Lumiere

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 20 November 2011 22:41:45

Thursday evening - 6pm; the crowds were thronging around a snow-globe - a wonderful neon "I Love Durham" subversion of the statue commemorating Lord Londonderry. Me, I was in a sparsely populated disused graveyard on the edge of the city centre conversing with a security guard who was unsure how to get an Emin masterpiece stating "Be Faithful to Your Dream" switched on.

There was more than a touch of irony to the scene I witnessed. The Emin work was attached to the wall of a derelict church building and the security guard was frantically but unsuccessfully searching for the power. After a few minutes the gathered handful melted away; frustrated and unfulfilled despite the earnest efforts of the  said security guard.

I rushed through the town, taking a detour into the Lumiere HQ to report the problem but also to praise the security guard who had been unfairly left to just get on with it. Opposite the HQ was a display of skydiver outlines being projected onto the library wall. Rushing along I encountered various coloured lights streaming out of buildings; onto walls and off a bridge into the river. Even from a distance I caught aspects of the beauty.

North Road is an area I walk almost daily. It's where I tend to get on and off the bus in town; it's where my "home church" is located and it's part of the streetlights route. It was where, in my abridged viewing of the lights I felt most moved.

On the Old Miners Hall - now a nightclub - stood a message flashing out in the darkness: flash 1, "Capitalism Kills"; flash 2, "Capitalism Kills Love". The crowds outside this nightclub on the average evening contains many young people enjoying themselves, but also some who will undoubtably be the victims of capitalisms messages and practices regarding sex and alcohol. The installation is art in its rawest and most striking form.

Along the road - which was strangely quiet with the ever lengthening queue of taxi's removed - I sat on the concrete rim of the roundabout and worshipped. There was a beautiful installation being displayed onto the side of the chapel. It was flowers coming into bloom and simply being. The centre of the installation was based around a cross shaped part of the building - the cross created naturally by the position of four windows. Ambient trance played on a loop accompanying the visuals. It reminded me of the rave worship I had first encountered at Greenbelt in about '89 or '90 - early Visions stuff. I nearly wept as I sat on the roundabout and allowed myself to be envelloped by God's love expressed in visual form before me. In that moment and several others which followed later in the evening - enhanced by the gentle electronic beats seeping into the church building - I was able to feel touched by worship in a way that I'm not normally outside a festival field.

Tonight I was trying to get home from the station and ended up in town again....a nightmare with bus stops closed and roads turned into one way streets for pedestrians - security men stopping you from taking the usual short cuts around town. I got up onto Palace Green and saw the much talked about Cathedral - it was pretty and clever but for me the music and colours were too big - too exaggerated. This was an assult on the senses where as the North Road installation I had seen from the roundabout had been like a gentle massage for the senses. Think you can guess what my favourite bit of Lumiere was.