Speakers

Keynote

Mathieu Baudin | Director, Institute of Desirable Futures

Historian and futurist, Mathieu Baudin is Director of the Institute of Desirable Futures, a school that offers keys to understanding the present and creative weapons to all those who wish to build their future.

Former director of the College of Advanced Studies in Sustainable Development (CHEE&DD), teacher (CNAM, Ecole Centrale, HEC), TEDx speaker and organizer, TV journalist on France 2, he has been traveling for more than 20 years between past, present and future to imagine tomorrow for the best it could be.

Surrounded by a team of a hundred experts and artists, he organizes and leads intellectual explorations or LabSessions to better identify and project ourselves into the world of tomorrow.

He has authored the books Le Bonheur en marche (Ed. Guérin, 2015) with Patrick Viveret, Sustainable development, new ideology of the 21st century? (Ed l’Harmattan, Col. prospective, 2009), and Tell the future we are coming (Ed Alisio, 2020).

Roundtable discussion

Julien Pavillard | Director of the Fête des Lumières, City of Lyon (France)

Julien has been the Director for Events and Animation as well as the general coordinator of the Lyon Fête des Lumières since January 2020. He previously created and managed the Congo Bleu agency which has carried out numerous lighting projects and invented several light festivals (in Switzerland, Russia, Asia, North America and the Middle East). With his team, and alongside Annie Mesplède and Jean-François Zurawik, he also relaunched the Fête des Lumières between 2005 and 2009 to expand the festival into what it has now become.

Elisa Hiligen | Lighting Coordinator, City of Jyväskylä (Finland)

Elisa Hillgen is a Lighting Designer and City of Light Coordinator for the City of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has previously worked in the field of building and interior design and has over 13 years of experience in different fields of lighting. Her job as a lighting coordinator is to handle dark time cityscape by organizing design projects and maintenance for urban lighting in Jyväskylä.

Ronald Ramakers | Director, GLOW Eindhoven (The Netherlands)

Ronald started experimenting with light at a very young age, by building light installations in and around his family house. His professional interest in the subject took hold at 18, when he started working for a theater lighting designer in the Hague. After graduating as a theatre director, he worked in the Netherlands and Germany – notably interning with Thomas Langhoff at the Deutsche Theater (East Berlin) in 1990.
Two years after designing the interactive light artwork Trust the Cloud, Ronald became the Director of the GLOW Light Festival in 2016. He developed partnerships abroad for the festival, notably with the Qinhuai Lantern Festival in Nianjing (China).

Craig Morrison | Artist (UK)

Craig Morrison is an artist and festival director. He has become increasingly interested in introducing more sustainable ways of working. He is also the initiator of several collaborations between artists from different disciplines. This led to interesting and compelling results and beautiful interactions between many other artists and students. The development of visual art in public spaces using light and technology are central themes of his projects.

Pecha kuchas

Léa Conrath | Coordinator, HACNUM

Léa Conrath joined HACNUM – the national network of hybrid arts and digital cultures – in March 2020. She accompanied the creation of the network as well as its development, and is in charge of the general coordination. She works in a transversal way on all the projects carried out within the network: actions to support hybrid and digital artistic creation, organization of about thirty professional meetings on the shared issues of the sector, stimulation of peer-to-peer exchanges between members.

Léa has a law bachelor’s degree from the University of Strasbourg and a master’s degree in cultural project management from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Grenoble. During her studies, she also worked at the Shadok, a place of artistic experimentation around digital cultures in Strasbourg. 

Maria Güell Otero | Artistic Director, LlumBCN Festival

Maria received her degree in scenography from the ESAD. She is the CEO of La Invisible Studio, founded in 2003 as a platform to be able to produce her own lighting design work. Her first professional contact with lighting took place in the world of Scenographic Lighting. Subsequently, she collaborated on various architectural projects, ephemeral lighting installations and exhibition and museum lighting. She also has a long career in the world of teaching.

She is currently Artistic Director of the LLumBCN Festival, 2018-2023, Co-director and lecturer of the Master’s Degree “Projecting Light”, UPC Foundation, 2009-2023 Barcelona and Co-director Postgraduate Lighting Design, 2014-2023 Mexico City. She teaches at the Elisava School of Design, 2010- 2022 Barcelona.

Her other projects include being part of the curatorial team of the Festival LlumBCN, 2012-2018 Barcelona, co-designer of the project Raval KM0, 2016-2023 Barcelona and leading the team of the Master Plan for Public Lighting in Barcelona in 2012. She was a finalist of the Fad Awards 2013 and 2017.

@maria_guell_ordis / @la_invisible_studio

Aymen Gharbi | Co-founder, INTERFERENCE Tunis

Aymen Gharbi’s curatorial practice is dedicated to contemporary art in dialogue with cultural heritage since 2016. With a background as architect and cultural heritage researcher, he has been directing light and media art projects in Tunisia as well as in Jordan and Mali. In his PhD research, teaching and training he features cross-language approaches to develop a Tunisian vocabulary to communicate and mediate contemporary art projects in the Tunisian dialect.

aymenghrabi.net

Bettina Pelz | Co-founder, INTERFERENCE Tunis

Bettina Pelz has been working with light art projects around the world as curator, adviser, or critic since 2000. She is the founding curator of light art projects such as LICHTROUTEN Luedenscheid, GLOW Eindhoven, NARRACJE Gdansk, RESPONSIVE Halifax, INTERFERENCE Tunis, and SEGOU YELEN Ségou. In research, teaching and training she features art-in-context in artistic production, exhibition making and writing on art, encompassing a committed focus on audience development and art mediation.

bettinapelz.de / @kunstpelz

Jaap Schuuring | Lighting Academy, Signify

Jaap is leading the customer education activities in Signify (previously named Philips Lighting) for almost the last decade. Lighting education is what’s close to his heart in all off its variations. Before that he has been involved in many other roles in the same company. He has a photography and photonics background. Next to this he is an entrepreneur, he developed the first 3D printed LEGO light, 8 years ago and recently the locust light (detracting locust swarms from crops in Africa). Now he is involved in a new ideation which is about a hybrid energy providing solution using a combination of wind and solar.

Julien Taïb | Producer, Crossed Lab

Julien Taïb studied cinema and has contributed to the creation of an ecosystem of production and diffusion in favor of contemporary digital arts and practices in the Ile de France and internationally.
He is an independent consultant of digital cultures: in this context he initiates, cooperates and accompanies installation projects, exhibitions, conferences and workshops related to digital cultures.
He is also an associate producer of Crossed Lab, a production office in which he promotes hybrid art-science projects, light arts and the link between material and immaterial.

Sophie Hombert | CEO, Design Aglaé

During her design studies, she wrote her dissertation on “The domestication of plants”. She built partnerships with research laboratories to invent an elixir that gives plants a functional role thanks to lighting, building the Aglae company in 2016 that is a pioneer in this field.