Nuit Blanche blathering...
Not sure where to start...Nuit Blanche is an overwhelming festival for many reasons. Geographically, there's a lot of ground to cover (luckily you have 12 hours to do so, from 7pm to 7am), and it just feels too much for one set of eyes. Having said that, my friends and I managed to do a lot more last year -- started a bit earlier, and headed further east and north than we did this time. Had some time restrictions (my friend Isabel was gonna be going home for 12am, but hung in till 2am, in the end) which made a difference...
Anyway.
Started at "Horroridor" -- easily THE most impressive of the exhibitions/installations. Still waiting on Izzy's pix, cuz hers are better, but you get the idea. Basically, a corridor of Union Station (train station for both commuters and inter-city travel = tourists got to see this!) was banked with 3 huge video screens on each side - one side was looped clips of women screaming; the other side was men. It wasn't all horror-movie clips (but mostly), just any screaming. (Including Rambo, and young Eric Cartman with more of an arrrrrrrgh! kind of "scream.") The clips were largely themed, too: video sets of fire, monsters, rape scenes, etc. (but all facial reaction only -- i.e. the screaming -- though some of those faces were blood spattered, or, uh, monsters). This was about 9:30pm, and I delighted in the fact that the "venue" was packed, there were lots of children, and every single fucking person was wearing a big grin. It was far from "scary." It was just a really cool fun thing in a public space. REAL fun to pick out the movies the clips were from. We stayed there through at least 4 loops through the series. So fun!
(In "horror" type news, missed the Zombies in Condoland stuff. IF I'd been with different people and had more time to go to one of the northern art zones, I woulda headed to this. TOTALLY interactive! You had the choice of showing up in your own zombie gear --if you're of the annual Zombie Walk ilk--OR they'd outfit you with make-up and clothing. Professional types only -- they only wanted nurse zombies, or businessman, or pilots, or whatever...couldn't just be a bum or a student; that's no fun! I guess the only thing is you would then have to walk around the other events the rest of the night -- and we did see a couple of these un-dead -- but small price to pay for a chance to crawl outta the grave. Not sure there were enough brains around last night to satisfy all, though.
)
Next thing, "Earth and Sky" was underwhelming. Not even in comparison to Horroridor, but in general. In one of the European Nuit Blanche events where this particular piece originated, there was this beautiful (and huge) canvas stretched across one of those narrow, Euro streets, suspended three or four stories above...and painted to look like the sky (that you could no longer see because this canvas was covering it...ha ha!). See the photo of the original installation here:
http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/exhibition.aspx?zone=B&rowID=0 Unfortunately, here, the "space" was in this weird walkway beside an expressway underpass, which is already low... it was basically like looking at some crappy painting, but instead of on a wall, overhead. It was seriously no more than 10-feet above us. Lame. We didn't bother taking pix.
En route to something I'd selected in another zone, we stumbled across a few things we hadn't planned, including a photog exhibition that actually isn't part of Nuit Blanche but totally disturbing photo-journalist pieces, and a video installation (that is part of Nuit Blanche) in the business district. (That's one of the things Isabel and I goobed out about...art in typically un-arty parts of town. Kinda cool!)
Next up on the "official" walk: "Domaine de l'angle #2," which in previous incarnations has involved suspended drop ceilings (you know, those white ceiling panels often found in offices and rec rooms) w/ florescent lighting panels over forest areas -- a cool juxtaposition -- but in this case over an alley way. Still pretty cool.
Then it was "Into the Blue," that big plastic blue thing in the shopping mall, followed by "Stereoscope," at City Hall -- essentially turned into the world's largest interactive computer screen. 960 windows of the towers outifitted with rear-projection lighting. Onlookers could control which windows lit up by cell phone (if they signed up in advance), thereby creating their own patterns. (Which you can't tell from my pix, really.) At one point participants were apparently playing a massive game of Pong. Stereoscope was broadcast live around the world via the web and on a giant screen in Melbourne Australia's Federation Square as part of the international Urban Screens Conference.
There was also an interactive LED display outside at The Art Gallery of Ontario (still under Gehry's re-design -- set to open mid-November -- so the gallery itself wasn't open).
We headed to the Music Gallery venue next -- a church that's divided into two parts: one was showing experimental film shorts, including our client's "Pochsy," while the other part was set up like a sports bar. I'd go to church all the time if they served more than just shitty wine. (cough)
Brief stop-in at the "Droppin' Stuff" exhibition but it was exactly what it promised...dropping TVs, whatever, from a crane. I've seen this kind of stuff before so not that exciting and we moved on.
Decided on a wee break so headed to a street with few exhibitions/installations so we wouldn't have to battle crowds. Prolly midnight at this point. Isabel and I met up with my friend Patrick for a quick pint/breather at a bar near my place, then back out... to the park near my house. Last year, the park was full of people and art. This time, only 3 exhibits/installations, including my friend Rob's -- that's the fake ID guy, from Swizzle Gallery...no wonder I like him -- so the park was kind of a bust.
Walked a little while down the (very crowded) street just south of me for the Knit Cafe all-knit Toronto landmarks (funny!), then Isabel and Pat pretty much called it quits.(Around 2am-ish).
My hood is the part of the Art & Design district, so this "Zone" was easily the most heavily trafficked. Plenty of people around, so never felt un-safe walking around alone or anything... Actually saw a lot of stuff without other people dragging me down.
The Drake Hotel had some interactive video stuff going on, but I didn't actually go in. Just walked by -- but their awesome paper-fragments in all their hotel windows lit up with coloured lights at least made for a purty photo. On to part II of Zone C.
Was hoping to catch "Future (...........) Perfect" but got a bit lost in the meat-packing district (not code...about being lost, nor about packing meat). In no particular order, ended up seeing (and making a wish at) Yoko Ono's world-wide traveling exhibition, "Wish Trees," "Untitled" (photo I posted of projected women figures doing what audience commanded, via computer cursor), which required going into this weird warehouse space via a huge fenced-pen kind of thing (see photo here), "Euphemisms for the Intimate Enemy" (also in photo posted earlier... 550 55-gallon drums with ever-changing lit-up text), "Purified by Fire," in which it appeared -- thanks to more rear-projected video -- looked like the third floor of a converted warehouse was on fire, "Overflow," a waterfall flowing from a third story window which was hard to capture in photos because the installation was happening through a chain-link fence -- probably because of all the debris below in the site), and the "Bubble Habitat."
I missed a ton of stuff, but you can't possibly do everything, and I had a ton of fun doing what I did.
I think every city and not just Paris, Montreal, Chicago, Santa Monica, Riga, Madrid, Bucharest, Miami, Toyko, Brussels, La Valette and various UK cities (like Birmingham, Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, etc) should do this. It really is a feast for the senses. And Nuit Blanche means, of course, White Night (so lots of light installations and video), and who couldn't do with a little more light (and art) in their lives?
the end.
[attachment deleted by admin]
Author
