Experiments in Urban Luminosity

Abstract

This article addresses contemporary artworks that reinvent ordinary urban lighting fixtures and technologies to create complex sensorial environments. In recent years, light art has indeed flourished in many cities – often in the context of extravagant light festivals and all-night art events that are sponsored by municipalities and funded by corporations. The end result of such events can be empty spectacle and the further commodification of urban space. In contrast, the artists Michel de Broin, Philippe Parreno, and Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky have created complex works of illumination that directly confront commodification and spectacle. De Broin’s massive disco ball was suspended high above the streets of Paris, sending splinters of light across the city; Parreno cinematic marquees seemed to be reanimated historical fixtures from an urban past; Weppler and Mahovsky transform ordinary commodity items into enchanting lanterns that get carried away by city-dwellers. In all three cases the artists emphasize the role that lighting plays within the urban environment, in that the nocturnal city is a distinct cultural experience, while the encounter with light becomes embodied and tactile. These experiments with light therefore activate the human sensorium, while also contributing to urbanism as described by Henri Lefebvre – the necessary regeneration of the city through the everyday actions of its inhabitants.