My Nuit Blanche, 2012

Picture of "World Without Sun" in Nathan Phillips Square. Photo by Andrew Francais Wallace, 2012 Toronto Star

 
Nuit Blanche happened last weekend, where once again Toronto's downtown was transformed into an all-night celebration of art. I think there are two ways you can enjoy Nuit Blanche. One is as a somewhat passive observer, who soaks up the various smaller installations that pepper the downtown area. The other is to try and go for some of the bigger exhibits that draw large line-ups, but are tend to offer a more polished experience.

You'll get hits and misses either way, sometimes within the same instillation. Last year, there was a brilliant instillation that was little more than a spotlight set up in the middle of a closed-off street, which was to encourage visitors to simply let loose. Tell a joke, perhaps show off a neat trick. Whatever. Unfortunately, once the wee hours hit, the kids (under their parents' supervision) faded, and all that were left were a bunch of drunk teenagers, telling nothing but dirty jokes. Oh well.

Me and my girlfriend opted to try and hit several of the "bigger" exhibits this year, rather than simply whimsically drifting from exhibit to exhibit like previous years. It was once again a positive experience overall; I'd love to hear about other people's experiences! Here's what we did, in order:

Zone B 

#19: The Toronto Consort, Forty Part Motet(2001)

This instillation, held at the Trinity St Paul's United Church near Bloor and Spadina, had participants walk into a room where a circle of fouty speakers had been assembled. Each speaker was a recording of a choir member singing Spem in alium. Some of the listeners really got into this, and while standing for 10 minutes was a bit of a drag (could there not have been more than one bench?) the song was beautiful, especially as it was literally "surround sound." If you got close to the speakers either before or after the 10 minute piece, you can listen to the individual choir members chatting as they were preparing to record.

#17: University of Toronto Schools, Lux (2012)

We started our Nuit Blance pretty early, so early that there wasn't much of an exhibit when we came. Participants were asked to write secrets on paper lanterns, which would be hung from the building at 371 Bloor West. We didn't get a chance to come back when the sun had properly set, and when lanterns had been hung. I wrote on a small lantern both an inspirational quote and how to get the Warp Whistle in 1-3 of Super Mario Bros 3.

#16: Lesia Mokrycke Studio, Chõrus (2012)

There was actually two small installations at the Bata Show Museum; the first was a small room where the walls were covered in drawings of what looked like graphs and smoke, vaguely giving the image of city buildings. The second was a black room where a blurry image played on a screen. In both cases, sounds that were vaguely like city scape noises played. I don't think I really "got" what was trying to be communicated here (how sound affects our sense of space); sometimes art needs to be a bit less subtle!

#14:  The Royal Conservatory, The Royal Conservatory Presents (2012)

This was pretty cool. From the outside, viewers could watch as participants inside created two different window scapes that had been covered with a light blue material. The first was filled with images cut from cardboard that were then pasted onto the window, creating a shadowy sort of "stained glass". The second had participants act and pose near the window, creating temporal shadows that could be seen from the other side. Neat stuff!

Inside there were two areas for performances that were rotating through. We got there at the end of one of them, involving what looked to be an actor and a lady on a clarinet. Can't comment on it. Inside one of the theatres, they had this dual thing going on where a musician would play a solo piece on an instrument, while an artist used their music for inspiration (I think). We had the pleasure of entering just as Sylvian Blaissel played this fancy piece on a harp. It was a pretty impressive performance, especially since I'd never seen an expert play a huge harp before! Of slightly more head scratching was the artist, John Coburn, who did a pair of rough sketches of Blaissel as he played. I mean, the sketches were fine, but the artist seemed to spend more time mixing paint, examining his sketch, thinking about his line, and uh, not being on stage, than actual sketching. Artists!

#23: Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Various)

A kind of ode to the piano, we saw six different pieces inside of U of T's Hart House. The first was about a minute long video of a piano being tested in China. As you may expect of a process that involves hitting multiple keys very quickly, it was loud. The Hart House help desk was right outside; I imagine the volunteers who had to sit there for hours were delighted.

The second piece involved one man playing a song on a piano... except not all at once. The artist (a very amateur pianist) played the song carefully (and probably pretty badly), one hand at a time, then spliced recordings of him playing with each hand together such that he was playing the song "well", then combined both hands at once. The result sounds terrific, but watching the videos of his hands, you can see how many measures got smushed together (and for people who know how to play piano, his terrible fingering). Great stuff!

Outside they had a piano rigged up with piano wire attached to the roof of one of the buildings. If I remember correctly, the wire was carrying the vibrations of an actual piano piece, causing the piano bellow to faintly act as a kind of speaker. Kind of neat!

Next was a room with a guy hammering nails into piano keys. The room was crowded and the sound... well, he was hammering piano keys. How do you think it sounded? We watched for a few seconds and left.

The next piano piece had the viewer step inside a room where four piano techniques were being played, each projected on a different screen. It wasn't all that impressive if I were to be honest.

Finally, we saw the tail end of a performance where a guy was (apparently) playing the piano in a unique way. It didn't sound that great, and it wasn't the Ben Folds-esq playing that I was hoping for. Oh well!

#62: Max Streicher, Vertical Constructions: Dancer #1 and #2, 2012

Then we headed downtown and get swamped by the crowds! Sheesh. We ended up passing by a few nearby exhibits just because it was too insanely packed to reasonably watch. Special "Ugh" to that one guy with the speaker and mic who kept trying to explain about how we'll all rot in hell without Jesus or whatever. I'm trying to watch someone breakdance you are ruining the groove.

So we escaped into the Eaton Centre, but managed to only pass by one exhibit this year. The place was filled with teenagers. I ended up passing by one of the "first years" (she's a second year now), Sophie Knowles. Sorry I couldn't stop and chat! My girlfriend is much more aggressive at navigating crowds than I am, and she vaguely threatened to leave me behind if I didn't keep up.

The exhibit was... okay. They didn't really look like "dancers" in any traditional sense, and the materials used (recycled billboards) gave them a pretty big paper-mache look. I don't think they were disappointing so much as they were the only thing we saw in the Eaton Centre this year; last year they had a robot that moved around watching people and it was pretty cool.

#77: Peter Bowyer, Flat Space, 2012

An instillation of panels arranged on the ground that gave the feeling that the pavement was "warping", this was kind of neat, although there was some obvious discomfort that the crowd had with sharing the space with the exhibit. Without any sort of barrier you could literally walk right next to it, and some people weren't sure if they could walk through it or not. I saw someone try, and get booed. Ha.

City Hall (Museum for the End of the World)

#74: Christine Davis, World Without Sun, 2012

Before I get into some of the City Hall exhibits, I want to say that the maps of this area were kind of confusing! This exhibit was set up in the middle of Nathan Phillips Square, and made for nice watching as we climbed the ramp up to City Hall's rooftop garden area. Projected on six circular screens were images of... well I don't know wheat they were images of. I went with underwater stuff. It was pretty, and not having to wait in line to see it was a huge plus for me.

#61: Public Access, Symposium - Until the End of the World, 2012

This was probably the most awkward "exhibit" of the night. There was a huge lineup, which we thought was for Marco Brambilla's Civilization (Megaplex), 2012. It was not. What it was a line up for (as we found out once we were inside) was a talk with Slavoj Žižek.

I'm going to put Žižek's politics aside (he's a radical leftist), but will say his speech was entertaining (if uneven, the guy doesn't know how to be concise). However, the experience itself was... kind of terrible. Yes yes, it's our own fault for not understanding what we were wandering into, but we didn't enter thinking we were going to watch a two hour lecture. We went in wanting to see some art, and them move on. Not only was the place packed, they ended up ushering us into a room beside council chambers where a video projector was set up. Well, that's fine, except that the video stopped working shortly into his speech. Gheh.

The conditions were not optimal for us. Aside from not really being something we desired to see in the first place (a two hour speech is not exactly art), the place was so packed that we ended up watching from a screen... which would have been okay (there were seats at least), except that the video feed stopped working. Thanks to a large number of idiots blocking the stairs (despite being told to, you know, not do that), we couldn't exactly leave. So we stood with the crowd and watched the rest of the speech, eeking our way out when it was over.

The experience was pretty draining, so we decided to do the "Museum of the Rapture" in the City Hall Parking garage, as it was a big draw to coming here, before calling our Nuit Blanche a, er, night.

#48, Tania Mouraud, Once upon a time, 2011-2012

We go to see a bit of this while waiting in line. Projected on City Hall's east tower, this film contrasts images of beautiful forests next to the machines that want to turn them into Ikea furniture. It was neat to watch as we waited in line to get in.

Speaking of the line, there was a large crowd waiting to get inside the underground parking garage. They had signs up giving a suggested wait time (we got in place around the 45 minute sign), but the wait was much shorter than that, probably only about 15 minutes. Special props to the people who were trying to convince the bouncer to let their friend over the wall. No amount of chanting or clapping was convincing enough, but their spirit was admirable. Special slops to the group of guys who thought yelling "YEEEPP" a bunch of times was funny.

No.

#56 Douglas Coupland, Museum of the Rapture, 2012

Coupland's wackiness was on full display here. Entering the parking garage, viewers experience an array of signs that were each fighting each other to be a new pop culture slogan (you know how Coupland can be). Upon entering, to the right was a series of scenes of people who have vanished, leaving nothing but what they were using (a shopping cart for example) and their clothes. Creepy! To the left were a series of installations where actors played out a classroom, a Christmas living room, and a office scene. The office scene was the creepiest, as all the actors pretended they were in the throes of death. Pretty awesome!

#59: Thomas Blanchard, The Vault, 2012

These were a series of neat shiny tubes with images inside. If you stuck your head in, you'd see a extreme reflection from all angles. My girlfriend had a lot of fun poking her head in them all.

#49: Iris Häussler, Ou Topos, 2012

The most "museum" like of the exhibits, this piece worked on the premise of viewing the historical remains of a man driven to board himself up in fear of the apocolypse. The glass exhibits of "objects" the man used were cute, but the full sized trailed filled with books, mad writings, and cans was super cool.

#55: Jean Michel Crettaz and Mark-David Hosale, Quasar 2.0: Star Incubator, 2012

This was just a neat exhibit of fluorescent colours and tubes and stuff. Not really much to say about it, except that I don't think whatever would come out of that contraption would be human.

#50, Dana Claxton, The Uplifting, 2012

These trio of movies were (keeping with the theme) creepy. There was one of a woman in red just kind of looking like Charlie Brown after getting the football pulled away yet again. Dust yourself off lass! It's not your fault Lucy is a jerk.

#60, Sarah Beck, Postcards from the End / Dirty Loonie, 2012 / 2009

The Postcards were my favorite piece of this whole exhibit. They were (as the title suggests) postcard-like structures that showed (for example) the view from a supermarket roof overlooking a town in chaos, and a giant hole in the roof of a house. They were all designed to allow people to "interact" with them, allowing people to photograph them in these otherworldly situations. Super keen!

Dirty Loonie was (obviously) a pretty political piece. Like one of those drinking birds, the Loon  would dip itself in over and over into a barrel of what I assume was oil, splashing some on the floor (covered in kitty litter) as it came back up. I want to to say I thought it was cute, but the entire time I was thinking how much of a waste of oil the whole production was. So, uh, mission accomplished Miss Beck?

#51, Geoffrey Pugen, 416-788-9663, 2012

This one wasn't labelled, but I'm pretty sure this was technically the last exhibit we saw. As we were leaving through the exit, we could see a bunch of people gathered around what looked like a small rave party in a fenced off area near the ramp. Kind of lame after the trailer and loonie guys, but I won't hold it against them.

At this point, it was approaching 1am and we are old so we had to go retire for the night. Phew! That was my 2012 Nuit Blanche experience! What did I miss out on? Let me know in the comments!