Jarden Berghout
Extract from the Skyline Project
The Skyline Project was designed to accompany the millennium changeover with an ambitious artistic illumination project of the Frankfurt skyline, which was designed to symbolise the festive nature of the event.
All cultures associate light with life and happiness, and the presence of light is regarded as a sign of divine presence in most religions. In philosophy, light traditionally stands for knowledge and understanding, as well as joyful anticipation of the future. Every year on New Year’s Eve, people around the world greet the New Year with fireworks and chase away the old one.
Visitors encounter the illumination of the skyline as a collective experience. The marked light course offers not only residents but also visitors a range of possibilities to view the locus amoenus, or reflective landscape. For those who prefer to enjoy the experience on their own, there are many vistas offering ample opportunity for solitary contemplation both inside and outside the city boundaries. This poeticising of architecture is even clearly visible from aeroplanes flying in and out of Frankfurt’s international airport.
The Skyline Project is a metaphor symbolising confidence in the new millennium. The visitors themselves are part of the production; simply by walking through the streets, they themselves cast colourful shadows, which can again be seen as integral components of a constantly changing artistic production. The illumination subtly transforms our spatial experience of the city. New spaces are created, and our perception and mood are stimulated. This creates a new dimension from the onlooker’s point of view, similar to the vistas created in the work of Barnett Newman or Caspar David Friedrich.
The Skyline Project consists of approximately 29 individual works, all of which realise the topic of light differently. Artists working with the medium of light have created a series of individual works that are connected by a common theme. Buildings that during the day appear to have no connection to one another are transformed at night by illumination to form a new artistic whole. The architecture of skyscrapers does not usually pay much attention to the architectural facades of neighbouring buildings – indeed, this is often quite deliberate: architects and clients typically want to stand out. Each edifice therefore in a way stands alone, without any connection to its surroundings, and certainly lacking a human dimension. This is a uniquely modern kind of architecture that mirrors social living today. In the past, for example, city planners designed squares where people could meet as the focal point of cities. Such a consideration of the close relationship between society and neighbourhoods seems to have almost vanished in today’s society, in which selfishness appears to be the norm. The men and women working in the city’s office towers are dehumanised, mere “human resources”, the biomass of the economy, to be sold, made redundant or disposed of in the case of mergers or company reorganisations. Taking all this into consideration, the nightly illumination of the skyline represents an attempt to create a unified artwork, restoring a sense of artistic harmony in a fractured world.
At night the city centre light course leads the visitor like Ariadne’s thread from one installation to the next. When viewed from the vistas on the edge of the city, one can experience the artistic concept as a whole. Unity symbolises what can be achieved through the close collaboration of many people and institutions.
An exhibition of pictures, photos and inscriptions accompanies the illumination project. In addition, the exhibition’s catalogue examines in more detail some of the scientific aspects of the project. During the exhibition, there will be talks and guided tours on using light in art. Another thematic focal area is the meaning of light in science and research. The Skyline Project is in this aspect extremely forward-looking with regard to the importance of light as a medium of expression and as a future energy source.
[ top ]