Speakers

Moderators

Gaële Beaussier-Lombard, Journalist

Gaële is a journalist, producer and debate moderator in the fields of culture and the arts.

Jessica Férey, Deputy Director, LUCI Association

Jessica is French/American with a multidisciplinary background that includes arts management, art history, and theatre directing. She is a passionate arts-lover with particular commitments to innovative connections between people and culture and public space. As Deputy Director of LUCI she is in charge of network stewardship and development as well as events strategy. She is the project manager for the Creative Europe LAiPS project (Light & Art in Public Spaces) and oversees LUCI’s activities under the Art & Culture pillar, including the Light Festival Working Group and all things relating to creative lighting. 

Previously, she was Deputy Director of the Global Cultural Districts Network and prior to that worked at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She received a Master’s in Arts Management at American University in Washington DC, where her research focused on gender equity in arts leadership. 

Roundtable

Luc Schuiten, Architect and President at VEGETAL CITY

For nearly 40 years, architect Luc Schuiten has tirelessly sought alternative solutions to environmental degradation and the banally global object-architecture. Freeing himself from the rigid or traditional lines of construction, he tries to manage materials and techniques differently, focusing his research for example on bioclimatic houses or dreams of “habitarbres”. Over the years, this atypical architect designs a multitude of projects animated by the concern for other life choices. This way of thinking gives shape to a new architecture based on a poetic vision where invention and the relationship with nature occupy a preponderant place. But it is above all in his utopian visions of futuristic architecture that Luc gives all the strength of his creative and imaginative expression, proposing cities built solely with living materials. To define these new places of life linked to another hierarchy of values, he created the neologism “archiborescence”.

Thomas Geffroyd, Creative Director at Ubisoft

Acting as a Creative Director in the Annecy Ubisoft Studio, Thomas’ involvement in game creation spans almost two decades. After more than 15 years in Montreal Ubisoft where he acted as Content director supervising world building, writing, realization and consistency at brand level. He worked on multiple titles from Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Assassin’s creed and Watch Dogs among others. Coming from a sociology background, his work aims at conveying social connections between players but also connections to the world they inhabit ingame.

Victor Vieillard, Lighting Designer at Studio By Night

Trained in design through Applied Arts, he developed his nocturnal vision by studying the impact of artificial light on human behavior in public spaces. Since 2006, he has been practicing as an independent lighting designer and later founded the Studio BY NIGHT.

Within the studio, his areas of expertise encompass light urban planning and interior lighting, both permanent and temporary. Additionally, he regularly engages in artistic work under his name on public space projects. This diversity of experiences has allowed him to integrate methodologies and techniques in the service of lighting projects, maintaining a cross-disciplinary approach throughout all project phases, from conceptualization to on-site implementation, enabling the realization of integrated and creative projects.

Through projects in public spaces, he aims to alter, question, and enhance the daily lives of individuals. He strives to invest space poetically, demonstrating that light is a matter to be used with purpose and moderation.

Sara de Gouy, Architect, Designer and Plastic Artist

Sara de Gouy is a spatial designer, architect and artist. A firm knowledge of the land on which she is to build is always the starting point for all her projects, as she considers a site’s function, as well as its spatial, cultural and historical context to be the essence of its expressive potential. Once the “circumstances” of the project are established, she can reappropriate the space to imagine a «custom-made» project. Light and color are essential components of her work. Collaborating with the future end-users of a building is an integral part of her creative process, to be as close as possible to the needs and its aspirations.

She intervenes at different project scales, whether permanent or ephemeral, daytime or nighttime, ranging from custom furniture design to light installations to architectural projects. The disciplines enrich each other, both functionally and artistically. Her studio is located in Lyon.

Pecha kucha

Thorsten Bauer, Founder of Urbanscreen and StudioBauer

Thorsten Bauer is an award-winning creative director of international installations in the field of projection mapping, light design and media architecture. He is the founder of the artist collective Urbanscreen and founder of StudioBauer GmbH. With his design studio he develops media installations for indoor and outdoor applications. His clients are internationally active architecture firms, corporations and the art market. In addition to his work in the field of architecture, Thorsten Bauer is also a curator, author and lecturer in a variety of cultural and scientific contexts.

Emilie Dias, Production Manager at Leipzig Festival of Lights

Emilie Dias is production manager of the Leipzig Light Festival since 2019 as well as Sustainability Manager for Leipzig Tourismus & Marketing GmbH since 2021. With a magister in Sport & Tourism Management followed by a master’s degree in Art & Culture Management, Emilie started to work in the event industry internationally. After more than 10 years working on delivering major international multisport events, she circled back to engage with the project management of a large cultural light event in the public space in Leipzig, Germany.

James Cochrane, Director at Jigantics

Jig Cochrane is the founder and lead artist at Jigantics. He comes from a community arts background working with light art carnival in fractured post conflict communities. For the past ten years, he has been working with giant flowers creating forests of all sorts of illuminated flora in many places worldwide.

Luzinterruptus, Artists

An anonymous collective based in Madrid, Spain that collaborates with local people to carry out their work all over the world. They like to say: “Luzinterruptus is all of us.”

Joanie Lemercier, Visual artist at Studio Joanie Lemercier

Joanie Lemercier is a French visual artist and environmental activist whose work explores human perception through the manipulation of light in space. Working primarily with light projection and computer programming, Lemercier transforms the appearance of everyday objects and forms, bending reality to his imagination.
In recent years, Lemercier has become increasingly concerned with climate change and environmental degradation, lending his projection skills and artistry to activist causes and groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Les Soulèvements de la Terre, Ende Gelände, as well as developing a new body of work, Slow Violence which looks at the devastating effects of coal mining on one of Europe’s oldest forests.
He has been working with projected light since 2006 and co-founded the acclaimed visual label AntiVJ in 2008. Represented by a New York based gallery since 2010, Joanie founded his creative studio in Brussels in 2013, under the co-direction of Juliette Bibasse.

Amelia Kosminsky, Visual artist

Amelia Kosminsky is an international artist whose work focuses on slowing life down to have time to catch the beauty around us. Her work is predominately peaceful and contemplative, using light as a medium to produce pieces that contrast with the harshness of urban living. Her video artworks have been seen on the Piccadilly Circus Screens (Sparks of Nature), at Lumiere Durham 2021 (Anthology), and most recently for the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Her light sculpture works have been seen in Kew Gardens (Phantasma), City Lights – the Mayor of London’s Light Festival- and at the 10th anniversary festival of Lumiere Durham with her piece Celestial Brainstorm.

Philip Ross, Owner at Studio Philip Ross

Philip Ross creates lighting that aims to invite positive action: The question how to activate values like harmony, openness and creativity through lighting drives his work. Ross’ combined background as industrial designer, academic researcher and practicing lighting artist/designer allows him to find inspiration from art, science and design and form new synergies in his work. Philip has had the opportunity to create light for cities, companies, institutions and festivals in Europe, the US and Asia. Ross acts regularly as invited speaker and enjoys writing and publishing about light. Philip works and lives in Eindhoven, the Dutch city of light.

Pierre Amoudruz, Musician, videast and performer

Pierre Amoudruz has been evolving in the scene of electronic, digital and hybrids arts for the last 20 years. He specialized in deflecting and poetizing public spaces through many collaborations with choreographers, musicians or coders. He attempts to share his creation protocol from collaborative processes to interactive or participatory experiences, including a wide diversity of people.

After being head of AADN for 15 years – a non-profit organization for the promotion of Digital arts and Cultures based in Lyon – he founded the Lab-Lab, a research studio about immersive experiences. He is still trying to transfer those experiences of senses from dome or visual caves to outdoor urban spaces.