Red Night II
26.02.2009 - 26.02.2009 | Carl Michael von Hausswolff
RED NIGHT II
is a light-installation consisting of three 500 watt out-door spotlights with red gelatin filters illuminating the oldest jewish cemetery in Stockholm during a few hours on February 26 at night. One might say that it's a large monochrome painting.
In the summer of 1999 I installed the first RED NIGHT piece in the old Our Lady of Gaudelupe cemetery in Santa Fe, New Mexico (5th International Biennial SITE Santa Fe, curated by Rosa Martinez). It was taken down after just a few days, following a complaint from a woman claiming that it was a work of evil. This was fascinating because other members of this parish, having relatives buried there, had been praising the work as a fantastically beautiful and blissful piece. I told the woman that I had installed the piece there because the cemetery had been in a very bad shape full of litter as no one had been taken care of it properly since a very long time. The woman promised me that she and her family would make sure that the place would be well taken care of in the future. I agreed then to take the piece down!
Later I have executed quite a few light projects involving the color Red: In Chicago a van took me around the city for a couple of nights photographing empty buildings (Red Empty, Chicago 2003) and in Kaliningrad I dragged a small wagon with spotlights and a generator around the over one hundred years old zoo taking pictures (Red Zoo, Kaliningrad 2006). In Luxembourg I lit up an endangered train repair building (Red Sea Saw, 2007) and in Rijeka and Zagreb, Croatia, I filled two abandoned factories with red light (Red Empty, Zagreb 2003 and Red Empty, Rijeka 2005). Other "red" projects have been in Liverpool, Bangkok, Svolvaer and Bucharest.
To light up the jewish cemetery in Stockholm is perhaps a challenge considering the everlasting conflict in the Middle East as well as the ongoing battle between religious group. Red Night II might contribute by letting the audience meditate over these tragic circumstances; the horrors that have stained twentieth century and that now is bleeding in to the twenty-first - but also the intense love that exists and has existed between people; a love that has caused millions and millions of tears to fall, sometimes in bliss and sometimes in loss.
My starting point for this piece is the fact that the cemetery is rectangular, small and immensely beautiful. It also looks like it has been lowered into the ground as it is situated a few meters below the street level surrounded by a small wall, but in fact it is the surrounding streets and houses that has been elevated - the cemetery was there first 1776! Not many people in Stockholm knows anything about this place, or it's history, and it is by illuminating this urban pearl that it get the attention it deserves.
Stockholm, February 26
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
see also:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E7DB1F39F931A1575BC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
http://lampo.org/hausswolff/
http://liverpoolbiennial.adatabase.org/index.php/objectui/type,vra.vrawork/id,18079
http://www.cca-kitakyushu.org/english/project/hausswolff_project.shtml
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