It's that time of year again. The first Saturday of October. Time for the ninth annual Nuit Blanche. The all-night art/performance festival held here in Toronto.
I've gone every year since it started. And, except for the first year, I've tried to stay out almost all night (if not all night). This year I didn't quite succeed. I packed it in 1-1/2 hours early at 5:30 a.m. By then I was pretty tired having walked 10-1/2 hours through the city.
As I've done over the past year or two, I parked down at my church. This means I started at the AGO (which is less than five minutes away).
Like last year they weren't really ready at 7:00 p.m. (around the official start time). So I headed to the next stop with the intention of returning at the end of my night.
The next stop was a film installation at the east end of the AGO. After that I headed next door to OCAD where they had an installation too.
Next was Nathan Philips Square by 8:37 p.m. There was a lot going on there. It's a big place and a lot of people were there. I even bumped into Changhwan who was volunteering there. He's an international student from Korea studying English here.
Of the nine installations around Nathan Philips Square I took photos of six of them from 8:30 to near 11:00.
The organizers changed things up quite a bit this year. Over the previous few years they closed down much of Yonge Street. As well there were things going on at Yonge-Dundas Square, the Eaton Centre and Ryerson University. This year they were empty. Perhaps participation was down.
Instead of shutting down Yonge, they closed off Queen Street West and part of Spadina Avenue to cars. That's where I headed after City Hall.
Queen Street was absolutely packed. There weren't that many installations along there - only six. Though it lead to many more north on Spadina or, the way I was heading, south towards Fort York. I spent a bit over an hour along Queen taking pics and a bit under an hour along Spadina on my way to Fort York.
It was my first time ever to Fort York. Like Liberty Village, it's a great place for installations. But here they didn't have to worry about keeping residents up overnight with the noise. I guess that's why they stopped having them there a few years back.
There was around a dozen installations at Fort York. The one called Between Doors had a line up to walk through the doors set up there. One of the nicer, more colourful ones was Melting Point which had bright lights "dancing" to music. I was in the area for about two hours to near 3:00.
The next 2-1/2 hours were spent walking back up to my car while checking out six installations in between. It was a long, tiring night. Of course it was fun. I enjoyed taking in all the creative projects and taking pictures of them.
'Til next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment