connected to a light art installation from a previous year. An interactive one, with the funniest interface! By swinging, the audience made light signals move by lines stretched from the swing to the surrounding buildings. It had something to do with comets and other astro stuff, but hey, swings! Jipii!

My thighs were killing me the next day.

Surprisingly many adults in the swings

Chromatic variations

The festival was held already 24.11.–24.12.2021, but in my usual slow pace I'm writing about it now. I was lucky to have a private tour of the festival by Mr. Ben Essig, who is one of the curators / organizers / bosses of the festival. And a generous provider of glühwein. We had most interesting discussions about art and popular taste, which I’ll go back to as soon as I can remember them. That glühwein, it was really good though!

Other People Wrting about Lausanne Lumières

• ...alt werden kann ich später: Lausanne Lumières (in German)
• L'objectif en Balade: Illuminations nocturnes dans les rues de Lausanne (in French)

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