June 2008
Tales From the Cryptic
How to decode the public art offerings at catch-all fest Luminato By David Balzer
What is Luminato? Or, rather, what isn’t Luminato? This all-encompassing year-old arts and culture festival wants to be boundary crossing, promising, as one of its main initiatives, to provide “accidental encounters with art.” But just how is a typically chary Torontonian, still reeling from the overstimulation of Nuit Blanche, to deal with such intrusions? Pocket our field guide to three of Luminato’s most gregarious works and head out there.
CITY OF ABSTRACTS
What you need to know: The brainchild
of New York choreographer William Forsythe and his jet-setting Forsythe Company, whose aim is to extend dance to areas of technology, visual art and architecture.
How to recognize it: A wandering truck with a camera and video screen, which displays digitally distorted images of passersby.
How to approach it: With glee and abandon. The point is to create your own dance by
moving along with the screen’s manipulations.
What to tell your friends: Seems fun,
but local interactive installation artist David Rokeby has been doing similar work for years—and with more intellectual menace.
MILLE FEMMES
What you need to know: Part of a worldwide photographic series launched in 1993 by French artist Pierre Maraval, who describes his works as “human landscapes.”
How to recognize it: A thousand headshots of artistically inclined Toronto women,
hung in Brookfield Place’s Allan Lambert Galleria on Bay Street.
How to approach it: With an appreciation
for the big picture as well as the little one. Who’s in the exhibit is important, but so
are such things as age, style and ethnicity.
What to tell your friends: Kind of like
a Dove ad featuring Olivia Chow, Valerie Pringle and Erica Ehm.
STREETSCAPE
What you need to know: Presented
by the Art Gallery of Ontario and local
collective Manifesto.
How to recognize it: Graffiti, murals and
multimedia installations by some of the field’s biggest names; set up at several spots, including Brookfield Place, Jarvis Street
Slip, Parliament Street Slip and Regent Park.
How to approach it: With an open mind. StreetScape is about the power of graffiti
to beautify the city.
What to tell your friends: It’s events like this that could unearth our very own Keith Haring or Banksy. Much more aesthetically appealing than those “Give graffiti the brush-off” ads.
Luminato takes place at various venues across the city, June 6 to 15; 416-872-1111, www.luminato.com.
