CITY HALL AND NATHAN PHILLIPS SQUARE

By Carly Maga

City Hall has been a central location for the city-wide all-night contemporary art event before, with a large-scale Daniel Lanois installation in 2010 and last year’s Flight Path zipline. This is the first time in Nuit Blanche history, however, that it will be treated more like its own Zone. Curators Janine Marchessault and Michael Prokopow have turned the entire area—Nathan Phillips Square, the City Hall lobby, underground garage, council chambers—into a Museum for the End of the World, looking at the link between creativity and the apocalypse. Here are a few of the 14 projects we’re going to see:

Until the End of the World (Symposium) — Public Access
Council chamber

Thinkers Arthur Kroker, Brenda Longfellow, and Slavoj Žižek will discuss the problems facing our planet. Following the discussion is a screening of Wim Wenders’s film Until the End of the World, at 1 a.m.

Highlights: Great discussions, big name attractions, come and go or stay for the whole event, and see artwork afterwards.
Warning: Will likely be a very popular event, so arrive early to grab a seat.

Museum of the Rapture — Douglas Coupland
City Hall underground parking garage (accessible through ramp on Bay Street)

Douglas Coupland uses images of The Rapture to explore how modern technology has separated the mind from the body, resulting in its own kind of rapture that separates the “old world” from the “new world.”

Highlights: Big name attraction, smartphone friendly.
Warning: It’s in a big, dark, underground space and Coupland says he wants us to be “weirded out” and “a bit angry.” This might not be everyone’s thing.

White Dwarf — An Te Liu
City Hall loading dock (accessible at Chestnut Street and Armoury Street)

Obsolete pieces of household technology (answering machines, anyone?) come together in a slowly spinning, floating, white orb reminiscent of a dying star.

Highlights: Nostalgia factor from the technological relics of our past, Star Warsfans may enjoy a few Death Star references.
Warning: Depending on crowds, you might not get a good look.

Postcards from the End/Dirty Loonie — Sarah Beck
City Hall underground parking garage (accessible through ramp on Bay Street)

Two absurd yet disturbing Sarah Beck projects are presented together in this installation. Prove you were present at the end of the world by snapping your photo beside three sculptural postcards from epic disasters. Then check out a Canadian version of the bobbing-for-apples game, with a loon ducking his head in and out of a barrel full of oil.

Highlights: Great photo opp, interactivity.
Warning: Watch out for lineups and splashing oil.