Notti di Luce
The city and the eyes

The artistic project

Starting from a lucky intuition of Italo Calvino – The city and the eyes – taken from Invisible Cities, Notti di luce 2004 /Nights of Light 2004 inquires into some aspects relating to the “vision” of urban spaces that, starting from the sheer sensorial element, inevitably leads to a multeplicity of connections and artistic, architectonic and social relations.
The city and the eyes first of all imply relational life, people who don’t know each other and meet up, scrutinize, imagine, talk to each other right through their glances. The eyes represent also the privileged channel for memory and fantasy that becomes more vivid and substantial when joined to the properties of the places.
Images and architectonic volumes become magic if exalted by the lights and shadows of the night or if combined with the sound images of music, words or with the bodily movement of dance. Analizing the “inside” of the city we discover a world that is “invisible” but extremely rich in hints and reflections. The self-restraint offered by home is often “raped” by television or, more recently, by the internet: big technologic eyes inside the city that scan and, in many cases, influence our life, the social behaviours, so directing, more or less consciously, the stream of thought. The “web” tries, and in many cases manages, to substitute the “real” community with a telematic virtual community. A fascinating magic dimension, where it’s possible to be what one wishes thanks to a simple “nick name”. What lacks is just real eyes, our inner windows, where it’s difficult to escape from to tell our story in another way. So the eyes take up, in this sense, a role different from the one they are meant for, spreading the sheer sense to deeper and more interior visions. They become instruments of the soul, of creation and fantasy.

As in the past, the programme bears in mind either artistic aspects, with particular reference to the “original production” of unique events for a national festival, and popular involving in order to comfirm the function of Notti di luce/Nights of Light as a feast and meeting place, a role taken up thanks to the Chamber of Commerce.
So one night will be dedicated to a music/theatre/light show exclusively made for Nights of Light that, following the route of the last year dedicated to Italo Calvino, finds inspiration in his “cult” book, Invisible Cities, which recently Triennale di Milano and Corriere della Sera dedicated a very successful exhibition to. The show Music from the Invisible cities will be indeed combined with a round table conference right on city visibility/livability and involving directors, architects, artists, scolars and culture personages. The exhibition Orobit will be held within the same context of the conference, in the yard of the Chamber of Commerce: Orobit - the eye of the park will explain the European project The Pattern, inaugurated by Bergamo’s Parco dei Colli, meant to bring out the big park surrounding Bergamo through the guardianship of woods and naturalistic areas, promoting typical food products and constantly monitoring the territory by means of technologic “eyes”.

As is its rule, Nights of Light will present a dance show inspired, this time, to a kind of music which underlines and exalts the urban rhythms par excellence: hip-hop and break dance. Hip-hop, started as a social and artistic phenomenon of ethnical minorities in the Usa (as Fernanda Pivano underlines in her well-known Album Americano-American Album), has quickly conquered the whole world even crossing the generational barriers and becoming a kind of music appreciated by everyone. Nowadays hip-hop dance, because of its “metropolitan”, acrobatic and strongly scenographic characteristics, is a kind of music fully studied and followed in Italy. The group invited, the Aktuel Force, is one of the most well-known at international level.

In the end, the actor Teo Teocoli, very appreciated by the public also thanks to his latest appearances on TV, will set out a biting ironic show taking butt especially of the world of TV and its personages.

To complete the programme, every night will be opened by a fantasy show inspired to the three elements (water, air, fire), made up of flying machines, lights, acrobats and dancers, projected by Valerio Festi in collaboration with Clay Paky, an international leader for show lights.

Claudio Angeleri
Artistic Director