Enchantment, light installations and imaginative authentication

This paper investigates how tourists hotly authenticate three light installations: Fool's Paradise at Durham Cathedral, The Ship of the Gods at Hull Minster and Northern Lights at York Minster. Light installations align the perspective of the viewers creating “vantage points” into enchanting, affective experiences of the historic architecture. The paper extends current theories of authenticity and the imagination by investigating notions of ambiguity in Blanchot’s (1981) Two Versions of the Imaginary. Qualitative research conducted with the installation designers of Northern Lights, Ship of the Gods and Fool’s Paradise provides insights into processes of creativity, imagination, mythological, folkloric and historic research which re-authenticates spaces, which are transformed into a liminal “elsewhere”, creating possibilities for the fleeting, yet profound imaginative authentication of space and time.