Season 3 in Paris - Living Lights, Aesthetics of Bioluminescence

Living manifestations of light have always been a powerful motive of wonder for humanities. Living organisms able of creating light have been a source of fascination and inspiration since time immemorial. Whether on land or in the ocean abyss, these manifestations, which emerge from the darkness, are the receptacles of an irreducible enigma. Most bioluminescent beings, such as fireflies, dinoflagellates, crystal jellyfish and deep-sea brittle stars, produce light through the intercession of symbiotic photobacteria.

Light - from its representation to its concrete manifestation - is a major aesthetic issue. If, for example, the emergence of the Light and Space movement in California in the 60s is one of the most visible contemporary expressions of this, a new field of research and creation is developing today around bioluminescence. This calls for new cooperation and alliances between humans and non-humans. Our hypothesis for Season 3 is to consider this field of creation dedicated to bioluminescence as one of the manifestations of a parallel narrative of the living, still too much in the minority, which invites us to decentralize, and to get rid of a linear, mechanical and anthropocentric vision of the living, to envisage it as a complex interweaving of interspecific relationships and alliances, a metamorphic and symbiotic continuity.

For this Season 3, the Fondation LAccolade welcome three artists, including Nadia Merad Coliac, Côme di Meglio, Teresa Van Dongen, who experiment with works, devices and protocols using living micro-organisms, who make living art or stage living art at work.