ZONE A

Dead Philosophers’ Limbo, 2009
Susie Burpee

Court House
361 University Avenue (Outdoor rotunda underpass in the Garden of Justice)
Click here to view this location on a map.

Dead Philosophers’ Limbo is a twelve-hour dance to the life of ideas and the death of philosophers as told by the living philosopher Simon Critchley in his, The Book of Dead Philosophers. Each dancer’s boombox emits passages from the book, broadcasting epitaphs as the score for the performers who literally and figuratively use dance to break into that space between life and death, between mind and body and between the here and the now. Find your place in this limbo as twenty-four dancers dance and nearly two hundred philosophers die. Witness the wonder and amazement as these bodies describe a philosophical dictum for the ages. Dance all you dead philosophers – dance!

Le Grand Peep Show
Casa Loma presents Corpus Dance

The Stables of Casa Loma,
328 Walmer Road
Click here to view this location on a map.

A large Peep Show tent, a presence in the Casa Loma Stables, the sound of carnival music. Inside, two marionettes perform an unusual courtship ritual. Dressed in PVC black bodysuits, they communicate only by touch. Their language, at once comedic and sexy, embodies the infinite complexities of the relationship between men and women. For the really curious, a private Peep show is also available at the back…

Bert and Tony’s Block Party
Jenny-Anne McCowan

John Innes Community Centre
150 Sherbourne Street (at Queen Street East)
Click here to view this location on a map.

Shaped by the social dance movements of the 1930s and inspired by the history of the Ward, home to the city’s most dangerous slum at the time as well as some of Toronto’s most famous dance parlours, Bert and Tony host an open invitation dance-off. Dancers from all disciplines take partners and compete while audience members dance the night away.

move
Peggy Baker, Debashis Sinha (Peggy Baker Dance Projects and Canada’s National Ballet School)

Canada’s National Ballet School,
400 Jarvis Street
Click here to view this location on a map.

Twenty-four dancers advance across the floor in a rolling, meditative pattern. Their spiralling movements evoke the raked sand of a Zen garden. After each cycle of the dance, an audio-visual installation by Debashis Sinha energizes the room.

dance like no one is watching
Stand Up Dance and York Dance Ensemble

This is a mobile project. See Zone A Info Centre (at Yonge-Dundas Square) for Schedule
Click here to view this location on a map.

Contemporary dance meets mobile clubbing. Four teams of dancers perform in relay to portable music across the city. Follow along and listen in. Surprise and spectacle erupt in unique locations as dance celebrates and illuminates pedestrian places. Dancers perform choreography and improvisation travelling from the Distillery District, through downtown, up to Casa Loma and Wychwood Art Barns, back down to Queen West and into Liberty Village.

ZONE B

Dances Distilled
Dance Ontario

55 Mill Street, Case Goods Building
Click here to view this location on a map.

Works by five fresh, fabulous,urban dance groups: AX-S Dance’s Break Time, for 6 performers, inspired by a 15-minute shift; Eroca Nichols’ interactive Made To Order, for 10 performers who solicit ideas from the crowd and make dances on the spot; Infestation, HerciniArts’s timely guerilla aerial that compares an out of control pest situation with corporate greed; Gadfly’s street style fusion inspired by sleeplessness  (NOW Magazine‘s “outstanding ensemble” at Fringe Fest 2008); and Jay9′s travelling piece, Affects/Effects for 3 performers and drummer Al Bee that takes full advantage of The Distillery’s alleyways. Performance schedule online at danceontario.ca.

The Eros Boulevard Cabaret
Sion Irwin-Childs and Eros, Thanatos & the Avant-Garde

The Rivoli
332 Queen Street West
Click here to view this location on a map.

In celebration of Nuit Blanche, The Eros Boulevard Cabaret will present a multimedia experience for the senses live on the front Patio of the Rivoli at the corner of Queen and Spadina. Drawing on the artistic, cultural, comedic and musical heritage of the Rivoli, The Cabaret features a diverse array of short works created in video and all disciplines of dance, choreographed and performed live by emerging and experienced artists from across Canada. Connected by the epic themes of sex, love, light, death, passion and the avant-garde, these themes have been collected from the performing arts and are universal to all cultures, dance forms and modes of creative expression. This broad spectrum of work accurately reflects the vast cultural and artistic resources that co-exist in Toronto today.

ZONE C

Dance of the Cranes, 2009
Brandon Vickerd

Liberty Towers Construction Site
East Liberty Street and Pirandello Street
Click here to view this location on a map.

Dance of the Cranes is a collaborative performance piece consisting of a 13-minute choreographed dance performed by two high-rise construction cranes. The dance will be performed at the beginning of every hour, from 7 pm to 3 am, on the night of Nuit Blanche. At designated times, two tower construction cranes standing on the same site and visible above the Toronto skyline, will come to life in a synchronized spectacle of motion. In the darkness they will slowly begin to pivot, rotate and sway in harmonized gestures, each crane performing delicate motions hundreds of metres above the audience on the sidewalk below. This work is a meditation on the movement and labour that takes place on a colossal scale in the physical building of our urban landscape. It is an attempt to draw the audience’s attention to the massive machines that build our city above our heads and the skill of the individuals that operate the cranes. The dance will be performed at the beginning of every hour, from 7 pm to 3 am. From 4 – 7 am,  video projection of earlier performances will be screened.

So, there you have it. Dance in its many forms are abundant at this year’s Nuit Blanche, and each project embodies an innovative take on movement and expression.

Zone A recommendations here. Zone B recommendations here. Zone C recommendations here.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: dance, nuit blanche, performance, toronto

It all starts on October 3rd at 6:55pm.

FIRE AND SAUSAGE: Small Mercies, 2009
Tom Dean
Visual Art

Parking Lot at Liberty Street and Hanna Avenue
Click here to view this location on a map.

The fires and the Liberty district’s remove, the trace of the feral, suggest the aftermath of a collapse, a catastrophe or apocalypse. But what the artist is interested in is the calm after a fall, when we count our mercies and shared the surplus.  An economic collapse that has returned us to essentials, warmth and food and social generosity.

FIRE AND SAUSAGE: Small Mercies is a social sculpture.  It engages and arranges people.  Participants congregate around a fire, a cooking station, clustered radially around food and fire.  The form remains, enlarging and diminishing, a stable form centered around food and fire.  All the complexity and richness and pathos of a social cluster, strangers and friends with some common purpose and focal point, a clustered audience before a spectacle and themselves a spectacle, figures joining and departing the cluster and flowing from one site to another.

After the fall, a hobo utopio. With sausage and hot chocolate by Jamie Kennedy, piano by Hank Bull, and poker by Jim Garrard.

I don’t know what a “hobo utopio” is, but I like the idea of a “social sculpture.”

BICITYCLE (Bike City), 2009
Kyohei Sakaguchi
Interactive Mobile Installation

Lamport Stadium Parking Lot, west side

Liberty Street, at Fraser Avenue
Click here to view this location on a map.

BICITYCLE (Bike-city) is a project about mobile life. Sakaguchi is inspired by the lifestyle, innovation and survival skills of homeless people in Japan. His research focuses on two concepts; mobility and recycling. The houses of the homeless are easy to dismantle and remake because people are forced to move their houses. They separate the infrastructures: water, gas, toilet, and electricity. The houses are made from the scraps of the city, as they understand the materials of urban waste are natural resources. Sakaguchi undertakes this concept further through incorporating used bicycles as a survival action for the city. For Nuit Blanche, the artist will create 11 mobile housing units, each attached to a bicycle. The audience can interact and relocate the works within the area.

More interactivity, this time focused on mobility and recycling.

Take Shelter, 2009
Annie Si-Wing Tung
Maggie Flynn
Meiko Maruyama
Stephanie Nicolò
Jessica Thalmann
Installation

Lamport Stadium Parking Lot, west side

Liberty Street, at Fraser Avenue

Click here to view this location on a map.

Take shelter. Build. Take apart. Rebuild. Make shelter. Recreate.

Bring a can if you can. Take a can if you need.

Canned food and cardboard boxes form the basis of this participatory installation. Using these materials, viewers are invited to pack, fold, and stack to create a shelter. Participants may take food items as needed or may bring non-perishable food items to contribute to the piece. Remaining food will go to the Fort York Food Bank. As participants add to, take from, and alter the shelter, they are implicated in a struggle for stability in a system where stability isn’t possible. The cyclical and temporal nature of this exhibition is reflective of the situation perpetuated by superficial solutions supposed to remedy issues of poverty and homelessness. In donating leftover food to a food bank, Take Shelter simultaneously participates in and problematizes one of such temporary solutions. The experience may be playful, reminiscent of building a fort with the box that the refrigerator was delivered in. But it also may be desperate: how do we create shelter when our resources don’t make sense?

Another interactive project, still referencing sustainability and homelessness (like Sakaguchi) but folding in a limitation of resources and a building experience that includes the audience.

These three projects complement each other well, all raising some combination of similar themes: mobility, domesticity, home, sustainability and reusing/recycling. And they all seem to be tackled in different, creative, critical and engaging ways.

Zone A recommendations here. Zone B recommendations here.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: dwelling, homelessness, interactive, makiko haro, mobility, nuit blanche, take shelter, tom dean, toronto, zone c

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.

Zone A recommendations here. Zone C recommendations here.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: display cult, iain baxter&, jennifer fisher, jim drobnick, lorri milan, nuit blanche, santiago sierra, shawna dempsey

Zone A, in Downtown North — most of which is accessible by the Yonge-University subway line — features 53 projects, some curated by Gregory Elgstrand and others by Thom Sokoloski. Here’s what I think you should make a point to see. Zone B recommendations here. Zone C recommendations here. (Images and descriptions lifted from the Nuit Blanche website.) It all starts on October 3rd at 6:55pm.

Ghost Chorus — Dirge for Dead Slang, 2009
Katie Bethune-Leamen
Installation

Larry Sefton Park
Corner of Bay Street and Hagerman Street
Click here to view this location on a map.

From the dead centre of Larry Sefton Park the sights and sounds of Ghost Chorus – Dirge for Dead Slang rise up into the trees and into the ears of onlookers, rubberneckers and passers-by. These ghostly apparitions raise their voices to the driving melancholic baseline from the beyond to revivify outmoded slang of the long and recent past. See the dead rise to life! Hear the dead rise to life! Sing. Sing. Sing.

A little bird told me that this chorus will feature volunteers who do not necessarily have vocal skills. Obviously this needs to be witnessed.

Battle Royal, 2009
Shaun El C. Leonardo
Performance Art

Toronto Coach Terminal
610 Bay Street
Click here to view this location on a map.

Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, 20 men will enter Toronto’s original bus depot with lingering art-deco design and step into a 17’ steel cage. Shaun El Conquistador Leonardo (artist and trained fighter) along with 19 of Canada’s elite pro-wrestlers will fight blindfolded until only one man is left standing.

The match is an intense, theatrical recreation of the book’s opening scene also entitled Battle Royal. Occupying a space between literary representation, wrestling spectacle and art performance, Battle Royal is an unscripted event harkening back to the actual fight to-the-end bouts African Americans were encouraged to enter for prize winnings during post-slavery American South; while manifesting the artist’s own personal fear of societal invisibility.

Beginning at 7pm members of the audience are invited to be blindfolded and escorted into the cage where they will have the opportunity to feel the intimidation and potential of aggression Battle Royal encompasses. Gradually, as the night reaches its peak, professional wrestlers will be introduced to the ring, initiating the action while the artist, Shaun El C. Leonardo, seeks to withstand the pain, embarrassment and discomfort of struggling in front of eyes without having sight himself.

Honestly, I can’t explain why I want to see this. The printed catalogue didn’t include the last paragraph that indicates audience members will be participating; I think this adds a whole other dynamic that may be even more painful to watch. It sounds brutal and violent, and I am ashamed by my own curiosity.

Artscape Wychwood Barns
Several group exhibitions/installations

601 Christie Street
Click here to view this location on a map.

I am recommending Artscape Wychwood Barns as an entire venue because they have five independent projects that all seem compelling and worth checking out. There’s Home Sweet Hogar, a group exhibition that is part of the Allende Arts Festival; Things With Wings, a large-scale sculpture exhibition by Charmaine Lurch; sound(e)scape by Darren Copeland and Tree Prosthetic Project by Jane Tingley, both sound art presentations; Memoir, a video installation by Peter Horvath; and a group exhibition called 1001 Stories.

The photo above is from Home Sweet Hogar.

There is lots of other stuff happening in Zone A (click here for a map), of course. Obviously Nuit Blanche is partially intended to be a psychogeographic experience, but in the past I’ve found it best to plan for the things you really want to see. Otherwise, you might never get to them!

Zone B recommendations here. Zone C recommendations here.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: artscape wychwood barns, gregory elgstrand, katie bethune-leamen, nuit blanche, shaun el. c leonardo, thom sokoloski

Although your new collage work continues to express themes you’ve often worked with — absurdity, humour, the figure — visually they’re a departure from most of your past work. What influenced you to reposition and appropriate the Old Masters?

There are a number of reasons why Old Masters reproductions are very attractive as source material. One of my main goals in this series was to make the finished images as seamless as possible; I wanted the works to look like they could have been painted that way a long time ago. To do this i am looking at thousands of reproductions, sometimes looking for a hand that is the right size, facing in the right direction, that is the right tone, making the right gesture. The quantity of available reproductions of this kind of work is what allows me to make my collages possible.

Most of my source material comes from auction catalogues. I love the high quality of the reproductions and also that the works are obscure or by minor painters. You can’t really collage Leonardo or Rubens these days because everyone will recognize it, after Warhol this would be exploring an entirely different conceptual theme, one that I am not concerned with at the moment.

The style of the painting has to match as well. This is what’s great about old paintings, you can go from Renaissance painting up to the Pre-Raphaelites and find an abundance of source material that can be matched seamlessly.

Also, re-arranging the meaning would not be possible the same way if i were to use modern or contemporary art. There is a language of Old Master paintings which allow for the juxtapositions and contrasts that I am interested in. In my work you notice that the woman completely covered in flowing fabric with everything but her breast and a knife covered looks plausible, but it doesn’t match up with anything else in art history books. This is much more difficult to do after modern art where many more things are permitted, and the rules are more open.

I’m really looking forward to seeing them in person. The opening reception is on Friday, September 18 from 6 PM to 9 PM. Show ends Sunday, October 18.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: balint zsako, collage, exhibition, katharin mulherin

REPLYall, presented by Art Metropole and SAVAC, is a six-week-long, collaborative art exhibition between Daniel Barrow (Winnipeg), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg/New York), Lorna Mills (Toronto), Peter Morin (Victoria) and Shaan Syed (Toronto/London, UK). Although you can view the work online at any time (and you should go, if only to see Mehra’s “Money in the Bank” video), if you work at a gallery, you certainly can’t make it to the public art talk at Art Metropole on Saturday, June 13th. It starts at 2 pm.

Another thing I can’t attend is Balint Zsako‘s book launch, also at Art Metropole. Presented by MOCCA, Works from the Bernardi Collection is Zsako’s first book, and it sounds like a work of art in and of itself (and is a steal, at $45) — “The fully-illustrated, [and hardcover] 156-page publication features a text and interview with the artist by renowned Winnipeg writer and publisher Robert Enright, a short text by New York writer and advisor Robert Curcio, and a foreword by MOCCA Artistic Director and Curator David Liss.” The launch is this Saturday, May 30, from 1 pm to 3 pm at Art Metropole. The artist will be present. (You can read my interview with Zsako here.)

(Also at Art Metropole, which already passed last Saturday, was the launch of Dan Adler’s new book, Hanne Darboven: Cultural History 1880-1983. If you know Darboven‘s work, you know this book was a huge undertaking, and though I haven’t read it, I’ve heard Adler speak about it, and he has tackled the subject with unerring patience and a devoted curiosity. I can’t wait to pick up a copy. It was published by One Work/Afterall Books. Each book in the One Work series focuses on a single work by an artist. It’s available at Art Metropole.)

Ok, fine. It looks like it’s just Art Metropole and I who can’t seem to make it work.

(Above photo: Screenshot of the REPLYall website.)

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: art metropole, balint zsako, dan adler, daniel barrow, divya mehra, hanne darboven, lorna mills, mocca, peter morin, replyall, shaan syed

From the Luminato press release:

Robert Lepage’s nine-hour multimedia epic weaves together the stories of nine interconnected lives over the span of 70 years. In this groundbreaking work, co-commissioned by Luminato, Lepage complements the visual spectacle that is a hallmark of his staging with an exploration of the sound of the human voice. The performance lasts approximately nine hours including four intermissions and one extended meal break.

I suppose that details of the screening are still to come.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: installation, lipsynch, luminato, robert lepage

Notables (sorry, no direct links because the website uses frames)

• Buses to out-of-the-way galleries AGYU and Blackwood, two fantastic spaces that I often, though unwittingly, neglect; Click on Programs > Tours for details
• Hanne Mugaas & Cory Arcangel‘s Live 5: Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet) Performance; April 10, 7pm @ Theatre Centre
• Talk to the Pie with Louise Bourque; April 6, 3pm @ Gladstone Hotel

The festival has also set up a blog–a good place for up to the minute festival news.

Above image: Clive Holden.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: film, images festival, installation, new media, toronto, video

To give you an idea of whose work you could possibly get a hold of, cameras by Suzy Lake, Dennis Reid, Kristan Horton, Stephen Bulger, Barbara Astman, Ohbijou and The Meligrove Band will all be available for bidding. Each camera starts at $30.

The silent auction begins Tuesday, March 3 at noon, and ends on Friday, March 13 at 8pm. Bidding hours are Monday to Friday, 8am – midnight; Saturday, 9am – 6pm; Sunday noon – midnight, and takes place on the 2nd floor of the main OCAD building at 100 McCaul St., in the display cases across from room 240. Contact Jennifer Long for more information.

Above image: Barbara Astman, 2009. From the Silent Auction 2009 poster.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: barbara astman, dennis reid, kristan horton, meligrove band, ocad, ohbijou, photography, silent auction, stephen bulger, suzy lake

(more…)

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: cbc, jian ghomeshi, judy chicago, q, radio, textile museum