This weekend, the 2017 edition of Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s all-night art party, arrives with less corporate financial backing but, for the first time, a singular theme: Many Possible Futures. More than 350 artists will fill downtown with 85 forward-looking installations on Saturday night. Here, five you can’t miss.
Spadina court house rotunda Any art installation that requires its viewers to don a hazmat suit upon entry has us interested. Netflix’s Red Forest is an immersive world inspired by the creepy Upside Down realm from the sci-fi series Stranger Things. Explorers will enter woodsy portals along University Avenue and Osgoode Lane and walk through the mystical foliage and Twilight Drive-In of Riverdale, Stranger Things’s bike-growing trees and an Orc tree conception pulled from the Netflix film Bright. Sure, it’s art as promotional tool, but dang, it sounds cool.
Nathan Phillips Square Floating nearly 45 feet above the pavement, Hendrick’s Gin’s L.E.V.I.T.A.T.R.E. (if you really need to know: Levitating Elevating Voluminous Illuminating Tantalizing Amazingly Towering Roaming Eye) requires a Willy Wonka–esque golden ticket to ride, which you can try to snag online beforehand. A lucky few will get a unique bird’s-eye perspective of Nuit Blanche, flying high in a giant, cucumber-themed hot-air balloon.
Queen’s Park A gaggle of cars tricked-out with top-of-the-line, bass-heavy sound systems will be parked in front of the Ontario parliament building with the volume cranked to 11. The soundtrack: Automobile, an abstract composition by artist Joseph Namy that you’ll feel in your chest. The primal throb of sound will hit near-illegal decibel levels, allowing guests to lose themselves in an impromptu street dance party.
Nathan Phillips Square Local artist Tings Chak’s Monument to (Im)mobilization is a full-scale recreation of a maximum-security prison cell in the middle of Nathan Phillips Square. Claustrophobic and filled with artifacts from actual cells, the installation mimics the space in which undocumented migrants and refugees conducted a hunger strike in 2013 in two Ontario pirsons, demanding the eradication of immigration detention.
Nathan Phillips Square Curator Nato Thompson’s Monument to the Century of Revolutions will fill 21 shipping containers with as many artistic projects. One highlight: local electronic duo LAL explore Toronto’s migrant and Indigenous history with a 10-minute soundscape that samples sounds and voices from Chinatown. Oakwood, Korea Town, Little Italy and beyond.
Albert and James Streets The oral tradition of North Bay’s Nippissing First Nation is embodied in Serpent People, a collection of stories about the human condition. Aanmitaagzi Company artist Perry Mcleod-Shabogesic uses sculptures and a 15-foot puppet to stage a series of pop-up plays that examine humans’ relationship to consumption, and how what we consume takes us away from who we are.
Yonge-Dundas Square Toronto graffiti artist Kwest (born Brian Leitch) creates sculptures out of sneakers, organic art installations out of wood and glass and futuristic Ping-Pong tables for Drake. In this downtown installation, he’ll gather recycled garments and textiles from H&M—symbols of the discarded—and transform them into a streamlined work of art, providing commentary on how we live and treat the planet.
NEVER MISS A TORONTO LIFE STORY
Sign up for This City, our free newsletter about everything that matters right now in Toronto politics, sports, business, culture, society and more.