21 December 2004
Candle Night Performance
“Turn off the Lights and Take it Slow.” This is the continuous theme for the Candle Night Event, now in its third season along Harajuku`s Cat Street. This event uses the earth’s natural “clock” the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, and the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, to help bring awareness to the natural flow of time. For the event, our hope was to turnout all the streetlights along Cat Street, to create a dark background for the candle installations. The city was unable to respond to this request, but shops along the street were cooperative and we succeeded in creating a darkened atmosphere for the event. A total of 11 installations were set up along the street. Most were student projects that have began to incorporated messages and other exciting tricks into their candle works. Some fun performances included a big “CHEERS!” with a candle beer glass and illuminated one-yen coin chains symbolizing the money spent on electricity.
Creator Candle Design Exhibition
The Creator Candle Design Exhibition was a new event added to this winter solstice performance. Ten designers designed candles to be displayed at the exhibit. Naoto Fukazawa and Takashi Sato are just a couple of designers who willing donated their time and work to the exhibit. Even though all who participated were professional designers, candle design was a first. Designing a candle is not just about its form, but it also has to be burnable?that is the hard part! With the help of candle manufacture, Kameya Candles, we were able to design and produce high quality candles in the limited time that we had. Suzuki Designer melted down his own paraffin and tested his design over and over again before the final product. Chief Kaoru Mende created a “Dissipating Paraffin Lake” that gradually melted away and changed as exhibit time pasted.
Saiko Tanuma
