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.

A metayard

Other people writing about Lumiere Durham 2021

Mark Brown / The Guardian: ‘A chariot in the sky’: Lumiere festival of light in Durham honours Covid dead

Katy Wheeler / Sunderland Echo: First look at spectacular Durham Lumiere 2021

Hello Freckles: Durham Lumiere 2021

****

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

LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art

There's not that much of LUX in the exhibition, but all the more of transitions, mirrors and technical details.

LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art at 180 Strand, London
13 October 2021 - 20 February 2022
Curated by SUUM Project in collaboration with Fact and 180 Studios

Lux, as in Light, as in “Light as subject matter, a thing to explore and shape”, as the information text told us, was not exactly subject matter or explored nor shaped in the exhibition. LUX was more about video art, new kinds of screens and digital technologies and how wonderful they are. Light is a part of that, but in a form of a technic, not content. It is not the worst crime in history to name an exhibition ambiguously. Except for definition wise. I mean, who would like to go to a happening, advertised as a light art exhibition, and be forced to see video art instead! The horror! 

Luckily, the video art in question was pretty ok. And there was also some light art. 

½ pcs of light art

Es Devlin’s Blueskywhite is a diptych of light art and video art. At first look it much reminds me of ripped canvasses by Lucio Fontana. Even though the two look quite different, the idea of a slash is there. In this case, it is a bright light, bursting from a narrow whole in a partition. After admiring the composition of this seemingly 2d-ish artwork, I realized it’s a walk-in light art installation, leading to the video art part of the piece, with black, white and clouds, describing the possible change in sky colour and reasons for it. Simple, clear and beautifully executed.

A slash of light

Darkness is total in Blueskywhite

Surprisingly, the artworks I enjoyed the most were the ones furthest away from abstract light. Solemnly gospel-like Black Corporeal (Breathe) by Julianknxx dealt with breathing on both physical and mental level, peacefully and desperately. An extremely beautiful piece of art, with assertive content. 

I’ve seen Hito Steyerl’s This is the future previously at the Venice Biennale, where it held a larger space. Even though the artwork itself was just as wonderful in this crampier site, with all the flowers and dashing to and fro in time, I quite missed the beautiful light pools of Venice version, reflecting from the plastics screens. Accidental light art at its best.

Breathe is an extraordinary piece of art

An old friend from Venice

Mirrors mirrors over-all

Space bending is an expression used a lot these days. In this exhibition, it meant mirrors. There was Carsten Nicolai’s unicolor, a study in light theory, where mirrors on both sides created an infinite space. Then there was Cao Yuxi’s Shan Shui Paintings by AI, where mirrors on both sides and above created an infinite space. In Refik Anadol’s Renaissance Generative Dreams mirrors everywhere created an infinite space. 

Ever changing colour combinations creating a fleeting colour theory lecture

AI creating fleeting Shan Shui style images

Colourful nonpareils creating fleeting renaissance images

In a’strict’s Starry Beach the mirror effect was done with projections. But it did give a sense of an infinite space as well. The goal of a’strict has been to create a beach for those who haven’t been able to travel to a real one for some time now. In the artwork, the essence of a beach is distilled into universally recognisable sound and waves. It took me some time to realise that the waves were far from realistic, since the mass and movement was captured with such skill. Even though Starry Beach is probably not the most complex artwork in the exhibition, it did give me a sense of sweet melancholia and meditative joy.

Just like not at home!

Creatures in transition

Transition was a smash hit in the theme pool of the exhibition. Cecilia Bengolea’s Favorite Positions, portraying a computer-generated feminine body as a transparent vessel of unknown liquid that drips from her contours, the transformation is mostly about positions. And octopuses. In Bestiaire, from the same artist, a similarly glossy body transforms into variety of fanciful creatures, retaining the theme of positions as well. 

One of the favourite positions

Another position, with more colours

Transfiguration by Universal Everything is way more straightforward. A creature walks in a glossy-floored void to an unchanging beat and turns into different kind of materials from fire to goo to rocks to ice and everything between. The thumping soundtrack alters accordingly. “What a banal spectacle” was my first thought, but soon I realised I had been watching the thing for quite some time, mesmerised. A more poetic version of transforming, Morando by a’strict depicted images of blooming and fading peonies in transparent screens. You know, circle of life and stuff. Also, a lot of technical details. 

The goo phase. One of them.

See through peonies and screens

Textual nagging 

Technical details were abundant in most of the information posters and I wonder why do I need to know that stuff? The peonies are just as beautiful and engaging, no matter what’s the specific type of the screen used. The answer may lie in the list of sponsors, but I've noticed this phenomena in non-sponsored exhibitions, too. Well, at least this time no-one wanted to tell me the exact amount the led lights used in an artwork, which seems to be Very Important Information in a lot of light art festivals.

iart Studio's Flower Meadows is created using flexible OLED displays

The poster for Random International’s Algorithmic Swarm Study was rich with words like algorithm, processes and software, which led me to expect a little more than a group of 3d coins in the air. Mind you, I'm not yearning for a flashy spectacle here, but some sense of what is this and why is it, in the first place. Same applies to information text for Je Baak’s Universe, in a way. Lots of big expressions with  no connection to the artwork (that I could see). But maybe this more a question about texts than artworks, the former being quite neglected area in the new waves of contemporary art.

Swarm in action

Amusement park in a void

Other people writing about Lux

• Dilpreet Bhullar / Stir World: 'LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art' puts light as the key focus of new media art

• Julian Stallabrass / New Left Review: Sublime Calculation

• Salterton Arts Review: Lux: New Wave Of Contemporary Art – 180 Studios, London

• Steve May / The Luxe Review: The Matrix repainted: LUX New Wave of Contemporary Art exhibition review

• Tabish Khan / Londonist: LUX At 180 The Strand Is Mesmerising, But Is It Memorable?

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

Helsinki Public Art, the Nonconventional Edition

Helsinki has its share of huge metal lumps, in boring shapes of important middle age white men from the days past. Luckily, there is another kind of public art too, well worth seeing. Or hearing. Or even experiencing. In this first part, I'll list some of my own favourites in the central Helsinki area. Outskirts of Helsinki will follow, one day. Of course, there's a map, which will be updated as I go.



Holy Cows of Intersection

Artist Miina Äkkijyrkkä is known for her fondness of cows. They're a recurring theme in her works, including textile patterns, paintings and graphics. She has studied husbandry and even maintained a herd of eastern finncattle herself, even though that didn't end too well.

In Finland, cars are often regarded as holy cows of a kind, and Äkkijyrkkä indeed uses cars and car parts as material in her cattle themed sculptures. The ones in Hakaniemi, called Joy (2006) are of a smaller kind, the biggest may include a whole van in the body of the cow. And what could possibly be better place for these statues than a busy traffic intersection?

Getting this close is a tad dangerous and probably illegal, since
you have to cross a few car lines with absolutely no pedestrian crossing

Golden Showers in the Harbour

Manneken Schmanneken, we have it bigger and... more endearing? Tommi Toija's Bad Bad Boy (2013) was originally exhibited in Sweden, and in Finland first installed in front of the presidential palace, but only temporarily. Wonder why. In 2015 it was once again re-erected in Jätkäsaari, on the grounds of Verkkokauppa.com store of everything, welcoming people arriving from Tallinn by boat. It was supposed to be, again, temporary, but there it still stands in it's 8,5 m glory, years overtime. Which is great!

At first, the statue stroke me as horribly ugly, but on the second sight I began to see the laconic humour and appealing bluntness of it. It's kind of cute in the same way as a baby owl. The body of work of the artist Tommi Toija includes a lot of characters similar to Bad Bad Boy, just smaller and more hazardous in their looks, on the edge of horrible and heartbreaking. Judging from the internet commenting, not all bother to look twice, and/or see Bad Bad Boy merely as a joke. I beg to disagree. And dare you to take a shower in the jet on a hot summer day.

"Never mind me, I'm just on my way..."

Sound Art Hidden in Plain... Sight?

Every day at 5:49 pm, ever since 2005, there is a 5 or so minutes of sound art to be heard in the Senate Square. The likelihood is that uneducated ears don't even recognise it, since Senaatintorin ääni (The Sound of the Senate Square) is composed of very church bell -like sounds and thus is easily mixed with the bells of the actual church by the square. But they are not quite the same.

The sounds emanate, in turn, from different rooftops around the square and every version is different. The work is not just recordings of different bells, but an electronic composition by Harri Viitanen and Jyrki Alakuijala. If you really want to feel like in the know, linger by the statue in the middle of the square, listen to the beautiful sound art and scorn the tourists (and Helsinki dwellers) around you, who have no idea there is art going on.

The art work is audible on the whole square, but the best place to listen is the
area around the statue of Alexander the II, marked with white square in the image

Art under Your Feet

One probably notices Denise Ziegler’s public art works by accident or by already knowing what to look for. Even though I’d very much like the crowds to find them, the subtlety is a part of the poetic charm of the works. Epigrams for Helsinki Citizens (1999) series consists of eight manhole covers, spattered around Helsinki centrum, every one of them adorned with a sentence defining the site in a more or less poetic way. Here the text goes ”in the backroom of the city you’re enjoying the sea view”, which is very much true behind the market hall.

Note the more than fitting cigarette stub.

Sounds from Sewers

Markku Puustinen's Mutta minä lähden (But I shall leave) has been reciting under Torkkelinpuistikko parklet since 2003. The well pronouncing voice utters notifications of flights departing, heard from the sewer in the corner nearest to Avikainen bakery (which supported my wellbeing during my years in the nearby arts high school with their crescents and munkkis, so that you know).

At the time I first heard the piece I regarded it quite optimistic, as a kind of dream of freedom. Now, of course, this has all changed and the voice feels more like a harbinger of the inevitable doom. During the winter the art work hibernates, since the the battery can't stand the minus degrees. Let's see how the climate change will affect that.

The horror here is way more cerebral than in Stephen King's IT

Some Lumps are Okay I Guess

OK, these are lumps indeed, but not made out of metal, nor in shape of men. Even though Maria Duncker’s six part work of huge pieces of stone, Too Heavy Guests (2010), remind me of Pushkin’s play The Stone Guest, the awkward creatures still feel friendly to me. There they stand, a bit mopey, somehow in a wrong place and yet part of the community of buildings around them, old and new. I especially enjoy the combination of roughly chiseled stone and the finest detail of traces of decoration on their surface. No evil thing would have a tattoo of a jolly candy kane on them, would they?

I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what's the deal between these two.

Blinded by the Light Art of Venice: Biennale area

Too much art is certainly a first world problem, but it does get real when you're in Venice during the Biennale. In order to survive the emotionally suffocating amount of art in the city, one can start with concentrating on one aspect of art. In my case, that was obviously light in art.

Remembering last editions of the Biennale, light played a lesser part in the works in the Giardini national pavilions. The main exhibition there lacked light in the number of art works, but the sheer amount of it, when used, was often pretty considerable. Even painfully so. In the Biennale's Arsenale site, however, light was widely used. In some cases it took the lead, but mostly it was used in supporting roles. There were also quite an amount of sporadic light and lightish art in the national pavilions spattered in the city, outside Giardini and Arsenale, of which I'll mention a few. The non-Biennale-related exhibitions had their fair share of light, too. A fair, fair share.

Giardini

In my posting about Prague Quadrennial scenography show I briefly brushed the theme of thin line between scenography and fine arts. I was happy to find a reason to smile smugly when I found this piece in the Russian pavilion. The artist was also on display in PQ, which totally proved my point. Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai's coulisse had some more mechanics involved this time, and some whimsical neon light, too. Blatantly old fashioned and wonderful!

I though I could stand any amount of light, with my vast experience with it, but no. I just had to close my eyes in front of the painfully full radiance and walk half blind through Ryoji Ikeda's spectra III in the main exhibition. First it got me really irritated and wondering why is this done in the first place and is it even art and my imaginary child could have done this and after a few hours of pondering I realised I had been thinking quite the essential questions of art. Well done, Mr. Ikeda, but I still hate you!

Venice's own pavilion has lately been quite the Liberace of the Biennale, putting forward everything shiny and expensive la Serenissima has to offer. Luckily, this year it had a more distinguished and subtle approach to the essence of the city. I especially enjoyed the immersive artwork by Plastique Fantastique and Fabio Viale, which grasped both the romantic and melancholic atmosphere of the drowning city, quite haptically, without unnecessary embellishments.

Arsenale

Here's an example of not often seen political light art. Tavares Strachan's Robert Henry Lawrence Jr here and an earlier but similar What Will Be Remembered in the Face of All that Is Forgotten are more or less straightforward comments on remarkable persons, faded in history, most likely because of their gender and colour. 

It was nice to watch the breathing hues of these "corals" and I do appreciate military materials used for art rather than war, but somehow the piece by Christine and Margaret Wertheim was a little too showcase-y for my taste. However beautiful the electroluminescent wire was, it still was just electroluminescent wire. With nice colours. The context, however, brings some content to it: the other pieces of Crochet Coral Reef are handicrafted corals, commenting the great barrier reef and the possible loss of it. This one was taken aside for the darkness it needs, I presume.

Korakrit Arunanondchai's No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5 was another example of the thin line between using video as media or as light. Sometimes the information of image was the main point of attention, sometimes the screens were filled with pure abstract colour fields, making them luminous sources of light. This, of course, defines if the art work falls to category of video art or light art. Which is a question no one but an obdurate classifier, such as myself, should be bothered with. 

Hito Steyerl's piece This is the Future included some accidental light art in the form of most wonderful reflections. And yes, I'm a fangirl looking for any excuse to include Steyerl's work here, even though it's pretty obviously not light art per se.

Here's one example of increasing use of light as material for an artwork. Alex da Corte's Rubber Pen Devil is a hilarious series of videos of Satan and his pals, shown in a neon framed auditorium. The light in itself was definitely not the main attraction of the piece, but it did bring a certain kind of modernist-decadent mood to the space and thus to the experience of the videos. This was not just well designed, unobtrusive lighting, but very precise part of the artistic whole.

Most of the attention in the Indonesian pavilion was stolen by the big ferris wheel in the middle, but pretty soon my interest was stolen away by the light numbers on the ceiling. I couldn't quite catch the idea of them, nor did I find information about the piece. Which probably was there right in front of my eyes. Anyhow, the lights of Lost Verses by Handiwirman Saputra and Syagini Ratna Wulan really got me thinking, wondering even.

Not in any way technically amazing or visually staggering, Synchronocity by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Hisakado Tsuyoshi wasn't too easy to get, lightwise. I still don't know if I did, since after wondering, what's the light gimmick here, what with the fading bulbs and random general lighting, I realised there isn't one. By then I was far too mesmerised by the piece for not liking it so, yeah, I could say it really caught me. 

Even though Saules Suns by Daiga Grantiņa in the Latvian pavilion didn't include light wow effects either, the quasi sloppy untidiness felt a bit arrogant to me – even though there was something interesting in the use of light, when I really put my mind to it. I'm all for messiness, that's not the problem, but I quite felt like someone is inventing the wheel again and making it crappy on purpose.

I do love me some good neon allright, but this particular work by Gabriel Rico, I think, was in a wrong environment in the hallways of Arsenale. The placement made the work seem diminished, something taken to the corner, out of way. The surreal in the art work was nullified into awkward by mere misplacement. That's a bummer, since mr. Rico seems very interesting artist, especially by his use of light.

Hypersonic Hyperstitions by Marko Pelhjan of the Slovenian pavilion was probably one of the most photographed pieces in Arsenale. It was also one the pieces whose message was lost on me. Later Google told me all kind of interesting ideas about hypersonic weapons and stuff, but at the site all I could think of was a vehicle commercial from Galactica. Or this: 

There seems to be a certain trend in the use of light in contemporary art, which could be called souvenirism. The light emitting materials used in this kind of art include, indeed, actual blinking souvenirs, but also motley selection of other shiny bric-a-brac. 

Here's just two examples of many: Lee Bul's Aubade and Tracey Snelling's Shanghai/Chongqing Hot Pot/Mixtape. See also Thailand's pavilion, later. Snelling "gathers information through the process of wandering, observing, participating and documenting", which is pretty much what tourists do, and thus matches my self-invented -ism perfectly.

After the long walk of multi layer of meta levels art pieces in the Arsenale's never ending corridor, it was a relief to see some sunlight. Call me easy, but I enjoyed tremendously A Place without Whence or Whither by Chen Qi, an outdoors extension of Chinese pavilion. The idea was simple, pretty much from a course of lighting design for beginners: holes in surface where the light gets through and makes nice patterns on the other surface. That's what we do in theatre all the time. The work really was border line kitschy, but it didn't try to disguise in any kind of deeper philosophy, which I do appreciate. It was what it was. Just lovely!

See also:
Blinded by the Light Art of Venice: Other National Pavilions
Blinded by the Light Art of Venice: Other Exhibitions