First-time attendee – but not my last! Never attended Nuit Blanche before – the usual “excuses” – how can one possibly stay out all night (at my age!) and still get up and into the office on Monday morning (let alone, get laundry and grocery shopping done!)
Exhibits are mounted all over the city (all temporary installations, too!) I only managed to get to some of the exhibits in and around the downtown core. Me and literally thousands of other people! The size of the crowds milling around and participating in some of the installations was truly impressive! As soon as I saw the overall size and enthusiasm of the crowds wandering around the closed-down streets of Toronto’s financial district, I knew I had been missing out on a very strange, spectacular event!
But is also became very apparent, very quickly that if I wanted to take anything away from my first Nuit Blanche experience, it would be best if I just checked my rational, left brain at the “door”, didn't make eye contact, and kept on walking! Otherwise, “Museum for the End of the World” is just too creepy! ("Christmas Morning" and "Office Workers" come to mind!) Cold, bare concrete, minimal lighting and the parking lot under City Hall at midnight – all that was missing was the requisite apocalyptic zombie cadre ....
(MUSEUM
FOR THE END OF THE WORLD - Curatorial Statement ….
Mounted in various locations
around Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall (from Council Chambers to the
underground parking garage), Museum
for the End of the World is an exercise in creativity and crisis.
One of the greater ironies of
human existence is the persistent anticipation of its end. Whether the result
of monster waves, unstoppable pandemics, nuclear calamities or the sun ceasing
to shine, the idea of Doomsday – that revelatory moment of the end of the world
– can be at once the fire of speculative lamentation and the spark of
insightful creativity.)
.... this particular installation - live "images" of everyone in Dundas Square passing in front of the "sculpture". I'm somewhere in one of the panels ....
..... remember "Space Invaders" ......
..... installation participants, dressed in black and white overalls, scaling a office building wall just off of Queen Street .... the "background" is being projected onto the building ....
