The volume is an in-depth study of the energy issues on which Light is Life is based. Festival of Lights, the event organized by A2A as part of the events for “Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023.”

Light Art has undergone an important development in recent years, both because of growing public interest and as a result of technological innovations, providing artists with increasingly accessible and effective means of expression. As a result, new festivals devoted to light are always being switched on around the world, consisting largely of sequences of individual works arranged in the urban fabric in keeping with a specific criterion.

It is by imagining a way to move beyond this formula that A2A decided to support Light is Life. Festival of Lights, an absolutely unprecedented project with the ambitious goal of transforming the cities of Bergamo and Brescia – together named Italian Capital of Culture 2023 – into a single great work, an art gallery on an urban scale conceived in its entirety as a harmonious and integrated system. Not just an exhibition or festivity, but a comprehensive work, based on the authoritative vision of the artistic director Angelo Bonello and his team, leading the visitors to enjoy a fluid experience to a preordained rhythm.

And so the visitors to Light is Life, traveling along a path marked by an omnipresent blue light, find themselves watching a sort of theatrical performance in motion, whose times are marked by the sequence of the original music, the pulsing of light and the succession of works in keeping with a clear and legible narrative.

Light is Life was also an initiative under the banner of environmental and social sustainability, promoting the conscious use of energy and raising awareness of the issue of energy poverty through the Energy Bank (a nonprofit entity that allows people to donate to those in economic and social hardship, promoted by A2a), to which part of the proceeds from the sale of the book go.

Italian English edition. Translation by Richard Sadleir.