The anniversary edition of the GLOW light art festival started on Saturday evening. Not only in Eindhoven, but also in Veldhoven, Oirschot, Best, Helmond and Lieshout. A total of 87 different projections can be admired this festive edition. Many light artworks can be seen on buildings. “It’s incredibly fun.”
It will be joining the queue again and shuffling from light artwork to light artwork. The organization expects approximately 750,000 visitors in a week. During such an outdoor festival in November, the weather apps are monitored extra closely. “It will be a fantastic GLOW this year,” predicts director Ronald Ramakers. “The weather is going to be good,” he says enthusiastically.
“A gigantic festival that connects people like around a campfire.”
It is also his last edition. Ramakers looks back on it with pleasure. He believes the festival has enormous value for the Eindhoven region. “It is a gigantic festival that connects people. When you are together around a campfire, you always feel connected to each other. You now have that as a whole.”
GLOW also stands for connection for another reason, according to Mayor Jeroen Dijsselbloem. “It brings together art, creativity and technology,” he says, while in the background ‘his’ town hall is undergoing a metamorphosis in a short time. “GLOW is a celebration of fantasy, of imagination, of changing perspective. With light and sound you can instantly transform a building like this city hall into an aquarium, into a coral or into a jungle and then into a sea of fire.”
“It is truly fantastic what GLOW can bring in terms of imagination and perspective. It is one of the city’s biggest crowd pullers. It attracts hundreds of thousands of people, who literally walk through the city in a parade every day.”
“It is very beautiful and very impressive and incredibly cozy.”
One of those visitors – you could already walk over heads on Saturday evening – did not miss a single edition. “It is very beautiful and very impressive and incredibly fun,” he says, which is probably what everyone who wants to join in the glow this time will experience. A born and bred Eindhoven resident agrees: “It’s eating, drinking and enjoying, every year.”
The route in Eindhoven is five kilometers long and leads past 34 light artworks. ‘Old Gold’ is back because several crowd-pullers from the past twenty years can be admired again. Much to the delight of GLOW fans. Such as the luminous sunflowers in the Anne Frank Plantsoen – a tribute, of course, to the painter Vincent van Gogh. The public garden turns into a sea of luminous sunflowers. If you come closer, you will see that they are lanterns.
It is also busy on this first evening at Tunnel Rinascimentale, the light artwork in Rechtestraat. Here you walk through a fairytale tunnel of light. The columns have huge arches decorated with hundreds of thousands of colorful lights. In combination with the music, this gives the feeling that you are walking in a cathedral. This is light art with a touch of kitsch.
“Everyone can like it, that gives value to society.”
There is something special about walking past the many light artworks together in peace and quiet and viewing them together, according to outgoing director Ramakers. “That connects people on an incredible level. You have to imagine that you are walking with everyone and that you feel like: ‘This is mine. I can look at this. I can like it.’ But your neighbor may also like it. That gives value to society. I think that’s really the essence of a festival like GLOW.”
