Light Activism: alternative urban nightscapes

Since their beginnings, artificial lighting technologies have been used as a tool by those in power to express their authority and ensure their control of cities. State and commercial hegemony determine urban lighting, which has a substantial spatial, semiotic, emotional, and physiological effect on us. Lighting conditions imposed from the top down inform our bodily experience of the night. LED technology is revolutionizing artificial public lighting. Nevertheless, critical inquiry about its potential uses is sorely lacking. This research will explore the capacity of collective light interventions to turn public spaces into more inclusive nightscapes. It will focus on community-driven projects where the use of lighting contributes to the production of alternative urban experiences. The research engages methodological issues by asking how lighting tools can potentially contribute to community empowerment. Can lighting actions in public spaces propose other ways of interacting and other ways of experiencing the night? This paper revolves around critical lighting practices. It shows how the use of light can foster citizen engagement and ignite new nocturnal imaginaries as the perception of the night is reshaped to restore communities’ right to the city. The intention is to bolster critical awareness regarding the use of light and the power underpinning its instrumentalization. This text will also shed light on the effect ephemeral collective light interventions have on public spaces and its perception.


Introduction
Darkness is associated with the unknown, with a time and space rife with menace and supernatural forces.Gloom is feared and nighttime is a time to withdraw.Light, meanwhile, represents the godly.It is a manifestation of life and knowledge and a tool that allegedly provides safety and security.
Access to devices and infrastructures that use natural resources to cast light and shadows-that is, lighting technologies-has always been a privilege reserved for the few.Monarchies and independent nations, as well as luxury commerce and entertainment, have been at the forefront of the use of light, establishing a night experience where citizens interact under a sky of branding, marketing and the minimum functional light to stimulate consumerism and work (Slater & Entwistle, 2019).
Lighting technologies are by no means neutral, and as such, they must be understood critically for the sake of more inclusive urban settings.Urban life takes place under lighting conditions imposed from the top down.Two contrasting situations frame urban lighting with, firstly, a panopticon-like approach that seeks to standardize minimum levels of light for the sake of safety and security.Geared to streets dominated by cars, this approach tends to a uniform urban nightscape, or what we might call a city of sameness, having as a result over-illumination and light pollution.Secondly and conversely,

The invisible spectrum of light
The following map is a visual representation of the literature review studied for the paper using the traditional diagram of the spectrum of light.This updated, deviated and hyperbolic map portrays a bigger picture, making visible the hidden layers of light and darkness and their cultural associations.Furthermore, it frames the practices within the lighting discipline and the power structures that are linked to the medium of light.The literature review will constantly be referenced to the map.The map can be read in multiple ways.To begin with, like nighttime, everything is covered by blackness, and light is a fragment that intrudes within it.In a vertical way, from top to bottom, the institutions that historically have control over the visible spectrum of the light are named: God, the 3 King as its representation and the State.At the bottom, Hell, the Devil, and the Night are the everconstant menaces that justify the need for illumination.
Inside the visible spectrum of the light -what we can see from light -the lighting design discipline is exaggeratedly depicted.It is possible to polarize conceptually and oppose two types of light.We have, on one extreme, urban lighting infrastructures that use homogenous white floodlights in social housing with the promise of safety and security.And on the other extreme, light as excess, the flickering bling-bling and play of brilliants, the over-illumination of desire and consumerism with Las Vegas as its epitome.In between these extremes, the discipline uses different light strategies, colors and CCT (Correlated Colour Temperature) to define spaces, with more focus on visual perception and well-being.
This map is reversible, it promotes another way of looking at the light spectrum, deepening in the invisible part.When we turn the map around, we see from a different perspective.On one side, we have gamma rays and the atomic bomb: the strongest light source ever invented and the most dangerous one, setting the boundaries of technological exploration.On the other side, fire sets the limit: the primordial and most basic source of energy.In relation to the other wavelengths, the different uses of light are portrayed: light as a weapon in warfare, as an element for control in smart cities, as a pollutant and as an element for art and activism.Each employs a set of particular light technologies related to their respective objectives.
On the margins of the visible light, we can read a set of words that relate to cultural associations with darkness: from cultures who are fascinated by the mysteries and freedom of the night to hygienic enlightened cultures who condemn and shame the darkness, criminalizing certain practices and building images of violence and fear that work as a way of legitimizing the process of illumination in order to expand a 'respectable' nocturnal sociability (Koslofsky, 2011).
The map evidences the political spectrum of the different light technologies and critically exhibits the relationship between power and light.These devices structure and define the nightscapes of our cities and determine the way our bodies are affected.As lighting designers, we must deepen the history of these technologies to trace and understand how this broad medium has been introduced into culture and shaped it.The following parts of this chapter examine the multiple layers of the map, convey the history of light and its relation with power, and explore quests for an other history, one of alternatives and resistant lighting practices.

The conquest of the night
What are the cultural associations with the night?The cultural meanings of lightness and darkness are ambiguous and are subject to constant flux (Meier et al., 2015).The night is a moment related to fear and simultaneously to freedom, an alternative to daylight practices; its routines, obligations, and tasks.It is a time for dissidence, where danger and pleasure are common ground for the definition of this otherness, a time for dark cultures to escape daylight.As such it has always been challenged, legislated, restricted, curfewed, narrowed, illuminated, glared and polluted against.
Night is a vital space-time, crucial to the construction and reconstruction of identities, both individual and collective.The night is tied to notions of transgression and the experiences of minorities and marginalities: the origin of many subcultures lies in nocturnal practices.It is about the emergence of clandestine stories, where human expression tries to escape surveillance (Palmer, 2000).The image of the night is full of contradictions, from the territories of the Devil to a time for praying, from honest nocturnal professions to excesses and transgressions (Figure 1).Nighttime is also free time, when the vast majority of people have a moment for leisure and interact in other ways (Koslofsky, 2011).
After two centuries of saturation of artificial lighting infrastructures, our cultural understandings of darkness are still informed by the fears, legends, myths and imagery of nighttime over the ages (Edensor, 2017).However, nowadays, new conceptual frameworks are emerging from understanding the impact of light as a polluting agent (Cerveira Lima, 2022) repositioning the relationship with darkness.Researchers and practitioners are redefining darkness as a positive condition (Narboni, 2017), an exceptional luxury in an over-illuminated contemporary life.

Brief history of urban lighting
It is possible to define two differing processes that give origin to artificial lighting in public spaces with two models that were happening simultaneously in the late 17th century in Europe.There is a top-down process that started with Louis XIV of France, the "sun king", who used lighting infrastructure as a way of exhibiting the monarchy's presence and rule over the city at night.He introduced order, control, and safety to the proximity of his palace by hanging 'réverbères' whose brightness contrasted with the night's darkness.In contrast, a citizen initiative took place in Amsterdam where painter and inventor Jan van der Heyden proposed an efficient lighting pole to the Municipality that emerged from the ground.He designed a network system needed to illuminate the city and redefine the urban nightscape of Amsterdam (Dietrich, 2015).
Koslofsky's seminal work (2011) explains how European courts, between 1600 and 1750, experienced a conspicuous temporal shift in their celebratory practices from diurnal to nocturnal.In a display of symbolic self-identification, monarchs and rulers of this era sought to forge a divine connection, aligning themselves with both God and the celestial body of the Sun, positioning themselves as beacons of illumination (Figure 1).The festivities, spectacles and pleasures were essential tools of government that valued festivals and entertainment to display their majesty.The act of nighttime illuminations emerged as a veritable art form, symbolic of the privileged status of the elites in Europe that portrayed nocturnal emerging sociability.A new way of conveying power, blinding people with light in the deep dark contrast of the night.Crucially, the ostentatious display of majesty not only served as a manifestation of political power but also played an active role in its very construction.
In a context where light and darkness have so much symbolical meaning, the control of these two elements constitutes an image of power.If the night is a land of menaces, having the tools to project light over darkness is a way of showing authority.Not only because of the possibility of using scarce resources, but also because of the capacity to manage a tool that was aligned with the divine: those who manipulate light have power.

Nocturnalization, regulating for a respectable night
Being in a public space during the night was a restricted activity.An unexplored realm, the urban public night opened for the broader population, with a shift away from curfews to a street lighting system controlled by the authorities.The focus transitioned from the suspicion of night walking and the necessity of carrying lanterns for visibility to the pursuit of beautification and respectability after dark (Koslofsky, 2011).The Nightwatcher's role evolved into proto-police forces and was replaced by more modern forms of night authorities that eventually expanded their activities into daylight.Through the introduction of police-controlled lighting infrastructures in specific urban spaces, the more illumination available the more people ventured outside, increasing mobility and the need for patrolling the growing cities.The utilization of light by authorities was a mechanism for establishing order and worked as an instrument of discipline.Illumination by night is a surveillance tool that enables the regulation of what happens after dark, a disciplinary power, producing subjects that fall under a gaze or glare (Schlör, 1991).
The introduction of artificial lights at night in Western European city landscapes was a diverse process that was mainly developed by a powerful minority allowing the expansion of human activity into night public space mainly controlled by law enforcement departments and police forces.The conquest of the night imposed a nightscape, a way of moving and behaving with values that responded mainly to bourgeois and religious morality.
The invasion of artificial illumination was shaking traditional nightlife and political order too.Street lighting also had increasing utility for businessmen, who advocated for their installation defending that trade follows light (Bouman, 1991).While elite social life was expanding into the night, its traditional inhabitants -servants, apprentices, students, tavern visitors, sexual workers, and those who sought to escape the social legibility of early modern daily life -saw their space and time threatened by disciplining forces (Figure 1).
The image of the night in cities is characterized by light, a history of increasing illumination, where darkness is expelled into mysticism, prehistory and mythology, and light conquers the streets (Schlör, 2016).The process of nocturnalization (Koslofsky, 2011) is now being looked at with a critical lens: we are entering a decolonization era regarding light, where darkness is paradoxically a symbol of luxury and inequality.

Opening the lighting Black-box
From the 19th century, cities in Europe began to open, outer walls became obsolete, the intense urbanization and growth expanded, problematizing the city-periphery division, and borders began to dissolve.Likewise, the nocturnal city introduced a new topography in which people started expanding their activities after sunset.
Lighting infrastructures developed at a slow, uneven, patchy and privileged pace until the introduction of gas infrastructure and later the electrical revolution.These innovations spreaded and institutionalized artificial light at night, making it a part of everyday life and producing a black box effect, hiding how the technology works, making invisible the network and distancing users from the light sources.Light turned into an infrastructure of illumination serviced and maintained by professional experts, regulated by administrative structures and shaped by vested commercial interests (Edensor, 2017).The thrill subsumed by the first lights waned to a mundane feeling.A disenchantment process culminated in a technocratically regulated homogeneous over-illuminated nocturnal built environment (Schivelbusch, 1995).Nowadays, this vital network is defined by normalization organisms that are mainly regulated by the industry, defining the way the world is illuminated, and thus, how our bodies interact and are affected.The implementation of new SMART technologies is opening a new era where infrastructure of outdoor lighting encompasses a combination of elements such as wireless sensor networks, the Internet, cloud computing and even the invisible spectrum of light.Surveillance systems use the infrared spectrum to produce thermal-images(Figure 1).These hyper panoptical techniques are entering the domain of the invisible (Edensor, 2017).
It is imperative to incorporate the extensive historical significance of socio-cultural symbolism associated with urban lighting within the framework of urban lighting design.The adoption of smart lighting has resulted in community unrest due to its consequential utilization for law enforcement and surveillance purposes.Conversely, cities are also actively endeavoring to develop the implementation of these smart technologies by prioritizing urban participation and community values (Oram, 2022).

Resisting lights: A brief story of lighting alternatives
The night was always a contested territory where lineage, age and gender mark the lines between respectable and prohibited activity after hours.Light was used to free the night from the darkness, from the ghosts and evils that await in the dark space.Nonetheless, the night remained a time to undermine and challenge authority.
During the 18th century, a strong resistance to lighting emerged.Activities like lantern smashing were a traditional dissent action from youth cultures all over Europe, mainly students from male noble privilege, that had a more accessible and inhibited relationship with the night, but also revolutionaires during French revolution.(Koslofsky, 2011).Moreover, during the French Revolution, the lighting infrastructure was a strong symbol of the monarchy, and was therefore constantly smashed and lighting posts were even used to hang people.Later, under the Commune, smashing lanterns and returning the city to darkness was used as a defense mechanism, a wall of darkness that protected themselves from the state authorities.After the French Revolution ended, instead of darkness, there were blazing festive illuminations, where victory was celebrated in the light and with light (Schivelbusch, 1995).It is interesting that people smashed the top-down technologies and then celebrated with bottom-up lighting, in close relation to the light source, using self-made hand-held torches.
At the same time, in London, crowds gathered at night in urban centers to express with light devices their political opinion.For instance, in several occasions there were illuminations associated to failure of bills, anniversary coronations of King William and Queen Mary, and different political events from mid 18th century.Light, or its absence, had a powerful agency within political discourse.Yet, this sporadic and self-organized way of expressing opinion and dissent slowly shifted into spectacularization and aestheticization, through designed experiences of lighting displays in public space that neutralized the political value of light (Barnaby, 2015).
There has been a constant shift in how light is used: from a way of control, a way of celebration, an effective direct expression of dissent, to the beautification of a city for enchanting.In this sense, it is interesting to look at how art approaches lighting technologies.Art has a way of deviating things from its original objective, changing and modifying how elements are combined and presented to convey and communicate a critical way of seeing.Since the beginning of the 20th century, artists have been using light to address issues of pollution, surveillance, ecology and consumerism.Beitin (2021) states that light is a basic condition of modern social life, and yet, its permanent and excessive use has numerous negative effects.In that sense, it is within our power to limit these effects and to ensure the responsible use of light.We can see that artists have been providing small-scale experimental light setups to question and critique the way we live.From Dan Flavin's fluorescent tubes to Jenny Holzer's LED (Light-Emitting Diode) screens, each technology offers a world of repurposing and expressive opportunities.Artists, technicians and communities use lighting technologies in critically engaged practices that question the status quo.The aesthetic possibilities of light are just being explored (Joelson, 2022).

From social engaged lighting practices to Light Activism
There is a dispute about the night between public and private lighting, with collective and individual visions of how the urban night landscape should be (Nye, 2015).In the last years, a series of practices that seek to look for other ways of addressing the night and its illumination emerged; understanding the night more as a process, a space and time for cultural practices and not a thing to be floodlighted.Groups like the Light Collective, Social Light Movement, Configuring Light, Guerrilla Lighting, amongst others, develop workshops, manuals and open source information to stimulate a lighting engaged with local social practices, expanding the range of the lighting design discipline away from the traditional luxury lighting projects (Bordonaro, 2018).
In recent years, light has been used in protests and struggles for demanding more access to rights.In those circumstances, it works as a tool for resistance (Caixeta, 2022).Citizens are exploring how light can make problems visible; can express community concerns and political opinions; and can address urban conflicts and inequalities in an aesthetic manner.
Light activism is the appropriation of lighting technologies by citizens and communities (not governments or institutions) that use devices to visualize and problematize conflicts, disputes, abuses of power and political and ideological positions.The medium of light is transformed into a metaphor: to put something under the spotlight, to focus and reveal it.Light activism uses light to develop actions and interventions in the urban space to hack the status quo, ranging from more spontaneous self-organized actions to collective projections and performances that reclaim the political value of light.
In the last decade, from 2010-2020, there has been an incremental tendency in different cities of popular demonstrations using lighting technologies in diverse ways to communicate a message.For example, pro-democracy (Hong Kong, 2019), anti-corruption (Romania, 2017), during election campaigns (Brazil, 2018) and anti-state (Chile, 2019), amongst others (Schielke, 2018;Caixeta, 2021).Currently, the use of low-voltage LED promotes more accessibility and possibility of control.This new tendency is increasing exponentially because of a trending radicalization of inequalities, more collaboration between artists and citizens, and a visual culture that constantly demands new images.It IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1320/1/0120287 is an alternative way of using light and of communicating non-hegemonic narratives, using light as an attack and defence mechanism.Although related to power struggles, light activism also has a festive agency, gathering people and uniting them.
The installation of light infrastructures in the city has always been followed by a series of objectives for ensuring security, safety and accessibility, while also being intertwined with a complex network of meanings, symbolisms, and exclusions.This alternative use of light at night not only enables the communication of messages and provides alternative night images, it also questions who has the right to use light in the night and affect the senses by doing so (Rancière, 2013).

Ephemeral light interventions: citizen empowerment through lighting
This section examines a series of three collective light actions that happened in 2020-2021 in Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (CABA), Argentina as one case study.They were selected because I participated as co-director of these events, facilitating access to information and stakeholders, while also being examples of alternative bottom-up lighting experiences.This section will give an insight into the ways they have been produced and their impacts.The interventions combine practices from collaborative architecture, participatory design and non-conventional lighting, to build urban actions and interventions through light that promote eco-social integration.
The light interventions were organized by FLUXLIAN, a light research platform that I am cofounder of, and in collaboration with a wider number of co-producers.The actions occured in different public spaces related to the accessibility of green public spaces in a context of dense urbanization and the privatization of public commons driven by the government of the city.
People live their lives in the context of engineering-defined street lighting with minimums that do not contemplate social practices.After sunset, governments try to stimulate the nighttime economy by reducing social interaction into commercially driven activities.The case studies explore other ways of living this standardized night.Through the aid of lighting tools, the interventions created social interaction between diverse groups who had an alternative night experience and built collective images together.The lighting choreographies allowed people to relate materially and symbolically to the places they are denied access to, manipulating the light technologies, affecting, being affected and having an effect on their agency within the city.This section will continue to outline the background of FLUXLIAN and context of the urban controversies before describing the interventions that took place across the three sites.In this sense, the three actions happened consequently every 2 month, and yet, they are addressed together as one case study due to its methodological similarities.It was a work-in progress where improving methodologies were tested.

FLUXLIAN
As a collective, we focus on how to use lighting technologies, concentrating on engaged bodily actions that deviate objects from their traditional function and use them in non-conventional ways to research with space, perception, light and darkness.With a multidisciplinary background, we perform a diverse range of actions, from light interventions for live music to stage design, dance shows, light installations, urban performances and collective light choreographies.To build caring relationships and networks, we developed a non-conventional lighting workshop to share a place for testing and drifting around the possibilities of experimental lighting.We address a wide range of urban problems through the prism of light, practically and symbolically, as a tool to affect the immaterial and material urban environment.

Parque Salguero
In 2020, the Government of CABA organized an architectural contest called "Parque Salguero" to seek ideas for the urbanization of 32 hectares of land on the coast of the Rio de la Plata.However, the project faced criticism as it was perceived to be a plan for another luxury neighborhood for highincome individuals rather than a public green park in public property.The sale of public lands to private stakeholders for real estate developers caused widespread dissent and backlash from various communities.Concerns were raised about the inadequate amount of green space in the city, with CABA having only an average of 6 m2 of green space per inhabitant compared to the World Health Organization's recommended minimum of 10 m2.The contested land included the Arroyo Ugarteche, a water stream, a typical landscape of the region yet that is rarely visible in Buenos Aires because water streams are all piped.This case provided an opportunity to make the riverside accessible to people by night and to engage in building a new night experience in a denied part of the city.

Playon Colegiales
The Predio Ferroviario de la Estación Colegiales, an abandoned railway workshop and depot, is located in Colegiales, a neighborhood with high population density and minimal green spaces (only 0.7 m2 per inhabitant).Over the years, neighborhood organizations in Colegiales have been mobilizing to protect green and public spaces.Since 2016, residents have advocated for transforming the railway yard into a large, 100% green public park.Despite these efforts, a local government project approved in 2017 designated nine plots for sale to private stakeholders for luxury residential buildings.The vacant railway yard, spanning almost 7 hectares, is seen as a unique opportunity to create a significant urban park and increase green space availability in the neighbourhood and the city.This case offered the possibility of engaging local residents with a territory that is physically inaccessible to them, but by illuminating it, they could appropriate the space they are trying to inhabit.

Isla de la Paternal
In the neighborhood of Paternal, another vacant public space was subject to privatization.The Albergue Warnes building complex, originally intended to be South America's largest children's hospital, was demolished after a complex political history.The land, previously owned by the city government, was sold at a low price to a retail company, which obtained a controversial approval in 2018 to construct towers on the site.After being vacant for a long time, the space was used by neighbors as a park.A change in building codes facilitated real estate speculation and led to the acceleration of its resisted urbanization.Citizen organizations organized to protect the public space.This case had the potentiality of gathering diverse stakeholders that inhabit the park in a festive, carnivalesque attitude that showcased citizen organization and local empowerment.

Designing the light interventions
In these contexts, FLUXLIAN and a collective of self-organized researchers, activists and citizens decided to produce a series of light choreographies to defend public commons in the territories under dispute.For each intervention, an open call invited interested people from diverse backgrounds to occupy the public space that is under a privatization process and to build a social bond with their environment using accessible light technologies.Motivated by the need to shed light on urban controversies and engage participants using their bodies, out goals were to make visible the privatization of public lands carried out by the Government of CABA; build a series of images and videos for social media distribution; promote social cohesion after a post-pandemic situation; and explore the role of light to create a bottom-up approach while stimulating a novel nighttime experience.
The light interventions were the final acts of public events organized to defend public commons in the neighborhoods.In each case, during the day, a light stencil workshop was developed where people cut out their own phrases to project later with the light devices.The tools to be used were mainly tactical LED flashlights, green laser pointers and cell phones.The coordination team was divided into a master of ceremonies who communicated the joint actions to be performed via loudspeakers; several lighting assistants who helped people with the devices and instructed them on how to use the light sources; a documentation group who was recording video and taking pictures of the whole event; and a lead photographer who was in charge of making long-exposure photographs.
Activities were designed to occur in the whole spectrum of twilight for people to experience the nighttime.Before sunset, tactical flashlights and laser pointers were given to participants, while others, as instructed, used their own lighting devices.Starting at civil twilight, there was an introductory workshop where participants were instructed on how the lighting devices work and made warm-up movements together to rehearse future movements to be developed in the light choreographies on site.During nautical twilight, the designed actions began with participants walking with their lighting devices and projecting their stencil messages onto the walls and surfaces in the surroundings.At astronomical twilight, when there was enough darkness and people were familiarized and in tune with each other and the site, the light choreographies started in order to produce long-exposure photographs.While the master of ceremonies, with the aid of an audio system, explained and stimulated participants to illuminate different things in the city, the documentation team took pictures and videos.The event finished with a series of portraits made by participants illuminating themselves.

Results and discussions
In Figure 1, light activism is positioned within the electromagnetic wavelength of the microwaves, in this sense the collective light interventions are micro actions that provoke an increased engagement of participants who gather together with flashlights in their hands trying to communicate a message; they illuminate the built and environmental heritage they are trying to defend from privatization.Participants prepared and improved the light stencils, valuing the places they care about.Light projections effectively communicated the messages without harming the infrastructure.(Figure 2) The projects had a playful and inclusive approach, fostering interactions between different stakeholders.Participants enjoyed a unique nighttime experience engaging with spaces of the city that are characterized by their inaccessibility, darkness and sense of insecurity and safety, sharing images and videos to highlight urban conflicts and defend public commons.The post-pandemic context added significance to these outdoor actions as a way to reclaim nightlife and public spaces after the intense and long insolation from the curfews.
Following local pressure, the government has initiated the construction of a public park in Parque Salguero and two plazas in Playon Colegiales, not meeting the full requirements of the neighbors.The projects still face ongoing challenges, and despite not achieving all the desired outcomes of the light interventions to stop the urban developments and constructions of buildings, the interventions succeeded in building bonds and creating memorable collective experiences.

Illuminating playfully with our hands
By giving the tools of illumination to the participants, they shift from spectators to active performers of the action.Different light sources, manipulated manually and enlightening collectively the landscape, created multiple points of view, exhibiting the complexity that needs to be assumed when dealing with urban transformations.If light is usually imposed on our bodies from the top, then this is a way of illuminating from beneath, from the ground.Light can be cast to the city by its own citizens: an empowering action that places the power to illuminate within the communities, giving them agency to define the sensory and spatial perception of the city with and without light and its variability in a playful way.
The playful nature of the game is a relevant way to deal with fear, distrust and insecurity within the city.If light should enhance the security feeling in our cities, projecting light in a playfull way clearly increases these feeling of belonging and care, this unexpected methodology allowed improvisation between bodies and light that produced the emergence of spontaneous choreography, building a valuable, memorable event.The collective lighting actions produced an atmosphere that stimulated a shared mood, permeated the bodies of the participants and triggered emotions that strongly marked their memory.The interventions were a collaborative way of producing a new image of the city, where empowered people illuminate the places they want to inhabit, emerging new future imaginaries (Figure 3)

Light as a mediator
Illuminating the disputed territories allowed their visibility, making tangible the issues, giving them an entity and defining them amid the darkness.Light showed the scale of the conflicts and emphasized the space available for the dreams of local residents.Light worked as a mediating agent, giving the right to the people to appropriate that space for a moment (Figure 4).
The actions co-produced images in territories under conflict.By placing the body collectively in the sites, a new imaginary around the night, light and public spaces was built.In these cases, giving flashlights to participants allowed for an intensified exploration of the darkness and the re-discovery of the built environment (Figure 3).

Re-enchanting the night, an ephemeral action
These interventions produce zones of autonomous time (Bey, 1991) and illuminations: a series of ephemeral actions that shifted disenchantment to fascination and portrayed the actual power of light.In contrast to the homogenous, glary and standardized urban lighting, these interventions promote the emergence of new, innovative approaches to lighting, fostering more culturally diverse lightscapes while acknowledging vernacular and site-specificity.In a post-pandemic context, this was a way of reenchanting the relationship with the night that was being curfewed and privatized.These actions promote the re-focusing and valuation of the landscape and built environment for a particular moment, for one night.This soft approach allows people to engage and appropriate the space for a specific time frame.During this particular time, light shows an alternative: what would be possible, the imaginary, another option.In this sense, the ephemeral condition enhances the power to observe, analyze and reflect.
To change the city illumination, the first steps are to educate citizens about light technologies and their power to transform and impact human and non-human experiences.Nightlife is fabricated by social practices; it is socially mediated.The history of artificial lighting is not only technical but of changing social practices and imaginations.Therefore, it is not only about changing the lighting infrastructure of the city, but also about changing how people relate to the night, to light and to the city.It is the first step for collectively thinking about our nightspaces.To transform the built environment with inclusive participation it is necessary to develop transdisciplinary mechanisms that integrate, educate and engage with communities, so they can be active designers of their spaces.

Conclusion
To summarize, public space lighting usually is either a homogenous uniform functional light that theoretically works exclusively to promote safety, security and mobility, and is deployed using minimum standardized levels of lights and is mainly a state-controlled dispositive.Or it is a privatedriven marketing illumination that maximizes the relationship between architecture and light to enhance the communication power of light, resulting in a completely staged urban nightscape.
The introduction of artificial lighting and the shift to nocturnal lifestyles have had profound effects on various aspects of human society and the natural environment.Artificial light sources have shaped human behavior, urban perceptions, and daily routines.Lighting not only facilitates vision but also influences our physiological well being, including sleep patterns, hormone regulation and brain activity.Additionally, lighting plays a crucial role in our perception and emotional responses, creating atmospheres and moods that impact our experiences and interactions with the built environment.It is important to consider the social and cultural dimensions of lighting, together with its biological effects.
Overall, the use of light has evolved from a symbol of power and privilege to a medium of resistance, community expression and aesthetic exploration.It has the potential to shape social practices, challenge authority and create meaningful experiences in the urban environment.However, there is a need to consider the politics of light, its potential for standardization and spectacle and the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives within lighting design and urban planning.
Light can be much more than a governmental control dispositive, and there are more creative and artistic uses to resist that control.To propose an other alternative way of thinking about the night and its illumination, this paper discussed how ephemeral light actions can spark discussions about bottomup inclusive lighting and involve citizens in shaping their nightscapes.Collective lighting interventions have the power to build a temporal new image of the city, to create a zone of autonomous time, where empowered individuals shape their spaces and can project their imagination to new places.
Lighting infrastructures need to be a relevant public issue and citizens should be informed about the impacts of lighting technologies on the environment.Facilitating discussions through light intervention workshops can promote citizen engagement and foster inclusive urban lighting.The bottom-up approach enables diverse perspectives and democratic decision-making.It is possible to use the city as an open-forum to discuss, try and change the shape of a place by night.
Lighting actions in public spaces offer transformative potential for engaging with and experiencing the night.By distributing light sources and enabling social interaction, new forms of