KIM COLEMAN
Suntrap (2011)
Site-specific commission for MS Dockville arts festival, Hamburg.
A constellation of looped projected videos examine light as it performs on the city stage. Civic, private, and natural light function as spectacle, controlling device, or both. The round-the-clock port city’s shipping lanes, urban ‘beach bars’, docks, public parks, and monuments feature, as light alternately instructs,enchants, and mimics.
Young people congregate around the city's landmark Von Bismarck statue. Captured at dusk they and it illuminated by floodlights installed to reduce after-dark transgressions. Shipping lane buoys like endless setting suns facing as many palm tree populated drinking holes on the waterfront.
The resulting installation was set in a wooded clearing on the festival site. Projections ran day and night throughout the festival, coming to life at dusk. Later into the night the installation functioned as its own dimly-lit stage for discreet night-time festival activity.