Nuit Blanche 2008 Struggling to Get There

I’ve been bitching about the PR on this thing for weeks.

First, i hear nothing about the damn thing till the week off. Then, both EYE and NOW Magazine shit the bed on their “guides” to Nuit Blanche. I didn’t get a pocket guide till I was at an exhibit hours later.

Here’s a guide to the good and bad of Nuit Blanche.

Good:

The streets were filled with people. That was so gorgeous. Toronto can be so beautiful when we are ourselves. And i mean just lined with people. Old, young, fat, thin, teenage. Drunk, sober. Everyone taking pictures.

Exhibits worth checking out:

Katherine L. Lannin’s House of Leaves.

Which was basically a hallway with torn out sheets of paper littering the whole joint that made it look soft and breathy.

The Horridor at Union Station was my favourite. The longer I stood there surrounded by screams, the more impact it had. One side, all men, the other all women. The artist, Kelly Mark, in an interview mentioned that the men had much more range of emotion in their shrieks, whereas women almost always convey sadness and fear. I thought about that a lot while I stood there. You think it’s because men associate a wider range of emotions with screaming or because women are only ever written as victims? Ponder.

Other cool stuff: City Hall playing light ping pong and the general feel of the city as an art backdrop. Suddenly you look around at the whole city like it’s one big exhibit.

Shit:

Everything was a bit far apart and there wasn’t one good map that worked well enough. They shoudl have had signage on the streets and maybe a plaque or two that stated what the exhibit was, OR even a page number in the guide where you could find it.

Here’s some exhibits that sucked ass:

This is a balloon bell in the Eaton Centre. It is nothing more than that. It’s a long trek to look at a bell balloon no? I would have rather seen the whole centre filled with single balloons. The water fountain at the centre every day is more exciting than this thing.

Biggest Let Down of the night was this Talking Yogurt thing.

Maple Leaf Gardens was ten million times more exciting than watching two screens of robotic voices (that no one could understand) talking through milk to each other. Everyone stood around feeling nostalgic for the old seats. Know what would have impressed me in this space? Recreating the fan reaction when the Laughs won the Stanley Cup back in the 60s. Now, THAT would have been dope!

Honourable mentions in the Shit department: Security guards not knowing anything about anything at all to do with any exhibit, exit or any questions really at all around any exhibit. You couldn’t have given them a guide with a red circle around the exhibit they were near? The lack of bathrooms open tot he public, and drunk teenagers kinda everywhere ruining it for us respectable 30-year old drunks. Oh, and Boystown–seriously, that’s all you got? You are responsible for PRIDE!!!!! All you could come up with was a show that occurred once every ten hours (felt like it) and a few trees with green lights and smoke? Shameful.

***All Photos Except the Horridor and Bubbling Milk taken by Natalie Lisa Johnson***