I leave the Parc del Centre del Poblenou, where the square has become a theater of experiences. This weekend, in effect, the streets, squares, and facades I walk through have been transforming into fields of luminous ideas that, whether you looked at them from afar or let yourself be drawn in by their magnetism, exorcised the usual winter, industrial, solitary (and expatriated) darkness of the neighborhood. The 30 installations in total (a combination of established creators and proposals from design, art, and architecture students) unfolded between brilliant technical achievements and other more debatable aesthetic enigmas.
One of the most powerful points of the night was, without a doubt, Albert Serra's projection on the facade of the DHub with Aquesta nit. The iconography and almost hypnotic atmosphere it displayed, with audiovisual fragments imbued with the music of his favorite band, Molforts, transformed the famous "stapler" architecture into a portal to another nocturnal dimension. It was cinema and installation at the same time, like a theatrical stage over Glòries Catalanes, and, in addition to having considerable spectacularity, it mastered, as always, the art of unwritten narrative (but lived, almost improvised, visceral).
At the same time, the tendency to generate Instagrammable experiences became palpable with installations like The Whispering Mountains, by ENESS: inflatable sculptures that, with light and movement, invited people to take photos and sing while the mountain whispers. The visual charm sometimes found in Llum BCN often clashes with the culture of the quick image, and some pieces remain more as photogenic backdrops than as profound luminous discourses. And that's fine, of course it is. It's just that sometimes it's too noticeable.
Another moment that stuck with me was Bulla, by Lola Solanilla, in the same Parc de les Glòries: a field of light points (or suspended green spheres) that created a kind of immaterial cloud. The piece moved between tenderness and enigma, offering a poetic pause in the middle of the journey. This work did speak to me, about space and about density, but with a poetic intention that was appreciated and went a step further. I also found Aüc, by Laia Estruch, impressively delicate, a holographic figure suspended in a way that seemed to defy (as one must always defy) the law of gravity. These types of works would deserve a time and a stillness that are not always found among other sequences of light that scream louder.
As always, the large number of proposals (and their dispersion throughout the urban geography of all of Poblenou) was noticeable, running from one point to another as if you were in a nocturnal scavenger hunt, and I suppose I am not the only one who felt more concerned with "closing the list" than with emotionally connecting with the art. The very essence of Paisajes nocturnos is debated between drawing an emotional cartography and a catalog of visual impacts, and this debate can sometimes end in blows. It almost always ends that way, in the case of Llum BCN.
However: seeing how 18 university schools contributed discourse and technique was one of the most stimulating notes of the encounter. From young creators who explored topics as diverse as the simple perception of space and night, to others who proposed more social reflections, the combination with pieces by established authors offered a promising range. Evidently, there were installations intoxicated with pretension (and so be it, that's their role), without forgetting that others truly managed to make me stop, breathe, and think.
Regarding the weak points, the density of pieces and spatial dispersion can be overwhelming (and sometimes confusing) for those who do not arrive with a route plan or with hours of time to dedicate to it. Attention to families, in a neighborhood that is not particularly family-friendly even during the day (things of a poorly understood urban modernity that is still trying to be corrected). Some interior spaces, with works that begged to be looked at closely, were suffocated by queues and people passing by in a hurry. And, personally, I missed a selection of more accessible context texts or interpretation keys at some points: with light art, this can be even more necessary or can do even more good. To shed light, in short. That was what it was about.