The organizers of Nuit Blanche held a launch event at OCAD this morning to announce this year’s curators—Wayne Baerwaldt, Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design; Dave Dyment, Director of Programming at Mercer Union, Toronto; Gordon Hatt, a writer and curator who lives in Kitchener; and Haema Sivanesan, Executive Director of Toronto’s South Asian Visual Arts Centre—and allow them to outline their individual......

If you're looking for something to do this Friday night—while abstaining from burning any holes in your pockets—you could mosey on down to the Mercer Union for some definitive hosting by Brian Joseph Davis. To celebrate the "oversized" release of Davis' newest work and adding to his long list of other works, Blocks Recording Club is having a summer release party. The Definitive Host is a collection of Davis' large array of sound and......

If you took a census of your musical instrument-playing friends, eight of them would probably be guitar players. Which is cool, but the laws of supply and demand mean that there just isn't going to be room in bands for all these guitarists. If, on the other hand, you decided to learn the theremin, you'd be pretty much guranteed to be the only kid on the block with that skill. The theremin resembles something......

Anyone up for beating the shit out of a car on Wednesday night? Today it rests comfortably in the mainspace of Mercer Union, but tomorrow this car is scheduled to be hoisted up by a crane in the courtyard of MOCCA (952 Queen Street West) for a piece entitled Beater by Anitra Hamilton. Bystanders will be asked to smash the piñata car apart with sledgehammers, an activity deemed ideal for those with rage issues,......

Last Thursday, June 21, art and drink enthusiasts united in the back room of Mercer Union (37 Lisgar Street) where artist Dean Baldwin was serving drinks from the teensiest bar in the city. The installation was called Minibar, which did double duty as a performance piece and beverage catering for the opening night of the gallery's exhibition, Seducing Down The Door. The "building" was a mere 3x3 metres2 with a stooped doorway and ceiling.......

There are three interesting happenings in the local art scene right now. This evening Mercer Union presents new compositions by Stephen Parkinson, a local musician who creates "do-it-yourself situations...with various friends as performers, reacting to a variety of methods of prescription/notation, involving toy instruments, electronics, vintage turntables, field recordings, as well as more traditional musical instruments." Tonight's various friends include Martin Arnold, Allison Cameron, Eric Chenaux, Rob Clutton, Aimée Dawn Robinson, and Doug Tielli. The......

The good news: tonight, there are three great literary events happening in our fair city. The bad news: you’re going to have to choose. Mark Truscott’s Test Reading Series presents Reg Johanson and Jordan Scott at Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art (37 Lisgar Street) tonight at 7:30 p.m. Reg Johanson has traveled from East Vancouver for tonight’s performance. His first book, Courage, My Love was published by Line Books last year. Reg’s critical......

Nicole Brossard is one of Canada’s most prolific and avant-garde writers, with more than thirty books to date and a dizzying list of awards to match. Her work is often sharply self-referential: saturated with the impossibility of a seamless translation and the problem of writing in a language already loaded with meaning, Brossard’s work is a meditation on how to write outside of a coded imaginary. While Brossard’s oeuvre has been associated with a postmodern......

Torontoist Poetry Contest Reminder! At the beginning of the new year, Torontoist launched a poetry contest to encourage the penning of new poems about our fair city. To inspire you, we are presenting a series of previously published Toronto poems that will run until the final week of the contest. Our second poem is “Girls who eat flowers and fail their IQ tests” by Hugh Thomas. Its title comes from a mis-overheard conversation at Healey's......

No time…Must get back down to Harbourfront…IFOA in full swing…Here are some other literary events taking place this week…. Monday The Test Reading Series returns on Monday night, 7:30pm, with readings from Rob Read (that could be the best name for a writer I’ve ever heard) and Souvankham Thammavongsa. This night is also doubling for the launch of the new issue of Carousel, one of the best lit mags in the country – Mark Laliberte......

The last 10 days have been a great time to be a film nut, but now Christmas comes early for book nerds as over the next few weeks two of the biggest events of the year take place, starting with next Sunday’s Word on the Street, which will be followed by the start of the International Festival of Authors in mid-October. A few events taking place today. Poet Lorette C. Luzajic launches her first book,......

If we've learnt one thing in the last few years is that Mercer Union, that artist run centre on Lisgar, knows how to throw a party. It's not the people, or the location, everyone knows that to throw a good party you need really really good gimmicks (wacky themes, activities, or lots of blow). [ed. note we don't actually use any blow and don't think you should either] This Friday's opening party for two shows......

Last month Torontoist posted about Brian Joseph Davis' Yesterduh project. Tonight, Davis wraps up the project with a CD release party. He's layered 60 individual recordings (Boy Reporter is one of them) of the Lennon-McCartney classic "Yesterday", gathered over a month, into one giant polyphonic Beatles extravaganza. Samples are available here. Tonight's event will also feature a performance by Vigilante Justice which features members of Pyramid Culture and Ninja High School who'll be performing early......

Mercer Union, a non-for-profit art gallery dedicated to the existence of contemporary art, is once again bringing you the good life; by providing a forum for the production and exhibition of Canadian and international "conceptually and aesthetically engaging art and related cultural practices". This is something that Torontoist can totally get behind. They pursue their primary objectives through activities that include exhibitions, lectures, screenings, performances, publications, events and special projects. This year, the Mercer......

For the last couple of weeks the Toronto-loving boys and girls at Spacing magazine have been blogging right here. They tipped us off on the Toronto Environmental Alliance's Show Lakeside, a group show at Gallery 1313 looking at Toronto's often ignored beaches. But seeing how it's summer we recommend you take the art crawling outside. Barring a garbage strike the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition should take over Nathan Phillip's Square this weekend. Be sure to......

The Wild West is arguably the most enduring myth in the American psyche. Through hundreds of novels, films and tv programs the violent, extremely bloody and often downright exploitative settlement of the American West has largely been replaced with images of stalwart settlers, and quick-handed, decisive men of action. Philadelphia-based video artist Matthew Suib draws links between the cowboys that popular film has created and the current cowboy in the Whitehouse. Currently showing at Mercer......