Singapore’s ‘Light Festival’ Expects To Draw 700,000 Visitors

Organizers of the “i Light Festival Marina Bay 2016” expect to surpass the record 685,000 local and foreign revelers in Marina Bay last year.

The festival, which is open to public, kicked off Friday last week and will run until March 27, 2016.

Lawrence Wong, Minister for National Development, led the opening ceremony to kick-start the three week “i Light Marina Bay festival 2016.”

Thousands of local and foreign visitors roused in a ruckus of excitement as hundreds of buildings around the Marina Bay waterfront lit in unison during the ceremonial switch-on.

The light festival features 25 innovative and interactive light art installations, which feature artists from Taiwan, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, China, Latvia, Israel, Thailand, Norway, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States.

Wong recalled that the creation of the Marina Bay waterfront was conceived 50 years ago by Singapore’s visionary leader, the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.“Once, the Bay was nothing but a vast seafront abutting the wasteland. Lee Kuan Yew wants to create something out of nothing, which gave birth to the creation of the Marina Bay,” he said.

Wong said that Lee Kuan Yew reclaimed the Bay area and transformed it into the financial and business center of Singapore that “we are all proud of today.”

Aside from being the financial and business capital, the Bay now known as the Marina Bay waterfront has become a popular destination of local and foreign visitors.

Wong said that about 700,000 people visited the Marina Bay waterfront during the “Marina Bay Light Festival” in 2015 – a project launched in 2010.

Jason Chen, the Festival Director and Director of Place Management of Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), said that the festival “aims to get people thinking about a sustainable future.”

“The festival is not only a platform to showcase works from the local and international art scene. We hope that the initiative would influence us to change some of our behavior and encourage everyone to join us in the push for sustainability,” Chen said.

He also said that the cooperation of stakeholders around the Marina Bay waterfront has saved the festival organizers about 280,000 kilovolts in power consumption despite the energy employed in 2015.

“It is the reason why some residences, malls, shopping centers, and buildings in the heart of the city are shaving their power consumptions,” Wong said during the launching of the festival.

The artworks in the “i Light Marina Bay Festival 2016” are curated by Randy Chan, principal architect at Zarch Collaboratives and Khairoddin Hori, Deputy Director of Artistic Programming at Palais De Tokyo, Paris. (PNA) LAP/CD