Arty Party

Auto Lamp - My Favorite Exhibit this year

We’re pretty much done with Nuit Blanche – Toronto’s annual all-night celebration d’art. This is the event’s 5th anniversary and we’ve been lucky enough to attend all but one year. But it’s gotten out of hand.

The organizers have improved aspects of the experience, like condensing the area where exhibits are found, but they dropped the ball on some of the most basic items – like providing planning materials for us plebs who want to actually find the exhibits. Clearly written descriptions of what each artist intends would be lovely as well, rather than the hackneyed and obtuse abstracts that make it feel like the artist is offering an exploration of his own navel lint.

More critically, NB is starting to suffer from success failure. Too many people trying to crowd into small venues to see smaller spectacles.

That wouldn’t be so bad, but it seems as if 90% of that crowd is students simply out for a fun night of smoking up and getting drunk on a closed-off Yonge street, or dancing at an impromptu rave in Dundas square…what’s artistic about that, I ask?!

Still, while this will likely be our last NB, we at least saw a couple of cool pieces in between the ubiquitous video installations. One artist had taken a plain white van and created some beautiful designs by punching holes into the truck body. The photo above, taken with my iPhone, doesn’t do it justice because it was actually really lovely, with light streaming out through the design.

And we saw three giant inflated clown heads, jammed into a vacant alleyway – a fairly impressive site and one that generated some good discussion. But that was about it.

We’ll just have to find something else to do in Toronto next year.

Giant Scary Clown Heads

An Evening of Assbooks

…And the Withering Insults that Drove Us Onward
At Nuit Blanche 2007, one year ago, there was an exhibit slated to appear in Toronto’s Kensington Market called Assbook. As near as we could interpret from the curator’s description, the artist planned to set up a photocopy machine and have audience members photocopy their posteriors for posterity, binding them into a collection: The Assbook.

Because it sounded irreverent (and because we thought we might get to see some skin) we scoured Kensington Market for Assbook, but the exhibit was nowhere to be found. We’re still not sure if the artist backed out or if the Nuit Blanche organizers pulled the plug on the exhibit, but for whatever reason, Assbook never happened.

Since then, any time there’s an exhibit we can’t locate, or one that is misleading (based on the curator’s description), or one that’s just plain bad, we term it an assbook and subject it to the acid wit of our crew of art connoisseurs.

Nuit Blanche 2008: Full of Assbooks
Let me preface this by saying that the group of friends that joins us for NB every year has no illusions about the  artistic efforts on display in Toronto. Oh sure, We’re always very excited after reading grandiose curatorial descriptions promising wonderful and eloquent exhibits, but we’ve been attending this all-night art event long enough to know that the exhibits rarely live up to the hype. Yes, there are some that do, but it’s no secret that you need to wade through a lot of crap to find the awe-inspiring.

Assbooks abound. But don’t for a moment think that’s a bad thing. There’s more to Nuit Blanche than art. If there wasn’t, the whole endeavour would have failed in the first year!

• There’s the simple fact that you’re out on the streets of Toronto much much later than you would ever normally be. We didn’t get home until 5 am this year.You get tired and cranky, but it’s an experience that brings you closer to the friends you share it with.
• There’s the fact that you’re hopped up on drugs. In our case it was caffeine, but it was plain to see that alcohol was a big drug of choice this year. And our noses made it abundantly clear that weed was a big fan favorite too. Whatever your poison, altered states always add to the fun.
• Most importantly, there’s the company you keep – in our case, a crack team of humorists, spewing barbed insults and directing their quick wit at every lackluster piece of crap that gets touted as artwork. What fun!

Yes, NB is less about art and more about making light of it. Still, we can appreciate the interesting exhibits:

• With House of Leaves, the artist tore thousands of pages from trashy romance novels and taped them to an outdoor hallway, inviting participants to walk through. I have no idea what it was supposed to mean, but it was pretty in its own way; making the hallway appear warmer, or at least more interesting. I suppose in the end it’s not much different from wallpaper. 3-Dimensional wallpaper.
• Projekt Blinkinlights was impressive just for the technicality of it. The front of Toronto’s City Hall was turned into a giant dot matrix display, with lamps in each office window turning on and off to let the artists play a giant game of Pong. This video is sideways, but you get the idea. Note: Video lost when Vox blogging platform folded



• The Horrorridor – a set of six projection screens set up in an unused portion of Union Station showing clips of actors screaming in rage, fear, and pain – was probably the most disturbing exhibit this year. Despite the fact these were all recognizable actors from Hollywood films and TV shows – and despite the fact that I knew they were just acting – being immersed in these sights and sounds actually had an impact on my emotional state. Which is great, especially given that this exhibit could have just been silly.

But for every worthwhile exhibit, there were multiple bombs. I’m not going to run through them all, but there was one that was particularly disappointing. Zombies in Condoland was supposed to take place in a park area surrounded by four large condos. People dressed as zombies were simply supposed to wander the park, I assumed as a comment on how our society is tranquilized and complacent. Should have been as easy as pie to coordinate, but by the time we arrived about halfway through the evening, there were only about a dozen zombies and the artist was trying to corral them for the start of the performance. There’s something strange about someone in a zombie outfit yelling at other zombies with a megaphone to “Please congregate by the fountain!” It could have been wonderful, but lacked the organizational skill necessary to pull it off.

Unless… Wait! Maybe WE were supposed to be the zombies, gawking at this catastrophe of an exhibit… Naw. That would just be lame.

And to Finish?
Last year, you’ll recall, we finished our evening at Lamport stadium, where we helped inflate a gigantic locust – the surprise highlight of the evening. Lamport delivered this year’s surprise highlight as well. The curator promised dozens of sports team mascots working all night to entertain the crowds. After so long on the field (we arrived at 4 am) we hoped to see mascots that had turned grumpy and lazy, but when we arrived they were clearly tired, but still going strong. It was so great to be among the crowd just listening to sports-event music and watching the mascots strut their stuff.

I don’t know if it was art, but It was uplifting, and it was the best way to finish the night.

The Race to Save the Giant Locust

“Wow! Boxes!” cooed the crowd with excitement.

We all pretty much agreed that this year, Toronto’s Nuit Blanche was less interesting in terms of exhibits than it was last year. I mean, come on. Three boxes — one vibrating, one vibrating harder so that it moves, and one that intermittently “inhales and exhales” — do not “embody the human experience.” The artist was clearly inspired by her lack of creativity.

But here’s the thing. Despite the lack of talent on display, it seems Nuit Blanche is still fun. For us, that’s because it became less about the art – to be fair, there was a smattering of interesting exhibits – and more about the companionship. And it turns out also that exhibits like the three boxes were great fodder for the jokes and conversation that made this nighttime excursion so much fun.

It gave us a great opportunity to commune with our friends Lex and Ger – to gab about the art, the city, and the people, and to just hang out and poke fun at everything. We never strayed far from one another because there was always a sense that we were in this together – that we would make this fun and entertaining, despite the artists’ best efforts to ruin it for us!

Gerry, leading the way

Best example: one of the last sites we visited was a giant inflatable locust that was supposed to be on display in a football field. It promised to be an interesting site to see. Well, when we got there, it was deflated. But people – both those associated with the installation and just visitors who felt like helping out – all took to tugging and pulling on the deflated carcass in a combined effort to help the giant fans get air back into the beast.

Gerry led the way as we tried to help and, while we lost interest before it was fully inflated, we definitely saw a vast improvement in the size of the beast before we left the scene. There was a great sense of achievement and community – not only with the rest of the Nuit-Blanche-goers, but within our own party – to try to make this evening work. And that sense of community was why it did work. Not because of the efforts of the artists, but because we were so connected with each other.

Semi-inflated.

Anyway, we capped off our five hour trek with a last quest to find a decent quick meal at 4a.m. before heading home for a well-deserved rest. After much deliberation, we managed to find a yummy snack at an Indian restaurant near Lex and Ger’s.

With tummies full, we headed to bed. Can’t wait til next year!

Pillow Fight! (As Promised)

pillow fight!

At Nuit Blanche in Toronto this past weekend, we were promised a trip on the “pillow fight” bus. While the bus never materialized (although we did get to ride on the mylar bus), we did manage to find some professional pillow fighters during the evening’s wanderings.

We got a short video of the event — which includes some pretty impressive blows. Check it out!