Location: Market Place
A meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, intimacy and distance
A captivating large-scale light installation by Belgian artist collective Bobolito&Co, Rhizome combines rope, light, with pulsing lights and ambient sounds to bring the structure to life, transforming space into a dynamic environment.
Drawing its name from the botanical term for root systems, Rhizome reflects on both the complexity of natural networks and the way we build digital and social connections. The tangled web of its glowing ropes, often found in forests or urban spaces, evokes a living structure – organic yet artificial, beautiful yet chaotic.
Rhizome asks us to consider the parallels between natural rhizomatic systems and our own digital communication networks. Just as roots interweave underground, hidden but vital, our online and social connections form invisible networks of thought, emotion, and information. “Rhizome” becomes a metaphor for human connectivity – the way ideas, relationships, and communities grow unpredictably and across boundaries.
Constructed through a highly physical and collaborative process that blends art, engineering, and performance, Rhizome is created by a dedicated team that climbs into trusses and elevated rigging points, often using ladders and harnesses to reach high and challenging locations. This intricate process transforms open spaces into glowing three-dimensional networks, carefully shaped by hand and intuition.
Each rope is a deliberate gesture, forming part of a larger structure that reflects the complexity of natural root systems and digital connectivity. Like spiders weaving a web, the artists work in the air – pulling, stretching, and tying hundreds of meters of luminous rope between fixed points.
The act of building Rhizome is just as poetic as the finished work itself, a meditation on the tension between connection and separation, nature and technology, intimacy and distance.
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Image credit: Rhizome, Bobolito&Co. Photo by Matthew Andrews