Longci Light Festival celebrates Tainan City’s 400th anniversary.
Longci Light Festival ran from Dec. 2023 to Feb. 2024 in southern Tainan City’s Huxingshan Park and was the first in a series of celebrations for the city’s 400th anniversary.
Held annually since 2019 in the hilly terrain of Longci District, the event is set in mountain and forest. The organizer, local design studio Fake Fire Atelier, titled this year’s festival “Void Mountain–Embers of Dragonfire.”
Themed around flames, 17 light installations created by 15 individual artists and groups illuminate the night. “Waterfall of Dragonfire” created by South Korean artist Eunsook Lee uses transparent polyester, fluorescent threads and light to represent the past, present and future. Students from local schools used colored pens to draw dragons and volcanos, which a production team transformed into light projections that run down the mountain’s steps in a colorful torrent and are collectively titled “Lava Overflow.”
The 48-day festival attracted nearly 100,000 visitors to Longci and made an impressive start for the 400th anniversary of Taiwan’s oldest city.
—by Jim Hwang
“Waterfall of Dragonfire” by Eunsook Lee from South Korea
“Warmth Contains Light” by Liang Lai-chang
“Reediting the Language of Artifacts” by CC & KK Art
“Light Dream Dragon” by Lee Wen-cheng
“From Light to Dark” by Cai Hui-ting and Fake Fire Atelier
“Rebirth—The Trilogy of Dragons” by Xin Qi, Lu Chia-chun and Guanmiao Elementary School