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

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?

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

Drop the Light Art!

Projio in Tampere is an interesting media art festival, that would do just fine without the light art appendix.

I loved the compactness of the Projio festival 2021. Just one building and six artists! Well, the VJ competition made a bunch more, but still. It was so much easier to concentrate to the art works with no pressure of seeing five hundred more, or walk miles to get to those five hundred more artworks. I also appreciate the curating of the festival: most of the art works had something quite meditational in common, but they were in no way too similar with each other.

Having time for concentrating was especially important with Yu Hsuan Yao’s Séance, with its intensifying dramaturgic arch and visual finesse. Projected on multi-layer gauzes and screens, the piece depicts a Taoist ritual in 360°. It’s not documentary, though, but gives a somewhat trancelike, even part-taking feeling when watched long enough. At least it did for me.

Ghosts or people? Doesn't really matter in Séance
Photo: Katja Muttilainen

Folding abundance of Visual Meditation

Patterns dissolving in Dissolving Patterns

Teemu Raudaskoski also used gauze in his Visual Meditation, but more for softening the image than layering it, I reckon. The gauze also emphasized the abundance of visual material, consisting of recognizable forest imagery, shattered, distorted and then recomposed. The overwhelming amount of material could be observed as separate details, but I enjoyed the general composition, which made me think of fruit and flower stilllebens of the 18th century. Except, of course, that the leben here was not still at all.

I was impressed by the near-abstraction and genial site-specifity of Janne Ahola’s Levottomuus (Restlessness) in FLASH Vallisaari exhibition some years ago. Projio's Dissolving Patterns, projected on the façade, was more of a flying bricks and twisting towers kind of traditional projection mapping piece. I know, everyone and their cousin love this awe inspiring style, but I for one sure hope to see mr. Ahola’s further forays into realms of non-geometric subtlety. 

Suvi Parrilla’s Kemiallinen kirkastus was subtle all right, even to the point of non-visibility. I’d like to think that was intentional, since the theme of the piece is disappearing of fish, caused by chemical clarification in lake Mikkolanlammi. Non-striking doesn’t mean non-interesting, I should add. White contours of the fish, floating gracefully around the façade, with added colour splash every now and then, were visually and thematically very thought of. 

Barely visible fish in Parrilla's artwork

Soft glow and crispy lines in Teemu Määttänen's Fold

If I'd do anything as tidy as Määttänen ever, I would show it to the world, too
Photo: Katja Muttilainen

Antti Pussinen's glowing globe

White lines were in an even more important role in Teemu Määttänen’s Folded. According to the name, the canvas was made of meticulously folded pieces of cardboard, where the projected white lines flowed across the ridges. This beautiful study of light and form is a close relative to a previous artwork of mr. Määttänen, Atlas Tree, where similar lines stroked a trunk of a tree. Then again, I don’t recall that many artworks by Määttänen, where white lines did not play a part. Not that I’m complaining, white crispy lines are one of the things that make life worth living!

I have previously seen Antti Pussinen’n Nth wave in the Oksasenkatu 11 gallery in Helsinki, where it floated in its own solitude in the gallery, behind the window, quite ominously. Here the display was quite different, but the somber beauty was still there. 

I’m not too familiar with video jockey culture, but I do find the accompanying VJ competition, organized in cooperation with Tampere Film Festival, to be a great idea and an example of good synergy. The huge wall of the Vooninki building made a good canvas for the projected art works, with its light surface and distinctive details. The videos were not the projection mapping kind I expected (and feared), but more like short, somewhat dreamlike movies. Every artwork had the same music, which I understood was a starting point for the artists. I have to say, though, that I didn’t sense a super galactic mind-blowing connection between the videos and the music, and I even dare to wonder why this particular, quite ambient music was chosen.

VJ Vixen's Primitives was my favourite for simplicity,
60's style bold colours and considering the façade's details

Projio is advertised as media and light art festival, but the light part was all but nonexistent. Yes, there was some light stuff around Vooninki building, but the name of the artist was not easy to find. Actually, I can’t even say if I did. So, light art clearly wasn’t the focus here. Also, light art is part of media arts, so no need to mention it separately. Also too, nice area lighting doesn't have to be called light art. Also three, I think the video art was quite enough, and there are about gazillion light art festivals already anyway. I don’t say this often, but forget about light art, you’ll do just fine without!

I wouldn't call it art, but the lighting around Vooninki was nice.
Photo: Katja Muttilainen

Bonus Track

My guide this evening was Katja Muttilainen, who knows Tampere, light and especially light in Tampere well. Some of the photos of this posting are by her, since she has a less shitty camera and more talent than me. In addition to Projio, we visited a brand new tram stop light art work by Jaakko Himanen and checked the lighting of Tammerkoski rapids by WhiteNight Lighting. Both were super. We also had a hearty dinner at Tuulensuu gastro pub, where Katja explained my erratic behaviour to the waiter: "She's from Helsinki". You know, there's this friendly-ish competition between the cities of Tampere, Helsinki and Turku, and we like to mock each other when ever the opportunity arises. Mocking me for being from Helsinki was totally okay, of course, since it was a punch up.

The weather was inhumane, but wet ground sure served Jaakko Himanen's art work well