Light Bulb Conspiracy Documentary Update

The post on the Light Bulb Conspiracy documentary online video by Cosima Dannoritzer has been revised, and there are also now long versions in several languages.

Whatever You Can, We Can Too

As they commented in the last post, feeling that their idea had been copied, it turns out that what "Kultur Reserve" cans...

"Licht Konserve" cans too...

They also sell canned Halogens and other products alongside, as seen here.

Also, promotion with online sales at plentino.de, with sales also via cardanlight.com, gebrauchlicht.de and maybe via other sites...

Sales brochure (pdf) here.


Walsroder newspaper article 19.12.2011 by E. Lindemann, as in the press section of Lichtkonserve.de, Google translation modified a bit to make some sense...

Light out of the Tin Can

A rebel from Schwarmstedt conserves light bulbs and sells his own lighting systems.

"I've always plotted my own lighting," says Bernhard Stich. As a trained electrician he was active for many years as a buyer of commercial electric lighting. Cable systems with halogen lights especially excited Herr Strich - but less so the prices.
"So I just built himself such a system," he says. Immediately there was demand from friends and acquaintances - the cornerstone of his company Halogenkauf Lightech was laid. The then 30 year old electrician designed his own home lighting systems, his wife mounted them while watching television, and the sale went through a newspaper ad.

"I have made my hobby into a career," he says. A milestone in the company's history was Expo 2000 in Hanover. "We fitted out about 120 gift shops on the Expo site with lighting systems," the lighting expert recalls. He is also a renowned expert in the lighting of retail stores. A specialty of the company are the furniture stores, for which the company has developed flexible systems.

Bernhard Stich started off with a designer store for lights in Hanover. "I grew into it the last 30 years out of that," says the 53-year-old. Step by step it grew into his current construction company.

The parts for his own lamps Stich initially had manufactured in Germany.

The contact with a Chinese man whom he had met at a trade show finally led to Halogenkauf Lightech being manufactured in China. Several times a year CEO Stich now flies to China and negotiates with producers. If space remains in the shipped containers, then it can happen that a popcorn machine or bamboo flooring also come to Germany and are sold in one of six online stores of the entrepreneur.

Still, Bernhard Stich remains a man of lighting. And that's why he could not just accept the ban on incandescents. His resistance he now does with a witty marketing concept: His firm has unceremoniously packed 60-watt bulbs into tin cans and now sells them as canned light. Already, the cans are to be had via his online business. Of course, Stitch has also secured its own website: www.lichtkonserve.de. Soon, the cans should also be available at gas / petrol stations, hardware stores and other shops.

Licht Konserve do seem to have started later, whether independently or not.
The point about mentioning them here is that they still seem to be selling the cans, with various offers, for anyone interested.
Maybe, as is often the case, the commercially based venture with more legal resources than the artistic based venture?
Or do authorities choose to bully those who can't fight back?!

Remember the Heatball sellers difficulty with the authorities too.
A serendipidity event is that by chance they just communicated that they have also given up the legal battle with Heatball and are now presenting remaining bulbs for posterity... yes, as "Kultur Reserve" :-)   Albeit probably not canned.
Maybe another follow up post, then...

Canned Heat "Das kleinste Birnendenkmal Europas"

No, this is not about these guys...






Rather about something with a less blue-sy content...

or if you will...

[Seemingly the same idea has occurred to different creators...
The ones covered here claim to be first and to have been copied, as per comment! Some more about the "Lichtkonserve" canning of light bulbs will follow.
Update: See "Whatever You Can, We Can Too"...]


The Heatball satirical objection to the bulb ban has been well covered in previous posts, and is still ongoing through all the legal challenges and appeals.
Meanwhile another satirical artistic venture has been going on for some years, although recently halted, again for legal reasons (the ones without humor are the German judges, but in that profession they are not alone!).
This is about the Frankfurt based Canned Heat venture, or rather Kultur-Reserve, culture reserve, by the Metermorphosen company: a word play on "metamorphosis",
as they focus on creating new artistic meaning out of everyday objects.


Their own description of their activities: Google translation, somewhat corrected...

MeterMorphosen stands, as already seen in the name, for transformed everyday objects.
We develop our own product ideas, check their feasibility, and then produce them with the most suitable materials. The transformations are more than just a gimmick, they give the items a palpable new dimension. Thus a yardstick measure of space became a measure of time and space. Or from the linoleum floor a memory card game was made, with original artwork from the 1920s. And from the world's most widely used eating utensils a small collection of poems, with which you can combine the sensuality of eating with the sensuality of poetry.
Important for MeterMorphosen is a playfully educative approach, the products must have a certain esprit, the abstract becoming sensually comprehensible. By such lateral thinking our products may succeed to make complex inter-relations more clear and able to be seen in a new way.

They also have an English language presentation of themselves...




While the canned bulb manufacture and sales have been organized by publisher Florian Koch and partners, the concept and also apparently the original manufacture was by artist Lutz Jahnke in Offenbach.

There seem to be slightly conflicting accounts about it, but the story seems to go something like this...
During the lighting festival Luminale in Offenbach April 2010, Lutz Jahnke and his partner Julia Diehl organized a big "Birnen Denkmal" light bulb memorial to incandescent light bulbs:
Public collections of spent bulbs took place and mounds of them were artistically arranged by Lutz, Julia and others.
Seemingly now in 2012 there are plans for some kind of repeat offering - the original idea and further development will be covered in a following blog post.

Having got access to sausage making /canning machines the idea then came to Jahnke
about extending the memorial idea... "after the biggest light bulb memorial in Germany, the smallest light bulb memorial in Europe!".
A "culture reserve", not really supposed to be opened, an artistically produced memory of today's bulbs for the future.

Lutz had several lines of thought behind it...
Birne = Pear = what former German leader Chancellor Kohl was called, also the classic bulb in cartoons being synonymous with a "bright idea", also historically the bulb reaching back a long time, given the action as a kind of memorial, while also symbolizing a resistance to government interference in personal freedom, the "last ration" aspect of putting it in a can, as in survival shelters...

So he started putting the bulbs into cans, somewhere along the line getting
help with the manufacture and distribution by the Metamorphoses company in Frankfurt.


Op-Online 10/4/2012 article about artist Lutz and the canned bulb development:
[or see Google translated English version]

The presentation of it as a product for sale:
[or see Google translated English version]

The site however also now warns
"The culture reserve product is until further notice not deliverable and can not be ordered from the online shop".....



The canned bulbs become banned

In recent months, the venture has again got media coverage in Germany.
14th July article from the Frankfurter Runsdschau paper, translated.

A fuller account from the 25th July, 2012, also from artist Lutz Jahnke's point of view
op-online website, translated.

As can be seen, the sale is now forbidden under threat of a 2000 Euro fine for a first offence (somewhat like drug dealing), the argument being that such 60W bulbs were banned from manufacture Sep 2011.
Lutz and company manager Koch - reasonably enough - feel they were really only packaging and distruibuting already made bulbs. The bulbs came first from German, then from French manufacturers, before the ban.
In the EU, like in the USA, the legislation is of not allowing further manufacture within the jurisdiction, or import from outside, of the light bulbs - neither of which apply here.
Florian Koch said that they may yet beat the new deadline of 1 Sep 2012 for 40W bulbs by filling cans with them instead... however, to date this seems not to have occured.

Videos:
Recent videos carry the same tale about the ban on the sale.
For example, July 24 2012, on the RTL Hessen site: mp4 file, featuring Florian Koch.

Another video from July, from the 25 minute point, featuring Lutz Jahnke, also describing how he got the idea after getting hold of a sausage machine.



Lutz's concluding thoughts from his Jahnke design site

01 september 2012:
glühbirnen — europaweit verboten
»nichts bewegt die welt mehr als licht — deshalb haben wir ihm ein denkmal für alle nostalgiger & ein mahnmal für alle die immer noch wahllos energie verschwenden, gewidmet.
die »kultur reserve« ist die antwort auf die faulen früchte der eurokratie. ein zeitgenössiches kunstwerk, das sie unbedingt in ihren besitz bringen müssen.«

01 september 2012:
incandescent bulbs - banned throughout europe
"nothing moves the world more than light - that's why we dedicated to it a monument for all with nostalgia and a memorial for all those who still (choose to) indiscriminately waste energy.
The "cultural reserve" is the answer to the bad fruits of the eurocracy, a contemporary artwork that they absolutely have to bring into their possession."

Germans Dim View of Light Bulb Inspections

Updated August 24


Interesting news article from The Local, Germany:





German language stories with the above and more, also via their links:
Germany: Der Tagesspiegel, Die Welt
Austria: ORF, Futurezone




Comment

As mentioned before, resistance to the ban is particularly strong in Germany and Austria,
both having sales figures demonstrating active hoarding, and both with various actions against the ban, (search function may be used for these posts): The Austrian film Bulb Fiction, the German Light Bulb Conspiracy documentary, several German TV documentaries (ZDF, 3Sat), the Heatball satirical campaign, as well as the Canned Bulb and Bulb Memorial campaigns to be covered in blog posts soon - apart from active involvement by mainstream politicians and by "heavyweight" printed media like Der Spiegel, of which more can also be seen on Ceolas.net,
for example in the story behind the EU ban.

Several petitions have also been launched, for example as via
Avaaz.org   Gopetition.com   Openpetition.de

The UK, by comparison, has no real involvement by mainstream politicians (a few calling for recognition for light-sensitive citizens while still "welcoming regulations") or by non-tabloid media. A few petitions have been launched though, and sales figures in previous years showed some hoarding going on.

One might note a North-South Europe divide in what protest there is.
Reasons for this may be covered in a subsequent blog post (also see http://ceolas.net/#li11x "Bans in Canada, and similar countries and states").

There is an irony about the EU Commission's supervisory fervor towards others:
As Halogenica has thoroughly documented, the EU promoted CFL/LED replacement products have to meet certain criteria laid down by the Commission itself... which they don't!



Turning to the above article,
it's obviously another angle of the pedantic nature of the ban that to have the "desired effect"
consumers must be stopped by any means possible from buying what they want.

The "rough service" bulb issue also arises in the USA and elsewhere.
The irony is that apparently they cant ban those bulbs entirely because you cant hang up a LED or CFL in dark big work areas, those bulbs just arent bright enough.
Also the “rough service” situation means that if the bulbs (unavoidably) get broken a couple of times, its no big deal with incandescents, unlike with expensive CFLs and LEDs, the former of course also with mercury vapor issues on breakage. Halogen bulbs meanwhile contain toxic Bromine or Iodine, not considered relevant ordinarily, but possibly so in confined spaces like small mine chambers.


Consider what would happen if the German authorities (and others) were successful
in keeping ordinary folk from buying any incandescents that remain legal for industrial use...

"Coalminer Joe" would just buy them for his friends and so on, passing or selling them on.
“Psssst mate wanna buy a light bulb?!”
Bulb pushers will have to go to jail and sit beside drug pushers!

The American Free Our Light campaign highlights this in an amusing video on their homepage.





Not forgetting the imagery evoked by seeking to control what people can use,
as seen earlier on this blog (exaggeration..what exaggeration? ;-) )

image  Otitis
"Incandescent Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc Lamp"
The sequel? Why, the Temple of Gloom, of course....

image  AdminGirl
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"

image  David Dees
"Getting a Light Sentence?"

"The Heat is On"


The last one coming from the mentioned Birnen Denkmal (Light Bulb Memorial) happening,
to be returned to shortly.