| Llum BCN | |
|---|---|
 Llum BCN 2022: Trevor Paglen, Faces of ImageNet and ProtoPixel, Mix & Match | |
| Genre | Exhibition |
| Begins | February |
| Ends | February |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Location(s) | Barcelona |
| Inaugurated | 2012 |
| Website | www |
Llum BCN is an annual light art festival held in Barcelona, Spain. It is celebrated since 2012 every February in Barcelona's neighborhood Poblenou. [1] It features a series of light installations and shows. [2]
Llum BCN, Light Barcelona in English, extends across various key points in the Poblenou neighborhood, starting at the Design Museum of Barcelona at Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes. The installations are spread across the neighborhood and are visible from nightfall until midnight. The 2024 festival edition expands with a new axis, including spaces such as the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, L'Auditori, and the Encants market. [3]
Large historic buildings, old factory chimneys and industrial plants, but also the modern Torre Glòries are illuminated by large-scale projections and audio-visual displays in the Poblenou neighborhood. Many of the festival's light displays include the use of technology such as virtual reality and AI. [4]
Llum BCN has featured artists such as Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Julio Le Parc, Luke Jerram, Ulf Langheinrich, United Visual Artists, Kurt Hentschlager, Trevor Paglen, Chila Kumari Burman, Vera Molnár and Catalonia's Antoni Arola as well as local schools of art, design, illumination, and architecture. [5] [6]
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork. Site-specific art is produced both by commercial artists, and independently, and can include some instances of work such as sculpture, stencil graffiti, rock balancing, and other art forms. Installations can be in urban areas, remote natural settings, or underwater.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist who works with ideas from architecture, technological theater and performance. Lozano-Hemmer lives and works in Montreal and Madrid.
Toyo Ito is a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" city, and has been called "one of the world's most innovative and influential architects."
Sónar is a festival dedicated to music, creativity and technology, founded in Barcelona in 1994 by Ricard Robles, Enric Palau, and Sergi Caballero. The festival has been divided into two parts since its inception: Sónar by Day and Sónar by Night, with a three-day congress, Sónar+D dedicated to Creativity, Technology and Business running concurrently since 2013. As well as the flagship event in Barcelona, Sónar hosts events around the world, with annual festivals having taken place in Bogota, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and Reykjavik. In 2023, editions are planned for Lisbon and Istanbul, as well as the 30th anniversary of the festival in Barcelona.
Pipilotti Elisabeth Rist is a Swiss visual artist best known for creating experimental video art and installation art. Her work is often described as surreal, intimate, abstract art, having a preoccupation with the female body. Her artwork is often categorized as feminist art.
Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, most often shortened to Glòries, is a large square in Barcelona, first designed by Ildefons Cerdà to serve as the city centre in his original urban plan, but nowadays relegated to quite a secondary position. It is located in the Sant Martí district, bordering Eixample, at the junction of three of the city's most important thoroughfares: Avinguda Diagonal, Avinguda Meridiana and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. Currently it serves largely as a roundabout of elevated highways. However, beginning in the early 2000s, and as of 2007, revamping project for Glòries has started, which is aimed to give the square a new role in Barcelona and revitalize the northern districts of the city, under the name 22@. These plans supplement other large-scale plans in Sagrera and the Fòrum area. The first installment of this project was the construction of the Torre Agbar skyscraper.
BCN Week is a cultural newsweekly started in 2006 by ex-pats in Barcelona. The English-language publication originally included a spattering of Spanish and Catalan words in otherwise purely English articles, reviews, recommendations, and event listings, but has since expanded to include articles in Catalan and Spanish. While its style is somewhat relaxed and irreverent, it also deals with real themes present in modern-day Barcelona. For example, construction of the new high-speed train link, to more cultural themes such as the creation of the first multicultural centre for the arts an NGO called Gracia Arts Project, connecting foreign and local art lovers.
El Poblenou is an extensive neighborhood of Barcelona’s Sant Martí district that borders the Mediterranean Sea to the south, Sant Adrià del Besòs to the east, Parc de la Ciutadella in Ciutat Vella to the west, and Sant Andreu to the north. Considered one of the best areas of the city, the neighborhood was once its own town, entirely separate from Barcelona proper.
Light art or the art of light is generally referring to a visual art form in which (physical) light is the main, if not sole medium of creation. Uses of the term differ drastically in incongruence; definitions, if existing, vary in several aspects. Since light is the medium for visual perception, this way all visual art could be considered light art absurdly enough; but most pieces of art are valid and coherent without reflecting on this basic perceptual fact. Some approaches on these grounds also include into light art those forms of art where light is not any medium contributing to the artwork, but is depicted. Thus, luminism may also refer to light art in the above sense, its previous usage point to painterly styles: either as an other label for the Caravaggisti in the baroque, or 19th and 20th centuries, fundamentally impressionist schools.
Tavares Henderson Strachan is a Bahamian-born conceptual artist. His contemporary multi-media installations investigate science, technology, mythology, history, and exploration. He lives and works in New York City and Nassau, Bahamas.
Vivid Sydney is an annual festival of light, music and ideas, held in Sydney, Australia. It includes outdoor immersive light installations and projections, performances by local and international musicians, and an ideas exchange forum featuring public talks and debates with leading creative thinkers.
Can Framis is the latest Fundació Vila Casas museum, an art center in Barcelona devoted to the promotion of contemporary Catalan painting. Located in the old Can Framis factory complex, the museum displays more than 250 paintings from the sixties to the present made by artists born or currently living in Catalonia. In addition to the permanent collection which is divided in three floors, Can Framis Museum has an area dedicated to temporary exhibitions named Espai Aø. The permanent collection is updated periodically, and two new temporary exhibitions are opened every three months.
Parc del Fòrum is a public park located between the district of Sant Martí in Barcelona and Sant Adrià de Besòs. It was built in 2004 following Elías Torres' and José Antonio Martínez Lapeñas's original design in order to hold the international cultural event Fòrum Universal de les Cultures, celebrated in 2004. It is operated by Ajuntament de Barcelona and Barcelona Serveis Municipals.
Evann Siebens is a Canadian multi-discilpinary artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada while her lens-based practice negotiates the human body as an archival site and the politics of the female gaze. Her practice cross-references film, media, photo, performance art, and dance. Siebens' film works have been shown both nationally and internationally and have won awards. She worked as a dance cinematographer for many years and shot dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lucinda Childs. Her work from ‘A Performance Affair’ in Brussels, Belgium was featured on the front page of the International New York Times in 2019.
Amanda Williams is a visual artist based in Bridgeport, Chicago. Williams grew up in Chicago's South Side and trained as an architect. Her work investigates color, race, and space while blurring the conventional line between art and architecture. She has taught at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Illinois Institute of Technology, and her alma mater Cornell University. Williams has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Museum, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and at a TED conference.
Francesca Llopis is a visual artist from Barcelona. She began exhibiting in 1981. Her works are based and focused on her travels and on nature, mainly working on painting, drawing and video installations and collaborating with other artists such as Barbara Held and Robert Waytt. "Painting, drawing and image in movement are the basis and the main instrumental from which arises the system where I start any proposal".
Kapwani Kiwanga is a Canadian artist working in Paris, France. Her work is known for dealing with issues of colonialism, gender, and the African diaspora.
Lauren Halsey is a contemporary American artist. Halsey uses architecture and installation art to demonstrate the realities of urban neighborhoods like South Central, Los Angeles.
Daito Manabe is a Japanese media artist, programmer, engineer, and DJ who creates artwork and interactive installations that utilize contemporary technologies such as virtual reality as well as prominent use of light and sound. He founded Rhizomatiks in 2006 after graduating from the University of Tokyo. His work with Rhizomatiks includes collaborations with Perfume, Björk, Nike, Honda and an augmented reality computer graphics display at the closing ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Noor Riyadh is an annual light and art festival that illuminates Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital city. Considered the largest light art festival of its kind in the world, it falls under the umbrella of Riyadh Art, a project launched by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as an initiative of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz to transform the Saudi capital into an open art exhibition.