In the Spotlight of the Night – Cities never Sleep

About

The exhibition In the Spotlight of the Night – Cities never Sleep follows various protagonists roaming through the city by night. Before the backdrop of a persistent commodification of the night, failing to spare even one’s sleep, the exhibition project seeks out the more marginalized areas of society, the parallel worlds, where one still finds an uncontrollable nocturnal space as a counterfort to daytime. Instead of highlighting flashy commercial places of night-time diversion or the main arteries through the city’s blaze of lights, the artists of this show focus on desolate industrial zones and non-specific urban environments, on scattered elements of street furniture and unexpected encounters within sub-cultural milieus. Under the impression of diffuse artificial lighting, the clearly defined social, moral or aesthetic distinctions as seen in the cold light of the day lose their rigid contours, allowing notions of the hybrid, the inexplicit and the shady to come to the fore. In this sense, the nocturnal semi-darkness of the cities may also prove to be a beneficial engine for societal transformation.

The exhibition and catalogue are a cooperation between the institution
KAI 10 | ARTHENA FOUNDATION, Düsseldorf, and the Marta Herford Museum.