During the 2024 Nobel Week Lights Stockholm festival, you can walk through an 80-metre-long tunnel of light and sound, spin around in shining lotus flowers and watch yourself loom in a sea of flowing light. This year the façade of the City Hall will display a work that celebrates female Nobel Prize laureates. The festival’s sixteen artistic light installations will be illuminated starting on 7 December.
Nobel Week Lights Stockholm is an outdoor event that presents light-based artworks inspired by the Nobel Prize. This is the fifth edition of the highly acclaimed festival, which enables hundreds of thousands of Stockholm residents and visitors to venture out into the December darkness to experience art.
This year there will be sixteen light installations on display in central Stockholm. Both international and local artists are contributing works, along with students from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Beckmans College of Design and fifth graders from Husbygård School in Husby, a northeast suburb.
“Within a short period, the light festival has become a very popular event that attracts many Stockholm residents and visitors outdoors around the city during Nobel Week. It’s great to be able to offer everyone an opportunity to both experience fantastic artistic light installations and join us in celebrating this year’s laureates,” says Erika Lanner, Director of the Nobel Prize Museum, which is presenting the festival together with a number of partners.
“We are delighted to be celebrating the fifth year of the light festival. Public artistic light installations are a powerful way to democratise public spaces and invite people to rediscover the beauty of their city. The installations create new connections between the Nobel Prize, art, innovation and society,” say Alexandra Manson, Annika Levin and Lara Szabo Greisman, who are the festival’s artistic directors and founders.
Photo: Niko Tiainen
In Niko Tiainen’s work Translucens (Translucence), which will be shown at Riksbron, holographic projections will appear to float in the air. The installation is based on the groundbreaking work of Nobel Prize laureate Dennis Gabor, who invented and developed the holographic method. Gabor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971.
“I like the challenge of creating site-specific and holistic experiences, where as an artist I have to adapt to the environment and make compromises. This often leads me to see my own art from a new perspective and make new interpretations of it,” says Niko Tiainen.
Locations with artistic light installations
Benny Fredrikssons Torg (a street behind Kulturhuset), the Grand Hôtel, Gustav Adolfs Torg (the square in front of the Royal Opera), Karl XII:s Torg (Charles XII Square, a park behind the Opera), Klara Mälarstrand (a lakeside street), the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Kulturhuset (the municipal cultural centre), the Nobel Prize Museum’s courtyard, the City Hall, Vasabron (a bridge between the central business district and the Old Town), Riksbron, Riksplan (a park in front of Parliament), Strömparterren (a nearby waterside park) and Sergels Torg (three locations: the square itself as well as Kulturtorget and The Node, a creative space below the fountain).
Participating artists
Aleksandra Stratimirović, Beckmans College of Design, Carla Zaccagnini and Runo Lagomarsino, David Ram, Eva Beierheimer, Husbygård School, Hyper Island, KTH School of Architecture, Ksawery Komputery, Les Ateliers BK, Navet, Niko Tiainen, SMASH, Studio UxU, Uljana Baykevych and Vertigo.
The works will be illuminated from 16.00 until 22.00 every day between 7-15 December. Sixty guided tours will be offered to the public, and special press tours will be arranged.
The full programme can be found at: https://nobelweeklights.se/?lang=en
Photos/renderings from Nobel Week Lights 2024
This folder contains renderings. Photos taken once the artworks are in place in Stockholm will be added on 7 December: https://nobelprize.org/press-images-nobel-week-lights-2024
Photos from last year’s light festival
http://nobelprize.org/press-images-nobel-week-lights-2023
Images and captions
Are you tired of seeing yourself on screen in endless digital meetings? During the light festival, you can instead appear in a sea of lights at Sergels Torg. FLUX is an interactive light installation by Ksawery Komputery that reflects the journey of digital communication. FLUX is inspired by the pioneering work of the 1907 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, Albert A. Michelson.
This year the Stockholm City Hall will display a tribute to female Nobel Prize laureates through history. In Leading Lights, Marie Curie will be the guide who takes you on a journey through the revolutionary discoveries of female laureates. As in recent years, the French creative team Les Ateliers BK is behind the City Hall artwork.
At Riksplan, in front of Parliament, the Copenhagen-based artist collective Vertigo will create an 80-metre-long light and sound work called Wave, inspired by Nobel Prize-rewarded research that has made it possible to see the inside of the human body. The Nobel Prizes for X-rays (physics, 1901), magnetic resonance imaging (medicine, 2003) and computed tomography (medicine, 1979) deal with techniques that use invisible waves to make our insides visible.
In Lotus Pods, artist David Ram has created luminous lotus flowers that you can step into and spin around in, inspired by peace prize laureate Carlos Filipe Ximene and literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The spinning flowers can be found at Charles XII Square.
Several of this year’s artistic light installations can be linked to the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the artwork De Aderton (The Eighteen), KTH Architecture takes on 18 female literature laureates by creating several illuminated pavilions, which will be set up along Klara Mälarstrand.
About Nobel Week Lights
Nobel Week Lights was initiated and produced by Annika Levin, Alexandra Manson, Lara Szabo Greisman and Troika AB. The event is part of the Nobel Week programme and is being implemented by the Nobel Prize Museum with support from the City of Stockholm, the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Fagerhult, FAM, Grand Hôtel Stockholm and Einar Mattsson AB as well as a number of other partners. Nobel Week Lights is an annual light festival celebrating the power of ideas that change the world. With light installations inspired by Nobel Prize awarded discoveries and achievements the festival offers a cultural experience that is free and accessible to everyone during the darkest time of the year.