Last November-December I spent a good three weeks in Northern England, participating in the International Light Art Residency, organised by the loveliest Things That Go On Things. With gracious help of the Finnish Cultural Foundation I extended the residency, visiting other lightart-wise interesting places and meeting super nice people. It was awesome!
I’ll certainly find more things to write about, but I start with one of the most interesting festival concepts I’ve seen: a light art festival with just one artwork. I think it’s a bold and genius idea.
The Elusive Beauty of Realism
I’ll be blunt: many of the light festivals are bloated. More is more, seems to be the idea when counting artworks, when in reality more is just more blisters and less time for art.
I fail to believe that the audience would rage about there only being fifteen artworks in the festival instead of twenty, nor about having time to drink that nice cup of mulled wine while having a proper break – or about being able to properly focus on the artworks, instead of rushing in haste to see all of them during one night.
As for the production, there is a mortal sin of monetary over-reaching, common for the field of culture in general. If one has 30 K, one too often tries to stretch it to make a 60 K festival, and if one gets 60 K, the goal moves to 120 K festival and so on. And how is the wishful-thinking-gap covered, then? Free work, subpar conditions, make-do resolutions, sugared with hopes of a last-minute sponsorship. It really isn’t healthy, is it?
I’m not innocent here, not even close, and complaining about this in public is a way of forcing myself to do better. So, a hard truth for me and everyone else in business: do a festival that you can afford doing well.
In Doncaster Festival of Light, they do just that.
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| A proper altarpiece |
The Churning Nature
The Doncaster festival is organised by Right Up Our Street, also responsible for other cultural projects in the area, and last year was the 8th edition. The previous editions have showed artworks from likes of Universal Everything and Luke Jerram, while the chosen artwork of last year was Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations: Large Nature Model, including three parts: Flora, Fauna and Coral.
If one only shows one artwork in a festival, this is a good choice. It’s science based, which is interesting, and in this case the connection is not too far fetched, as it sometimes is. The artwork is mesmerisingly beautiful. It's an abstract dance of particles and colours, that every now and then briefly aggregate into an almost-recognizable pieces of flora, fauna and coral. It includes a perspective illusion, which doesn’t fade away even if it’s clearly showed how it is done.
The venue of the festival is perfect. The very cathedral-y 19th century victorian gothic Minster Church of St George is impressive in itself, and it gives the artwork an elevated impetus from which it greatly benefits. There’s also ample seating, a huge plus.
If the artwork was just one of dozen, I probably wouldn’t have given it too much time, but now I watched it through a couple of rounds, giving it the focus every artwork deserves. This idea of just one artwork being enough is probably the most important thing I took with me from the Residency. I’m not saying that every festival should do just one artwork, but I’m asking organisers to consider how many artworks their festival really needs, in the end.
Less is not always more, but it might be just enough.
