Scandlight was held in Stockholm from 7 to the 9 of June. It was three days packed with talks and workshops. Chris van Goethem (BE) and Bastiaan Schoof (NL) kicked off the first presentation on Sunday morning. In 20 minutes, they explained how Canon II came about and what the results have been so far.
This year’s Scandlight event once again brought together many lighting designers and lecturers from lighting design courses in countries all over the world including Sweden, Denmark, Canada, United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Finland.
At an earlier presentation at Cue in Rotterdam in January, we were able to explain what we had planned. Now, in Stockholm, we could already report that results that have been achieved. We described the work the project has done on a method of gathering information through interviews – a tailored approach to the established oral history technique. We have developed a special questionnaire for this purpose, with questions aimed at capturing information about individual practitioners and productions, as well as the working practices of the past. The method has been trialled through two test interviews, with more planned. We have also started working on two case studies to show how to research lighting designers through archives and other writings – one on Henry Irving and one on Henk van der Geest.
Emma Weil also came to Scandlight to give a presentation about her work. In it, she explained that she had once been the assistant to Hans-Åke Sjöquist, a well-known Swedish lighting designer who will be the subject of the Swedish case study in the Canon project. We asked Emma and she was happy to collaborate with us – when she saw Bastiaan and Chris’s presentation, she already thought it would be a good idea to work together, showing the benefit of showing our work while the project is still in progress.
During the Q&A session that followed the first three talks, a considerable number of questions were asked and answered. There seems to be a great deal of interest in the Canon II project!
