Gone are the days when inventories of international light art in pitch-dark rooms were content with effect-seeking light cones, simulated comet showers or self-replicating neon squares.

In the face of never-ending crises, one would like to curate as closely as possible to the present, which often means that the collected "aspects" of a topic supported by a framework narrative overshadow each other in their overabundance.

Just like in Wolfsburg, where the curators Andreas Beitin and Holger Broeker in the exhibition “Macht!

Light!” all sorts of blinking things reflect the vibrations of the ecological-political conflicts.

Some of the keywords discussed would be: populism, racism, species extinction, #MeToo, disinformation, refugees, the meat industry or the aporia of technological progress - in other words, everything that is currently on the minds of the media public.

Don't be fooled even by the bright, hopeful sunset right at the entrance to the great hall.

It's going on somehow as long as there's a prospect of tomorrow?

Lori Hersberger has expanded his 2006 neon tube installation on the floor with a shattered black glass plate.

The planet is threatened with destruction, according to the striking and disarmingly current message, considering not only the climate crisis, but also the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

The radiant sunset is deceptive

It is bringing the still young 21st century to the brink of a nuclear apocalypse, which is why it is not surprising that the architecture of corridors, cabinets and niches, immersed in darkness, restricts the radius of movement and leaves no doubt that the era of increased comfort through artificial Light has long since been replaced by the destructive tendencies of light bulbs & Co.

For the selection of eighty works of light art, this means that some of them are more disturbing than when they were created.

While the Green Minister Habeck, of all people, is currently fighting dependence on Russian energy supplies, many a historical digression calls to mind the ambivalence that has always existed with regard to the state's use of lighting sources.

There was the uprising of the black slaves in New York in 1712, which was bloodily suppressed.

The city reacted with a ban on meetings and an increase in the death penalty.

The "Lantern Law," enacted a year later, seemed harmless by comparison, if no less discriminatory.

Accordingly, slaves were only allowed to go out on the street after sunset with a lantern or accompanied by a white person.

The Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwangas translates this moment of a surveillance light regime into two abstract sculptures entitled “Glow” (2020).