09/30 2010

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche: The Night of Future Past

Contributed by Christopher Jones

If you didn’t go to school at Ryerson University you probably have no idea that the grassy splendour of the Kerr Hall Quad exists between Gould and Gerrard streets, west of Church. Perhaps Saturday night’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and the two commissioned works being staged in and at the entrance to the Quad will introduce you to this normally tranquil little hideaway for the first time. That’s one of the hopes of curator Sarah Robayo Sheridan, left (photo by Angus Rowe MacPherson), who, together with the artists, has selected the location for the performance piece Reunion, 2010 (Ryerson Theatre) and Up, Up and Around: Toronto City Hall, 2010, by Christian Giroux and Daniel Young (Ryerson Quad).

Very nearby will be New York artist Iman Issa’s four Meeting Point installations, “light box projects stationed through the area that form a little pathway,” explains Robayo Sheridan. “They’re sort of tucked away in alleyways and back parking lots and they serve as proposals for monuments of the artist’s own invention. Those locations I scouted on bicycle, combing through the area to see what would work best, so I think some of the sites will be a surprise to people.”

Nuit Market Starring the Toronto Weston Flea Market, 2010, Installation by Mammalian Diving Reflex

Part of the wonder of Nuit Blanche lies in its ability to let Torontonians and visitors see the city in fresh, new ways. Another one of Robayo Sheridan’s commissions, Nuit Market Starring the Toronto Weston Flea Market, 2010, by Mammalian Diving Reflex, above, will doubtless make participants reconsider the possibilities of Victoria Street Lane (starting at Dundas Street East). “I’m sure there will be moments when the space will be shoulder to shoulder because it’s a narrow alley,” says the curator, “and I think that density will be great for the project.”

The theme of Robayo Sheridan’s Downtown East zone is The Night of Future Past reflecting the curator’s fascination with Nuit Blanche’s transposition of day for night, where time and space are “composed of histories revisited, futures explored and the present in flux.”

“In considering the curatorial task, my thinking became anchored to two priorities,” explains Robayo Sheridan. “One, to explore and have projects rooted in exploring the cultural history of Toronto, and two, to bring in international artists whose work I thought would make a nice compliment to the local history in the way that they both play with ideas of time.”

Reunion, 2010, Performance Art, Group Exhibition

Robayo Sheridan is enthusiastic about all the commissioned works that will unfold in her zone on Saturday but she seems particularly chuffed about Reunion, 2010, which harkens back to a legendary (to some, anyway) concert that took place at Ryerson Theatre in 1968 featuring John Cage and Marcel Duchamp playing an electronic chess board designed by Lowell Cross.

“The more research I did about the event,” expounds Robayo Sheridan, “the more I explored the influence of a number of artistic circles that were active in Toronto at the time like the Isaacs Gallery. Also at that time, there was a pronounced trade in ideas going on between places like Toronto and New York, in addition to the influence of people like Marshall McLuhan who was at University of Toronto. It was a very rich epoch in the city’s history.”

While many of the Downtown East installations rely on modern technology, several others burn with the most primal light of all, fire. In Yonge Dundas Square UK artist Ryan Gander sparks a bonfire within the confines of what is normally an electric circus. Nearby at Campbell House Museum, Floyd G. Elzinga sets a match to Pine Cone Colony and at the Distillery District, Blake’s Burning Buddha explores issues of human rights.

“Fire harkens back to a different type of public gathering,” observes the zone’s curator. “Ryan Gander has left some ambiguity as to what the fire represents; it’s sort of a universal symbol and a counterpoint to all the electric light that usually floods that square.”

Ning Ning, 2010, Multimedia Installation by Karen Garrett de Luna

Ultimately, Robayo Sheridan sees Nuit Blanche as an exciting “disruption in the normal civic operation of the city; it’s so great to see families with kids out at three in the morning. I’ve never seen so many people in the downtown core at night save for when we had that huge power outage and everyone had to walk home in the dark because the subways were down.”

“During its history Toronto has been known as Toronto the Good, so it’s amazing that the city has graduated to a point in history where it has an all-night art event. And it’s a great opportunity to see Toronto; we’re normally on our way to work and then it’s in a crowded subway car. Here there’s a density of people but they’re enjoying leisure time, it’s optional, they’re exploring, discovering parts of the city, perhaps for the first time.”