How do I pick just three for Zone B (Downtown South)? Curated by Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher of DisplayCult, and accessible by the Yonge-University subway line (start at Union) this zone is packed–and I mean packed–with a ton of multimedia, performance, installation and sculpture by some of Canada’s (and the world’s) best known artists, including Rebecca Belmore and IAIN BAXTER&. I won’t waste another minute. Here’s what you need to see. Zone A recommendations here. Zone C recommendations here. (Images and descriptions lifted from the Nuit Blanche website.) It all starts on October 3rd at 6:55pm.
Monopoly with Real Money, 2009
IAIN BAXTER&
Performance Art, Multimedia Installation
TMX Broadcast Centre Gallery,
The Exchange Tower
130 King Street West (Viewing area outside venue)
Click here to view this location on a map.
Money becomes a conceptual and tactile medium as Toronto celebrities play the iconic real estate board game throughout the night at the TSX. This timely restaging of the artist’s 1973 event draws an eerie connection between the 1970s era-defining recession and today’s market meltdown. Monopoly, patented during the Great Depression, gains new relevance with every boom-and-bust cycle. Does it provide an escape from the grim reality of stock-market crashes and factory layoffs, or offer a training ground for the next generation of would-be entrepreneurs? See how unlikely combinations of artists, musicians, journalists, authors, media personalities, and (yes!) financiers and developers vie for prize properties in an uncertain investment climate — all played in cold, hard cash.
This project is timely, perfectly suited to its zone and somehow manages to make watching a game of Monopoly sound immensely enticing.
Wild Ride, 2009
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan
Performance Art, Multimedia Installation
Bay Street
(Between Adelaide Street West and King Street West)
Click here to view this location on a map.
Bay Street – emblem of Canada’s banking industry – is closed. The smell of cotton candy and raucous music fill the air. Two midway rides reflect the whirling, tilting exhilaration of the bull market and its less than thrilling collapse. Free to the public and staffed by recently downsized businesspeople, the rides invite audience members to kinetically contemplate the ups and downs of the recent economic crisis. Out of the darkened financial district, screams will be heard!
No additional comment necessary except to say that those carnival-induced screams out of Bay Street are sure to be blood-curdling.
NO, 2009
Santiago Sierra
Sculpture
Temperance Street (East of Bay Street)
Click here to view this location on a map.
Santiago Sierra’s works address structures of power in art and society. His performances, installations and interventions have been featured internationally at venues such as Ikon Gallery, P.S.1/MoMA, Museo Rufino Tamayo, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the ICA (London), and the Sharjah and Moscow biennials. At the 2003 Venice Biennale, he exhibited at the Spanish pavilion. He is represented by the Lisson Gallery (London), Galería Helga de Alvear (Madrid) and Prometeogallery (Milan). At the artist’s request, this biography serves as the description of his piece until it is unveiled during the night of Nuit Blanche.
Hello. Did you read that last sentence? This is some mysterious business. The only clue we’re given is that it’s a sculpture. I won’t even attempt to imagine what it might be. I will just try to be there at 6:55pm when it is unveiled. Anticipation!
Seriously, I could go on and on. Anna Friz’s Respire, Dan Mihaltianu’s Vodka Pool, Marcia Huyer’s Wasted Breath... Spend a lot of your evening here.
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