Sparks but no explosion for lasting entertainment: the city of Aix-en-Provence hosted Wednesday evening, at the end of its first Biennale of art and culture, a fireworks display of a new kind, resolutely ecological .
Instead of colorful plumes cracking the sky with a crash, the public, several hundred people including many children, gathered on the terraces of the Grand Théâtre in this city in the south of France were able to marvel in a collected silence. of the
Ball of the Fireflies
staged by the Dutch studio Roosegaarde.
Energy sobriety requires, the "final bouquet" of the winter solstice, inspired by the light of fireflies, took the form of thousands of biodegradable luminous sparks moving with the wind after dark.
In this case, the device is therefore not pyrotechnic but technological, even if "
inspired by nature
", explained to AFP the artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde, founder of the studio of the same name.
"
It's a huge cloud formation (...) of tens of thousands of floating objects, kinds of bubbles that reflect and absorb light in an intelligent way
" and that the wind makes "
always different
", described the
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After having been deployed in Bilbao and London, and before going to Madrid and Auckland (New Zealand),
Spark
(“
spark
” in English), the last poetic performance of Daan Roosegaarde, is presented for the first time in France then that ends
A fifth season
, the Biennale of art and culture organized by the city of Aix-en-Provence, which welcomed 300,000 people in 2022. "
Many fun things are prohibited
" such as "
fires of traditional artifices
” which are no longer authorized in certain countries, noted Daan Rossegaarde.
"
So I asked myself “how can we celebrate in a sustainable way and keep this festive tradition but modernized when traditional fireworks have increased air pollution tenfold, dogs are going crazy and people damage their eyes?”
“, he said.
The idea with this installation is, in his eyes, to “
party in a more poetic and more lasting way
”.