Nuit Blanche has set its slate for the 2012 edition. Here’s what I’m looking forward to at the mammoth art party.
The big news this year is that York U cinema prof Janine Marchessault and historian Michael Prokopow, who brought us the wonderful Leona Drive Project in abandoned houses on a North York cul-de-sac in 09, are curating installations at City Hall, independent of the other three zones.
For Museum For The End Of The World, their explorations of the relationship of apocalyptic thinking to creativity, the duo employ a variety of locations besides Nathan Phillips Square – the underground parking lot (Douglas Coupland’s maze and live tableaux about the Rapture and Iris Häussler’s bunker of an imaginary survivalist), ramps (Geoffrey Pugen, of last Nuit’s tennis performance The Tie Break, re-enacting a 90s rave), loading docks, council chamber and rotunda. Previous Nuit Blanche installations haven’t really succeeded at animating this civic space, so hopes are high.
Most of the curated projects happen south of Gerrard near Yonge, so it should be easier than ever to hit all three zones.
In Zone A, the Textile Museum’s Shauna McCabe curates Drift, highlighting the fluid nature of urban life. Montreal’s Shelley Miller icing-sugar graffiti comes to Metro Hall, and you can’t get much more sarcastic than Jon Sasaki, who sets up a competition whose winner gets his $500 artist fee, displayed under guard inside a truck as part of the independent projects.
In Zone B, Bodies And Buildings, curated by Christina Richie, conceptualist Kelly Mark sets up a music-based film installation at the Eaton Centre, and Rhonda Wepler and Trevor Mahovsky’s convenience store/lantern installation inhabits a see-through building where you can “shop” for a lantern.
The Power Plant’s Helena Reckitt’s exhibits, Once More With Feeling, in Zone C, focus on music and sound in works the repeat, loop or revolve, including a restaging of a 1968 work by New York’s Trish Brown Dance Company.
Several permanent arts venues make their debut at Nuit Blanche: new photography museum Ryerson Image Centre opens its inaugural show of artists’ response to the Black Star Collection, and Artscape’s Regent Park Arts & Cultural Centre celebrates with puppetry, fire, music and more. Welcome to town!
