On October 28th, 2020, I had the honour of being the sole speaker at the Night Studies Research Seminar / Seminario de Investigación “Estudios sobre la Noche”, organized by:
- The Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (CISAN-UNAM), Mexico
- The Institut de Géoarchitecture (Université de Bretagne Occidentale) and the Institut des Amériques, France
- The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal (McGill University), Canada
The session, titled “Lights On Romania: Impacts of a Light Art Circuit”, was moderated by Edna Hernández González (Université de Bretagne Occidentale) and coordinated by Edna Hernández González, Alejandro Mercado Celis (CISAN-UNAM), Michaël Spanu (CISAN-UNAM), and Will Straw (McGill University).
In my lecture, I presented a methodological reflection on how light art festivals—specifically Lights On Romania—can both illuminate and obscure issues of accessibility and inequality in the urban night. I explored how cultural events framed as inclusive may, in practice, be limited by spatial and temporal constraints that affect who can participate and how.
This intervention contributed to a growing transnational conversation on the urban night as a complex social, cultural, and political phenomenon. The seminar was part of a broader initiative to develop critical and interdisciplinary perspectives in the emerging field of Night Studies.
For more information, visit the Night Studies blog: https://noche.hypotheses.org/
Manuel Garcia-Ruiz 