Lights in Alingsås announces 2017 theme
(Sweden) – Peanuts company designs graphics for 2017 ‘Emotions’ theme.
The theme for this year’s Lights in Alingsås festival is Emotions.
“I really don’t know if any theme has ever felt this exciting,” said project leader Angelica Larsson.
With six months left before Lights in Alingsås, when the whole town is illuminated in the dark of a Swedish autumn, the theme of this year’s festival has been announced. The visiting lighting designers and their students now know what they are to work with in their workshops – and it allows for any number of interpretations, because this year, they will be focusing their energies on emotions.
‘‘We were playing around with different themes but this one struck us like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. It just felt right,” added Larsson.
She says that this is one of the most open themes they have ever had and expects a lot from this year’s participants, and their exploration of the theme.
‘‘Perhaps it’s so exciting because it creates so many opportunities. After all, there are thousands of different feelings to explore, and I can imagine that these will include both intensely positive feelings, and tears. I have a very good feeling about the coming year,” she added.
This year, the Peanuts company has designed the graphics illustrating the theme. It shows a face registering different emotions behind one word, Emotions.
‘‘I think it feels spot on. We’ll all feel different emotions when experiencing this year’s light installations and it’s hard to find a more expressive medium than the human face. That’s where emotions are easiest to recognise,’’ said Margaretha Stenmark, lighting designer at Alingsås Energi and project leader of the Lights in Alingsås workshop collaboration.
This year’s lighting designers have now learned what they have to work with, and have started the process of creating the most emotional light trail ever. Larsson and the Lights in Alingsås team have many ideas about complementary events.
“We think that the theme can open the door to many other interesting contributions. We have discussed whether we should bring in people from the world of psychology, perhaps have different evenings dealing with different types of emotions. We’ll see. We have lots of ideas and would like to hear many more from people who work directly or indirectly with emotions,’’ concluded Larsson.
