Wolfgang Spahn

A truck art light installation, 2017

The media installation Noctilucent aims at re-mediating pakistani truck art. A burnt out mini-bus located on the premises of the biennale in Karachi serves as both an artefact and a canvas. By using mulitcoloured LED's to up-cycle the bus Noctilucent creates patterns that are luminous only at night or at twilight.

In the same way as noctilucent clouds are visible only when the sun is already below the horizon and while the clouds are illuminated by sunlight from below, Noctilucent is representing patterns of pakistani truck art without the actual painted patterns to be visible. Insofar, the bus functions as a palimpsest – a valuable 'parchment' that had been written upon twice, with the first writing washed away to allow for the reuse of media.

During the day Noctilucent showcases black and white patterns, because the mulitcoloured LED's, which resemble the ice-crystals noctilucent clouds are made of, shine only from dust to dawn. Thus Noctilucent uses re-medation as a translucent process that does not want to efface the old medium nor does it want to efface itself entirely. By using strong contrasts for day-or-night-display Noctilucent emphasizes the difference between the old medium and the new one rather than erase it.

It was shown at Karachi Biennale, Pakistan, 2017
Supported by the Goethe Institute Pakistan