What to expect from the all-night art event
Here, a handful of things to look for. The Stolen People Picture a fallen civilization, a century or less from now, where drab government-issue workstations dot the landscape, in which remaining citizens scratch out meagre survival: extracting water from the near-dead landscape and ingesting a government-rationed serum to stay alive. At night — like, say, Nuit Blanche — it becomes a gathering place for the Stolen People, the activist descendants of the Black Lives Matter movement, refusing extinction and conformity both. That’s the dystopic narrative told by Syrus Marcus Ware and Melisse Watson and, while its form is yet to be revealed, the story is both compelling and close to the bone.
At Nathan Phillips Square as part of the Monument to the Century of Revolutions program. Holding Still, Holding Together I saw this piece, a video work by Annie MacDonell, at the Ryerson Image Centre last year and it’s quietly mesmerizing. A troupe of dancers bleed across the frame in ghostly movement, some entangled to prevent their removal while others drag them dully from one point to the next. A poetic evocation of the oftenbrutal treatment protesters meet at the hands of authority, the work is absent a specific cause and focused on the body — both the strength to be found in numbers, and the violations it can endure to prove a point.
At U of T’s Medical Science Building, 1 King’s College Circle, as part of the Taking to the Streets program. Kitakio’sinnooniks It’s a talk show, of sorts, though Jimmy Kimmel it’s not. Inside the Campbell House museum, Cherish Violet Blood of the Kainaiwa First Nation will host a marathon session of conversation, musical performance and video around issues such as race, gender and class that “makes space for Indigenous voices that unapologetically resist a Canadian narrative.” If it sounds heavy, fair enough, but your host will have a light touch. Blood is a comedian, among other things, and won’t leave you squirming for long.
160 Queen St. W., back entrance, as part of the Life on Neebahgeezis; A Luminous Engagement program. Embassy The makeshift home of an imagined nation is, nominally, what Embassyis about, but the darker implications of this project by Cedric Bomford and Verena Kaminiarz abound. In a global climate beset with radical instability, the identity of such a space — existing, defunct, yet to be? — is a dystopic riddle that cuts close to the bone. It’s part of a program about possible futures though, as the world fractures further as nations threaten each other with increasing bluster, it seems less a question of if than when.
At Dundas St. W. and Chestnut St. as part of the Calculating Upon the Unforeseen program. Automobile Booming bass echoes from under the bridge that serves as a gateway to the University of Toronto at Wellesley St., and the toggle the sound plays with — between dread and euphoria — is fitting enough for these troubling times. Joseph Namy’s project here slides along that slippery edge, the throbbing emanating from a cluster of cars parked haphazardly beneath the bridge. The gathering’s ambiguity — is it an illicit late-night party? a protest? a rumble? — is also its strength, with anxiety and exhilaration hand in hand.
At Wellesley St. W. and Queen’s Park Cres. W. as part of the Taking it to the Streets program.