The Fête des Lumières, or Festival of Lights in Lyon, emerged from a popular tradition dating back to 1852 when the city’s residents placed lit candles on their window sills, lighting up entire districts of the city to celebrate the installation of a statue of the
Virgin Mary on Fourvière Hill, a decision that had been made against a backdrop of social unrest, radical urban change and regular flooding. The tradition of city wide illuminations started on 8th December and this continued into the following decades, becoming an event to which the citizens of Lyon feel deeply connected. In 1989, Lyon adopted its first Plan Lumière, or Lighting Plan, becoming the first European city to launch such a project. It was designed to enhance the city through the illumination of heritage sites and this pioneering initiative saw the permanent illumination of over 250 sites, having political, technical and artistic impact and giving Lyon a unique identity. In 2004 there was a second master plan which expanded on from the embellishment of monuments to highlight rivers, riverbanks, hills, major roads, squares, streets and bridges and in the process becoming an essential element of the urban environment as it created these nocturnal landscapes. As a result, Lyon has become a centre of excellence in the light field with several light designers, artists and architects sharing their expertise around the world. LUCI (Lighting Urban Community International) was formed in 2002 as an international network of cities using urban lighting, bringing together 65 municipalities on six continents committed to the use of light in sustainable urban development. LUCI provides a forum for knowledge exchange and best practice in the important area of sustainable urban lighting. In the ontology (see Chapter 4) the issue of the quality of light within the context of the Light Festival was raised by Mark Major from Speirs and Major (the architectural lighting design practice), who were commissioned to make a work for the Fête des Lumières, in 2002 and created the work ‘The Absence of Light’, a politically motivated work that was a direct criticism of the city for becoming over-lit because of certain commercial forces that were more concerned with ‘beautification’ than focusing on the quality of light in public spaces. “It was largely about prettification of the architecture. It may be admirable that they were in the vanguard of strategic lighting plans, but we just felt we had something to say about it. The rest of the Fête des Lumières was about the ‘wow’ kind of installation. I suppose ours stood out for being an ‘anti-light’ piece” (Major, 2018). According to Major, following this work that was moored in the middle of the River Saône and appeared like a black hole drawing attention to the light pollution in Lyon, the city reappraised its lighting strategy in response (Major, 2017).
Fig. 32a: Speirs + Major ‘The Absence of Light’ Fête des Lumières, Lyon (2002) Photo courtesy Speirs + Major
2.3 COLLECTIONS, ARCHIVES, LIBRARIES
Whilst there is an accepted distinction between a collection, an archive and a library (the first is the product of careful selection of artworks and the other two contain a wider variety of information), examples of all these will be discussed, each providing insights into the curation of collected materials. The preoccupation with archives since the early 1990s is frequently described as the “archival turn”, a term coined by the anthropologist Ann Stoler and which is often used to signify the archive’s repositioning as a subject of investigation rather than the site where research takes place. The fact that it was coined by an anthropologist rather than a humanities scholar highlights the archival turn as a multidisciplinary phenomenon (Eichhorn, 2008) and the growing popularity of archives as aspects of artistic process.
Where traditionally a ‘collection’ groups together a number of artworks under a unifying theme, the ‘archive’ might house more paper-based materials, whereas libraries tend to represent a public, democratic space, for housing universal
knowledge in the form of books, periodicals, film and music, without giving preference to one kind of knowledge over another. It became important to learn about the distinction between these entities when conceiving the proposed research
framework. Libraries are usually housed within a building and are material spaces, and it therefore seemed interesting to propose a library that might contain something that has both material and immaterial qualities, such as light and the practice of light.
2.3.1 COLLECTIONS
Unlike light, which is itself predictable in its behaviour, the various practices of light are less so, being often performative, ephemeral and in flux over time. Perhaps because of this, the documentation and categorisation of creative practices that involve light are inconsistent, with few collections being dedicated to the medium.
Fig. 32b: Speirs + Major ‘The Absence of Light’ Fête des Lumières, Lyon (2002) Photo courtesy Speirs + Major
Whilst light has featured in western art since the Renaissance, Light Art only really developed in the 1960s with the Light and Space artists, the Land Artists, the Liquid Light Show movement and artists involved in Lumino Kinetic Art, making it a relatively new genre. During this period, the category of sculpture made way for “the transition from “objecthood” to environment, and light’s potential began to be fully realised as a sculptural medium” (Lauson, 2013). In writing about this shift from object to environment, Light Show curator Cliff Lauson adds a footnote to Frank Popper’s suggestion (1966) that its origins lie in 19th-century stage lighting. Since the 1970s light-based art has taken many forms, from performance-based environments to site-specific contexts and being the subject of international exhibitions with a number of artists using light as material and object as central to their practice. Although certain institutions began to support and collect such works, it wasn’t until 2001 that a dedicated museum (the Centre for International Light Art, Unna) came to focus on this art form.
This section looks at research into collections and museums – specifically exploring the significance of archiving and preserving light-based media in the 21st century as forms and formats continue to expand – and the ways in which working with collections can stimulate artistic practice. The research into collecting light-based practice was conducted by engaging with key institutions, including the Dia Art Foundation in New York, which maintains a constellation of sites, from the iconic, permanent, site-specific artworks and installations in New York, the American West and Germany, to an exhibition programme that has commissioned dozens of breakthrough projects, and also including the vast galleries of Dia:Beacon, New York, and the programmes of education and public engagement. It is Dia’s particular support of artists working with light and landscape that provides insights into the preservation, collection and maintenance of site specific works such as Nancy Holt’s
‘Sun Tunnels’, and the Dan Flavin Institute, which houses an off-site permanent collection of Flavin’s light works. This research has built an understanding of Dia’s function and role in the preservation of artworks as part of a larger collection and in the generation of material for exhibition and scholarly study. It sheds light on Dia’s role as a public mediator of recent art using the medium of light and hence audience reception has been of significant interest, notably the role of the spectator and the model of spectatorship in the work. This includes the ‘pilgrim’ making visits to site-specific works, or the audience in an experiential, immersive or passive engagement with artworks. The Centre for International Light Art, Unna, was also selected as a key institution to consider since it was the first museum dedicated to the genre of Light Art. When it opened in 2001 it commissioned an unprecedented number of light-art works specifically for the former brewery building, and which constitued a significant part of the Route of Industrial Culture in the Ruhr. Uwe Ruth developed the concept for the museum in 1998, envisaging the premises as “a continuously growing museum for artistic light-installations with an internationally important light collection – the first of its kind (Ruth, 2012). In reviewing the various forms a collection can take it has been interesting to consider which might encourage or enable the audience to actively participate in the reception of an artwork, and even, in some situations, to become a co-creator or co-author of the experience.