Abstract

This paper is a media archaeological study focused on one of the materials that has been recurrent in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s installations and that has a contradictory character: light. The first part of this essay traces the historical theories about light that have fascinated the artist and shows how these theories are present in some of his works. The second part analyses the use of light as a material that helps to increase visibility and serves for care but also for control purposes. Light in Lozano-Hemmer’s work has an oxymoronic character that this paper unfolds, demonstrating its multiple contradictions and the fascination of this artist with its polysemous nature.

Highlights

  • Throughout this essay I consider that light in the works of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer can be read as a paradoxical material that joins the biological with the technological

  • In many of the works of Lozano-Hemmer, light is a reflection of our binary existence, but mostly it is as an intangible element that permits the visual illusion of the extension of our senses and the energy of our body to unimagined spaces

  • I argue that surveillance in LozanoHemmer’s work operates simultaneously in orders of both care and control, which makes it an ambivalent tool that could be used by the elites to repress and subjugate populations or by those excluded from the arenas of power and influence to bring about conditions of collective empowerment and protection (Monahan 2011, 497)

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Summary

Recommended citation

“Polysemous light: light as a contradictory material in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work”. In Pau Alsina, Ana Rodríguez and Vanina Y. Distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided you attribute it (authorship, journal name, publisher) in the manner specified by the author(s) or licensor(s). The full text of the licence can be consulted here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.en

CC Claudia Arozqueta
The physical nature of light
Lighting Subjects

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