NUIT BLANCHE
Last year during Nuit Blanche, Ai Weiwei's installation Forever Bicycles made an impression on many Toronto city dwellers in Nathan Phillips Square. The location and the size of the space for the instillation reverberates the mandate for Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche: to make contemporary art accessible to large audiences, while inspiring dialogue and engaging the public to examine its significance and impact on public space.
The 12-hour period allows all types of art lovers to roam Toronto's urban jungle from dusk to dawn. On October 4th at 6:45 pm - to be exact - Toronto's art community will exhibit over 100 projects.
Unfortunately, Nuit Blanche caters to quantity and not always quality. Patrons should not show up that night with the expectation that all the projects are worth trekking to see. Take out your Google Maps and plug in the locations of all the places you have chosen before hand to make your experience that much more enjoyable.
Thanir has put together a list of the top contemporary art installations to discover before you see the crack of dawn in Toronto.
Global Rainbow, 2014
Yvette Mattern
Light Installation
Global Rainbow is a large-scale light sculpture that uses high specification laser light projection beaming in parallel horizontal lines creates a natural perspective horizon arc simulating a natural rainbow arc with a trajectory of up to 60 km. Starting in Chinatown and ending at the CN Tower, Global Rainbow blazes through Toronto's night sky as a symbol of hope and diversity.
Visible city-wide 6pm - midnight
Best viewing location: 222 Spadina Avenue (South of Dundas Street West)
Extended Project: October 5 -9 & 12, 13 and 6 pm - 7 am, October 10 & 11
Made in China, 2014
Maria Ezcurra
Installation
Made in China is made up of garments labeled "Made in China," donated by the community of Toronto and set in a Chinatown alleyway. It functions as a bridge that symbolically connects cultures, old customs and current trends, globalization and tradition, society and individuals. It is about how we see and understand ourselves from other views, and vice versa.
Location: 330 Spadina Avenue (north of Dundas Street West)
Extended Project: Visit 24 hours a day, October 5 – 13
Screaming Booth, 2014
Chelanie Beaudin-Quintin
Installation
The Screaming Booth is a solution to the lack of places in the city where we can freely express our emotions. It offers instead a place of release, where screams no longer have to be suppressed.
Three Locations: 280 Spadina Avenue (South-west corner at Dundas Street West), 290 Queen Street West (North side, between Soho Street and Beverley Street), 180 Spadina Avenue (East side, north of Queen Street West)
Extended Project: Nathan Phillips Square, 100 Queen Street West, October 5 – 13
Melting Point, 2014
LeuWebb Projects (Jeff Lee & Omar Khan)
Light Installation
Melting Point stocks a pair of Fort York's cannons with an artillery of glowing good feelings. Featuring tributaries of light and a chorus of waves and harps, the work lays a defense against market forces beyond, creating a one-night safe space for Art.
Location: Fort York National Historic Site, 100 Garrison Road
Extended Project: Visit 7 pm - 7 am, October 5 - 13
Walk Among Worlds, 2013
Máximo González
Installation
The immersive installation is composed of 7,000 beach balls printed to resemble globes; each of these representing one million of the inhabitants of the planet. The globes, made of a petroleum derivative, require the introduction of human breath to give them their geoidal shape. They come in three different sizes, alluding to the concepts of “first” and “third world.” In this piece, the artist explores the effects of light and lightness, while reflecting on the political divisions of the world.
Location: Ogden Junior Public School, 33 Phoebe Street (East of Spadina Avenue)
Amaze, 2014
Marcos Zotes
Installation
Amaze transforms an ordinary scaffolding structure covered by multiple layers of fabric, into a fully immersive environment of light and sound in the heart of the city. The idea of the labyrinth is predicated in the notion of finding oneself through the notion of getting lost.
Location: 302 Queen Street West (At Soho Street)
Absolute Space, 2014
Callum Schuster, Brady Bothwell, David Nolan
New Media Installation
Using smoke and lasers to create a false sense of perspective, Absolute Space generates an optical experience for the viewer to become aware of one's depedendence on the eyes for optimal viewership.When entering the cubed room the viewer will see sets of lasers drawing grids through smoke to create a false sense of space within the room. In this way there is a powerful phenomenon of how our environment can affect our physical, mental and emotional well being.
Location: Fort York, Garrison Common, 100 Garrison Road (Located in the middle of Garrison Common, the open green space immediately west of Fort York)
2YouTopia, 2014
Vertical City
Performance Art
2YouTopia (based on an earlier performance, YouTopia, originally executed in 2013) features a free-standing maze of construction scaffolding and architectural piping evoking a decaying residence suspended precariously over a pool of water, accompanied by a dense soundscape. A sole human inhabitant will navigate the structure in movement throughout the night, pushing through boredom, exhaustion, distraction and any number of human bodily effects.
Location: Nathan Phillips Square - Parking lot P1, Underground, 100 Queen Street West (enter via Trout staircase or elevator on Nathan Phillips Square South of Albert Street)
Absolutely Free, 2014
Grégoire Blunt, Emmy Skensved, Lili Huston-Herterich, Aryen Hoekstra, Lorna Mills, Matthew Williamson
Installation
The basis of the group exhibition Absolutely Free is discorporation, where one can leave their body through digital bodies. This phenomenon is apparent when Googling oneself, sharing A Look Back movie on Facebook, or posting a selfie. The six-person show includes works that use immersive light, sound, film, video, .gif and sculptural installations, whereby the artists develop unique and interactive environments that will accumulate matter or deteriorate over the duration of the night.
Location: OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street (Enter at Butterfield Park, south end of 100 McCaul Street)
