Tracing Light Film Screening
| Fred Frith and gabby fluke-mogul | soundtrack |
|---|
Award-winning director Thomas Riedelsheimer works with light. It is his medium. Mysterious and beguiling. In this film, in remote island settings and hi-tech laboratories, he brings together art and science to find the sweet spot between knowledge and beauty.
For Albert Einstein, mystery was the origin of science and art. His work and, simultaneously, Pablo Picasso’s art, fundamentally changed our understanding of the world.
In Tracing Light, science and art come together to illuminate the mysteries of light. The film brings together physicists and artists from Scotland’s Outer Hebrides to the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light, Germany, in a quest to understand and to animate light. At the University of Glasgow, the artist duo Semiconductor works with single-photon avalanche diode cameras, aka SPAD, to film the propagation of light in space.
Julie Brook, one of a handful of female land artists, takes us on her search for light and colour to Scotland’s remote west and the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy. Fire, the eruption of stored sunlight, is close to her heart.
At the Max Planck Institute, the artists Brunner/Ritz regard the rotunda – a glass roof and white, towering walls – and the light changing through the day. Confronted by its inscrutable properties, they ask: What is the opposite of light?
Thomas Riedelsheimer finds the sweet spot between knowledge and beauty.
This event will last approximately 90 minutes without an interval. Please join us for a Q&A afterwards.
Continue the conversation around art and the natural world at Celebrating the Earth with Rachel Portman, Julie Brook and Nick Drake. Explore parallel responses to place in Different Worlds at Pangolin London, housed in the same building as Kings Place.
Concessions & Under 30s tickets
Kings Place Concessions Tickets
We want to ensure that people who may be struggling financially to purchase a ticket can still enjoy visiting Kings Place. A limited number of tickets are allocated for certain events (if the ticket type does not show in the booking pathway, it means they are not available for this event or have all been sold). Concessions tickets are accessible for people on the following criteria (for more information visit our FAQs)
- Pension Credit
- Universal Credit
- Disability Benefit
- Income Support or Job Seekers allowance
- Students
£10 ‘Under 30s’ tickets
A limited number of £10 tickets for attendees aged under 30 are available for certain shows. To purchase an ‘Under 30s’ ticket, please choose the ‘Under 30s’ price type when selecting your ticket(s). If the option does not appear, this means all ‘Under 30s’ tickets have sold out or are not available for this performance. Please note that proof of age may be requested at the venue. The £10 offer does not apply to premium price categories.
Plan your visit
Getting here
Kings Place is situated just a few minutes’ walk from King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, one of the most connected locations in London and now the biggest transport hub in Europe.
Our address is:
90 York Way, London, N1 9AG.
The Venue
Our performance spaces are situated on the lower ground floor. Hall One, Hall Two and St Pancras are located in level -2, reached by stairs, escalator and lift from the ground floor entrance level.
Event Times
Door times indicate auditorium entrance times only. Visitors are welcome to enjoy the Kings Place seating areas, gallery-level art, canal-side terrace, café, restaurant and bar throughout the day and evening.
- Our events begin promptly at the advertised start time. Typically, there is no support unless otherwise stated.
- We recommend arriving in good time before the performance. The Hall doors will open 30 minutes before the performance to allow time to take your seats, or to choose a space for standing shows.
- Latecomers will be admitted at a suitable break in the performance where possible
Access
We aim to make your visit to Kings Place as comfortable as possible. For more information about the accessibility of Kings Place, including details about our Access Scheme, please visit this page.
If you would like to discuss your access requirements with a member of our team, please get in touch with the Box Office team at info@kingsplace.co.uk.
Food & Drink
Rotunda Bar & Restaurant
Rotunda, situated on the ground floor of Kings Place, offers a unique dining and drinking experience alongside Regent’s Canal. The concert bar in the venue foyer will also be open for select events.
Green & Fortune Café
Recently re-furbished and now open with a new look, the Green & Fortune Café is open for selected concerts. Serving hot and cold food and drinks, including sandwiches, salads, soup, stew and a pie of the day, alongside a choice of cakes made by the on-site bakery team. See here for selected concert dates and standard opening hours.
About Thomas Riedelsheimer
Thomas Riedelsheimer is an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and director of photography. He has many international awards for directing, editing and camerawork. Thomas’ film Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (2001) earned him an international reputation. He lives in Munich where he created and leads dok.art, a development programme for documentary films.
About Julie Brook
British artist Julie Brook makes sculptural work in the landscape including the deserts of Libya, Syria and Namibia; Hoy, Orkney, Mingulay, Jura, in Scotland.
Her recent work includes projects in stone quarries in Japan and Carrara, on a wild Hebridean coastline, and in the Upper Mustang desert, Nepal. In 2023/24, she had major solo exhibitions at Abbot Hall, Kendal; Komatsu City Museum, Japan, and Pangolin, London and a new publication, What is it that will last? In 2025, Brook created a public commission, Tide Line, on the Fife Coastline.
Reviews
‘Light as you’ve never seen before’ Cineuropa
‘… in approaching the subject from both a scientific angle and an artistic one, Riedelsheimer finds the
sweet spot between knowledge and beauty.’ Screen International
‘…glints of surrealism courtesy of the sheer mind-bending quality of quantum physics buoy the dialogues.’ The Film Verdict
‘Tracing Light lingers on the (frankly entertaining) potential for collaboration between science and art, and
the encounters this engenders’ Cineuropa
‘Tracing Light’s strong visuals and accessible science should catch the eye’ Screen Daily