GLOW. Eindhoven light art festival seeks depth for the masses

From the corner next to the revolving doors to the outside, he has a great view of the north hall of De Heuvel. The luxury indoor shopping centre in Eindhoven's city centre is bathed in golden glow, while subterranean rumbling sounds from speakers. Above the heads of the crowd, bright light of all colours shines, reflected off bent mirrored plates. Edward Dams has just taken a picture with a slow shutter speed, so the crowd turns into a blurred stream, and the light floats gloriously above them.

'I've been going to Glow since the first edition,' the amateur photographer explains. He is a member of a photography club and, as he says, now wanders around, looking for the nice spots. GLOW, the now 12-year-old light art festival in Eindhoven, has countless of those. 'I may have skipped a year once, but I like the festival. I like coming there. I do like catching that atmosphere, or getting something in a special way to be photographed.'

With his hobby, he is not alone. On my walk around nocturnal Eindhoven, I come across dozens of photographers, although they hardly stand out among all the visitors shooting with mobile phones. Although you need good stuff for it: GLOW is one of the better instagrammable festivals of the Netherlands.

Exciting

GLOW is more compact than other years this year, the organisers tell the website. The 35 locations can all be visited in a walking route of over five kilometres through downtown Eindhoven. And walking people do, on the slightly rainy opening night, en masse. An uninterrupted procession of people, there must be many thousands of them, moves past familiar places like the Effenaar, De Lichttoren and the Catharinakerk.

I meet a Udens family at the Effenaar, where students from Fontys are showing a rhythmic laser projection on the facade, which is rhythmically controlled. It takes a while for it all to become clear. Not really a problem for the people of Uden. They come for the atmosphere, the conviviality, and to experience something fun with the children. 'They find it very exciting to walk through the city with all those lights like that,' says the father, who then quickly wants to get on with watching the projections.

Detail

The crowds are getting more and more intense. And it is funny to see that there are people from really all walks of life and many nationalities. Quite extraordinary for a festival dedicated to light art. But the couple from Breda I speak to later at a work of art made of recycled plastic bottles is not so concerned with that: 'I find it exciting and spectacular above all,' says the husband. 'Whether that's art? For all I care, but surely this is about much more,' his wife concurs.

The official opening this year was at the PSV stadium. There, light artists and DJs created not only a 'wall of sound', but also a wall of light, putting everything that has been happening at mega-parties up to now in the shade. Of course, we know the imposing moving beams, the laser curtains and the driving beats that constantly rise to a climax during the half-hour show. What is new is the detail. LED screens can not only serve as a light source with indeed a bucket of light, they can also be used to create moving images, lettering, fireflies moving upwards, and flowing colours.

Pollution

Such detail is also in two other artworks at GLOW. Near Eindhoven Central Station, on the façade of a tower block (The Student Hotel) is a projection of animations depicting the daily life of a student. Exciting and certainly intriguing, especially because of the technology behind it: how to turn a 60-metre-high flat into a work of art with a pair of beamers.

Right next to it, a video screen is mounted against a slightly less high facade. The screen shows, in a fluid motion, the difference between the night in Eindhoven, and that in an area where there is no light pollution: the Milky Way in all its colourful glory. Something few people have yet seen in real life. During Glow, that chance is even slimmer, as here the night sky over the entire city lights up blue. The huge glow comes from a huge battery of lights and lasers on the various rooftops of Eindhoven's hospital. The blue glow not only highlights the entire festival, but also attracts the attention of people living up to more than 20 kilometres from Eindhoven. A beacon, indeed.

Ronald Ramakers, director of the festival that originated in 2006 since 2016, is proud of it. His festival is also clearly distinct from other light art festivals, such as Amsterdam Light Festival or Trajectum Lumen, which is still making its mark in Utrecht. 'Glow has the power of temporality. We put up something that tells a story, and you give that story to the people. You can tell by that blue. That blue that is everywhere in the sky changes the artworks. The art and the city changes because of that blue in the sky. Just look at the glow on the wet pavements. That's what light art is about.'

Three years

Ramakers has a background as a theatre maker, although after wandering all over the world he now works mainly as an event organiser. Yet his ambition clearly lies in the direction of deepening. Thus, he has now given the festival a theme, which ties in with the next and previous years: 'I like to work in threes. This also allows me to insert new elements, along gradual paths. New makers are important for this festival. I think everyone also understands experimental light art, as long as you accommodate it properly.

With that in mind, I have set up three themes. In 2017 it was Source, this year it is the contrast, Shadow and Light, and next year Living Colour. I had made a drawing to go with that to make it clear to everyone: the first was a circle with colours, the second a black cube and a white cube, with the colours again in the white cube. Next year, you will only see the little colours flying around freely. That is both a passage visually and content-wise.'

Thanks to the triennial theme, the Van AbbeMuseum was also able to capitalise on the light art festival. So this year, the Temporary Art Centre, opposite the PSV stadium, will host a manifestation of smaller-scale light art that ties in with GLOW's theme.

Nanjing

It is these kinds of small interventions that Ramakers uses to strive to deepen the festival, which since its first edition in 2009, which attracted 45,000 people, has grown into a mega-event with 800,000 visitors in a tight week. For that deepening, Ramakers draws inspiration, for instance, from a project created by artist Gijs van Bon, as part of the collaboration launched this year with the - much larger - light art festival in Nanjing, China. Van Bon works from the idea of a drum whose sound is transmitted.

In Eindhoven, it is the most subtle artwork that flies with the moving crowd via small speakers attached to lampposts, to which small Chinese light artworks are attached. 'I think with that combination of innovative technology and traditional art, you also draw the general public into the reappraisal of art, and not just the studied public.'

Tree

The artistry lies not so much in the development of the technique - which makes phenomenal things possible and often makes for solid displays of muscle - but mainly in what kind of story is told with it, says Ramakers: 'The technique is now so far advanced that you can see the great artists break out of the limitations with it. It is not the technique that is the main thing, but the meaning you convey. This is a development that is inevitable and in which the wheat is now being separated from the chaff.

Ten years ago, you could hang a bunch of LED lights in a tree and people would shout oh, aah and you were an artist. But that doesn't stand the test of time. What you see now is total immersion in something that is more than beautiful, but also tells a story. That has eternal value.'