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Newsstand: November 19, 2009
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The Art of Not Knowing
Photo by Metrix X from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
Oh Nuit Blanche, what hath thou wrought?
For the second year in a row, we've polled Torontoist readers to find out what they thought of the night, and for the second year in a row, the haters are out in full force. We can't really blame them: most people probably don't head into a free cross-city art party hoping to not enjoy themselves, but the cumulative effect of this year's Nuit Blanche, like last year's, was disappointment. The city is on the right track, so close to getting it right—but in many respects still seems to be fumbling in the dark.
Here are some ways to make Nuit Blanche better in 2009.
Get Denser
Itineraries are great and all, but Nuit Blanche shouldn't require one to have a good time. The spontaneity of rounding a corner or getting lost and finding something new and unexpected and exciting—something that made 2006's Nuit Blanche so great—seemed largely absent this year, as exhibits were sparser and far more spread out. Though that layout choice was presumably to avoid crowding, the result was just as much crowding and far more urban sprawl.
Get Bigger
A million people on the streets at one time deserve something huge. Blinkenlights' Stereoscope at Nathan Phillips Square was one of the more interesting exhibits this year, and while watching Pong did get a little boring after a while (unless you got to play it yourself), Nuit Blanche needs more pieces like it, pieces that can accommodate thousands of people at a time, that get Torontonians to see significant pieces of the city in a different way, and that, hopefully, we can somehow Rickroll.
Don't Sacrifice The Execution
On Nuit Blanche eve, the Star published a nice long article about conceptual art, describing it (by way of the Dictionary of 20th Century Art) as "...art in which the idea or ideas that a work represents are considered its essential component and the finished 'product,' if it exists at all, is regarded primarily as a form of documentation rather than as an artifact."
This year's Nuit Blanche was, consistently, a fine example of what happens when concept trumps execution: it was full of underwhelming exhibits better on paper than in the streets. Take Dundas Square's Fifteen Seconds, for instance, where Daniel Olson shone a huge spotlight on passersby, one after another, for the course of the night. It's a fantastic idea, but in practice it just didn't really work, in large part because it's hard to imagine any intersection of the city where a spotlight would be less effective than at the utterly light-polluted Dundas Square. Or how about the dropped office ceiling for Domaine de l'angle #2, out back of City Hall, which seemed less like some magnificent and disturbing office/alley hybrid and more just like a really brightly-lit alley?
That's just the beginning; if you went out to Nuit Blanche with specific exhibits in mind, you can probably think of at least a half-dozen more examples yourself. Good ideas require good execution; good ideas are just, and only, that. Now there's a concept...
Get Us Involved
By all accounts, one of this year's winning exhibits was Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace, where participants added handwritten wishes on white paper to a "Wish Tree." Immersion is important, however you define it, whether it means wearing zombie makeup, playing Stereoscope Pong, or just letting people into a building they miss. If the art isn't supposed to be made by the public, it must still be for the public; if it must be protected or held at a safe distance, it probably belongs in a gallery. To that end, artists shouldn't keep their work behind fences, tape, or glass; they should, instead, let the public get up close with the exhibits, as close as they can get so long as they don't ruin it or risk killing poor mascots.
Free the TTC
A free all-night contemporary art thing is not free if getting to, from, and through it requires a day pass or a pocket full of tokens. If Nuit Blanche wants to continue expanding—and if there's enough art to go around, it absolutely should—the TTC must be free, all night, everywhere, and it must provide far more frequent service on all zone routes for the entire thing. We're talking you-can-always-see-a-streetcar-coming level of service; they'll need that even more if it's free. As far as incentives go—both to get out to the night in the first place and to migrate from zone to zone—getting around gratis is a pretty big one.
Ban Non-Pedestrian Traffic
Do it. At least along the main routes that the bulk of exhibits are on, ban all non-emergency, non-TTC, and non-pedestrian traffic—cars, scooters, Segways, and, yeah, bikes—and open the entire street up. Streets are for people, especially on a night like Nuit, and it's wildly impracticable, totally obstructive, and more than a little dangerous to take a car or bike out along the arteries of Nuit Blanche, especially in the earlier hours when the city is swamped (unless, in the case of a bike, you're walking it beside you, and even that's not a great solution). To reduce crowding along sidewalks and to really let the city breath a little, cars and bikes have got to be sacrificed at the altar of the Nuit Blanche gods—provided the TTC gives us all a break.
Somehow Ban Trashed, Annoying People from Participating
It just might work if we called it art.
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The spread out nature of things seems to be a side effect of every 'hood in the city wanting to cash in on the added traffic. The addition of the Distillery last year, for example, was a bit of a stretch.
I did enjoy myself (according to my friends, anyway, haha) because our contribution this year was totally unofficial and renegade.
I agree with you completely on the immersion aspect, and I think the City should have made it clear from Day 1 that Nuit Blanche is your personal invitation to be creative. Average people should ask each other "What are you doing for Nuit Blanche this year?" for the other 364 days.
This year we created a giant renegade soundsystem in a lit up truck that began at the ROM at midnight, made its way to U of T and ended near OCAD for the rest of the night. Call me crazy for suggesting this (although I doubt you'll be surprised) but I actually think there should also be funded music stages that are allowed to violate the noise curfew on Nuit Blanche. Music is art, too.
All good points that I've heard or brought up in conversation with friends.
Kevin:
Were you too drunk to remember?Music is art, to be sure, but in general it's not the kind of art that Nuit Blanche is about.
i think the true art was watching the cast of "art seekers" wandering aimlessly and recklessly around Queen W and Bay.
so many people on the street, so many people who were seeking a good time and, in my opinion, ruining the evening for those of us in it for the sake of seeking great art.
i think that art is very personal; its hard to enjoy it when you're part of a pushing crowd stumbling through the office-space/alley, unable to enjoy what you're experiencing and spending more time trying not to get pushed over by drunken dummies surrounding you.
i would love to enjoy NB. the 1st year was pretty good. last year was not great. this year truly was forgettable. i spent most of the night walking and not seeing many installations. a shame.
If my last post seems at all assholish, please disregard the sentiment.
The drunk comment was joking.
Better signage and better maps. I'm almost certain the map provided exaggerates north-south or compressed east-west, so some of the dots/squares marking installations were just not in the right places. And if there's an installation accessed from Street X, put Street X's name on the map! As for signs, some places had them and some didn't, but those that did didn't put them in very helpful places. At the door means I have to get there first, but just off the sidewalk means I can see where it is from down the street.
By all accounts Zone C was the place to be if you wanted to recapture what was lost last year, I just wish there was some way to have known that ahead of time.
I think next year I'll wait until midnight before going out, and skip any gallery with a line up.
What I found frustrating was people wrapping up their exhibits really early. We went out of our way to see a couple of things around 4am, only to discover that the artist had stopped performing earlier in the evening.
If the artist is going to quit early, they could at least say so in the program so you don't waste your time!
I poked around the Nuit Blanche site and could only find this address that may be suitable for feedback:
scotiabanknuitblanche@toronto.ca
I really hope people will voice their concerns about the TTC transpo (or lack of) that night, major streets still being open to cars and not able to handle crowds, and any other concerns...especially exhibits closing early. When the event is advertised as being open until 7am, that's huge! Especially when they recommend we go out later to avoid crowds.
Kevin, while I did enjoy your set-up at OCAD at about 3am, I don't think music should be included all by itself...the night is about visual art so if it can be tied into something to watch (like a live performance accompanying a visual installation), then that would make sense.
Close the streets! Queen St was a nightmare.
Opening all the elevated walkways around Nathans Phillips Square was fantastic and actually let us properly enjoy the lightshow. They should be open all the time.
Gloria, the walkways around Nathan Phillips Square are open all the time now, have been for the last few years I thought.
@10: Hmm, is that so? I remember last summer running into signs and little gates. Thanks for the tip; I'll check it out.
I think there needs to be a rethink about what Nuit Blanche should represent. When you're given the city as your canvas and close to a million people on the streets as your collaborators/subjects there should be far more effort put into involving the city and the people in the projects.
Part of the remit for the major projects should be to involve the city, transform buildings, change the way people see aspects of it. As an example the 'waterfall' made out of plastic bottles at College and University was a fine idea but it needed to be big, much bigger, to really engage the city and the people. It should have covered the front of the building! I know there's a lot more money and time involved in securing something like that against winds, etc, but it would have made a much greater impact. Having the waterfall be ten feet high would make an impact in a gallery but outside it's just dominated by the environment, rather than transforming it.
I'd love to see 10 or more large scale projects, like the Stereoscope, that really engage and transform and take advantage of the city, along with a multitude of smaller projects that entertain and surprise wanderers. Some roving pieces would be nice, adding a carnival edge to the night.
The area involved definitely needs to be tightened up and traffic closed on major roads. I've seen Yonge Street closed several times this year for much smaller events. Having the area stretch from Queens Park to the waterfront would be good. I'm a little baffled why the lake isn't involved in Nuit Blanche, it opens up a whole new canvas for artists... lets invite Christo and Jeanne-Claude to wrap the islands up, or something.
I did enjoy Nuit Blanche, but as much for the uniqueness of the event as for the few installations I did find creative and fun. I was still disappointed that no one, with a couple of exceptions, really seemed to be taking full advantage of the event.
Oh, and it pissed me off to arrive at some events to find them destroyed by morons (how did a couple of thousand lights in Trinity Bellwoods go missing at once?), but it's an inevitable part of it I suppose.
If anyone can pull it off, it's Scotiabank, but I have a feeling it'll be a tough favour to ask, getting Toronto to close off all those major streets all night. Especially when you consider that people already complain about the traffic chaos that comes with the two October marathons — and those are on Sunday mornings, when people should be in church, praying fervently and persistently for their mortal sins.
Now, if we could spruce up the transit or somehow make it easier to walk around, I agree that the event could be both denser (more exhibits in a single space, like a building or park) and more spread out (clusters off the main drag to prevent crazy-ass crowding).
Maybe I'm biased because I roll on the southeast side of town, but I thought the Distillery venue was really nice and had potential for greatness. The crowd there was decidedly more sparse and about 25 years older than everyone else. But it's already got a huge, self-contained, pedestrianized space and lots of excruciatingly commercialized galleries. All it needed was one or two installations that were actually worth seeing.
The problem with most concept art is that the ideas being expressed are usually dumber than "picture of a cute kitty cat". And then you don't even have a technically proficient image of a cat to look at.
CONCEPTUAL, not concept.
I think road closures can be achieved, they shut down Yonge between Bloor and Dundas for several nights when The Hulk was filming and University was shut down during the day a couple of weekends ago so a helipcopter could fly back and forth filming it empty for another movie.
Yeah put me down for less concept and more awesome. I think my favorite nuit blanch memory was the philosophers walk filled with mist from 2006, that barely had a concept but it was the best thing ever.
Also, aside from the drunk assholes. It would be nice if we could have less goddamn people standing around blocking everyone and acting self important because they're photographing every thing for their flickr account and or photoblog.
Regretfully, the installations were rather disappointing. With some exceptions, most pieces were amateur in execution. Many young and emerging artists had pieces on display; which was fantastic to see. But too few of the attractions were worthy of international accolade.
More of my thoughts at:
http://winstoninwonderlandart.blogspot.com/2008/10/nuit-blanche-2008-in-toronto.html
Miles - Any idea of the movie's title?
Rek, no, there were police stopping people from crossing and a few movie people with them, but they wouldn't say. I'm guessing - purely because they seem to want shots of an empty city - that it's the new Romero zombie movie that's reportedly filming around Toronto.