Title: Blinded by Light
Subtitle: The Colonization of Night and Space Mirrors
Original title: Oslepeni jasem
Original subtitle: Kolonizace noci a vesmírná zrcadla
Series volume: Dissertation P.S. No. 7 *
Book language: Czech-English edition
Author: Nikola Ivanov
Designed by: Jan Novák, Nikola Ivanov
Publisher: UMPRUM
ISBN: 978-80-88622-24-6
Selling price: 420 CZK
Binding: V4
Formate: 150 x 225 mm
Number of pages: 288
Is the constant illumination that is blurring the distinction between day and night a dream of modernity or a nightmare? When we shine a light into the darkest corners, does it really mean that we can see better and understand everything? Or can the omnipresent brightness blind us? The first part of this book outlines and summarizes existing research on the topic of the colonization of the night and traces its important manifestations from antiquity to the present day. The second part is more specifically oriented towards the issue of illuminating night areas with space mirrors. For the first time ever, it comprehensivelytraces the history of these plans from their beginnings in the1920s to the present day, placing them in a social, political, cultural, and environmental context.
Nikola Ivanov is an intermedia artist who works primarily with text, photography, and video. He is the editor of the anthology Odpočinek v neklidu (Rest in Restless Times), dedicated to the biopolitics of sleep. He currently co-directs The Applied Photography Studio at the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem and works as a methodologist at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.
* The UMPRUM publishing house's series of dissertations includes exceptional texts by graduates of the doctoral programmes Theory and History of Fine Arts and Fine Arts. The purpose of the series is to promote the synergistic effect of publishing books by authors of the same generation coming from the same school, thus showing that one and one can be more than two. With a graphic solution of a common and individual jacket in one, the edition aims to be a novel step out of the "squaring of the circle": how to make a series of books while preserving their uniqueness.