It’s like hugging around the fireplace when it freezes. The light in winter aggregates us like anemic and chilly fireflies. Geneva Lux does not act otherwise. The festival lights up the sad eyes of the houses, revives the cold bodies of the façades, gives wings to the starlings, scales to the poles of the harbor, leaves to the abandoned chestnut trees. Humans are gathering this year in the warmth of twenty-six installations scattered around the city, to be explored as of Friday evening. Eleven creations are new, tailor-made for the Geneva frosts.
Let’s start the tour. Impossible to miss them, these two, who have been trudging since Saturday, drawing a smile to the passers-by. All round, all white, the Anooki of Moetu Batlle and David Passegand play off-season in front of the MAH with “Escapade”, with “Récréation” at the foot of the Madeleine, before making “Appearance” at Cornavin, a game of “Hide and seek” on the portico of Saint-Pierre and to indulge in a “Secret” at the top of La Treille.
Below, the flight of starlings by François Moncarey.
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“Geneva is a great playground for them,” exclaimed Moetu and David about their Anooki, which they strangely resemble. “They are Inuit whose sea ice has melted, a couple gone to travel. We created them twenty years ago, before the urgency of today’s climate challenges, but they only become more acute. ”Made of polystyrene canvas, bimbos toddlers are kept inflated by a fan and powered by LED. “We are working to make their energy consumption neutral”, specify the artists.
Golden lanterns
Inside, the gems – we are used to – are inside. By way of a wink, Arnaud Giroud and David Lesort, of PITAYA, hung them on the walls of the room devoted to music. Forty-five precious laser-cut brass charms stand out like jewels on the austere stone of ancient fortifications and diffract their golden halos. “The lanterns are bright ornaments that reveal the facade; this is a canvas, a blank canvas that only needs to be embroidered with light, “describes Arnaud Giroud. Almost as beautiful by day as by night, these “Glowing Lanterns as Jewels”.
Starlings left in the fall, but a small band remained trapped in Swiss ice on Place du Molard. It’s “Swarm”, by Genevan artist François Moncarey, a mast and its shrouds raised towards the black sky which pulsate to the mathematical rhythm of the wings of the birds. A light, airy and scholarly sculpture, governed by algorithms. “This organized chaos is much more complex than order,” smiles François Moncarey.
Below, the celestial bodies in sound and light of Jérôme Donna.
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Planted in the grass of the Bastions, we climb briskly on the Milky Way. Luminescent stars, at attention like tulips, are as many little stars of various colors, red, blue, pink, purple, which produce by rubbing their celestial bodies ecstatic sounds. Jérôme Donna’s “Laniakea” is a gift from the City of Lyon which, given the good relations maintained with Geneva, could well receive the work of a Genevese in return.
Indeed, Julien Pavillard, the artistic director of Geneva Lux, hands over at the end of this 6th edition. Coming from Lyon, he returned there in 2020, this time as director of the Fête des Lumières. Guillaume Barazzone, meanwhile, founding father of the demonstration, withdrew in May from the government, not without first having “submitted a request for credit to the City Council of more than one million francs, in order to ensure the future of the event ”.
Geneva Lux From January 24 to February 2. info: https://evenements.geneve.ch/genevalux-oeuvres/
Created: 22.01.2020, 21h55
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