Event producers Artichoke have announced the first details of Lumiere 2011, the biennial festival that celebrates artists working with light in all its forms. It will be staged over four nights, 17-20 November 2011. Artichoke has been commissioned to deliver the festival by Durham County Council, with funds from Arts Council England and a panoply of other funding bodies and sponsors.
In 2009, the inaugural Lumiere festival drew an estimated 75,000 people into the city, and generated some £1.5m for the local economy. For Lumiere 2011, festival producers Artichoke will bring together a mix of international, national and local artists and designers, all using the medium of light to create artworks "to delight, surprise, and stop people in their tracks". Over 30 artworks will be situated all over the city, and the Festival will include a programme of talks, lectures and lighting demonstrations.
Participating artists include Cedric Le Bourgne, Tracey Emin and David Batchelor. French artist Le Bourgne creates eerily-lit sculptures in human form that will be seated on top of buildings and hang suspended in the air as if in flight. The Festival will open with a lantern parade through the streets of the medieval city created by Jo Pocock and her Liverpool Lantern Company in collaboration with 200 schoolchildren from all over County Durham.
Back by popular demand will be Ross Ashton's Crown of Light, originally commissioned as the centrepiece for Lumiere 2009. The piece, a huge projection that transformed the entire 120m span of Durham Cathedral into a vast animated screen, brings together the illuminated manuscripts of the Lindisfarne Gospels with ancient stained glass and artifacts from inside the Cathedral itself. The 12-minute animation is accompanied by a sound installation by Robert Ziegler and John Del' Nero.
Science and art will be a theme for this year's festival, as three European artists each team up with a scientist to explore the scientific and aesthetic aspects of light. The collaborations are part of Lux Scientia, a major three-way trans-European artistic collaboration with light festivals in the medieval cities of Torun, Poland and Tallinn, Estonia funded by the European Commission's Culture Fund.
Simon Henig, leader of Durham County Council said, "At Lumiere 2009, we saw not only how culture can bring people together but, just as importantly, how events like this can benefit the local economy. And as the countdown to Lumiere 2011 begins, it is exciting to hear more about how Durham will be transformed by this year's event."
(Jim Evans)
