LOOT is a multipurpose space in Mexico City that serves as an art gallery, a performance theater, offices, retail space, a place for private events, a cafeteria, and a bar. The key to the success of this space’s ever-morphing identity lies in its lighting design. LOOT is a white cube—white walls, white floors, and a white ceiling. We had the opportunity to create the lighting design and give the space a radical change. The lighting design responds directly to the function of the space and its users, which morphs and changes with it.
My vision was to create a multi-sensory space, a space where light plays with our perceptions. I set out to redefine the boundaries of our visual world that limit our minds in order to expand possible sensuous experiences with light. Through lighting design, I created a space of exploration and experimentation where artists can interact directly with the light — where the lighting itself is the medium generating emotions and substance.
The opening of LOOT coincided with TRAZO, a contemporary dance series that consists of six 15-min pieces. Directed by the dancer and choreographer Diego Vega, this series of performances were created to encourage the visibility of contemporary dance through the physical space, light and architecture in spaces not specifically designed for performance.
I worked directly with the dancers to develop these six different performances within the blank space. My objective was to enhance their choreography, to immerse the performers in a space painted with light, to generate powerful emotions within the audience. We programmed the system live, observing the shift in their movements and bodies, memorizing them, and changing the coloured light, intensities, and locations. The most interesting part of this project is that we transformed architectural lighting into stage lighting, which I didn’t even know was possible.
Light has the power to open a dialogue between artists and a space, and is an essential medium in the creation and sharing of art.
Seven months after completing this project, it is very satisfying to see how the space transforms, and how the artists have direct dialogue with the light, enhancing their work through shifting perceptions, and embodying their vision.
Light has a poetic and autonomous force, it creates new aesthetics and metamorphoses of a space. The intangibility of light in terms of portraying the unportrayable is very powerful, at LOOT this was accomplished with the use of new technologies. The visual dimension becomes immersive and ever changing.
