partner

 
5 – 8 OCT 2022

 

Lichtstadt Feldkirch has found an exciting extension in the new Spotlight format. Every two years, alternating with the biennial light art festival, we focus on an artist or an artist group and invite them to realize a project in public space.

From October 5th to 8th 2022, Feldkirch’s Neustadt became the scenery for a mapping by the Austrian media artists Ruth Schnell and Martin Kusch. The facade of the Old Dogana was used for the new large-scale projection “Flood”.

NEON GOLDEN, Miriam Prantl and David Reumüller designed new projects for the first edition of Spotlight in autumn 2020 from October 30th to November 22nd.

Flood

Ruth Schnell and Martin Kusch

The facade of the Old Dogana becomes part of the dynamic projection mapping “Flood”, the visual basis of which is the text of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” passed in 1948. This human rights charter of the United Nations comprises 30 articles, further agreements and protocols have been added since 1948 and are part of the “International Bill of Rights”. In “Flood” text, image and sound intertwine in an impressive way. The focus is on dealing with the articles on freedom, equality, freedom of expression, social security, education law and asylum law as well as dealing with climate change and associated topics and consequences, such as migration. The effects of climate change and environmental degradation are felt more than ever and every day. They are pushing people around the world, especially from the Global South, into increasingly precarious living conditions. The ecological challenges of the present are complex. They have social and therefore human rights components – for example, the right to access clean water was recognized as a human right by the UN General Assembly in 2010. In “Flood”, moving images of landscapes and water, but also of the consequences of the overexploitation of the earth and its Climate. Distinctive concepts that make the current state of the world comprehensible are in turn modeled from this visual pool as well as from light and shadow. The sound of “Flood” has a spatially expanding effect. The sound is a specially produced collage of texts on the subject combined with atmospheric sounds from nature and technology. The mapping is produced using a self-written program for generative graphics, in which 3D and text animations, nature shots and shots on the topics of migration, landscape, water, etc. are combined into a visual experience.

 

Ruth Schnell and Martin Kusch

Media artist Ruth Schnell (*1956), born in Feldkirch, lives and works in Vienna. She has been teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 1987 and has been head of the digital art class for 12 years. Her artistic work includes media environments, interactive mixed media works, robotics, public art, video sculptures, light objects, photography and video.

Martin Kusch (*1964) heads the digital performance group kondition pluriel, Montreal, and the Fulldome VR/AR Lab at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he is an associate professor. His practice focuses on media, virtual, interactive and performative installations and immersive environments.

 

Concept, idea, realization: Ruth Schnell and Martin Kusch
Programming: Johannes Hucek
3D modelling/animation: Malte Niedringhaus
Image research: Thomas Hochwallner
Sound production: Jakob Schauer and Marie-Claude Poulin

SPOTLIGHT 2020

PORTAL

NEON GOLDEN

UNTITLED

David Reumüller

AQUAMARIN

Miriam Prantl

AQUAMARIN

Miriam Prantl

In her new installation “Aquamarin”, the Vorarlberg artist Miriam Prantl fills the glass body of the “art box” with sea water. Inside, it flows into seemingly endless heights and depths, and pushes out through the panes onto the square.

Not a single drop is wasted: on the contrary, this poetic, sensual connection between space, time and ourselves celebrates playing with illusion. Through the interplay of projection, fog and reflective surfaces, the artist stages a light space, atmospherically underlain by a soundtrack made up of keyboard tracks and sound samples. As daylight decreases, the display case gains in radiance and the flowing water develops a dream-like suction effect. Ritual uses of purifying water have always been means of plumbing the invisible, incomprehensible and yet all-guiding subconscious – our inner motor. If we let ourselves become involved in this play, a fantastic exit from everyday life lies in store for us.

UNTITLED

David Reumüller

In his installations, photographs and paintings, and in the connection between these different media, David Reumüller deals intensively with the various forms of reality and perception that underlie the becoming of human reality. This may not show itself at first glance, but the abstract images arise from real situations, real people, objects and actions. A pattern may be borrowed from a curtain fabric in a medium-sized 1970s flat. Placed over a body, it transforms and abstracts it. Something new emerges, a kind of ornamental landscape. A mysterious place having cultural and historical connotations that tell us a new story about nothing less than ourselves.

PORTAL

NEON GOLDEN

An almost five-metres high “PORTAL” leads to another sphere. To enter physically is not only impossible but also unnecessary. The immersive effect is able to replace your own present with another, digital reality. The Austrian artist collective NEON GOLDEN develops this abstract dimensional leap in a finely choreographed, fascinating and overwhelming interplay of light effects and sound so as to send our senses on a journey into a new world of seeing and feeling.