Nuit Blanche turns Downtown Toronto into a massive art piece with the city as its canvas
© 2008 Miles Storey/Torontoist via www.torontoist.com
I hear a lot of people complain about Toronto. I hear that it’s an urban wasteland with no soul. I hear that it’s exclusively for yuppies who wish they lived in New York. I hear it’s bland and uninteresting and there’s just plain nothing to do.
All I have to say to that is, Nuit Blanche.
While neither the alpha nor the omega of Toronto’s incredible yet oft-untapped subculture, Nuit Blanche stands out to me as an exceptional example of what can happen when a city that claims to thrive on creativity actually lets itself be creative. If you’ve never experienced it, you should. Billed by its primary sponsor as “a free all-night contemporary art thing”, Nuit Blanche is a dusk-til-dawn walking tour of a city transformed into the world’s largest outdoor art gallery. Featuring works from all walks of life and in any media, it is a rare occasion for everyone and anyone to come together and just enjoy what the city has to offer.
For a look at this year’s work, including the absolutely spectacular City Hall animation, check out the photo stream at the Torontoist.
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Nuit Blanche was just a great experience. But particularly after midnight, I felt the people of Toronto got a little rowdy: too many people saw this as an opportunity to treat the streets like a giant nightclub. I don’t know if that news will turn people off or turn them on, but at some exhibits on Queen St. all the hollering, whistling, and drunken stumbling from the crowd made it really difficult to enjoy the art. (I even witnessed a couple of exhibits being carelessly damaged.) Next time I’m going to *start* on Queen St. and then head north after midnight – maybe then, I will be swimming against the yahoo tide.
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