«[...] a candle is like art because it is a source of illumination. If I approach it, it illuminates me. If I look at it, it illuminates me. If I touch the flame, it burns me. If I look at it from close, it burns only for me, like a secret. If I look at it with a friend it illuminates us both, like a mystery that we share. A candle is like art because it melts. It melts and loses itself as if in a dream, without any reason, like all the good things we would prefer to see last.»

Profs. Old Bungler and Signa Tura,
«Nouvelle Méthode pour apprendre à décourager les artistes en général et les peintres en particulier»

A Social Sculpture

Those of us who live in urban space on a daily basis often have to put up with it more than enjoy it. There are plenty of reasons for this: work, stress, haste, being saturated with noise and images. Let's Light up Lausanne! wishes to give us the chance to see what is right under our nose: a city space full of possibilities. This is not, however, an exercise of passive contemplation, but something constructive, which aims at achieving a new, original point of view.

Let's Light up Lausanne! wishes to create a magical meeting point, in which all the potential of the future will appear. One of the vital forces of any society is its culture. To light up this force in a way, which is collective, generous, unusual and civic is, as we see it, an original reaction to these times of unstability.

Let's Light up Lausanne! offers the citizens of Lausanne the challenge of lighting up one candle for each inhabitant. This challenge should function as a catalyst which reveals the complexity of the social and associative fabric of the city.

The Idea

«The idea came to me in Pokhara (Nepal), where I had arrived on my bicycle after having left Barcelona in 1984. During the Deepawali festival, when all the city lights are switched off and candles are lit everywhere, a stunning sensation of suddenly being a part of the world was produced. I asked myself if I would be able to relive this sensation one day.

Let's Light up Lausanne! expresses this wish to share a collective, generous emotion, created by a civic link between people within the framework of a city, and to transform it into an ephemeral event, which will become memory.»

Muma, artist

Place:

Lausanne

Date:

Monday 31st July 2006
(from 8 to 11.30 PM)

Idea:

To convert the city space into a collective work of art, to light one candle for each citizen, to establish an emotional link between urban space and citizens.

Material:

127'444 candles
(census as of 31.07.06)

Volunteers:

950 volunteers
(134 candles per volunteer) and all members of the public who wish to join in spontaneously.

Technical
aspects:

To switch off public lighting in town during the event.