For three years straight our team helps Dvortsovy Park to create an original style for “Night of the Light” festival. However, we are not only partners, but proud participants of this event.

This year IntiLED presented a new installation “Everything (Doesn’t) Matter”, by Ksenia Pilipetzkaya, company’s lighting designer. We asked her to share with us a few details about this project.

Well, I got my degree in graphic design and spent some time trying as much new, different things as I can. From branding till illustration and tattoos. During this search of my own style and direction I got a chance to try myself into architectural lighting industry and it quickly turned into my main field of interest as an artist and creator.

I joined IntiLED’s team two years ago. Since then me and my colleagues presented our works at “Night of the Light” in Gatchina and TAVA Lighting Festival in Estonia. This year's “Night of the Light” was especially important to me. Installation “Everything (Doesn’t) Matter” – my personal idea and it was such a pleasure to work with a whole team, shaping your thoughts and sketches into something real and beautiful.

Water and reflection – main themes of the festival in 2019 and I spent a long time thinking about all these reflections we have in our life. Reflections we use in architectural lighting, art and optics, such us effect of reflected light. Reflections we see on the water and in the mirror and the ones that happened in our thoughts. This word has many meanings and I wanted to explore, connect and find a shape that will reflect them all. Such as Cyrillic letter, known for their ability to reflect horizontally.

I would like for visitors to not just pass by and check out our installation, but take a short break and remember something that really matters to them. I even wrote a short instruction note: 

“Right in the middle of everyday’s buzz - please, take a break and read this slowly: “Feel like something that used to be important before but doesn’t matter anymore. Meanwhile, the most irrelevant things and events from the past play a big role in your life now”. Think about it. 

“He was important. Not anymore”.

“It doesn’t matter what time you will come back home if nobody waits for you. But if little purring ball of fur is waiting for you – you have no right to miss the last bus”.

“I used to care a lot about opinion of others, but everything has changed with time”.

Those are stories of my friends and I convinced that everyone of us had this experience.

Yes, it is not that hard to attract someone’s attention for a few seconds but we decided to go further and give people chance to interact with installation, encourage them to share their own stories. Mailbox seemed just about perfect for this task. 

To share something personal you also need a quiet, comfortable place, and it is not that easy to find oIf.you came for a crowded and loud festival. So... we changed the whole space and create peaceful, relaxing area where visitors could rest on a bench and enjoy meditative sound, such as sound of waves. 

We definitely had a few challenges – cutting every letter from polycarbonate using IntiLED's equipment was quite an adventure to me. It was pouring rain during our final day of assemble. But we also shared some good moments, for sure. One of them eve We were trying to keep busy a little son of Ulyana, head of our architectural lighting department. So we gave him a pack of sharpies and asked to decorate our benches. He took this task very seriously and at the end finished all of them! More of that, our visitors followed him and left their messages and little artworks all over the benches. I remember a kid, that wrote “It matters, when mom and dad live happily” – it was touching.

Oh, way more than we expected. We spent last few days sorting and reading them. Some are incredibly funny, other are pretty sad. But all of them, even skeptical ones, still share the same feeling of unity. Yes, we all people and despite all our differences there are still a lot of little things that unite us. I’m grateful to everyone who joined! Every story we received will be published in a pdf-book, as a final part of the project.

That’s true – everything matters.