Listowel Festival of Light / Féile an tSolais 2019

Listowel Festival of Light / Féile an tSolais 2019

Strong communities require inspiration and creativity.

Thursday 31st October | Friday 1st November | Saturday 2nd November 2019

 

The second Festival of Light –  the first of its kind in Ireland – takes place this Autumn in the heritage town of Listowel, Co. Kerry.

 

WHY: In an increasingly isolated rural society, public art and public engagement is a vehicle for bringing people together, the participatory process is very beneficial for self-confidence, for self-esteem and for general wellbeing.  The Festival of Light encapsulates this concept with an interactive programme facilitating new encounters with art.

 

Artists using new forms of technology will create site conditional work for the Festival of Light, encouraging maximum engagement from spectators – including Virtual Reality, Projection Mapping and Pop Up installations.

 

All events are FREE OF CHARGE excluding The FOREST OF LIGHT (Adults €7/Children €5/Family of 4 €20)

 

Featuring (Full Programme will be released shortly)

 

FOREST OF LIGHT
Artist Paul Gerard O’Connor                                  

Listowel’s town park The Garden of Europe will be transformed into an immersive sound and lightscape.
7pm – 10pm nightly

 

LANTERN PARADE
Make your own paper lantern! Workshops will be held in various locations ahead of the festival.

Everyone is invited to participate in the lantern parade through Listowel town.

Thursday 31st October 6pm

 

VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE
Another Forest of Imagination – Outdoor VR Installation
Artist Rob Bogucki

A Gesamtkunstwerk-inspired VR experience for the Oculus Rift marries information visualization and dance performance with GPU-simulated semantic network graph puzzle action.Tailormade VR experience for our FOREST OF LIGHT.

 

POETICA ILLUMINA

Premiered at Culture Night 2018, Paul Gerard O’Connor’s Poetica Illumina light & sound outdoor poetry projection wowed audiences at last year’s Festival of Light, it then went on to Other Voices in Dingle and will tour in 2020.

 

FIRE PERFORMERS

PYRO SKY – performing every evening in the FOREST OF LIGHT and will lead our LANTERN PARADE.

 

LIVE VJ AUDIO VISUAL SET

Qpopvr is a combination of 2 concepts started by marqu vr in 2001.Qpop is a critique on modern popular culture and Qvr is the application of different mediums to present art which questions conformity and makes us think about the world we live in. Qvr stands for question your vision of reality.

 

VISUAL ART EXHIBITIONS / INSTALLATIONS

Artist Ronan Coyle
Upon Quiet Projection projection mapping installation in St Mary’s Church window.

Artist Martina Cleary      

Ritual Dream of the Shaman (2019) visualizes the re-enactment of an Irish shamanic ritual, performed by experimental archaeologist, writer and musician Billy Mag Fhloinn. Ritual Dream of the Shaman (2019) consists of a multi-channel video installation. Using video projection mapping it responds to the context of the installation The soundtrack is an original composition, written and performed by Billy Mag Fhloinn. The piece also features contemporary dance artist Isabella Oberlander. Martina Cleary will also show an extract from a new work in progress Saturn Song (2019), including footage shot with The Armagh Rhymers.

 

Artist Helen Mac Mahon

Helen Mac Mahon is a graduate of Fine Art from DIT. Her work revolves around the investigation of light in its many manifestations. Her artworks take a number of forms, often large scale installations which lend themselves to the immersive and experiential nature of the medium. Other works take the form of smaller sculptural items, often interactive, that seek to draw attention to the invisible interconnections that exist between ourselves and the world around us. Photography and drawing also play a large part in her research process. The work seeks to reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary through the exploration of how natural phenomena interacts with the seemingly mundane objects of everyday life often with surprising results.

 

Students from LSAD Photography, Film & Video Degree Course will also install site – conditional work in various locations around Listowel town.

 

Audience Feedback 2018:

“Absolutely amazing experience! I felt like it was a lucid dream when I was surrounded by those lights in complete darkness. I never had the pleasure to see the Garden of Europe at night so for me it was something magical and unforgettable.”

“A different kind of fun … sensory orientated… mysterious…I really enjoyed it myself and my beautiful twin grandnieces were mesmerized … love it!!!”