This Saturday, a few dozen people will attempt flight over Nathan Phillips Square. A few streets away, an oversized sculpture will be lit on fire, as a large glacial boulder rolls down Yonge Street and falls into the harbour. Each of these acts, and 131 more, will be performed in the name of collaborative, experiential art as part of the sixth annual Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.
Every year, I wildly look forward to Nuit Blanche, in part because I can think of no other time when orderly Toronto willingly succumbs to such large-scale spectacle. There is something thrilling about seeing spaces and corners rendered invisible in the course of the daily pedestrian tread suddenly become sites of carnivalesque energy and raw artistic vision. The impressive crowds Nuit Blanche garners, though sometimes maddening, are a clear testament to the truly democratic nature of this urban art feast.
This year, the event will showcase more than 130 free contemporary art projects within three zones of the city. As in previous years, the events are a blend of the whimsical and wildly imaginative, the provocative and ambitiously political, and the brilliantly self-indulgent and absurd.
Zone C, which encompasses the financial district, will be taken over by particularly bold large-scale performance art. For instance, it’s hard not to be curious about Flightpath Toronto, a project in which the public will be able to participate in “an urban flight school.” People will glide suspended across a series of flylines while wearing what I imagine — based on the artist’s renderings, one of which is shown above — will be suits with wings. Flightpath was allegedly inspired by the birds of Nathan Phillips Square, and is a comment on the new dimensions of urban transport and public space.
Just down the street from Nathan Phillips Square will be FLUXe, another one of Nuit Blanche’s most spectacular and interactive exhibits. FLUXe will feature a 100 foot x 33 foot LED screen suspended on the north side of Scotia Plaza. Artists and onlookers will be able to use their fingers to create brushstrokes on the oversized digital canvas, collectively creating a giant and continually transforming digital painting.
As in previous years, some Nuit Blanche installations will be decidedly political. In Zone A’s The Police Station, Vancouver artist Althea Thauberger will use trailers to create a make-believe temporary police station. Members of the public will be chosen based on randomly generated profiles and “arrested” by actors in police uniform costumes. “Arrested” citizens will be escorted into the “Police Station,” processed, and temporarily “detained.” Zone A curator Candice Hopkins has said that by simulating a citizen’s interaction with police during an arrest and in detention, The Police Station seeks to highlight the tensions between citizens and authority, and echoes the 2010 G20 mass arrests that took place in Toronto.
Zone A also boasts the striking Erratic, a project in which artist Germaine Koh will roll down Yonge Street and drop into the harbour a massive boulder taken from the Canadian Shield. Koh’s project is meant to capture a pre-industrial development historical moment, when it was human labour — and not cranes and bulldozers — that laid the foundation of this city.
What: 2011 Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
When: Saturday, October 2, 2011
Where: For a full listing of Nuit Blanche zones and events, visit the official site.
Photo: Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Maria Gergin is a Toronto articling student. Her column, Leisure Aid, appears every other Friday here at lawandstyle.ca.