Programme

09:30-10:00 | Coffee and Registration

10:00-10:10 | Opening of the Lyon Light Festival Forum 2023

• Stéphane Malfettes – Director of Les Subs 
• Jessica Férey – Deputy Director of LUCI Association

10:10-11:00 | Mayors’ dialogue: Creative angles to imagine the city of tomorrow

Moderated by Mark Burton-Page, General Director of LUCI

• Grégory Doucet, Mayor of Lyon
• Mike Josef, Mayor of Frankfurt

Status quo is not an option: cities must reinvent themselves, find solutions, and develop their capacities for metamorphosis.

We need to offer more poetry, add spice to the future, and not see everything through a dystopic lense where tomorrow will be worse than today. We need to propose a story, a narrative for the city. But how can we bring new perspectives on these changes and sharpen our imagination to invent concretely the city of tomorrow?

As urban stakeholders, elected officials, artists, planners, architects, we invite you to blend imaginations. To engage in a dialogue about creating, transmitting, and receiving works of art and creations that inspire, break boundaries, let us dream and take the time to shape the new urban uses.

11:00-12:45 | Conversational Roundtable: Creative angles to imagine the city of tomorrow

Moderated by Gaële Beaussier-Lombard.

• Luc Schuiten, Architect and President at VEGETAL CITY
• Thomas Geffroyd, Creative Director at Ubisoft
• Victor Vieillard, Lighting Designer at Studio By Night
• Sara de Gouy, Architect, Designer and Plastic Artist

Q&A

12:45-14:00 | Lunch

14:00-15:00 | Creative Lighting Pecha Kucha Presentations I

Moderated by Jessica Férey.

These sessions of “Pecha Kucha”- style speed presentations will be an opportunity for peer-to-peer sharing and exchange in the field of creative lighting. Hear from light festival organisers, artists, and designers about creative lighting projects.

• Emilie Dias (Production Manager at Leipzig Festival of Lights) – Beacon of Hope

The events of the crucial day of October 9 1989 when around 70,000 people gathered to demonstrate for freedom are reinterpreted every year since 2009 at the Leipzig Festival of Lights to create a strong, vivid and real culture of remembrance, building a cultural bridge between the past and the present. The festival aims at strengthening the awareness for democracy to maintain the value of peace and solidarity and make them come alive especially for the younger generation. The festival also offers an exciting platform to foster more sustainable oriented events, like the “Beacon of Hope” project which came in 2023 to Leipzig and focused on this particular topic. In 2024, like every five years, the festival will take up the full inner-city ring road and offer to the visitors the possiblity to march on the historical demonstration path of 1989.

• Joanie Lemercier (Visual artist at Studio Joanie Lemercier) – Light as a medium, space as a canvas

“I use technology to shed light on certain issues, and I assist different groups of activists in their direct actions.” For around fifteen years, Joanie Lemercier has been experimenting with different unusual projection surfaces as a space for expression. In the studio’s recent projects, the extractivism inherent in the use of digital tools, their energy consumption but also the creation of new imaginations are central questions and areas of research. It seems essential to them to embody a political commitment in their artistic practice and the experiences they offer. The video will discuss the creative process of the studio’s projects in relation to Joanie’s engagement with different climate topics.

Joanie will be represented by Nicolas Roziecki (Producer at Studio Joanie Lemercier) for the Q&A.

• Luzinterruptus (Artists) – We illuminate the unilluminable

Through a 10-minute video, we will try to show our 15 years of work with light, since we started in the street as a guerrilla to the great pieces that we are currently carrying out in light events. We will show our philosophy of collaborative work and the use we make of basic and recycled materials.

• James Cochrane (Director at Jigantics) – Bezier BLOOM

This presentation will show a 1-minute video which featured drone footage of the art installation BLOOM in Bezier. The speaker will give details of this work and answer any questions.

15:00-15:30 | Coffee break

15:30-16:30 | Creative Lighting Pecha Kucha Presentations II

Moderated by Jessica Férey.

• Amelia Kosminsky (Visual artist) – Living Light 

The international artist Amelia Kosminsky will present her work that 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.

• Thorsten Bauer (Founder of Urbanscreen and StudioBauer) – Urban deceleration in the digital age: a media artist in search of time

From cyclical daylight to dynamic shadows and water reflections. Nature is full of dynamic light effects. In this sense, static light is by definition, unnatural light. Everything is in constant process, all life is dynamic. In our urban reality, however, we tend to depict only the extreme points of light dynamics. Between high-frequency LED advertising displays on the one hand and the static staging of dominating architecture on the other, there is a gap of slowness.
Digital technologies are dynamicising our urban space and transforming urban surfaces into mutable architecture. Of what importance is the slow process for a liveable city and how can digital technology help us to achieve tranquility through dynamism? A show of works and design philosophy as a résumé of a 20-year career as a digital artist.

• Philip Ross (Owner of Studio Philip Ross) – Airplay: How light invites collective creation of music

The new light and music installation a|rp|ay presents light as a tangible medium that invites people to create music together. Nineteen beams of light, 6m high and arranged in a 7m diameter circle, form a gigantic musical instrument analogous to wind chimes. Where your hand normally would pass right through a light beam, here each beam responds to touch: You can push them, make them sound and chime together with other beams and other people. The essence of a|rp|ay is that you and your fellow visitors engage physically in a collective creative activity: creating melodies and harmonies that are familiar yet different every time depending on who makes which moves. Next to this, people are invited to reflect on how it is possible that these intangible media of light and sound create such a physical experience,. a|rp|ay premiered at Glow 2023.

• Pierre Amoudruz (Artist, Videast, Musician) – Stories to move spaces

Through the presentation of 3 works, we’ll figure out how I try to bring political questions to sensitive works, opened to a wide audience.

16:30-17:30 | (Light)Speed Networking Moment

Take part in this speed networking moment to meet other participants and share your ideas of how light festivals can continue celebrating imagination in cities.

17:30 | Cocktail and closing of LLFF

19:00 | Visit of the Fête des Lumières