After shooting Xi and Jun's wedding at church I had a bit of time to kill before Nuit Blanche started. I walked over to the Eaton Centre and loitered at the Indigo until starting time.
The first project I saw (106) was right outside in Trinity Square. It was called Where am I from? There was a tent set up that you could write where you were from on with a marker. Since I was the second or third person there only two of us had written on the tent. Not much to see there at all.
After that I walked across the street to Nathan Philips Square. The first project I came across was: 114 - There Is No Away. The artist placed huge bales of actual garbage and recyclables along the east part of City Hall to illustrate how much waste we generate as a society. I'm glad I wasn't a volunteer there. It was pretty, pretty stinky.
As well, a mysterious artist who goes by the moniker, JR, had a number of projects set up at City Hall as well as other places around the city. His main project, 13 - Inside Out, was having posters made of people who could paste them in a huge circle in the middle of Nathan Philips Square.
Other projects I saw at City Hall were in the Council Chambers: 15 - Nuit Talks: Putting the extra-in-ordinary and; 20 - Park Here in the underground parking lot. In all I spent about two hours in the City Hall area.
Next I headed towards Bay Street. There were a number of projects set up going south until the lake front. At Queen and Bay there was a group of older gentlemen doing some sort of traditional European dancing on the street. I don't know who they were because they weren't a stationary project so I couldn't look them up on the event map.
I have to mention, this was the first year I didn't actually look up any of the projects on-line ahead of time. I guess I was a bit lazy. All I did was take a look at the map and plot a course around the city depending on the grouping of where the most projects were.
My route would start behind the Eaton Centre, head over to City Hall, go south on Bay to King then continue on to Union Station. From there I'd continue south to the Harbourfront before heading up Lower Simcoe to David Pecaut Square and TIFF Bell Lightbox and up to Queen and McCaul to OCAD and AGO.
The trip down Bay Street was below par I thought. There wasn't too much going on and what was there was below average. At Adelaide and York Streets I saw: 83 - The Face of Toronto (a video collage of exhibit attendees) and: 39 - Light Cave (a colourful inflated sculpture you could walk through/under).
Union Station was about the same. One project: 111 - Pattern Study was just stuff hanging from the ceiling near the entrance to the trains and the other: 117 - Domestic Motion had a line I deemed too long, so I skipped it.
Next was Queens Quay and the Harbourfront. Again it was extremely windy down there and the lines to go in to see things were 30-40 minutes long. I wasn't about to wait that long to see anything so I continued on.
The project: 68 - Tri-Monic - Shape, Sound, Sight at David Pecaut Square was a bit silly. Just some instruments set up and a microphone that you could play/sing into that made funny sounds.
I spent a bit more time at Bell TIFF Lightbox. They had a number of projects there. Some of them had long lines, others weren't too bad. I caught: 38 - Light Upon Light! (boring light sculpture hanging from the ceiling) and: 103 - Spacebro Justice Rocket which was a fun life sized video game.
I was in the home stretch now heading towards OCAD and the AGO. On my way up John Street I passed by the Much Music building on Queen. They had their own unofficial Nuit Blanche set up: On Tilt- 30 Air Dancers In A Parking Lot where they had a bunch of "air dancers" (like you see in used car parking lots) going with dance music/videos blasting in the background. It was actually pretty cool.
Even at 2:00 a.m. the line up to get into OCAD was too long for me. Pass. I headed over to the Art Gallery and waited two minutes to get in there. They had a couple of projects in there. As well they opened up part of the gallery for people to go through. I spent about 45 minutes there and by ten minutes to 3:00 was done for the night.
Au revoir, Nuit Blanche.
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