Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 1 > Fly By Night

Considering this is only its 5th year, Nuit Blanche has become a Toronto mainstay in a relatively short time. I think it's the romance of the concept: 12 hours from sunset to sunrise when the city is teeming with people until the wee hours, roaming the streets in search of art and spectacle. And like any romance, there's good (witnessing a city at play, seeing the gleam of discovery in people's eyes) and the bad (the drunks, navigating the crowds, not every installation connects with me). But every year, the streets are thriving and alive at 4am and I want to be a part of that.

This year I served as one of the Nuit Narrators for the event, sharing the night as I went. It proved to be a great motivator for staying out for the whole event. Also, it helped piece together the next afternoon after 4 hours sleep.

If you want a few tips for getting through the night: wear good walking shoes, dress in layers, and pack some supplies. On the supply side, packing light is good as you're on the move and need to maneuver through the crowds.

6:51pm all signed in at the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche centre at Yonge and Dundas. One of the changes this year was Yonge Street being closed to traffic from Bloor to Front Street, and it proved to be a highlight, walking down the middle of the road at 7pm. Pedestrians turned out in the thousands to take advantage of the festivities. Woe unto any drivers who didn't get the memo.

By 7:15PM I've met up with my partner in Nuit, Ms Rita, and we're off into the night. It takes a little while to come up with a plan of action: the challenges are 1) don't miss anything cool; and 2) avoid those areas that get clogged with crowds. You'll see later I forget about #2.

We decide to plunge south into Zone C, curated by Christof Migone. When the exhibition is named "SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO", how can I resist.

Auto Lamp, C1 shining into the night. Ms Rita wants to make it into a Lite Brite

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:00:51 PM

7:45PM we reach Yonge and Queen and the sun's gone down. The twilight is all the better to take in Auto Lamp by Kim Adams.

A van turned into a landlocked lighthouse, it's skin punctured with holes and insides filled with light. It shines out into the night:



"The vehicle's consistency is compromised, it's barely there, it's more holes than whole. "

C2 scape with 6 and 7 sound installation sounds like it's stalking us, the sound of breathing altered into something menacing

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:31:46 PM

We walk further and find ourselves at the Cloud Gardens on Richmond. We're drawn to the noise of Annie Onyi Cheung's installation "_scape with 6 and 7".

C14 The Task at 8:32pm moving bricks back and forth all night without building anything. An endurance test?

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:34:25 PM

South of Adelaide we find one of the open call projects selected by the curator. The Task by Chris Shepherd proves to be one of the most fascinating projects I saw that night. A man stacks and unstacks cement blocks all night. It's not in the effort of building anything, but simply the task. Nothing will be built, nothing destroyed.

We talked with the artist, Chris Shepherd, about how the repetition of the task is a meditative thing, as much mental as physical. He found the murmer of the crowds akin to white noise, nice and comforting. Chris wasn't doing the task for a purpose, "I'm just doing it because I want to do it."

C13 Wait Until You See ... I can't spoil what's behind the curtain
by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:46:40 PM

As a perk of my role as Nuit Narrator, I was given a media pass that allowed us to bypass any lines and head straight in to an installation. At "Wait Until You See This", my "skip the line" media pass was my undoing. This installation was based on the idea of lining up, the anticipation. And when you line up for 5, 10, 30 minutes, and finally peek behind the curtain?

Well, I skipped the line and wait straight in, to see what everyone else would eventually see: nothing.

My reaction was amusement, but what would my reaction be if I had waited like the piece intended me to?

Wedged between two buildings, three enormous inflatable clown heads.

Creepy but satisfyingly held at a distance, stuck with no place to go. One of the most popularly photographed installations at Nuit Blanche.

C8 Endgame squishing your fears

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:55:24 PM

C10 1850 where the waters of Lake Ont reached
by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 9:08:25 PM

At the southern tip of Zone C, we arrive at the point where Lake Ontario once reached. The water once stretched inland to Front. Those days are gone, but the shimmer of blue lights creates a ghost of that long gone time.

C9 Vexations the cycle continues song, sculpture, song ,sculpture
by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 9:18:16 PM

I seemed drawn to these installations themed around repetition and time. Vexations was a remarkable project. Built around a composition which instructs the player to play 840 repetitions, this installation had to accomplish the task in 12 hours. 2 pianists, 12 hours, each of the 840 repetitions printed on an individual sheets which, after playing, were taken and transformed into a paper sculpture.

The dancing clock of The Endless Pace (C7)

by the2scoops at Saturday, October 02, 2010 9:34:28 PM

In the Bay Adelaide Centre we found what was one of my favourite installations, Big O by Žilvinas Kempinas. Like The Task, it was beautiful in its simple concept: a loop of magnetic tape precariously balanced between a series of fans. It wavers, it flows, but still remains aloft. It's like some simple game we played as children, growing anxious every time it touches the floor that the game will be over.

Area around Ryerson is crowded, prob a good time to check out The Distillery District by the2scoops via iPhone at 12:16 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

Greatly pleased by the pieces we found in Zone C, we take a break for food, and that's when we're struck by indecision: it's 10:30pm, either we head back into the main zones where it's likely the crowds are out, or head to one of the outlying areas like Liberty Village or The Distillery District. We decided to check out the exhibits around Ryerson University, which in retrospect was a wrong turn.