Luftwerk x Aram Saroyan
The single word poem “lighght,” by Aram Saroyan, is the inspiration for Luftwerk’s site-specific installation at the Poetry Foundation. Saroyan describes his poem, a seminal work of minimalism, as operating like “electricity,” instant and continuous. According to Saroyan, “‘lighght’ is something you see rather than read…. Even a five-word poem has a beginning, middle, and end. A one-word poem doesn’t. You can see it all at once.” Luftwerk’s immersive interpretation brings viewers inside an ever shifting prism of colored light, transforming the Poetry Foundation gallery into a dynamic lightbox.
“Mehr Licht” (“More light”), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s last words on his deathbed, provides a historic reference to the minimal gesture of Saroyan. Throughout his life, Goethe had a deep fascination with the physical and metaphorical effects of light on humans. While he is best remembered for his literary works, he believed his scientific treatise The Theory of Colours, published in 1810, to be his most important work. Under Goethe’s system, colors are different admixtures of “properties” we call “light” and “dark.”
Thursday, October 17, 2024 – Saturday, February 15, 2025
- Poet
- Aram Saroyan
- Curator
- Fred Sasaki, Katherine Litwin
- Photography
- Sarah Joyce