ART PAPERS - WordPress.com

was a reflecting pool made from vodka.Intended as a meditative piece, it proved unexpectedlyprovocative. “Alcoholic fumes may havecontributed to the frenzy as people threw inpennies, boats made from paper money, housekeys, and even condoms, as if the work were akind of ersatz wishing well,” Drobnick andFisher note. “Eventually, dogs and strippeddownindividuals hurled themselves throughthe placid, aqueous pool, and at one point theinstallation had to be closed by security becauseof a near riot. By the end of the night, the volumeof coins surpassed that of the vodka, oddly mimickingthe public money surrendered to banksand corporations during the previous year’sbailout.” 7Tapping into ancient rituals, the festivalmodel marks the change of seasons and thecommunity’s survival. Such rhetoric promptsconcerns that expressions of celebration andconviviality are promoted over those of criticismand dissent, resulting in safe, sponsor-friendlyart. Critics remark on the closeness of “creativecity” rhetoric to these once-only or annual timebasedevents’ emphasis on youth, innovation,and technology. The interests of property developersand urban boosters find expression inprojects that animate buildings or transformundesirable nonplaces and districts. Liberalideas about art’s ability to heal and unite communitiesare bolstered by the focus on participationand interaction. The very metaphor ofilluminating the night invokes dubious argumentsabout art and moral uplift, connotationsthat arts policy scholar Max Haiven findsunavoidably colonial. Yet while Haiven criticizesthe neoliberal agendas that underscore suchendeavors, he accepts the need to take eventslike Toronto’s Nuit Blanche and Halifax’sNocturne seriously. “To dismiss the potential ofdream-like events like Nocturne is dangerous. Tofail to seize it is, unfortunately, all too easy.” 8The relatively large budgets commandeeredby one-off events have also prompted criticism.Paris-based curator Eva Svennung has attackedNuit Blanche as consuming “most of the city’sannual budget in an orgiastic one-night stand ofart in the streets—a populist intercourse readymadefor live broadcast on public television.” 9 Inless-developed art scenes, questions regularlyemerge about whether funds being channeledto ephemeral art projects could be better used tostrengthen a city’s cultural infrastructure andsustainability.These critiques aside, ephemeral civic eventshave received little in-depth scholarly attention,especially from art critics and academics.Popularity coupled with populist agendas makethem subject to art world and academic snobbery.I was advised by an academic colleague notto include Nuit Blanche in my outputs for theupcoming UK university Research ExcellenceFramework (REF), as it was only of “local” interest.Drobnick and Fisher responded to the academicneglect of ephemeral urban events byediting a 2012 issue of the journal PUBLIC oncivic spectacle. Such further analysis is welcome,not least because of the particular challengesand questions that curating such events pose.Will a thematic approach create a sense of curatorialcoherence or end up becoming overly prescriptiveand limiting (a particularly relevantconcern when, as with Atlanta’s Flux Night,most artworks are selected blind, from open-callproposals)? What is gained by presenting an artworkin public, short of making it big, bright, andeye-catching? In addition to paying attention tothe weather, crowd control, and communityadvocacy, curators must consider whether apiece can be experienced by large numbers ofpeople and its meaning grasped without theneed for explanatory texts. There are permitsand permissions to seek, roads to close, electricityto source, lights to install or arrange to switchoff. With little time to install or test-run projects,technical issues must be carefully anticipated.The popularity of these programs often leadscities to adopt them as annual events. This canlead to a situation in which such occasionsbecome victims of their own success. Crowdmanagement and safety require extra budgetand labor, as do the provision of refreshments,toilets, and transport. Inertia or outright hostilitycan set in amongst arts aficionados whocomplain that bureaucratic concerns and corporateinterests have usurped the initial spirit ofexperimentation. In Toronto the city organizersattempt to keep Nuit Blanche fresh by invitingseveral different curators each year, includingthose working independently and in artist-runspaces, and offering them commissioning budgetsand relative creative freedom. Nonetheless,Toronto artist An Te Liu’s neon work Ennui Blanc,installed in a storefront gallery during the 2010event, wittily captured the ambivalence of someresidents. Artists who make ostensibly participatoryart have started to incorporate elementsof critique into their work. Observing artists’projects in Toronto and Halifax, Haiven identified“the whiff of laconic nonchalance amongmany would-be ‘public’ artists, as if they wantthe audience to know that they know no-onebelieves in art’s transformative power [anymore],as if to preempt the presumption of overearnesteffort or intention.” 10 In 2012 Jon Sasakioffered his artist fee to the member of the publicwho was able to stand all night with their handsresting on a van. Hands on the Van queries theterms of participation offered by so much contemporaryevent-based public art.When I was invited to curate Nuit Blanche inToronto in 2012, I was aware of these competingviews. Having attended the event since its inception,I missed the first night’s exuberance andadventurousness and had wearied of spendinglong periods lining up for projects that took onlya few minutes to see. I had reached the conclusionthat, valuable though Nuit Blanche was, itwasn’t really designed for people like me workingin, or with regular access to, contemporaryart. Maybe I was just too old. In my zone, OnceMore With Feeling, I wanted to ask how anannual public event could be done again, with adifference. All of the works I featured performedloops of repetition and feedback, highlightingcycles of recurrence and renewal while suggestingthe possibility of revolt. I chose them for theinsight they offered into what it means toencounter art in large groups of people, how thatexperience heightens an awareness of our ownbodies and identities as well as our being-incommonwith others.The event’s temporal frame provided a contextfor international musician and artist SusanStenger’s audio work The Structures of EverydayLife: Full Circle. The piece took listeners through a12-hour cycle that evoked the passage of dusk todawn as chords swelled and receded, soared andsubsided again. Installed in a bandstand in St.James Park, the previous home of OccupyToronto, it was welcomed by protestors as a tributeto their struggle. The Structures of EverydayLife proved unexpectedly interactive. At 3 am agroup of performing arts high school studentsused it to stage an impromptu a cappella recitalof Carly Rae Jepsen’s maddeningly contagiouspop song “Call Me Maybe.”With the budget assigned for a “monumentalwork” that “will make the audience gasp,” Iinvited the Trisha Brown Dance Company torestage a little-seen work from 1968 calledPlanes. 11 Dancers scaled a façade in a corporatecourtyard, accompanied by 16 mm film projectionsof Vietnam War footage by Jud Yalkut anda vacuum cleaner soundtrack by Simone Forti.Satisfying the need for visual impact whileresisting the demand for dazzling spectacle thatoverwhelms the viewer’s subjectivity, this workeschewed virtuosity to celebrate pared-down,everyday movements.A work by UK-based collaborators MaeveBrennan and Ruth Ewan called Tremolo questionedthe event’s emphasis on duration andperformance. Brennan, an accomplished pianistwho suffers from debilitating stage fright,played a series of piano recitals throughout thenight. Audiences at the Rainbow Cinema waitedattentively, not knowing if they would experienceprofessional playing, faulty playing, or noplaying at all. Tremolo became an unexpected44 ART PAPERS