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Nuit Blanche, sponsored by Scotiabank, artificially reproduces white nights’ natural phenomenon through art, gathering over a million visitors for one sleepless night on the brightly illuminated streets of downtown Toronto.
This year the spectacular sundown-to-sunrise art festival returned in Toronto with more than 100 exhibitions for its eighth year. The city seemed to be ready to the event like never before: the TTC was open until 7:30 a.m. and GO was running extra trains and buses to and from Union Station.
Mayor Rob Ford’s statement on the event’s website read, “Since 2006, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche has showcased more than 850 official art projects created by nearly 3,500 local, national and international artists. This annual event has resulted in more than $138 million in economic gain for the city.”
Convenient information centres let the public start their all-night art experience from three optional locations: Yonge-Dundas, Nathan Phillips or David Pecaut squares where fresh-looking volunteer ambassadors provided everyone with a map, event guide and farewell wishes.
Containing major art pieces, Nathan Phillips Square attracted thousands of people, scurrying back and forth in search of creative inspiration or friends lost in the crowd.
“I came here as a tour guide with the group of 40 ESL students. When we reached the square I found only four, the most persistent, ones. Such a mess!” said Jennifer Bran – one of the art victims.
The puzzling structure “Forever Bicycles” by world-renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was one of the many bicycle installations around the city. More than three thousand interconnected bikes formed a 3-D kinetic sculpture which creates detail-endless visual effect.
“In 2013, we celebrate the centenary of ‘Bicycle Wheel’, Marcel Duchamp’s first readymade,” an independent curator and Paris-based art critic, Ami Barak, said in the pages of Nuit Blanche guide. “He combined a bicycle wheel and a stool – and it has become central to the very notion of Art and artistic attitude towards objects.”
“Crash Cars” consisted of two driverless cars constantly making figure-eight loops and a fluorescent light installation of a short poem “The rose is without why” were presented by French artists Alain Declercq and Boris Achour respectively.
Another massive eye-catching installation, “Garden Tower” reminded viewers of a pile of chairs based on the shape of the Tower of Babel. It was made by Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata and will stay on display until Oct. 14.
“The crew have taken to calling the work ‘Chairway to Heaven’ and if you line yourself up with the sculpture and the church you get a perfect tower of chairs culminating in the steeple,” wrote Julian Sleath, programming manager at the City of Toronto for Special Events, Economic Development and Culture, in theHuffington Post on Oct. 4.
Besides the numerous exhibitions the public was able to take a parade route which was set along University Avenue.
Curator of the “Parade“, Patrick Macaulay said, “The intent of Parade is to create, at first glance, an unconventional parade. The floats do not move forward and the people, who would normally be stationary, become the procession by actively participating in the parade. In essence all parades require pageantry and people. Scotiabank Nuit Blanche perhaps most patently encapsulates the power of this equation.”
Toronto’s Nuit Blanche is a presentation of contemporary art, performed in various forms, including everyday items transformed by talent, which creates a feeling of wide art accessibility in and out the festival.
