“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized”. (Audre Lorde, Poetry is Not a Luxury, 1977*)
The experience that one can also see things differently, in a different manner than one is used to perceiving them – that one’s view of things can change, if one changes one’s perspective, if one observes them from a different viewpoint, at another period of time, from a distance of a couple of hours or years – sheds a critical light on the act of seeing: apparently, seeing is no guarantee that things are as one sees them. It is the act of seeing itself that allows the reality to appear in a particular light.
Seeing sees only this light, under which things become apparent: in Plato’s allegory of the cave, it was not even light that appeared to the eyes, but only the shadows of things, which were then held to be the things themselves. From this perspective, for centuries a long shadow has been cast on the act of seeing, which rather is subject to deception instead of enabling a view of truth. This criticism of seeing, however, is premised upon the fact that these things or the truth already existed, that these were already there and were only waiting to be seen correctly and recognised. To this critique, seeing appears as secondary nature that is only added to an assumed reality; what then follows is a controversy about seeing correctly or falsely. What this critique does not see or does not want to see is the possibility that precisely the variability of perspectives opens up a space in which differing viewpoints and experiences – consequently the conditions of politics and culture – become possible: the fact is that the things can (only) appear in differing light. In this sense, in the weakness of seeing, in its lack of being able to see the things as they are in reality, lies its political credo and argument – a plea for the fact that the possibility of differing perspectives first opens up a space for diversity and differing opinions, a plea for the right to be able to take up divergent perspectives.
From this vantage point, the light interventions by Victoria Coeln make a case for being able to see sites, and the (hi)stories connected with them, in another light, and to shift perspectives. The point here is not that these sites, and the experiences associated with them, should appear in a new light or be theatrically displayed; instead, the point is to prove that the allegedly everyday or accustomed view of these represents only the product of a very specific perspective. The astonishment due to the new appearance not only alters the perception of sites, but updates the invisible theatricality of the mundane: it is the altered perspective, the act of seeing under a different light, that first generates meaning, proves it to be a generated meaning. The illusionistic moment does not lie in the spectacular light that Coeln stages, but rather in the notion that things would exist independently from the light in which they appear. Light, that is a thing.