Julianna Yau’s blog

I went to show my support at the Progressive Coalition rally today, and it was much better organized than I expected.

There was a strong union presence, and although I could hear the artists in the crowd respond to Jack Layton’s reinforcement of the importance of the cultural industry, I was disappointed that we weren’t as organized or visible as the unions. My friend swears up and down that Sandra Oh walked past us, holding her hand to shield her face from my camera. I didn’t get a good look at her, and didn’t take a picture because I respect people’s desire for privacy—celebrity or not. We did, however, hear Broken Social Scene with Leslie Feist before we had to leave.

I was also shocked that, despite being active on Facebook and Twitter, I only heard about the rally last night from a DoC message. Although, I suppose it’s likely I had messages about it earlier, but deleted them because I’ve been bombarded by political bacn in the past few days. I also haven’t been keeping up with my blog reading, and don’t expect to return to it any time soon.

The Department of Culture notes that a mere 500 people showed up to support the Harper rally, picking up on the Globe’s article with the estimated numbers. The Facebook event shows over 2,600 confirmed guests to the Coalition rally, plus another 2,000+ maybes. Pretty good, considering that most of the RSVPs on Facebook don’t come with 100% comitment.

I have participated in Art Space’s POST-IT to Mr. Harper exhibition (a complete exhibition directly in his mailbox)! I wasn’t able to make it to Art Space in person, but they signed my name to a Post-It on my behalf:

General group shot of the POST-ITs:

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).