In 2010 in six cities across the UK and America, a selection of sidewalks has been turned into a impromptu stages by turning
streetlights into theatre spotlights. The result is an astonishing mix of reactions. 2011 sees a new set of cities hosting the
installation.
The simple intervention replaces two streetlights with theatre spotlights and instantly transfoms the street into a stage and
passers-by into performers, somewhere between spectacle and surveillance. This intentionally subtle alteration to street
lighting suggests on one hand the latent potential of public realm as places of interaction and celebration and on the other
hand offers an alternative approach to city's lighting as more than securitarian.
This project was initally developped for
Radiance
, Glasgow Light Festival, in 2005 as
Limelight.
Past host cities in 2011:
Riverwalk in Gaborone (Botswana), The Hauptwache in Frankfurt am Main (Germany).
In 2010
Glasgow's Merchant City, Quayside in Newcastle, Church Street Inverness, King's Road London,
Clarendon in Arlington, Virginia, Crossroads in Kansas City, Missouri.
Next scheduled host cities for 2011:
Toronto (Canada), Istanbul (Turkey), Berlin (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic)
Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Miami (USA).
Limelight: Saturday night has been chosen to form part of a series of works commissioned to mark the launch of
ARTISPHERE, a new visual and performing arts centre in
Arlington Virginia, USA.
You can follow the project and see previous cities in the Limelight blog