Was Nuit Blanche Toronto a success? Better than last year? Too crowded?

What did you love? What did you loathe? VoCA wants to hear!

Craig Walsh, Blurring The Boundaries, 2001 Installation view in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Image: scotiabanknuitblanche.com

VoCA loved Craig Walsh’s video installation - a glowing aquarium in the window of the Great Hall on Queen - despite the crowds.

More on Craig Walsh HERE

We loved Misha Glouberman’s vocal choir - Ugly! Beautiful! - Terrible Noises for Beautiful People at Mercer Union.

More on The Misha Glouberman School of Learning HERE

We loved the moody lighting and excellent soundtrack of Darren O’Donnell’s Slow Dance With Teacher at Hart House.

More on Darren O’Donnell’s projects HERE

We loved how seminal works of art - Martha Rosler’s excellent Semiotics of the Kitchen at Hart House, Joseph Beuys at the Consulate General of Italy - were on view between contemporary pieces.

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. Image: collection.fraclorraine.org

Charles Kriel’s projections on the side of the ROM after 11 pm were disappointing, as was Melissa Shiff’s piece Iconoclash in Grange Park next to OCAD. (All we saw was a projection of a Simpsons episode with drunken people dancing in front of it.)

Daniel Borins and Jennifer Marman’s piece Event Horizon at King’s College Circle was impressively slick but perhaps couldn’t live up to expectations formed by people waiting in the long queue.

Daniel Borins and Jennifer Marman, In Sit You, 2006 at the Toronto Sculpture Garden. Image: akimbo.biz

Borins and Marman are represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto.
Click HERE

This is art as spectacle. As Francesco Vezzoli (showing now at Toronto’s Power Plant) noted, artists today must attract an audience that has little or no interest in contemporary art. They must provide an experience as entertaining as film, theatre, circus etc, either through their art or through sheer personality - think of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel…

Is this a good thing? Is art becoming less elitist? Or is it pandering to a lazy audience?