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Photo: Tivoli
Enhancing the darkness with light For the first time ever, Copenhagen is hosting a light festival. Taking place in February, the festival will transform one of the darkest months of the year into a poetic winter experience with a number of light installations and events throughout the capital’s old city centre, harbour and Tivoli. By Signe Hansen | Photos: Danish Lighting Centre
Copenhagen Light Festival combines the efforts of light artists, students, and commercial light specialists to present the poetic beauty of enhancing the Nordic winter darkness with Scandinavian light design. “The festival will be based on the idea of having light and darkness together. Lighting festivals can be very colourful and bright, but we’re seeing it as an opportunity to create something that’s more poetic. It’s about enhancing light by combining it with darkness,” says Anne Bay, director at Danish Lighting Centre, the non-profit organisation behind the festival. “It’s embedded in the Danish lighting traditions. We don’t like exaggeration. We like light to be soft on the eye and have a more meditative effect, and this is going to shine 20 | Issue 107 | December 2017
toric buildings with lighting and colour, and we are also hoping to see a number of dynamic displays, such as pixel mapping and mobile projectors,” says Bay. Facts:
through in the way the art works are presented at the festival.”
The Copenhagen Light Festival will take place for the first time in February 2018.
The festival will include a number of free light installations and events such as bicycle rides, Chinese New Year lights, night runs, light sculptures, guided walks, and installations combining music and light. The majority of installations will be embedded in Denmark’s distinct lighting and design heritage which, led by architects such as Poul Henningsen and Arne Jacobsen, originated in the 1920s.
The festival will include a number of mostly free light installations throughout the city centre and the harbour.
“We will take advantage of the city’s many different kinds of places to make beautiful, intriguing sculptural elements and explore new aspects of spaces and his-
The festival is supported by Copenhagen Municipality. Danish Lighting Centre is a nonprofit umbrella organisation working to enhance knowledge sharing and networking between people and companies working with lighting. For a full festival programme and map, visit the website.
Web: www.copenhagenlightfestival.org