Copenhagen Light Festival
The Copenhagen Light Festival is an annual event that takes place in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. The festival has been held for several years and has grown in popularity, attracting visitors from all over the world. The festival showcases a wide range of light installations and projections, created by both local and international artists, that illuminate the city’s streets, squares, and landmarks. The festival is an opportunity for the public to experience the city in a new and unique way, as the installations and projections create a magical and immersive atmosphere.
This year’s edition of the Copenhagen Light Festival will take place between February 3rd and February 26th. This year’s festival is particularly special as Copenhagen has been selected as UNESCO’s World Capital of Architecture throughout 2023. The festival will follow this theme by highlighting the city’s rich architectural heritage and showcasing the work of architects and designers from around the world. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the city’s architecture and design in a new and exciting way, as the light installations and projections will bring the city’s buildings and spaces to life. The festival will be a great opportunity for visitors to appreciate the city’s architecture and design in a new and exciting way.
Visit the Copenhagen Light Festival 2023
In February 2021, I had the opportunity to visit the Copenhagen Light Festival. Despite having heard great things about the festival, I was not prepared for the freezing cold temperatures in Copenhagen. I found myself having to bundle up in multiple layers just to make it through the evening. Despite this, the festival was truly a magical experience.
As I walked through the city center, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of individual art pieces on display. Each one was unique and captivating in its own way. However, due to the cold weather and the vast number of works on display, I found myself sticking to a shorter route and only managing to see a few of the pieces and only photograph few of them.
For those planning to visit the festival in the future, I would advise arriving as early as possible to avoid the freezing cold temperatures of Copenhagen and to have enough time to see most of the artworks, ideally in two days. This way you can take your time to visit all of them and interact with each one of them. The festival truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I would recommend it to anyone visiting Copenhagen during the festival period.
Despite the weather I managed to come up with 10 usable photographs from the evening.
GREEN BEAM IV and the SLØR
“GREEN BEAM IV” is a powerful green laser installation that runs for 3.7 kilometers through the city of Copenhagen, starting at Tivoli’s Concert Hall and passing through the tower at Christiansborg before ending at B&W Hallen on Refshaleøen. The exhibition is impossible to miss as the beam cuts across the city overhead. The work is a collaboration by the artists Båll & Brand (bll&brnd), and it serves as a striking visual marker, creating a sense of connection and continuity throughout the city. The green beam creates an ethereal ambiance and it is a must-see for anyone visiting the festival.
“SLØR” is an installation that winds around the tower on Børsen. It features dragons and their tails, which grow wings of light when a veil (SLØR) waves out of the historic tower. The installation creates a sense of movement and change, blowing a wind of transformation over the building and the surrounding area of inner Copenhagen. The angle and formation of the light columns is based on the Fibonacci sequence and if one pays close attention, they may be able to see the dragons strike a blow with their new set of wings. The artwork is a collaboration by the international artists Båll & Brand (bll&brnd), it creates a sense of wonder and enchantment, inviting the viewer to experience the building and the city in a new and dynamic way.
Pressure
“PRESSURE” is an installation that consists of a 300-meter-long RGB-LED hose shaped like a doodle and wrapped around a construction. The LED doodle features flashes of impulses that whip around, run towards each other and change color, giving the impression of a digital, stressed doodle. The artwork is created by the visual artist Hans E Madsen and lighting technician and lighting designer Frederik D. Hougs/Theaterpixel. The storytelling behind the piece is to provide a sense of chaos, communication, uncontrollability, stress, programming, train of thought, brain scanning, viruses and nerve pathways. The piece is a thought-provoking and visually striking, it creates an atmosphere of confusion and complexity that is both mesmerizing and disorienting.
Ghost
“GHOST” is an installation inspired by reports of animals roaming urban areas and venturing into locked-down cities around the world. The artwork is a representation of origami cranes, constructed from folded 4.5mm natural recycled polypropylene and internal structural elements created using folding techniques found in origami. The internal LED lights illuminate the entire body of the cranes from within, creating a striking and ethereal effect, akin to glowing lanterns. The artwork was created by Studio Vertigo, a collaboration between Lucy McDonnell and Stephen Newby who work internationally to create light installations and sculptures. The artwork was intended to create a sense of animals existing on the periphery of the city, unseen and present like ghosts. It’s an intriguing artwork that makes the viewer ponder about the presence of animals in the urban areas and their relationship with us. I have used a special sepia color palette in editing to highlight the between line reading of the original artwork.
L’ETOILE
“L’ETOILE” is a 3-D light art installation that pays tribute to the stars, which have been a discreet but constant presence in the night sky since the beginning of time. The installation aims to recreate the bright spot in the night sky that has been observed and admired by humans for millennia, representing the first and only source of light we have ever known. The artwork features a gigantic 3D star illuminating cold white branches that seem to merge or multiply depending on where you stand. The minimalist and technically innovative light sculpture invites visitors to contemplate and return to the fundamentals of light, as they walk through the city at night. The artwork is created by French light artists Simon Chevalier and Lucile Cassassolles. It is a visually striking installation that encourages the viewer to reflect on the significance of light in our lives and the beauty of the natural world.
THE SUN HORSE
“THE SUN HORSE” is a visual art installation created by artist Karen T. The artwork explores the theme of light and its movement, focusing on the sun as a crucial source of life on Earth. The installation takes the viewer on a transformative journey through a world of colors and graphics, people and animals, and day and night with star images, in a contrasting scale. It tells a cyclical tale, from dawn to dawn, and it’s a human time journey in images and sound. The installation creates a luminous frame story that continues over and over again, through the years.
The artwork is divided into five different life rhythms, namely silence, staccato, chaos, lyrics, and flow, that flow together in a 12-minute-long wave. It’s a thought-provoking artwork that encapsulates the theme of light, movement and time in an immersive and visually striking way. This photograph is one of my favorites from the evening because of the dynamic movement inside the composition.
These are not all the places we visited but these are the ones that I had good enough pictures. Copenhagen Light Festival 2023 is just around the corner so I have to be prepared this time. Here are some other pictures that I captured that day in the city. One of these are actually a public toilet and it is up to you to find out which one is it ,)
