The Zažni mesto (Light Up the City) project is an evening programme that brings a series of light and multimedia installations into sacred spaces and the public realm of Trenčín. The installations are spread throughout the city—from historic buildings to contemporary urban spaces—creating a unique evening map of visual experiences. Their aim is to make contemporary art accessible to a wide audience, to transform the way we perceive familiar places, and to create space for pause, contemplation, and shared experiences.
Live Drawing and Animation Workshops with VJ Suave
Author: VJ Suave / Biela Noc
14 February, Saturday – studio at the M. A. Bazovský Gallery, from 2:00 PM
We invite you to a joyful workshop led by the Brazilian artistic duo VJ Suave. It is intended for children as well as adults who have not lost their imagination and love of drawing. The workshop connects drawing with technology, and its result is living artworks that transform projected walls into an enchanting shared gallery of ideas and imagination. Everything drawn during the workshop using the digital tool Tagtool is projected and animated in real time. Come bring your ideas to life and enjoy unforgettable moments together with your children.
Interior installations – sacred spaces
Evangelical Church
Venue: Evangelical Church, Vajanského Street
Artist: Marek Kvetan (SK) / Biela Noc (SK)
Title of the work: GLAEM
Gleam creates a fleeting environment of fragile crystal fountains—glass chandeliers in an inverted position. The viewer perceives reality as if looking down at these objects from above: freed from gravity, yet at the same time reinforced in their fundamental function as carriers of light. The installation disrupts the ordinary optics of everyday objects and transforms them into ethereal luminous structures in which fragility meets monumentality.
Greek Catholic Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 1st of May Street
Artist: TRAKT (SK) / Light Art Festival Trenčín (SK)
Title of the work: Lumière et Vitrail
Light awakens in the temple space. It penetrates through stained glass windows and spreads across stone walls. Light enlivens the silence of the church. Each ray moves, refracts, and changes, creating a delicate play of light and shadow that constantly changes and reappears. The visitor becomes part of this subtle theater. The light guides them, washes over them, and reveals new perspectives of the space, while the temple itself takes on an unexpected, poetic dynamism.
Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Mariánske Square
Artist: Ondrej Puchta (CZ) / TRAKT (SK) / Light Art Festival Trenčín (SK)
Title of the work: Laser Harp
An interactive laser harp transforms the church space into a place of play, discovery, and music. The beams of light create a musical instrument that is played not with strings, but with the touch of hands and fingers directly in the air. When a visitor interrupts a beam of light, a tone sounds. The light, accentuated by a fine mist, gives the space a magical atmosphere. Every movement creates its own musical track. Every touch changes the sound composition. The work invites visitors to stop, experiment, and become part of the music—the visitor becomes the performer and the space becomes a living musical instrument.
Notre Dame Monastery Church, 1st of May Street
Artist: Lukáš Matejka (SK) / Pavol Soukal (SK) / TRAKT (SK) / Light Art Festival Trenčín (SK)
Title of the work: Breath
Experience an unforgettable contemplative experience in a sacred space. Using site-specific interior video mapping, the projection spreads across the vaults and architectural details of Notre Dame, transforming its interior into a living visual space. The moving visual images reflect the shapes of the church and are accompanied by gentle, meditative music. The projection runs continuously in a loop and has an abstract, spiritual atmosphere. Thanks to the work with the genius loci, it seems as if the interior of the church is breathing, moving, and changing shape.
Piarist Church of St. Francis Xavier, Peace Square
Artist: TRAKT (SK) / Light Art Festival Trenčín (SK)
Title of the work: Touches – Temple of Light and Sound
Light and sound work together as a single instrument, creating an experience that changes depending on the presence of people. The interior of the church is lit in such a way as to highlight its walls, vaults, and depth. Simple but striking light motifs move across the architecture and, together with sound, envelop visitors from all sides. Several metal objects are placed in the space – touch domes, one of which is central. The work is activated only at the moment of cooperation: one visitor touches one of the domes, the other touches the central dome, and they hold hands. This connection creates a live circuit that activates the work. The entire temple is thus transformed into a multimedia organism that responds to human touch and cooperation. The result is a joint audiovisual concert, where visitors become co-authors of a unique experience.
Synagogue, Hviezdová
Artist: Dorota Sadovská / Biela Noc
Title: Wounded Canvas (Yesterday, Tomorrow, … Today)
Dorota Sadovská: Wounded Canvas (Yesterday, Tomorrow, … Today), 2026, painterly light object
The artist opens up the age-old issue of time and transience, set against the human desire for permanence and eternity. Within the space of the synagogue, the work evokes the power of the site’s past while posing questions directed toward the future. On the reverse side of the white canvas, a different world unfolds—rich and vividly coloured, composed of the three primary colours from which all others are created.
The blue background features cut-out lines forming an eye gazing downward, into the past. Yellow dominates the cuts that merge into an eye looking upward, toward what has not yet happened—the future. Red refers to activity and the corporeality of the real moment, yet the eye does not look at us; its pupil turns aside. It is like the present itself—something we often pass by and fail to truly live, without the awareness of gratitude.
Dorota Sadovská, 2026
Triptych, painterly light object
LED lights, acrylic on canvas, cut-out
Three objects, each 150 × 180 × 22 cm
Exterior installations – public space
Park Milana Rastislava Štefánika
Artist: Biela Noc
Title: Silent Moments by BN Label (SK)
Silent Moments is a modular light installation composed of minimalist human figures drawn as continuous luminous lines. Each figure captures a simple scene from everyday life — a walk, a child learning to ride a bike, a runner at dusk, a grandmother passing slowly, a dog waiting beside its companion. These ordinary moments often go unnoticed, yet they quietly shape the emotional atmosphere of daily life.
By isolating these gestures in the landscape and rendering them in glowing line-based silhouettes, the installation encourages visitors to slow down, observe, and reconnect with scenes they recognise from their own lives. Silent Moments introduces a gentle narrative into the environment: a sequence of familiar human gestures that become visible, meaningful and shared when illuminated at night.
Átrium pod mestskou vežou
Artist: Biela Noc / Kvant
Title: Magic Forest
A dreamlike walk through urban space. Site-specific installation that enchants with its delicacy and minimalist poetics. Under the cover of night, the public space awakens and, through sensitive lighting design, transforms into a fantasy garden. Let your imagination drift with the atmosphere of a luminous meadow and observe how simple visual interventions reshape a familiar place into an experiential landscape of light, silence, and imagination.
Sídlisko Juh a centrum mesta
Title of the work: Suaveciclo
Artist: VJ Suave / Biela Noc
Walking routes – times and locations:
-
13 February, Friday – Matej Bel–Halalovka route (Juh housing estate), 6:00–7:00 PM, starting at the Halalovka playground
-
14 February, Saturday – Vajanského–Hviezdoslavova route (Trenčín city center), 5:00–6:00 PM, starting in front of the ODA building
-
15 February, Sunday – Mierové Square route (Trenčín city center), 6:00–7:00 PM, starting in front of Hotel Elizabeth
Suaveciclo is a roaming projection-performance that turns the city into a living canvas. Riding a custom tricycle equipped with a high-lumen projector and sound system, the artist play the animations in real time, casting hand-made visuals onto façades, trees, streets and unexpected surfaces. The piece blurs borders between performance, public art and play: people gather, follow the bike, dance in the beam, and often become characters inside the drawings themselves. Children interact, adults smile, and night spaces soften, what was ordinary becomes briefly enchanted.
VJ Suave is a Brazil-based new media art duo formed by Ceci Soloaga (Argentina) and Ygor Marotta (Brazil), who have been creating together since 2009.
They combine frame-by-frame animation, moving projection, and urban intervention to create experiences that transform public space into luminous poetry.
Specialists in moving projection and immersive installations, VJ Suave creates hand-drawn animations that blend technology, storytelling, and street art into a single poetic language. Each piece is carefully adapted to the architecture of the city, transforming façades, trees, and buildings into living canvases where animated stories unfold. Through their work, VJ Suave invites the public to experience a unique connection between art, city, and movement.
