Yesterday, I returned to Toronto to experience Stereoscope one more time before they took it down.
Walking through the Ryerson campus, it was sad to see that the pond was all but deserted, devoid of people, ducks and public art:
What was odd, though, was my friends and I noticed a permanent fixture on The Chang School building, which leaves very little to the imagination:
At City Hall, we spent over an hour watching the animations and playing arcade games. There wasn’t much of a crowd when we got there, but people started to gather in our general vicinity as we became more excited by the game play. A few people came up to us and asked us what was happening, and we explained the project and gave them the phone numbers for the games.
One of the would-be gamers had an iPhone, and after playing a miserable game of Whack-A-Mole because of the 1-second delay between his punching the numbers and the request being processed, repeatedly decalred that Apple’s product sucks.
I was elated when I was able to get 11 out of 12 in Space Invaders, and even got a cheer from the onlookers!
Our last stop was the House of Leaves, which was a recreation of Katherine L. Lannin’s home in an alleyway at Ryerson. She had wallpapered her home with pages from books, and was evicted for the fire hazard it posed. On the way to see it, we passed by a chess board painted on the street, and I was disappointed that there weren’t enough of us to play a game. In retrospect, I could have called out to other Nuit Blanchers to try to start a game, but I was too tired to have thought of that option at the time.
House of Leaves was a great last exhibit to see, because it was a quiet, reflective installation. Its tone and presence was entirely different from the duck pond. And although the pages were more accessible to visitors, and there were many pages “for the taking”, the very nature of the display did not invite the same type of interaction as the duck pond. People were more interested in seeing and reading (and, in my case, smelling…from a distance) the pages than in taking pages off to bring home.
In retrospect, I wish I had taken many more pictures than I had (for example, I don’t have one of the coin-operated “robot”). But I think I had a much better time being a part of Nuit Blanche than merely documenting it.
As we were leaving to see House of Leaves, we were approaching a coin-operated “robot”, and I couldn’t resist dropping all of my change into the bucket for a little performance. I felt invigorated and like a child again, being given the chance to be playful and spontaneous in a way that we rarely allow ourselves (at least I, myself) to be. En route to to Queen Station, I saw one of my favourite unintentionally public art displays—an art-induced traffic jam. I do feel badly about the people trying to get through the intersection, but it was elating to see such an obvious impact to the way people move an interact because they were out to see art (and…also…I can’t believe there are some people crazy enough to drive through downtown Toronto during Nuit Blanche).
So, after passing more performance artists, we took the subway to Dundas Square. 15 Minutes was on intermission, so we headed for the House of Leaves. En route, we stopped to ask where people were getting rubber ducks, and were told that there was a duck pond at Gould Street. Teresa and Adriana almost ran for the pond, and I was delighted to see so many people crowded around the display and wading into the pond to play with the ducks, despite the ice-cold water. Justin was brave enough to wade into the pond, but his trip was cut short by an onlooker who was chastising everyone for “destroying the artist’s work”, claiming that the artist was just here and had been telling everyone to stop taking ducks. She refused to believe that the program said that people were encouraged to go into the pond, and continued to yell at people until her friends started to try to push her into the pond.
Honestly, even if the artist had not intended for people to take ducks home with them, I don’t have a problem with this type of activity. It was all in good fun (versus vandalism), where the public was simply wanting to interact with the display and take a piece of the work home with them. Is it still theft? Yes. And although good intentions doesn’t invalidate the act of theft, the coordinators of Light Up the Nightdid invite people to hunt the proverbial sitting ducks. After Steroscope, the duck pond was the most interactive and playful display we encountered last night.
Updated: Added embedded video of live show (clip).
The next stop was the Steroscope display by Project Blinkenlights, which was my raison d’être for Nuit Blanche. We took the subway to Osgoode, and I could feel my heart start to flutter when we caught glimpses of it through the trees as we approached. We went up to the overpass to get a good view, and it was every bit as phenomenal as I had hoped. We arrived just in time to catch a bit of the live performance involving a dj playing music to what was happening on City Hall.
I was so excited that I was actually having difficulty breathing, and was completely awestruck by what I was seeing. I don’t think there’s any way to describe what it felt like, watching all of the windows in City Hall act as a single unit to display pixelated images. It was particularly amazing because I knew it took them two weeks of working at night to install the drop sheets over the windows and place lamps, each connected to a wireless dimmer switch, behind the drop sheets. For a geek like me, knowing that the central computer system allows me to play arcade games by calling into a phone number, and that I was able to upload animations to the computer, was all the more thrilling. I feel breathless just thinking about the experience—the exhilaration can only be parallelled by the time I went parachuting (not tandem).
After meeting up with Justin, I managed to talk to one of the Blinkenlights guys, who was very friendly. I must admit I was completely starstruck, and Adriana did much of the talking for me. The Blinkenlights guy mentioned that the display would be up for two weeks until October 12th, and that pretty much pushed my excitement over the edge, knowing not merely that I had the chance to return to see it some more but, more importantly, that it would be there through to the election. We (and by “we”, I mean Adriana) told him about the election and what our Prime Minister was doing with arts funding, and he told us “Fuck the Prime Minister”. We giggled like schoolgirls and Adriana told him how important it was that their display would be at City Hall leading up to the election, and he said “Good! We like to sit on people’s faces!”.
While wandering around Nathan Phillips Square, I heard nothing but statements of absolute awe and excitement from the people at the event, with people calling friends to tell them how amazing the display was and how much they would enjoy it if they were present.
It took me a while to connect to the games (partially because the live show had the phone lines closed, partially because of the demand for the games after the live show was over). For a while, I was being persuaded by my friends that it wasn’t interactive, but I knew that it was because I was familiar with the project even before I knew they were participating in Nuit Blanche. After much persistence, I was able to dial in to play Space Invaders, and scored a puny 17 points before the dreaded GAME OVER screen loomed over me.
After wandering a bit more in Nathan Phillips Square, midnight rolled around and we proudly held up our ART signs for 4 minutes and 33 seconds in homage to John Cage’s 4 minutes an 33 seconds of silence and in support of art & culture in Canada. I was shocked that we were the only people there participating in the protest, but also felt empowered because we were getting much attention. Some people were very obviously humoring us, but I received several nods of comradery from people passing by.
We wandered through a bit more of Cabbagetown, stopping to listen to a reading of Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner. We also caught the end of a very cute short film featuring dancing notes juxtaposed with the soundtrack, and also watched as the giant outdoor screen came falling down. Luckily, no one was hurt because the closest row cleared the screen by a few feet and was vacant. Adriana and I rushed to help them right the screen, and hold it while they re-secured the frame to a tall, industrial tripod and brought in more sandbags to weigh it down. By the time we left, the hand for Red Door was already well along its way.
Amazingly, this year was my first time at Nuit Blanche. I hadn’t originally planned on going, because everyone I know who went the first and second years said that the first year was fantastic and the second year pretty much bit. But Gordon Hatt, the curator of Zone A and the new executive director of CAFKA, is now working in the same building as my studio and showed me all the stuff he was bringing in for the event. I was pretty much sold as soon as I found out Project Blinkenlights was coming, but was curious to see some of the other things too.
Nuit Blanche is also a particularly important event for the arts community this year, because its success brings art & culture to the forefront of peoples’ minds as election day approaches. And from the hordes of people who attended the event last night, I dare Harper to continue to claim that art doesn’t matter to “ordinary” Canadians (or, perhaps, that “ordinary” Canadians are in the majority, or that it’s desirable to be “ordinary”). Although probably not all Canadians, the estimated 1 million attendees clearly disagree with Harper.
The night started with my friend Teresa taping a glow-in-the-dark ART sign on the back of her vest in preparation for the 4:33 minutes sign of protest scheduled for midnight. With her dog in tow, we made a quick tour of Church street, seeing the beginnings of the ethereal forest and some performances happening on the closed street.
We returned Teresa’s dog to her apartment and, almost immediately after returning to the streets, were approached by a family who was attending Nuit Blanche for the first time. They had seen the ART sign on Teresa’s back, and decided to ask us for directions on how to get to some exhibitions. We directed them to the downtown core, near the Eaton Centre, where many of the events were centralized, and they seemed very enthusiastic about the event (and had even driven downtown and parked somewhere nearby).
