Water Light Festival 2024

Idea & Concept Werner Zanotti

Artistic Directors Nika Perne, Bettina Pelz

Art-historical expertise Hanns-Paul Ties, Martina Rabensteiner

Projektmanager Matthias Mair

Production Brixen / Bressanone

Simon Boccolari, Nika Perne, Oliver Kern, Florian Kreil, Elias Gamper, Andreas Vale

Production Neustift / Novacella

Bettina Pelz, Julia Niederstätter, Veronica Pelz, Aymen Gharbi, Martin Moosburger, Franz Tauber

Marketing Claudia Oberhofer, Lorena Höllrigl

PR Erica Kircheis

Social Media So.you for Brixen Tourism

Hospitality & Ticketing Maria Liendo

Artbook Texts Elisa Barison

Photo Matthias Gasser, Jennifer Braun, Studio Bettina Pelz, Jürgen Eheim

Graphics Frei&Zeit

Print A. Weger

In cooperation with Augustiner Chorherrenstift Neustift / Abbazia di Novacella

WATER IS LIFE – LIGHT IS ART

Water Light Festival

Local and international artists transform water sites and culturalhistorical treasures in Brixen and Neustift into a gallery with their creative ideas. The focus is on reflections on ecological, economic, and social aspects relating to water and light.

The Brixen Water Light Festival takes place annually in May. The idea for the festival was born in 2015 after the première of the light and music show at the Hofburg in Brixen. The first edition of the festival was held in May 2017.

Art, light and water and a head full of dreams and thoughts. Being free and letting oneself fall, floating on the surface of the water, submerging, and carrying the light within. Being critical and playful, a rollercoaster of emotions. Screaming, standing still, having fun, seeing the world. And figure it out?

MISSION

Water – our most precious resource.

The Brixen Water Light Festival© aims to raise awareness of this issue beyond regional borders. The mission is to spread a respectful awareness of nature and sustainable use of water resources, to strengthen the cultural link with local tradition and history, and to raise awareness among guests and the public about environmentally friendly consumer behaviour.

The Brixen Water Light Festival stands as a venue in South Tyrol for sustainability. The focus is on the use of energy from renewable sources, environmentally friendly products and digital advertising campaigns. It would be nice if you too could help to make our festival a more ecologically compatible event, e.g. by making your journey to us more environmentally friendly.

Brixen Bressanone

Water Light Festival 2024

Installations in NEUSTIFT / NOVACELLA

45 CHARLY NIJENSOHN ANCIENT SEAS THAT HAVE VANISHED

47 DORRA HICHRI C-P H2O

49 ROSMARIE WEINLICH ANIMA HABITAT

51 SARA FÖRSTER LICHTBILDER (Neustift)

53 ANISH KAPOOR ODE TO PETER

55 CAZADOR DEL SOL SONNENFELD

57 BRIGITTE KOWANZ LICHTWECHSEL SICHTBARES TRIFFT AUF VERBORGENES

59 LAURENCE BONVIN ALETSCH NEGATIVE

61 KEITH SONNIER CHACAHOULA

63 FRANÇOIS MORELLET RECRÉATION NO. 7

65 JUAN FRANCISCO DEW PORTAL RODRIGUEZ

67 MARTINA DAL BROLLO POLARIZED VIEW

69 DANIEL NUDERSCHER SKRFF_OLOGY CORRIE FRANCIS PARKS

71 HEINZ MACK LICHT RAUM FARBE

73 JULIAN HÖLSCHER VIVID CANVAS

75 NICOLÁS RUPCICH ARCHIPELAGO ARCHIVE

77 JAKUB NEPRAŠ LIANA

79 ATELIER MEJIA WÄLZ TABLEAUX FAUX

81 JAZMIN ROJAS FORERO BODIES INSIDE EACH OTHER

83 ANNIKA HIPPLER OSCILLATIONS LUMINOGRAMS

ESTHER STOCKER

Italy

Squares

2022

Esther Stocker is an Italian painter and installation artist. She expresses herself through lines, grids, right angles and the non-colours

black and white. Inspired by a constructivist tradition, the artist uses her work to explore relationships, structures and contradictions.

Esther Stocker is showing the work Square, which she sees as a continuation of her intervention as part of Klanglicht Graz 2022. The title has a double meaning: on the one hand, the square shape, which appears again and again in the artist’s practice. On the other

hand, it refers to the public square in front of the railway station, which Stocker views from a social perspective: the shape of the place influences human interactions and relationships within it.

TENTAKULUM

Germany

The German artist collective TENTAKULUM, consisting of Tom Groll, Katharina Berndt and Kuno Seltmann, works together with musicians on a project basis to create audiovisual media art that deals with the tension between nature and society.

Green Washing

2024

The work was created for the festival and consists of two washing machines, two IBC water tanks and a bathtub. The tanks are all connected by a long hose system through which light green water enriched with uranine

flows continuously - and glows during the day and at night with the help of UV lamps. The self-explanatory title demonstratively stands for a smooth wash cycle of perfected greenwashing, in which we are all somehow involved.

RAUMZEITPIRATEN

Germany

RaumZeitPiraten (Tobias Daemgen, Jan Ehlen and Moritz Ellerich) has been active as an artist group since 2007. They combine media such as performance, site-specific spatial installations, immersive environments, kinetic sculptures and interactive instruments. Their focus is on the critical examination of the relationship between man and machine.

Physarum

2023

A generative algorithm draws an interactive mapping on the façade of Brixen’s St Erhard’s Church. The growth strategy of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum is translated into machine language and transferred to the façade as a constantly changing

projection. Data such as weather conditions or the movements of passers-by are recorded and collected by small, analogue circuits on the building and converted from the digital mushroom mesh into the visually tangible façade.

STUDIO TOER

Netherlands

Studio Toer is a multidisciplinary design studio from the Netherlands founded in 2011 by Castor Bours and Wouter Widdershoven. Their approach is always playful and experimental. Driven by exploring technical and aesthetic boundaries, they create interactive experi ences between applied art and light installations.

Firefly Field

2019

As the title suggests, the work is a glowing field of fireflies at night. However, these consist of countless spring steel wires with small LED lamps in the centre, which are mechanically driven to imitate the movements of real fireflies. Starting from material research

and always interested in the dynamics of things, the designers were fascinated by the seemingly natural movement of the wire and transformed it into a quiet yet captivating sea of technological fireflies.

XAVI BOVÉ STUDIO

Spain

Xavi Bové Studio is a Spanish digital art studio consisting of Xavi Bové and Xavi Maixenchs. Together, the artists create audiovisual works of light, image and sound, focussing on themes and concepts such as time, memory, human perception and the interaction between people and their environment.

Lunar Oscillations

2020

The installation is a contemplative intervention centred around the perception of a changing environment. Inspired by the influence that the moon exerts on the oceans and us living beings, the artists create a sea of lights and shadows reminiscent of an

endless universe and dynamic moons. The inner courtyard of the Hofburg is transformed on the one hand by the lights and an underlying musical thread, and on the other hand by the free movement of visitors in it.

OCUBO

Portugal

OCUBO is a Portuguese design studio consisting of Nuño Maya and Carole Purnelle. Since 2003, they have been staging elaborate works of light art all over the world, with interactivity at the centre of their projects. They use light and

Human Tiles

2008

Human Tiles is an interactive installation in real time in which the audience plays the main role: a graphic pattern reminiscent of the typical Portuguese ‘azulejos’ – traditional, colourful tiles – appears on the façade in the inner courtyard of the city library. The

technology to create urban landscapes, immersive video mappings and reality-changing virtual spaces.

constantly changing pattern is created by the colours of clothing and the movements of passers-by interacting with the projection. The work creates a playful approach to other cultures and their traditions.

PIERO GILARDI

Italy

Piero Gilardi was an Italian sculptor and one of the most important representatives of Italian Arte Povera. Known above all for his tappeti natura, which reproduced natural landscapes in polyurethane,

the artist was always interested in the preservation of these ecosystems and, as an artist who was always politically active and critical, is considered a pioneer of the environmental movement.

Migrazione (Climate Change)

2015 / In cooperation with “Luci d’Artista Festival”, Turin, Italy

The project refers to the large animal migrations triggered by global warming: a flock of pelicans flies in search of cooler climate zones, alternately lighting up in blue, violet, red and yellow colours reminiscent of a sunset sky. The installation consists of 12 pelican silhouettes that light up alternately according to a control algorithm defined by Gilardi and realised by Heinrich Vogel.

GRAYZ

Italy

GRAYZ is an audiovisual artist duo, consisting of Moritz Brunner and Georg Ladurner, which deals with the creation of experimental and futuristic visualisations and digital art. By combining aesthetics, technology and philosophy, they develop challenging visual and immersive worlds.

Self-luminous Creatures

2024

In this work, the artists explore the bioluminescence of individual, tiny organisms, which are put into a high-energy state by a chemical reaction and thus generate a warning light signal. The artists depict this process in transparent objects filled with a liquid full

of self-luminous protozoa. The whole thing is pumped through transparent tubes in the curious attic of the city’s Pharmacy Museum, where it finds the perfect environment for an experiment of this kind.

TILEN SEPIČ

Slovenia

Tilen Sepič is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Slovenia who works in the fields of new media, lighting design, product design and audio-visual light installations. He is primarily interested in the experiences behind an object, the revelation of its functions and materials.

Light Oscillator

2016

Above the riverbed at the level of the Adlerbrücke bridge, four floating light objects oscillate in a conical motion over the pure mountain waters of the Eisack. Developed in 2016 and now adapted to the surroundings of Brixen, the work is based on observations and experiments on frequencies and oscillations in nature: movements that can

be found, for example, in atoms, the movement of the planets, biological time and other cycles of flora and fauna. At the same time, the work literally highlights the value of pure mountain water.

Dmitry Morozov (::vtol::) technical solutions / programming

JULIA DANTONNET

France

Source

Julia Dantonnet is a French artist whose lighting creations for public spaces are closely linked to a place, its architecture or its history.

Faced with the ubiquity of digital technologies, she seeks other ways of making images by developing simple and poetic lighting devices.

The site-specific work plays with the mysterious and often overlooked presence of fountains in the city. Through the artist’s projection, a floating carousel appears to rise from the depths of the fountain in Stufels. Mystical shadow plays create an imaginary underwater

world, with the projections hovering over the façades around the fountain and creating the feeling of being underwater yourself. This is further emphasised by a soundscape of siren songs.

PHILIPP ARTUS

Germany

Aquatics

Philipp Artus is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker from Berlin. His work is dedicated to the diverse expressions of life through moving images and sound. His audiovisual experiences include playful elements as well as minimalist structures, grand and timeless themes, and contemplative silence.

2022–2024 / In cooperation with RE.LIGHT Festival, Regensburg, Germany

The work presents a generative underwater world with animated sea creatures. The work explores the emergence of life through abstract forms and movement and passers-by can use a tablet to design their own creatures for the virtual ecosystem. On

the one hand as a utopian vision of the unknown beauty of nature, on the other as a dystopian algorithm designed to replace nature, the work offers a glimpse of a possible future in which artificial ecosystems replace real life.

TOKYO BLUE

Denmark

Tokyo Blue is a Danish artist group founded by Silla Findstrøm Herbst, Katrin Barrie Larsen and Helle Frøjk Knudsen. Their focus is on the exploration of colours and their interaction with light, surface, space and material. In site-specific installations, they explore the ability of colours to create sensory experiences and narratives.

Water Walker

2024 / In cooperation with Copenhagen Light Festival, Denmark

The site-specific work explores the connection of female existence with the element of water. Water will be the great opportunity/problem of the future and its scarcity has the greatest impact on women and their arduous marches in search of it. At the same

time, it symbolises characteristics of the feminine principle and underlines the central role of women in the narrative of it. The work explores this connection in a visual way and symbolises the constant transformation process of water that we are also subject to.

MATEJ BIZOVIČAR

Slovenia

Refufish

2016

Matej Bizovičar is a visual artist from Ljubljana who has a background in painting, but has also created sculptures, installations and mosaics over the years. In recent years in particular, the artist has focussed on the interaction between sculpture and light.

The work Refufish is a play on the words ‘refugee’ and ‘fish’. The colourful school of fish made of polyurethane foam symbolically represents the refugee crisis that has been going on for years, whereby migration is part of human history, and the colourful

animals emphasise the exact opposite at first glance. Through their unusual shapes and colours, the artist tries to emphasise their otherness and foreignness. This is intended to encourage passers-by to reflect on the age-old human fear of the unknown.

FABIAN FEICHTER

Italy

Fabian Feichter is an installation and performance artist and musician from South Tyrol. He repeatedly explores the theme of water and its various aggregate states: as a glacier in the form of a kebab skewer, artificial ice in a hotel room, a snow substitute from a popcorn machine or three-dimensional moulds of various lakes.

Concrete In The Brain And Other Stories

2024

The gallery is filled with a carpet of mist. Sculptures moulded from various materials appear in the middle of the blanket of mist. They are reminiscent of organic structures or architecture and landscapes from a bird’s eye view. But just when visitors think they recognise something familiar in the swathes of

mist, the next cloud of grey-white water droplets appears and makes everything disappear into obscurity again – like a memory that fades away. In collaboration with Youlee Ku.

Curated by Linnea Streit.

ONIONLAB

Spain

Climate

2022

Onionlab is a multidisciplinary art and design studio based in Barcelona. Their work covers art as well as design and technology and always starts from a graphic concept and detailed ideas, which are translated into projects with technical innovation and aesthetic approaches.

Originally created for the digital art festival Constellations in Metz, Onionlab presents an adapted form of the 3D projection Climate on the façade of Brixen’s Cathedral. Through a detailed study of the architectural details, a 9-minute video between utopian and

dystopian future - with and without the climate change - is adapted to the façade of the cathedral. Partly abstract, but very strong images such as fire and flames, change into bright, hopeful sequences and present viewers with both future options.

MASSIMO UBERTI

Italy

Massimo Uberti studied fine arts in Milan. He participated in several light festivals and did many experiences in public art in both Italy and worldwide. He has had exhibitions in galleries and museums.

Battistero d’Oro

2020, Brixen Bressanone Water Light Festival Permanent installation since 2022

The Italian artist Massimo Uberti builds on the unusual heptagonal basic structure of the fountain, an octagonal building, which in its form and shape is evocative of the typical baptisteries. He sets a balancing counterpoint to the unusual structure of the building and gives the existing fountain a new form and function. The filigree construction consists of fine, gold-coloured metal tubes. Windows and doors of the baptistery consist of bent neon tubes.

Uberti worked on a permanent installation in Amsterdam, and on behalf of UNESCO he worked in the city of Verona. The artwork Today I Love You will be exhibited during the Expo 2020 in Dubai.

With “Battistero d’oro” Uberti builds a bridge to a Christian tradition, which was particularly widespread in Italy and gave great importance to baptisteries. The octagonal floor plan of the baptisteries is based on an eschatological thought: on the first day of the week (Sunday) Christ rose from the dead, and so the original first day of creation was regarded as the eighth day and day of new creation.

CHARLY NIJENSOHN

Argentina

Argentinian artist Charly Nijensohn has been represented at numerous light festivals, art museums and biennials around the world since 1992. Using the artistic media of film and photography, he documents dwindling ecological habitats in the southern hemisphere and the consequences for their inhabitants.

Ancient Seas That Have Vanished

1999–2024

The Salar de Uyuni, a salt desert in Bolivia formed by the interaction of prehistoric lakes and volcanic activity, is the setting for the photographic images for the video installation on three large-format screens in the Engelsburg. Together with members of

the Koya, an indigenous people living in the salt desert, the artist takes a stand against the exploitation of their sacred site and the destruction of their culture and the biodiversity of the surrounding area through invasive mining projects by international companies.

DORRA HICHRI

Tunisia

C-P H2O

2022–2024

Dorra Hichri is a Tunisian artist who graduated from the Sousse School of Fine Arts in 2024. She works with projections and projection environments, her artistic medium is digital animation. Since 2022, she

For the wall projection shown in Neustift, the artist took water samples from various springs in and around the monastery in February 2024, which she dried and examined under a microscope. She viewed the crystalline

has been developing works that deal with water or substances dissolved in water. The condensates form their source material for experimenting with photography and animation.

formations as coloured shapes with the help of a polarising filter. She organised a selection of them into a series and displayed them as a wall projection, which also documents local water qualities.

ROSMARIE WEINLICH

Germany

Anima

2011–2024

Rosmarie Weinlich is a German artist who completed her art studies at the Bauhaus University in Weimar in 2012. Her practice includes drawings, paintings and installations. Her artistic interest lies in materials and situations of transformation and transit.

The Anima installation consists of a large number of glass bulbs in the shape of historical light bulbs. Various inorganic crystals grow very slowly in these bulbs over long periods of time. These have special physical properties that are used in modern communication and media technology. The installation visualises a natural material that has become an everyday technical building material.

Habitat

2011–2024

The Habitat installation consists of a series of luminous objects that are freely suspended in the room. The glass bulbs in the shape of light bulbs are home to sundew plants. They are filled with a nutrient solution and are supplied with light. Although the sundew can adapt to nutrient-poor environments, the plants can only survive for a limited time in a hermetically sealed biotope. The installation shows the different stages of the plants’ adaptation processes.

SARA FÖRSTER

Germany

Sara Förster is a German artist who works primarily with the medium of photography. Cameraless photography is one of her specialities.

She develops photograms, luminograms and solarisations. The subject of her artistic experiments is light.

Lichtbilder (Neustift)

2024

In March 2024, the artist was a guest at Neustift Monastery to record the light situations in and around the monastery using various materials and methods. Using photosensitive paper and a

camera, she collected a variety of light impressions. The result is an artistic archive of natural light situations with a multitude of light colours and impressions of time.

ANISH KAPOOR

India

Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor is recognised as one of the most important contemporary artists in the world. An innovative sculptor, he is best known for his unexpected use of terrain materials such as earth and coloured pigments, always creating captivating environments that inspire a meditative and poetic experience.

Ode To Peter

2003, Collection Zumtobel

The installation is a field of experimentation for perception and thematises the processual character of seeing. At the centre of the installation is a black picture surface that shows no light reflection. It is embedded in a luminous

surface that continuously changes colour, constantly altering the impression of its surroundings. Unaffected by the dynamics, the black surface appears static and gives the human eye the impression of emptiness and depth.

Court

CAZADOR DEL SOL

Italy

The company Cazador del Sol has been creating solar fields in Germany and Italy for over ten years, often in castle grounds, in cultural-historical ensembles or for garden shows. In 2021, they were represented for the first time with a project at the FÊTE DES LUMIÈRES Festival of Light in Lyon.

Sonnenfeld

2024 – Daylight project

A reflective field of sun catchers is created around the Wonder Well in the courtyard of the monastery. These are sun catcher discs made of technical acrylic glass, which with added fluorescent colour pigments make UV light visible in daylight. This is invisible to the

human eye, unlike fish, reptiles, dogs, cats and some bird species. The yellow to red glowing ‘sun field’ in the courtyard is the first daylight project of the WATER LIGHT FESTIVAL at Neustift Monastery.

BRIGITTE KOWANZ

Austria

Lichtwechsel

2002, Collection Zumtobel

The installation consists of 15 square light surfaces in different colours. The LED tiles alternate irregularly between ‘on’ and ‘off’. They are programmed to display a Morse code. The displayed term is also the title of the work ‘Lichtwechsel’. The installation thematises light as a signifier, as a carrier of information and as a medium of information systems.

Brigitte Kowanz was an Austrian artist. Known for her sculptures and installations with various light sources such as neon, fluorescent or

LED, as well as acrylic glass and mirrors, she researched how information changes when it is translated into signs, language and codes.

Sichtbares trifft auf Verborgenes –Augenblick auf Dauer

2003, Collection Zumtobel

The installation consists of fluorescent lamps in acrylic glass sleeves mounted in series on stainless steel. Round and elongated openings can be seen on the front, representing the short and long pulses of a Morse code. They visualise the titular text ‘The visible meets the hidden’. The stark contrast of black and brightly lit lines blends with the metallic reflections to create three-dimensional shapes.

LAURENCE BONVIN

Switzerland

Laurence Bonvin is a Swiss artist and has been a professor at the cantonal art school in Lausanne since 2001. She collects her impressions with the camera and the microphone, her themes are processes of change and transformation, in natural and cultural landscapes, as well as in ecological and social systems.

Aletsch Negative

2019–2024

The photographic animation is based on a trip to the Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 2018. The Aletsch Glacier is the largest and longest glacier in the Alps in terms of area and is located on the southern slope of the Bernese Alps. Equipped with a

camera, microphone and computer, the artist collected image and sound material for her projection here. Still and moving images, as well as audio recordings, make the process of melting and change in its irretrievability tangible and comprehensible.

KEITH SONNIER

Keith Sonnier was an American artist whose work radically changed the idea of what sculpture can be. As a pioneer of the so-called ‘New Sculpture’, he challenged traditional sculpture with artless and ephemeral materials. Neon and fluorescent light are central to his work.

Chacahoula

1997, Collection Zumtobel

The work is a graphic composition of various coloured neon lines, unlabelled tin cans, plug connections, cables and a transformer. The title refers to the river ‘Chacahoula Bayou’. Sonnier has developed a series of works that refer to places and landscapes in Louisiana, where he was born and grew up. The large-format drawing reads like a snapshot of Louisiana’s esprit, where indigenous and African, French and Spanish influences come together.

FRANÇOIS MORELLET

France

The French painter, sculptor and light artist François Morellet is considered the greatest pioneer of minimalism in Europe and one of the greatest masters of geometric abstraction. He began working with light in the 1960s, and today his works are considered milestones in the art history of neon light.

Recréation No.7

1994, Collection Zumtobel

The artwork is a graphic composition of different coloured, handwritten neon lines, plug connections, cables and a transformer on a canvas. ‘Recréation’ is a series in which the artist practised copying children’s drawings. He had selected sequences translated into neon.

JUAN FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ

Juan Francisco Rodríguez is a Colombian filmmaker and artist who works with the media of optics, photography and film. His artistic approach is speculative, developing experimental systems that are fuelled by scientific thinking, technical design and poetic knowledge in equal measure.

Dew Portal

2022–2024

The installation is inspired by the optical qualities of dewdrops in nature. Due to their spherical and translucent nature, they function like small lenses that bundle, focus and project rays of light and reflect and reproduce images. In the installation, a crystal ball takes

on the function of a dewdrop. This lies on a light table, with a slide underneath showing a reflection of the sun on a marshy pond. The installation shows how much light and optics determine our view of the world.

MARTINA DAL BROLLO

Italy

Martina Dal Brollo is an Italian artist with a degree from the Frank Mohr Institute for Artistic Research in the Arts and a degree in New Media from the Hanze University of Groningen. She develops aesthetic environments, settings in which she explores her way of viewing, perceiving and experiencing.

Polarized View

2019–2024

The artist often works with local plastic waste from the area surrounding the exhibition. She uses these found objects to develop material collages, which she enlarges using a camera and projects onto the surrounding walls. She uses a dichroic filter to transform

the bending, tension and stretching of the waste into an iridescent play of colours. She thus utilises a technical principle from industry, while at the same time thematising the long-term durability and irreplaceability of plastics.

CORRIE FRANCIS PARKS DANIEL NUDERSCHER

In 2023, the American artist Corrie Francis Parks and the Austrian photographer Daniel Nuderscher are developing the SKRFF_ology project. It is a media archaeological project on graffiti in public spaces, those characters and images that have been an integral part of many cityscapes and an expression of urban culture since the 1980s at the latest.

SKRFF_ology

The artistic collaboration began as an investigative excavation in Vienna. The artists treated a public wall like an urban ecotope, a sgraffito sculpture or an archaeological site. They experimented with tools, materials, pencil and camera. The process documentation is the source material for stop-motion animations. The uncovered layers of colour are – like the annual rings of trees – documents of decades of urban history.

HEINZ MACK

Germany

The German artist Heinz Mack is best known for his monumental outdoor sculptures and his contributions to the light and kinetic art of the 20th century. Together with Otto Piene, he founded the group “Zero”. He took part in the Venice Biennale and the Documenta in Kassel.

Licht Raum Farbe

2003, Collection Zumtobel

The cuboid object consists of glass plates with a dichroic coating. The cuboid is mounted on a platform that allows the object to be illuminated from below using a compact fluorescent lamp. The result is a lively spectrum of colour-light images that become more differentiated as the ambient light and the incidence of light change. When viewed, the many points of view inherent in the work can only be revealed by changing position and perspective.

JULIAN HÖLSCHER

Germany

Julian Hölscher’s works are created in the field of tension between technology and audiovisual communication. He has been involved in various projection mapping projects since 2012, including as art director at the Bremen studio URBAN SCREEN. In

Vivid Canvas

2023–2024

The projection mapping is based on a reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting ‘The Arctic Ocean’ from 1824, as well as diary entries from sailors who travelled the polar seas 200 years ago. The projection re-choreographs individual picture elements to Thomas Werner’s soundtrack.

the same year, he completed his studies in Integrated Design at the University of the Arts Bremen.

NICOLÁS RUPCICH

Chile

Nicolás Rupcich is a Chilean photographer, film and animation artist who has been exhibiting worldwide since 2009. In 2022, his works were shown at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm El Sheikh. His artistic interest focuses on the difference between analogue reality and digital representation.

Archipelago Archive

2020–2024

In 1850, scientists and photographers began documenting the global glacier retreat that continues to this day. Rupcich travelled to the Arctic Ocean in April 2022 to record the current changes from his perspective. Archipelago

Archive provides an insight into the video material that the artist recorded there. The many screens are at the same time reporting, image library and knowledge repository.

JAKUB NEPRAŠ

Czech Republic

Liana

2007–2024

Jakub Nepraš is a Czech artist who has been a regular guest at many European light festivals since 2006. His works include media objects, installations and art interventions, for which he mixes natural, technical and digital materials and incorporates artistic, scientific and philosophical insights.

In the large-format video collage, the artist transforms observations of activities in urban contexts, such as traffic flows on roads, on rails or by people, into a pulsating, artificial ecosystem of shapes, colours and rhythms. The art project highlights the close links between natural and anthropogenic factors - such as soil, water, air and transport facilities, transport routes and flows of goods - that result in the complex urban ecosystem.

ATELIER MEJIA WÄLZ

Colombia / Germany

Camila Mejia and Erik Wälz have been exhibiting together since 2022. Camila Mejia is studying art and Erik Wälz digital media, both on master’s programmes at the

University of the Arts Bremen. In their work, they combine research methods from the sciences, design analysis systems, artistic research and digital data exploration.

Tableaux Faux

2024

The multi-part installation by Camila Mejia and Erik Wälz is made up of local soil and plant samples as well as several monitors that show artistic reworkings of the technical data material that the tandem obtained from the samples. The arrangement functions like an experimental system in which various possibilities of image and sound are collaged together to represent observations of nature.

JAZMIN ROJAS FORERO

Colombia

Jazmin Rojas Forero is a Colombian artist and filmmaker whose work has been shown at the INTERFERENCE light festival in Tunis and LUNA in Leeuwarden since 2017. In her

practice she focusses on the changing relationship between nature, the history of knowledge of nature and the spirituality inherent in nature.

Bodies Inside Each Other

2019–2024

A luminous display shows a photograph of the plant species ‘great monks’ (in Spanish: ‘frailejones’). This type of plant protects itself from freezing with multiple layers of dead leaves and supplies itself with water from the air through a condensation process. The second part

of the installation is inspired by this: a glass sculpture filled with ice. As inside the plant, the ice in the sculpture creates a cooling surface that allows the water to condense from the surrounding air.

ANNIKA HIPPLER

Germany

Annika Hippler is a German artist who has been exhibiting regularly worldwide since 2007. She choreographs light events with materials such as paper, mirror foil or textile fabrics, with transparent or semi-transparent media such as acrylic, glass or water and with analogue motors and frequency generators.

Oscillations

The installation Schwingungen uses a line laser whose focussed light is projected over a moving water surface. A falling drop of water animates the horizontal projection, creating a reflection that reveals a relationship between the light beam and the water surface: any turbulence is also transferred to the reflection on the wall.

Luminograms

Annika Hippler’s luminograms are unique photographic works. The camera-less recordings were created in the darkroom and depict the interplay of laser light and water in motion on light-sensitive paper. The resulting lines and shapes are characterised by a multitude of black and white colour tones and overlapping layers. The ephemeral nature of movement is translated into colour gradients.

WATER LIGHT FESTIVAL

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