Which role does artificial light play in the human connection to force, power, violence, control? What happens if I set this light source free and largely remove it from control?

Light, a term that tends to have positive connotations – force, a rather negative one often used to describe a dark component of something. An ambivalent field of tension: What if the positive is powerful?

Power describes a construct characterized by structure and orientation – it includes and excludes – creates contrasts.

What is the connection between light, orientation, identity and power?
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The ability to bring light into darkness, thereby structuring time and space and thus determining life, has long been outside of the human skillset. Life’s structure has been set by nature, by day and night.

Only as the people settled down, a first self-determined structuring began, the structuring of space and land. (...) territory developed into a means of expressing power. Wars became conducted to increase areas of influence, open up access and determine habitats.

Even if artificial light has not played a decisive role there for thousands of years, the impenetrable darkness of the moonless night did. Night is still the preferred time of the assailant.

The nights low contrast, makes differences only hard to discern, object and environment merge into one another. Being able to distinguish is a substantial ability to wield power. So darkness was increasingly perceived as a territory – territory which had to be mastered. So time was settled.