Light Move Festival – a light festival in Łódź

Łódź is a city exceptionally open to new cultural and artistic initiatives. This is reflected in many recurring themed events that attract not only locals but also tourists from various corners of the world. One such attraction is the Light Move Festival – Festival of Kinetic Light Art, which gains broader recognition year after year and never lacks for good entertainment.

How did it all begin?

Beata Konieczniak and Norbert Wasserfurth are the two people who contributed to the creation of the Light Move Festival in Łódź. To bring the Festival to life, a non-governmental foundation called Lux Pro Monumentis was established, which in Polish means "light for monuments," intended to draw special attention to historic buildings and highlight their beauty. It is precisely through the medium of light that the city of Łódź can showcase its eclectic and post-industrial tenement houses and other buildings from a different perspective. The first Festival took place in 2011 and since then, every September or October, it has been held on Łódź's squares and streets. The event starts at 7 p.m. and ends at midnight, and each edition differs in its artistic program, always varied and full of surprises. It is a unique event for all those who appreciate modern art – surprising and ambiguous. The Lux Pro Monumentis Foundation ensures a unique atmosphere at the Festival, always providing a huge dose of great emotions and new cultural and artistic experiences.

The Festival's idea and goals

The ideas guiding the Light Festival have a cultural, creative, and educational character. The organizers' intention is to showcase Łódź's urban space bathed in light and dressed in colorful illuminations. Young amateur artists, art schools and technical universities have the opportunity to showcase their work and develop parts of the city with their creations. Renowned artists from around the world also come to the city, and their presence raises the rank of the events. This creates great artistic diversity and synesthesia of impressions, so everyone can find their place by participating in this amazing spectacle.

The fact that the Light Festival enjoys increasing recognition in Poland and abroad is evidenced by the awards given for this initiative. In a competition for the best tourist product, Light Move Festival was the first to receive two certificates. It was also honored with the EFFE badge (Europe For Festivals For Europe) and received a POINT FOR ŁÓDŹ in a plebiscite promoting initiatives enhancing the city's image. Another award is the Culture Patch 2013 given in a plebiscite for the most important event in the region. Of course, these are not all the marks of recognition with which the Festival and its creators have been honored.

What can you see?

Łódź comes alive for three long evenings and takes on various colorful hues. The Festival's activities include a range of cultural and artistic events of various kinds. These include, for example, extraordinary, breathtaking installations, audiovisual spectacles, large-format shows using 2D/3D mapping technology, artistic illuminations on buildings, concerts and conferences. Łódź bathed in a feast of colors captivates residents and tourists with its magical atmosphere, expressing itself through the powerful means of expression that is light. Every architectural detail and the tectonics of buildings emerge from the darkness and appear in full splendor.

Previous editions

From the very beginning, that is, from 2011, attendance was high. It started with around 45,000 people, in 2013 there were already 200,000 viewers, and two years later over half a million. Statistics indicate the growing popularity of this unique event, during which thanks to the medium of light, the nooks and larger streets of Łódź invite visitors to a fairy-tale world. Over all these years, in addition to countless unique light illuminations and audiovisual spectacles, projects and mappings, Łódź has hosted many distinguished guests. Among them were, among others, Michał Urbaniak, co-creator of the Polish school of jazz; Axel Gercke, a German painter artist; Janusz Bielecki – creator of chamber, solo and symphonic music; Belarusian composer Sergey Badalov; Tiffany Carboneau (creator of large-scale installations) and many, many others. There were also well-known and lesser-known artistic groups and alternative theaters.

Record-breaking edition

The seventh edition of the 2017 Light Move Festival took place under the motto "No limits" – Participants had to cover as much as 15 km of the route, 55 buildings on Piotrkowska Street were illuminated, and 38 light illuminations, animations and projections were prepared. The audiovisual spectacle "Intricacies" by Yann Nguema, during which 15,000 stones were "animated" with the help of electronic music, light painting on the facades of the Church of the Holy Spirit (Kościół pw. Zesłania Ducha Świętego), the Ethnographic and Archaeological Museum, and 12-meter large-scale sculptures in the Schiller Passage (pasaż Schillera), are just a few of the many surprises at the 7th edition of the Festival. The event was graced by the presence of artists associated with the world's largest light festival, Fête des Lumières in Lyon. Presumably, there were as many as 700,000 Festival participants.

It is worth coming to Łódź for such a spectacular event as the Light Move Festival. The city then becomes a carrier of art and history, sparkling with a million colors and surprising visitors with something new every year. Visual art combined with a multimedia message creates new realities, seemingly familiar yet unknown, so every architectural detail looks different each time. For a few days, Łódź becomes one great animation, made up of a million colorful pieces, a spectacle combined with illumination and sound.