The LICHTPARCOURS Braunschweig is a unique light art festival. Embedded in the historical cityscape of Braunschweig, the festival creates a particular framework linking art, light, and urban space. The city center of Braunschweig is surrounded by waterways, by the Oker, and partly by older city moats. City and moat ditches originally belonged to the city fortifications. Still today, anyone who wants to get into or out of the city center depends on one of the bridges. The unique urban landscape defined by the water system serves as the canvas of the art interventions.
In 2000, the first LICHTPARCOURS was conceived as a new public art project. On EXPO 2000, the world exhibition in Hannover, temporary artistic interventions on light and water were realized in the nearby city of Braunschweig. It was one of the first festivals of light in Europe, and the first curated light art festival in Germany, developed by Anja Hesse and Gerhard Auer (Technical University of Braunschweig). Anja Hesse has pursued the project for over 20 years; today, she is the city’s head of the culture and science department, supported by a project team, she realizes a new edition every four years.
Selection process
For each edition, a list of proposals of possible artistic positions is developed by a jury. This year’s jury consisted of Nuno de Brito Rocha (formerly interim director of the Kunstverein Braunschweig), Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gehring (Vice President of the University of Trier), Dr. Stefan Gronert (Curator of Photography and Media Art at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover), Karola Kraus (Director of the MUMOK in Vienna), Roland Nachtigäller (managing director of the Insel Hombroich Foundation), Dr. Susanne Pfleger (former director of the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg), Dr. Andreas Beitin (director of the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg) and Dino Steinhof (scientific advisor to the director of the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg) were involved in the current exhibition project. There is no other festival of light in Europe with an advisory board, all representing art institutions.
Site- and context-specific projects
Artists were chosen from an initial pool of recommendations to develop site-specific or contextually relevant concepts. Their concepts and models were showcased to the public and potential backers, viable projects moved forward to implementation. Artistic quality, contextual reference, technical feasibility, and funding arrangements were negotiated in an ongoing dialog leading to this year’s program featuring eighteen installations: thirteen temporary and five permanent pieces.
The installations
The permanent works include a modification of the “Arch of Remembrance,” which Fabrizio Plessi developed for the first LICHTPARCOURS; the “Elster Flea Market”, an illuminated smorgasbord by Mark Dion from 2004; the “Evocation in Red”, the light installation of a bridge passage by Yvonne Goulbier (2008), the “Solar Cat” by Michael Sailstorfer (2016), the bronze statue of a cat basking in a street lamp. The latest addition from 2020 is the installation “No Sleep” by Johannes Wohnseifer, a sculpture of discarded streetlamps.
The festival does not show media art, projections, or projection mapping, but only installations and interventions that work with light as material, medium, or metaphor. The LICHTPARCOURS shows how artists in the 21st century work with physical light as a material and medium. “Art in Times of Ambivalence” is this year’s leitmotif. The artists developed poetic plays of light to transform their sites into deceptive idylls. They created seemingly perfect, tranquil, or beautiful sceneries glitching into contrasting realities.
Same examples from the trail
Luzinterruptus: (Plastic) Full Moon.
A large ball made of plastic waste floats like a moon over the pond in Kiryat Tivon Park.
IAK: No Entry.
Students at the Institute for Architecture-Related Art (IAK) used construction fences and barbed wire to block public access to the Oker at the Sidonienbrücke.
Bettina Pousttchi: Swarm. Clusters of glowing traffic lights have been installed in the Bürgerpark.
Jan Philip Scheibe: Red Light.
A bright red acrylic glass sculpture refers to the nearby Bruchstraße, whose history as a place of prostitution dates to the Middle Ages.
Monica Bonvicini: Hit & Run Lovers.
Neon text replaces the lighting on the historic Rosentalbrücke. It is dedicated to fleeting lovers.
Alona Rodeh: Slow Swan Social Club.
Two prepared, automated swan pedal boats circle the Portikus pond, their paths never crossing. Against the historical backdrop, they recall the well-known story of the ballet Swan Lake, in which the unhappily enchanted princess is only released by the love of a prince.
Jacqueline Hen: One’s sunset is another one’s sunrise.
A glowing red circle is reflected in the Oker. It refers to the sun that neither rises nor sets and is intended as a symbol for the simultaneity of different realities.
Jens Pecho: Great Tits Mobbing Phallic Landmark.
The monument at Löwenwall commemorates the Dukes Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand and his son Friedrich Wilhelm, who fell in the Napoleonic Wars against Napoleon I. It was erected in 1822-1823. Light boxes are installed here. They show great tits attacking the obelisk.
Marinella Senatore: Assembly.
In front of the Braunschweig Landessparkasse stands an installation in the style of Italian “Luminarie.” These light installations on wooden structures are rich in volutes, curlicues, circles, arches, railings, or rosettes. They go back to the awe of Saint Domenica, who freed the city of Scorrano from the plague around 1600 when every convalescent put a light in the window.
LINKS
LICHTPARCOURS Braunschweig
International Light Festivals Organization