Enlightenment

[shewhomust]

We have, it seems, been granted enlightenment. The Durham International Light Festival consists of four major installations, and a number of minor ones, and we went out yesterday evening to see what was to be seen. Of what we saw, I liked best the Calcutta Lights on Elvet Bridge - and either it's a lucky coincidence that that is also the one of which I took a satisfactory picture, or I liked it best (and was happiest with my photo of it) because it's the one I got closest to (walked through, in fact). Take your pick. I thought it was fun, and colourful - and that's about it.

We got off on a bad footing when we discovered that we couldn't follow the circular route we had planned, because the yellow jackets (marshalls? secutity staff?) wouldn't allow us to go down the steps from Framwellgate Bridge onto the riverbank. In theory they had no right to stop us, because it's a public footpath, and while the organisers could have applied for a temporary closure, they don't seem to have bothered. It didn't seem worth picking a fight, so we continued up Silver Street, unimpressed by the 'fringe' artworks in Woolworths window (videos running intermittently on tv screens), mildly amused to realise that the stack of cardboard boxes in the Post Office window was also Art. The photos on show at the Town Hall were also part of the festival, though I only know this because I asked - I wouldn't have guessed.

At the Town Hall we were offered purple glow sticks - and I'm not sure why this aspect of the festival irritated me so profoundly, but I can rationalise it along two lines. On the one hand, it's all terribly wasteful. Yes, it's in the nature of art to be wasteful, in that it's something outside our material needs, by definition. But in a climate of anxiety about resources, not just of finance but of energy itself, when we are all saving the planet by switching to low-energy bulbs - let's just say that a Festival of Electric Lighting performs that essential function of contemporary art, it makes me uncomfortable. And giving everyone a little purple glowstick, as if we were going night-clubbing - that just underlined the waste. If they'd been giving us torches, now, that would have been useful - or if they'd used all those additional lights to create a trail you could follow, and to cast a little light where you were walking while you did so.

As it was, I suspect we got less out of the experience than we might have. Although we followed the map in the booklet, we weren't always certain where we were supposed to go. Should we seriously have gone down the steps at the peninsula end of Kingsgate Bridge to see Lulu Quinn's Chandelier? Down the steep, narrow, unlit steps? Looking at it now, I suspect we were, and I'm sorry I didn't see the piece (other than a distant view from Elvet Bridge), but I wimped out. And if they seriously wanted me to go down there, they could have given some indication (and maybe swept the leaves off the bridge, too).

Instead we went on to Prebends Bridge, from where we could see the illuminated carpet floating below the floodlit cathedral or, from the other side of the bridge, the moon floating in the darkness above and below the river. durham_rambler liked the carpet; I didn't dislike it. It was charming, unassuming - certainly I preferred it to the brashness of the Light of Darkness piece, which (for all the thoughtful background given in the documentation) looked as if someone had scribbled a pair of demon eyes under Framwelgate Bridge. This, too, might have worked better if we had done what was clearly intended, and walked along the one stretch of riverside footpath which was illuminated, ending our circuit where we had tried to begin it, at the steps on Framwelgate Bridge.

But we looked at the cathedral, and we looked at the eyes, and we thought (or at least, I did) of the climb back up Crossgate, and dinner waiting at home, and a bottle of Chilean carmenere warming in the kitchen, and took the highter path into the darkness up to South Street. This took us past the throbbing generator, and the service van parked bang up against Reveal, a displaced pinnacle from the cathedral - it's asking too much of the artist, I suppose, that the workings of this sort of art be concealed, that the light be brought forth, as if by magic, out of nowhere. You approached these installations as if across a building site of railings, generators, hoardings, not just here (where we had wilfully gone behind the tapestry) but on Elvet Bridge - no, I'm being unreasonable, I see that it had to be so, I wanted an impossible perfection.

I also wanted the installations to relate more to their surroundings, to acknowledge the sculpture among the trees, the lines of the bridge, the other lights in Durham's night sky - the Cathedral and the Castle, and the Prince Bishops shopping centre, almost as bright as the decorated arches on the bridge. Pointless, I know, to criticise any work of art for what it doesn't do; and an indication, too, of why I am not an artist. My creativity, such as it is, is critical, reactive; I find something almost arrogant in the urge to impose your own mark on the landscape, to make something new that wasn't there before. When it works, of course, I'm very glad that other people lack this inhibition.

Comments

[anef.livejournal.com]

Still, I love the photo. And the festival sounds like a brilliant (sic) idea but not well-executed. Which is a shame.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Still, I love the photo.

Thank you.

And the festival sounds like a brilliant (sic) idea but not well-executed.

That may just be me, you know...

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

This was a great post to read since I couldn't actually be there. Thank you for the really decent descriptions. I don't expect that we'll still be here next year for the next show, but who knows...

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Hi, Lori -

Welcome back! Sorry not to have replied to your e-mail; I was thinking, yes, coffee on Friday morning, that sounds good... And then I realised that it was Friday morning, and I hadn't got in touch to set it up...

Glad the post worked for you. Letter in this morning's paper suggests that the one we missed was really worth seeing, but that access was as tricky as it looked!