Written for Urbane Künste Ruhr, Arts in Urban Space, 2012-2017

Life itself has summoned into being this poetic deity which thousands will pass blindly by, but which suddenly becomes palpable and terribly haunting for those who have at last caught a confused glimpse of it. Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant

When invited to visit Bergkamen, Germany, for the first edition of Urban Lights Ruhr back in 2013, we were intrigued. A small town and a light-art festival is an unexpected combination. We were curious.

Usually when someone says “festival of art” a little hint of doubt flickers down one’s spine. Perhaps it’s the presumed frivolity that the word “festival” suggests, or perhaps the defining of a time and place within which condoned art will happen. Our practice is drawn to art that doesn’t require a specified framework or rely on being defined as “art” to have value. Perhaps, most of all, it’s the suspicion of the motives behind “festivals”: by whom, and why, is this huge effort being undertaken in this place? Say “festival of light” and this suspicion is amplified. A “festival of light” can certainly be an extraordinary social occasion, a coming together, a wonderful happy mass occupation by people of all ages, unusual in a city by not being focused on commodity. Yet these festivals can also have about them a whiff of cynical marketing with the concept that bigger and flashier is best in the pursuit of mass appeal. Festivals of light across the world exist in that most precarious of places for art, that of being pure entertainment, measured and valued by how many tourists visit and how many social media threads it starts. Having taken part in many light festivals, we are aware that maybe we are in the minority with this dour skepticism. Although from talking to other artists and curators we know we are not alone, there is a sense, however valid, that making work for a festival of light is not perceived as serious, it’s not “real” art.

The invitation from Urbane Künste Ruhr had a different tone, their interpretation of a “festival” promised to be all their own. Urban Lights Ruhr treated light as a topic, not as the defining medium. The city serves as a test site for art to stimulate a discussion about light’s implications in public urban space. The key objective was about addressing issues of public space and city planning and initiating discussions between the public, artists, city planners, and political groups about strategies, potentials and possibilities.

We were first struck by the artists with whom they were working, they were not specialized “light artists” but rather artists who provoke new perspectives on our relationship to place, who question our assumptions and challenge our expectations. Urban Lights Ruhr were working with some of the most interesting artists around, not just the most well-known ones, they were not playing it safe. For instance, the piece by Office for Subversive Architecture (OSA) for the first edition of Urban Lights in Bergkamen in 2013 was spectacular in every sense; it demonstrated an acute level of contextual understanding and sensitivity, made even more astonishing when realised in a small own as part of a light festival.  Of course you need talented and conscientious artist, but it also takes a commissioning organisation with curatorial vision and integrity, able to realise hugely ambitious projects. Perhaps most impressive is the organisation's ability to create the environment for this work to occur and stake out the creative freedom for the artists to do their best work. Urbane Künste Ruhr often works for years, fostering relationships, advocating and planning, to be able to create this kind of environment. Artists always have a wonderment of fantastic concepts, but it needs this kind of organization to make it possible to turn such ambitious and contextually meaningful work into reality.

The other difference is that Urbane Künste Ruhr understand it would be a missed opportunity to approach the commissioning of art for a light festival as a curatorial shopping trip of works seen elsewhere (however great). Rather, it is an opportunity for an artist to form a specific relationship with a place and its people, the chance to develop new work genuinely responding to a specific situation. As a commissioner this is certainly riskier: you don't know what you are going to get, the work hasn’t been tested (both technically and in the eyes of the public), timeframes are fluid, budgets are constantly evolving, permissions are hard to determine. There are a lot of unknowns. As an artist, it is one of the most exciting invitations to receive, providing freedom and support to create your best new work.

With Urban Lights, each edition begins with the curators selecting the artists based on their past work, followed by the unusual process of inviting all the artists to collectively visit the host city. The group is exposed to different facets of the place, meets local experts, learns about the context, present and past, forming a deep insight into the place before any proposal is discussed. It is a responsive process. The time dedicated to doing this together triggers new thoughts and collective observations, and provokes conversations and new relationships with each other, the city and its people. This steps may appear functional, obvious, simply details in the process. Far from it, each are deliberate curatorial decisions that inform and effect the quality and breadth of the works created.

Having experienced all this at the first edition of Urban Lights, we jumped at the opportunity to take part in the second edition in Hamm, and again for the Hagen edition in 2015 as co-curators as well as participating artists.

Through all of its iterations Urban Lights Ruhr has chosen not to work in the conventional centres of art, nor in the same place year after year, but to go the hard way by partnering each time with different town. This necessitates forging new collaborations with municipalities, organisations and employees every time. Yet this is the only way that Urban Lights Ruhr can meet its own expectations: not to remain focused on one city but instead aiming at the entire Ruhr area.

In 2015, the curatorial team chose Hagen, for the complexity of its urban fabric, mostly resulting from its industrial past. The traces of redundant activities that shaped the city are becoming more visible as the city is evolving: a walled river is visible once again as the factories that lined it have been demolished; a stream meanders unnoticed underneath a motorway in the heart of the city; a 1930s train station, once an architectural masterpiece, clad in the 1960s to hide its decorative shapes and ornaments, and now partially re-revealed. Hagen is rich with such overlaps and conflicting urban elements, a fertile ground for artists to explore and respond to. Additionally the city’s administrators were passionate and enthusiastic about hosting the 2015 edition; their appetite to explore their city through art was infectious and liberating.

As the curatorial team, we collectively wished to continue and expand the path initiated by the previous editions of Urban Lights Ruhr. We were particularly keen on inviting artists interested in making artworks out of a deep understanding of the context. The artists —Simon Faithfull, A. Kassen, Janice Kerbel, Anna Rispoli, Shiny Toys and Taturo Atzu— were asked to think of light and its pivotal, if under-acknowledged, role in situating our relationship to our direct environment. “Light is a means through which order is attained, attention is focused and function is implemented; it is static, constant and reassuring—a utility. Is this the limit of our relationship with light and the city? Can our gaze be redirected for a time, different functions be enabled, emotions be elicited, a new position on the familiar be suggested?” 1

The result was a journey in Hagen through the artists’ impressions of the place, a parcours  that changed the way visitors came to experience the city, renewed the way residents perceived their neighbourhoods and altered the perception of the places involved.  These artists impressions demonstrated for us the value of bringing artists to have a dialogue with a place and its people. These new works were informed directly from the relationships developed with the place, with contextual integrity meaningful for the people of that place. This approach to light art, to any art in public, is a demonstration of not only how art can change our perceptions but also how we can change our perception of art in the public.

A less ambitious organization might be tempted to “dumb it down” for the public, in the fear they might not understand. Yet with all three editions of Urban Lights Ruhr, the critical discourse has remained robust throughout the development of the artists’ concepts, with great curatorial care and consideration given to making work in public, and huge efforts given to providing tours, guides, and interpretations to those who wish for it throughout the festival. There is no toning it down, no compromise. Good relationships are formed through mutual trust and respect between the organization, the artists, the municipalities, and the public. Perhaps one of the main reasons that Urban Lights Ruhr's work resonates so well and is respected so widely is that they apply this to the making of a light festival.

1. From the curators letter of invitation to the artists