Connecting the dots 2020

Eindhoven, Netherlands

KARI KOLA AND IVO SCHOOFS’ ARTWORK CONNECTED A WHOLE CITY DURING DIFFICULT TIMES WHEN THE PLANET WAS IN LOCKDOWN.

“On November the 12th at five pm the light artwork was shown to the entire world for the first time. The immense light artwork ‘Connecting the Dots’ reached out over the entire city. A work that consisted of more than 1,500 led lights, 1,000 balloons, red dots, that floated in the sky and more than 20,000 red-glow-dots on windows. The two striking chimneys of the former Philips grounds Strijp-T were transformed by the artist Hugo Vrijdag into a permanent light art piece. This was the start of GLOW 2020.

From that moment on Eindhoven started to reveal, district after district an enormous dome of blue light. This blue sky above Eindhoven, designed by the Finnish light artist Kari Kola, created a different effect every day. A spectacular natural phenomenon influenced by rain, clouds and fog. The red dots, from dutch artist Ivo Schoofs, danced in the wind! The art piece was not only on show for all the homes in Eindhoven, but you could also watch it all over the world on the temporary Livestream.”

Idea of the project was that we could make a positive signal to global media. This was excecuted on november 2020 when we had already suffered over 6-months of planetary level lockdown cause of Covid-19 pandemic. All projects were closed, in media there was almost only Covid-19 news. We wanted to create moment that people would remember that there is also good things happening. We wanted to inspire artists all over the world to follow their art and use these special times to evolve on their art. And we succeeded on that throught this project.

All events and projects were cancelled so the idea was that we make so large project that people dont need to go to anywhere spesific place to see this, cause its everywhere. Nothing like this has been done in a city ever before.

Its was my privilege to work with curator Ronald Ramarkes, Technical chief Tom Weers with my colleagues Ivo Schoofs and Hugo Vrijdag to realize the project.

Pictures by: Christopher Lund