inventory

1....................About NB
2....................Design Philosophy
3....................Fun Slide
5....................The City
7....................The Apology Project
9....................Witche’s Cradles
11...................Rescue Bubble
13...................Gone Indian
15...................Ghost Chorus
17...................Sounding Space
19...................Rabbit Balloon
21...................Imminent Departure
23...................Alienation
25...................Vodka Pool
27...................Speed Shift
29...................10 Scents
31...................Beautiful Light
33...................PWN The Wall
35...................Conclusion
36...................Credits
Nuit Blanche 2009
a free all-night comtemporary art thing

Nuit Blanche 2009, took place on the night of October 3. It looked

excellent this year. Perhaps more serious than past years, many of
the pieces were designed to make you consider the meaning of your
surroundings. With more performance-based work than previous
years, there were many ways for getting you involved with the art.
For one sleepless night the city experienced a transformation by close
to 500 artists for Toronto’s fourth annual sunset to sunrise celebration
of contemporary art. Art was installed in galleries, museums ,and
other unexpected places; from churches and grocery stores, to
chimney stacks and bus stations.
It was a night when even the iconic CN Tower became a piece of
installation art, seeming to bop and boogie with color and sound,
courtesy of the tunes supplied by CIUT Radio 89.5 FM. From dusk to
dawn, the fourth edition of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche featured
12 hours of art, music and live performance in 132 projects created by
more than 550 artists, local, national and international, supplemented
by 459 volunteers. Nuit Blanche is both a high art event and a free
community event that draws people out and into the streets of
Toronto to become part of a contemporary art phenomenon.

1
Design Philosophy
communicating unreality

Nuit Blanche 2009 was an event featuring highly abstract installations

influenced by culturally and socially-rich meanings and symbolisms.
Following the photography phase of the project, I realized that I
would not succeed in communicating the essence of the event by
simply placing original images onto the page. No one image can
convey the multi-faceted conceptual nature intended by NB artists.
Following some reflection, I decided that each spread will be separate
and unique, comprised of a collage from various photos of each
art work. I would eventually supplement certain compositions with
illustrative elements, to enhance the ambiguity of my perception.
My approach is based not on pre-determined aesthetics or rigid
signature styles, rather, it grows naturally from a quest for ideas,
thought, and answers. Designs are never imposed; they evolve from
a rigorous inquiry into the particulars of composition, intended
messages, and the artistic style of the designer. They also represent
my determined belief that we can transform problem-solving through
application of the creative method.
I feel that the final pieces of art in this book reflect the mood I
experienced at the Nuit Blanche setting. The colorful, chaotic, blurry,
and indefinite study of the event constructively reflects my outlook.
Fun Slide
This ride reflects the whirling, tilting
exhilaration of the bull market and its
less than thrilling collapse. Free to the
public and staffed by recently downsized
businesspeople, the rides invite audience
members to kinetically contemplate the
ups and downs of the recent economic
crisis. Out of the darkened financial district,
screams will be heard!

Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

“Our promises of sweet nothings, I think, will be
more filling than the sweet nothings promised by
folks on Bay Street.”

3
 The CITY
Yes the lines were too long, the streets too crowded,
and the TTC too packed. Almost a million Torontonians
spent Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday
morning scurrying around the city to experience wNuit
Blanche; lineups at almost all participating venues
offered a strong indication that NB had surpassed even
the most conservative audience estimates. Streets
were clogged with people experiencing everything
the strangeness this night had to offer. There was art
in car washes, art on outdoor billboards, art on street
corners and art in parks.

5
 Mayor David Miller
“I’m pleased and proud to have been able to be
part of the inaugural Nuit Blanche in Toronto. For
one exciting night Toronto became a city alive
with culture and buzzing with excitement. Nuit
Blanche really showcased Toronto’s proud and
vibrant arts scene. I look forward to many more
nights like this.”
 The Apology Project

Fifty-five people will congest the entrance

of a tunnel while wearing brown paper bags
over their bodies and personally apologizing
to everyone who walks through. If these
people were truthfully sorry they would stop
obnoxiously congesting the tunnel and would
go home and sleep instead of being disruptive
for twelve hours. The piece exposes a double
image that makes you question the sincerity
behind the words “I am sorry.” It’s also a tongue
and cheek reference to the notion that Canadians
are overly apologetic.

7
 Maria Legault
“Thinking about the nature of guilt and apology
and how we handle these as individuals and as
a society was what made me come up with this.
What does it mean to say we are sorry when it is
not accompanied by action?”
 Stepping into the cathedral-like space, visitors

witches’ cradles
encounter a line of “witches’ cradles” suspended
from the ceiling. Originally used to punish those
accused of witchcraft in the Middle Ages, these gently
swaying pods were later reclaimed by witches and
used to induce prophetic visions. One by one, audience
members can enter and experience the cradles.

Center for Tactical Magic

“Rumour has it, that 15 minutes hanging
in one of these things has you seeing
visions; which could be a good thing.
Extreme seclusion: It’s one way to escape

9 Nuit Blanche overload.”

 Tomer Diamant
“I began to see pylons everywhere, to
notice how really ubiquitous they are.
Once you have a reason to notice them,
you’d be shocked to see how many you
pass by every day, unclaimed pylons
that have been abandoned for different
reasons. They’re in the most public
spaces and yet they’re invisible.”

11
Rescue Bubble
As the humble foot soldiers of disposable
infrastructure, traffic pylons solicit an indifferent
compliance in our daily navigations of the city.
Here however, hundreds are amassed into
a single glowing beacon of urgent concern.
This installation represents an attempt to link
imagery from the world of Sci-Fi; that of the
solitary, ominous alien vanguard with our current
speculative economic reality in order to crystallize
a feeling of a looming presence; a foreign,
spore-like organism at once familiar and foreign,
promising and dangerous.
 Rebecca Belmore
“He’ll be dancing, and I’ll be doing my own
thing, but I won’t tell you what it is.”

13
Gone Indian

An artistically rezzed-up pickup truck that

drives slowly around downtown. Decked out in
‘traditional’ pow-wow regalia, the truck features
ongoing drumming and vocals, and a dancer that
erupts into action at unsuspecting moments.
Over the course of the night, the rhythms and
intonations of First Nations culture reverberate
against office buildings and re-territorialize the
financial district.
 Ghost Chorus

Against the auditory background of a looped

clip from a track on the OMD album Dazzle
Ships (1983), a chorus of ghost-costumed
enchanters stands in a circle. Wearing sheets that
glow in the dark, they voice slang words long
dead, disused, or disfavored in a gesture towards
reanimating them.
15
 Katie Bethune-Leamen
“I really wanted do a piece that
glowed in the dark. The rest of the
elements of the work were taken
from things I am working on right
now in my art practice, and the
parameters of NB itself.”
 Sounding Space
The north courtyard entrance of Scotia Plaza
transformed into an extraordinary, interactive
and collaborative musical instrument for Nuit
Blanche. Visitors touch, jump and play with
tiles, benches and planters to create music.
Covering 3500 square feet, the project alters the
space from a place of serious financial business
into a musical playground. A space where you
can become the audience, the participant, and
the performer.

17
 Karlen Chang
“NB is not just discovering new art; it satisfies our deep thirst
for new ways to interact with each other. We’re social
animals, online, at parties, and on our streets. Instead
of just being a passive audience we want new social
interactions that create meaningful experiences.”
 Rabbit Balloon

19
It reflects the needs of culture and society and can represent
so many different things to the viewer. In the looking glass
or through it, step right up and jump into this circle with the
hole in the middle and rise or fall into a wonderland of your
own making. It’s late, it’s late on this very magnificent date.

Jeff Koons
“It comes from my upbringing, I grew
up in south-central Pennsylvania, in a
rural community, and at special times of
the year, people would put things out
in their front yard for decoration, like
reindeer at Christmas time. In the spring,
around Easter time, there would be
rabbits, inflatable rabbits. I was always
very struck by the generosity of the
neighbors in doing that, giving pleasure
to other people in that way.”
 Imminent DEPARTURE

Life-changing upheavals, whether caused by

personal, economic or historic events, serve as the
backdrop for this intervention in Toronto’s historic
terminus. The Great Hall of Union Station is the
arena for countless stories of last minute escapes,
lovers’ reunions, missed connections, riding the
rails, and uncertain farewells.

21
 Heather Nicol
“I had filled the main hall with colour, shadow,
fog and voices. People lay on the ground and
gave themselves up to their senses. This station,
which I’ve rushed through a thousand times,
catching trains, leaving trains, became
de-familiarized. Beautiful. Strange.”
 Alienation

23
 Eugene Olin
“Although this exhibit probably had a name,
meaning, and artist, this particular photograph
means something personal to me. The
composition contains a silhouette of a bicycle with
a figure whose back is turned away; the entire
scene is surrounded by red pylons. This reminds
me that sometimes humans become tired of the
ride and wish to take a break to nap on the side
of the road. Such individuals are isolated and
deemed social outcasts. Albert Einstein once said
“Everything that is really great and inspiring
is created by the individual who can labour in
freedom.” It seems the poor fellow in this shot
grew bored of the organization he works. On his
way home he decided to rest a while, becoming
alienated from the cultural tradition.“
 Vodka pool
A pool of 80-proof alcohol with volatile and symbolic
qualities. Liquor and liquidity bear more than passing
associations to banks and money. Intoxicating, like the
euphoria of riches; evaporating, like the vanishing of
investments during economic downturns; alchemical,
like the transformation of use value into exchange
value. In black markets and other underground
economies, the connections are even more literal. During
wars and totalitarian regimes alcohol serves as both
an escape and a home-brewed currency for procuring
essential goods and services.

25
 Dan Mihaltianu
“A key aspect of his practice concerns research into
liquids and their associations and functions. From
the world’s oceans to financial liquidity, from political
transparency to liquor and food culture.”
 Erwin Redl
“The formal aspect of the works is
easily accessible. An interpretation and
understanding of this aspect is dependent upon
the viewer’s subjective references. Equally, the
various individual’s interactions within the context
of the installation re-shape each viewer’s subjective
references and reveal a complex social phenomenon.”

27
Speed Shift
The installation places two artificial visual
realities, Minimal Art and advertising
billboards, in unmediated juxtaposition.
Consumer society made Oscar Wilde’s
aphorism “Life imitates art far more than art
imitates Life” into “Life imitates commercials
far more than commercials imitate Life.”
Advertising has taken over society.
 10 Scents
Chih-Chien Wang
“Is it time already for dinner?”

Public toilets are filled with unlikely materials

and scents, their aromas conjuring up landscapes,
characters and events from Lewis Carroll’s classic
fantasy and logic-twister Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. Rather than journeying down a
rabbit-hole, visitors engage in their own adventures
by just opening the door. Visual, textual, and olfactory
clues may coalesce, or not, posing evocative sensory
conundrums to ponder and explore.

29
 D.A. Therrien
“In Egyptian mythology, the god Taht (Apollo
in Greek) was represented as a “beautiful
light” and this light represented knowledge
itself. In the Bible, angels are described as
beings of light, messengers of light. “

31
 Beautiful light:
4 letter word machine
The 4 LETTER WORD MACHINE, the first
installation in the BEAUTIFUL LIGHT series,
explores the purity of white light, the mystery
of language, the precision of digital codes and
the magic of 4 letters, A, C, G, T, representing
the DNA code, and consequently all known
life describing both the observable physical
nature of consequently, all known life.
33
PWN the wall
Graffiti Research Lab, a cross-
Canadian collaborative team, is
debuting bombIR, which is an
infrared-LED equipped spray can
that allows writers to physically
paint with light. In the ongoing
battle between graffiti artists and
those who revile their work as
visual pollution; painting with light
provides at least one night’s respite.
 Conclusion final words

Much as attending the event, working on this book was exciting and
inspiring. While visiting the installations at NB, I was exposed to many
interesting people and their concepts. I saw many artists’ visions come
to life in unusual, but successful ways. I consider this book to be my
own success. Although I used photographs of other art, I believe that
some part of me inherently exists in each composition. Whilst working
on each collage I attempted to interpret not only the intended
meaning of each installation, but augment it with its environment
and my own thoughts. I believe I succeeded in doing so.
At first I was somewhat sceptical of the artistic integrity of Nuit
Blanche; based on previous experience. However after the visit my
attitude changed completely. Many of the projects were incredibly
thoughtful and conceptual. Some were inspired by myth and history,
others touched upon serious social, political, and economic issues, yet
others seemed spontaneously abstract. I imagine that my creation
communicates the beauty, mystery, and certain chaos that I felt at the
overnight festival.
By taking such an atypical way of constructing this photography book,
I evolved as a graphic artist. I learned to meditate on the concept
before delving into development and production. At the outset of the
project I was determined to express the essence of NB, and was able
to produce distinct spreads powerful on their own. Yet they sit very
well in a book format complementing one another and contributing
to the overall message. I am really proud of this work and aspire to be
challenged in such ways in the future.

35
 Credits
evgeny olin

To gather material for this book I attended the 2009 Nuit Blanche
festival, where I took photographs of several installations and the
downtown area of Toronto. I used my Nikon D90 DSLR camera to
capture numerous images of my encounters. Following the event,
I came upon the idea of communicating my experiences in collage
format. To enhance certain spreads I used my own drawings within
the compositions, made in Adobe Illustrator. The collage artworks
were shaped using Adobe Photoshop to combine and enhance
several photographs. Each spread is made to have a distinct character
within a continuous style used throughout the book. Certain
spreads have high contrast areas for an overwhelming effect, while
others are created on mid-tones; to preserve the academic theory
of environmental painting. The final spreads were combined using
Adobe Indesign, where I also added the typography.
This project was a wonderful experience; I not only increased my
technical knowledge of the software, but developed new ways of
discovering innovative solutions to design challenges. I would like to
thank certain classmates who offered their critique and feedback. I
would also like to extend special gratitude for my design professor
who presented us with the opportunity to work on this project and
was available for support and reference.