brigitte kordina

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LICHT 2000

LICHT 2000 was a title fraught with significance as it bore all the expectations placed on the new millennium. Whether or not such reckoning is correct from a mathematical point of view, the figure inevitably stands for the vision of a future that will make all of the utopias of the 20th century come true. What better metaphor than light to express this vision. And all the more important to approach the follow-up project LICHT 2001 with a relaxed attitude, to establish a little bit of distance and not fall prey to the pressure of history. Because the year 2000 was a year of light just as the year 1900 had been, which was the year the world exhibition in Paris lit up in a multi-coloured sea of light. LICHT 2000 and LICHT 2001 did not ignore the importance of the light metaphor which is still evident in contemporary art despite the fact that the style of representation has changed so dramatically. A radical change of attitude was noted back in the sixties when light objects were first considered works of art in their own right. The light projects of Krems-Stein relinquished some of that autonomy in favour of a present-day claim for simultaneousness and complexity. This was achieved by participants in the projects establishing a contact with the medieval urban space, drawing its outlines and referring to social phenomena. Artists and architects developed a kind of phenomenology of light by using various sources and forms of light which they treated as objects and metaphors at the same time.

LICHT 2000 began with a picture puzzle by Brigitte Kordina. It consisted of individual light spots which when you joined them spelt the word LICHT (LIGHT) on the gables above the main gate to the medieval town.