(capsules) is a series of temporary installations that take over vacant shop windows, bringing contemporary art proposals to unexpected corners of the city and opening up urban spaces to contemporary creation 24/7.
(capsules) benefits from the generous support of the City of Luxembourg.
With the kind support of MG Hotels & ERCO
Lucas Castel
Pigeon Paradise, One Loft Race
Location
3, rue Louvigny
L-1946 Luxembourg
In November 2020, a new world record was set in the world of pigeon racing. New Kim, a Belgian pigeon, was bought at auction for 1.9 million dollars by a wealthy Chinese man through the auction house PIPA (Pigeon Paradise).
Lucas Castel was able to photograph the bird. That first portrait opened up a whole imaginary world, which the artist chose to set against a practice that grew up in the Belgian and French mining regions. There he discovered a complex network linking professional and amateur pigeon owners, who train their birds like elite athletes. Over the past few decades, pigeon racing has spread to every corner of the globe and become an international, lucrative sport. This enthusiasm for the racing pigeon has given rise to new competitions such as the One Loft Race, in which as many birds as possible compete to reach a single finishing point, unlike traditional races, in which each bird flew back to its own home. The owner sends one or more young pigeons to a foreign country, where they are acclimatised, fed and trained to take part in a series of races covering several hundred kilometres, with recognition and very handsome prizes at stake.
In this installation, created for the Art Au Centre trail, seven videos of bird releases from around the world are shown on phones. These releases form part of a collection of about fifty amateur videos. The videos presented here were filmed in Egypt, the United States, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Belgium, Senegal and Turkey. Some of the trophies on display belong to the artist's personal collection, gathered over the course of his work, while others are on loan from Belgian pigeon fanciers. They feature the bird within an object that symbolises victory, and by removing the trophy from its original context, the artist questions how we represent the animal.
By examining the evolution of a popular, local practice in this way, Pigeon Paradise sheds light on our relationship with the living world in a capitalist society and in the Anthropocene era. The project brings together a series of photographs the artist took between 2020 and 2025, along with the fifty or so amateur release videos he collected from around the world.
Biography
Lucas Castel is a Belgian artist based in Brussels. Working with photography, video and installation, he takes a documentary approach to examining the society and world in which he lives. In 2015, at the start of his studies at the Le Septantecinq photography school, he became interested in how energy is produced and what impact that industry has on living things. His first project took root in the expanding German mining industry in the heart of the Rhine basin. This research continued through several series begun from 2017 onwards, including work on Belgian nuclear power and Deuxième saison, which questions the reopening of a mine in the Pyrenees (Ariège, France). More recently, with Pigeon Paradise, Castel has developed a reflection on a popular practice that puts the relationship between animals and humans at stake. In it, he examines our contemporary obsession with controlling living things, at the heart of the Anthropocene, and the transformation of a local, amateur sport into an international business. Pigeon Paradise drew attention at the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi during the Prix National de la Photographie Ouverte in June 2024. The prize recognised a promising project, which will be published as a photobook with Eriskay Connection in autumn 2026.
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