The area framed by Toronto's McCaul Street and University Avenue is a microcosm of perpetually developing urban activity. Alongside seemingly public spaces like numerous parks, swimming pools and our streets themselves, the area is a sprawling mix of private residences, key cultural institutions, world-renowned education, medical and research facilities, and hulking government and corporate centres. We often take for granted the ways that we move through and inhabit the spaces of the city. Thinking about the range of behaviour and experience that can happen, we might come to see that all of our spaces are both legally and socially regulated. The result of this often-unconscious conditioning is that we learn very particular ways of being and engaging in our city.
Restless in the face of our habitual urban experiences, the artists of Nuit Blanche help to pierce through our routines. Inviting a celebratory and productive insomnia, Nuit Blanche provides an opportunity to slow the fast pace of Toronto's perpetual state of becoming and, perhaps in new ways, take a look around. Here the engagement of contemporary art becomes widely visible as a catalyst for the production of civic space in Toronto, provoking a consideration of the quality of relationships people have to each other and to our institutions.
The many artists and performers responsible for these eight commissioned projects all create with an acute sense of play and joy, exposing or transforming aspects of the ways we are in our city. A playground of urban fantasy, visions and encounters will greet those who venture out this night. Towards collectively creating personal memories of public space and visceral experiences of physical and conceptual institutions, Nuit Blanche asks us to look and listen closer through twelve sleepless hours, wandering in a state of wonder.
Kim Simon
