City of Toronto Announces Full Program for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2014

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - August 27, 2014) - The City of Toronto today released the complete artistic program for the ninth edition of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, which will take place Saturday, October 4 from 6:53 p.m. until sunrise on Sunday. This year's lineup features more than 120 art projects created by nearly 400 local, national and international artists who will transform the streets of Toronto for one magical night. Details for the full program are available at http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca and a Backgrounder highlighting some details about the City-produced exhibitions is included with this news release.

Along with the exhibition at City Hall/Nathan Phillips Square, this free event is expanding into new neighbourhoods such as Chinatown/Spadina Avenue, Fort York and Roundhouse Park/Bremner Boulevard, allowing for a renewed perspective, especially for those who attend the event each year.

"Scotiabank Nuit Blanche brings this city together in such an exciting way," said Mike Williams, General Manager, Economic Development and Culture. "This collaboration of the City of Toronto, the arts community, corporate and media sponsors and hundreds of volunteers brings over a million people out to the streets to experience contemporary art on a grand scale. This overnight festival also generates significant economic impact, totalling more than $177 million since 2006."

"We are proud to support Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, a special night when Toronto comes together to celebrate and experience art throughout our city," said Claude Norfolk, Scotiabank's Senior Vice President of the Toronto Region. "We believe the arts have a special role in our culture, inspiring us to pursue our passions and see the world through new perspectives. This year, we're excited to bring back 1nspired Night, a popular installation introduced last year that lets attendees share their experiences during the night."

City-produced exhibition projects
This year the City-produced component features an engaging lineup of 48 contemporary art projects, the largest number of City-produced projects in the event's history.

Details are provided in the Backgrounder that follows this news release.

1nspired Night: presented by Scotiabank
1nspired Night is an art installation that tells the story of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche through a live, immersive experience that allows attendees to become part of the art. Tagged pictures will be streamed in real time via #snbTO on Twitter & Instagram. This compilation of images will be projected throughout the night within the 100-foot (30-metre) walkway of screens at 130 Spadina Ave.

Extended projects in 2014
Ten artist projects will be extended for one week until October 13: Yvette Mattern's Global Rainbow, Maria Ezcurra's Made in China, Glenda León's Silent Rise, Chelanie Beaudin-Quintin's Screaming Booth, SuttonBeresCuller's Big Top Grand Stand, Michael Oatman's 8^th Wonder, Yoan Capote's Open Mind, Wilfredo Prieto's Ascendant Line, LeuWebb Projects' Melting Point and Antoni Mutadas' Good News. A complete list of times and locations is available on the website at http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/2014-event/extension.html.

Nuit Talks
A series of themed talks scheduled to run from September 30 to October 3, allow for personal interaction, engagement, contemplation and meaningful discussion on the practice and projects of the artists and curators. This year's Nuit Talks include: a conversation with artists Máximo González and Ivan Buenader; a discussion on the costs and benefits of art festivals; a look at each of this year's curators' vision, process, projects and purpose; a special preview presentation in partnership with the AGO's First Thursdays; and an examination of the role anxiety plays in our lives, reflected through artists' practice. A full list of events, speakers, locations, ticket information and times is available at http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/2014-event/nuit-talks.html.

Community-produced Independent Projects
The community-produced portion of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2014 will feature more than 70 projects created by cultural and educational institutions, neighbourhoods and individual artists. These exciting projects expand the boundaries of the event and showcase the diversity of Toronto's art communities.

The BATA Shoe Museum, the Gardiner Museum, the Spadina Museum, Mackenzie House and the AGO along with OCAD University, Canada's National Ballet, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Artscape at Youngplace and Wychwood Barns and many more organizations are hosting important projects in their unique venues.

Travel packages
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2014 partners include official host hotels, the Eaton Chelsea, Toronto and Fairmont Royal York, and official transportation partner VIA Rail Canada.

Visitors who book a two-night stay with any of the 14 Scotiabank Nuit Blanche hotel partners will receive an invitation to Behind The Nuit, featuring an exclusive sneak peek experience of Performance Anxiety at Nathan Phillips Square on the evening of Friday, October 3. This special event allows visitors to experience the work while learning about the curator, and artists and their creative process. Complete information on all travel packages and hotels can be found at http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/travel-packages.

Media note: High resolution images and information about the projects are available at http://bit.ly/1tXpwnu.

About Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is Toronto's annual all-night celebration of contemporary art, produced by the City of Toronto in collaboration with Toronto's arts community. Since 2006, the event has featured more than 950 official art installations, created by nearly 4,000 artists and has generated more than $177 million in economic impact for Toronto. Look for information and updates at http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca, on Facebook at facebook.com/sbnuitblancheTO and Twitter at @sbnuitblancheTO, #snbTO.

From Scotiabank
Scotiabank is a leading financial services provider in over 55 countries and Canada's most international bank. Through Bright Future, our global philanthropic program, Scotiabank and its employees support causes at a grassroots level across six pillars: health, education, social services, arts and culture, environment and sports. Recognized as a leader for our charitable donations and philanthropic activities, Scotiabank has contributed on average some $50 million annually over the last five years to community causes around the world. Visit us at www.scotiabank.com.

Toronto is Canada's largest city, the fourth largest in North America, and home to a diverse population of about 2.8 million people. It is a global centre for business, finance, arts and culture and is consistently ranked one of the world's most livable cities. Toronto is proud to be the Host City for the 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games. For information on non-emergency City services and programs, Toronto residents, businesses and visitors can visit http://www.toronto.ca, call 311, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or follow us @TorontoComms.

Backgrounder

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche program details for City-produced exhibitions

The artistic program for the ninth edition of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche will take place Saturday, October 4 from 6:53 p.m. until sunrise and feature more than 120 art projects created by nearly 400 local, national and international artists. Highlights of the City-produced exhibition projects follow.

City-produced exhibition projects
This year the City-produced component features an engaging lineup of 48 contemporary art projects, the largest number of City-produced projects in the event's history. These are all part of four curated exhibitions.

1. Between the earth and the sky, the possibility of everything
Curated by Dominique Fontaine, an independent curator from Montreal, "Between the earth and the sky, the possibility of everything" features 12 projects in Chinatown and on Queen West. Fontaine's exhibition creates a framework for artistic experimentation that alters basic assumptions about what people see, feel and understand about the world and themselves. The exhibition invites audiences to re-think the possibilities of public spaces.

Highlights:
- Global Rainbow from Yvette Mattern is a monumental public light sculpture that beams seven rays of laser lights representing a natural rainbow with a trajectory or viewing spectrum of up to 60 km arcing across the city. The presentation is poetic, magical and powerful.
- Maria Ezcurra's Made in China creates a façade in a Chinatown alleyway entrance using local community-donated garments labelled "Made in China." The idea is to build a bridge between two buildings, creating both a physical and a symbolic connection among cultures.
- AMAZE transforms an ordinary scaffolding structure into a fully immersive environment of light and sound in the heart of the city. A labyrinth like no other, Marcos Zotes' installation provides a multisensory experience through a personal journey of discovery and transformation.
- Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin's Screaming Booth is for those who would like to scream out loud to let off steam and release stress but who dare not for fear of disturbing the peace, appearing crazy, or alarming friends without cause. In this space, no one can hear you scream…or barely.
- Nathan Whitford's Shy Lights explores the distinction between spotlight and searchlight by reversing the roles of light and subject. By lighting only the empty space between participants, the lights themselves become the subjects, performers in a playful dance of pursuit and avoidance.

2. The Night Circus
Denise Markonish, curator at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., curates the exhibition "The Night Circus," named after and inspired by Erin Morgenstern's book. Featuring 10 projects located in and around Roundhouse Park and along Bremner Boulevard, Markonish's exhibition offers a spectacle of magic, with an aura of darkness bubbling underneath. Artists dazzle, entertain and enchant downtown Toronto during a night circus that vanishes as the dawn breaks.

Highlights:
- HOLOSCENES is a performance installation from Lars Jan that is a visceral, visual and public collision of the human body and water. As water rises, a performer swims to the top for air when necessary and dives below to adapt their behaviour to the new aquatic environment.
- A continuous, meditative cycling of images explores bodies as capsules of history and perceived progress in Anandam Dancetheatre's Cascade. The project creates a charged space of performative togetherness between audiences and artists.
- Diane Landry's Icebreaker sets up an impossible situation, a boat hovering in mid-air, with water seemingly flowing around it - a ghost ship with a single rower, a feat of time, endurance and gravity.
- In the tradition of drive-through redwoods and captured great white sharks, Michael Oatman and Brian Kane's social sculpture 8th Wonder is a photo opportunity backdrop, a colossus for a new age and a love letter to that great North American huckster, P.T. Barnum.
- FASTWURMS' The Fortune-Teller Machine - Zardoz, allows the audience to meet with cybernetic Witches in a custom-designed nomadic caravan trailer. In exchange for inputs and information, the audience get a personal fortune message and gift.

3. Before Day Break
Curated by Magda Gonzalez-Mora, an independent curator in Toronto, "Before Day Break" includes 12 projects located in and around historic Fort York. Gonzalez-Mora's exhibition examines the intricacy of everyday life and the perception of reality. Through these works, the artists reflect on different conditions that impact our ability to understand the world.

Highlights:
- Yoan Capote's Open Mind is a labyrinth based on a drawing of the human brain that people can walk through, acting as metaphors for neurons transmitting information. This work inspires dialogue on the human need for tolerance and acceptance in a global world.
- This latest work from Antoni Muntadas entitled Good News, examines the duality of media as a source of information and an instrument of manipulation. The piece displays a wide range of headlines in order to create a defiance in the uniformly constructed "media flow."
- Part installation, part sociological survey, Between Doors from Labspace Studio invites audiences into an evolving narrative on the nature of choice. Confronted by a series of free-standing doorways, participants are asked to make a choice; for every decision there lies a doorway; through that doorway, another set of doorways and another set of choices.

- Conga Irreversible perfectly illustrates Los Carpenteros' strategy as artists, using irony to replace direct criticism. This video installation features 100 professional Cuban dancers in outlandish black outfits doing the conga in reverse.
- Kelly Mark's live performance and video installation Everything and Nothing, takes the form of a back and forth dialogue between a man and a woman. The exchange continues until they have recited one hundred phrases each, repeated in reverse order, to create an endless loop.

4. Performance Anxiety
Heather Pesanti, senior curator at the Contemporary Austin in Austin, offers an exclusive performance-based exhibition for the first time ever at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche called "Performance Anxiety." Curated in the spirit of symphony, events will take place throughout the night at Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square. Pesanti's exhibition reflects the sensation and emotion an individual feels when facing the public.

Highlights:
- Tony Conrad collaborates with Jennifer Walshe to present THE SIGNING, a street spectacle shadow-opera that centres on the tension enacted in the signing of a document. The project uses shadow puppetry, voice, violin, electronics and projections.
- For Wanwu: Metamorphosis, Bingyi creates a large-scale painting under a halo of intense green light. The painting is completed, then dissolved by water while an operatic performance occurs throughout the night.
- Vertical City presents 2YouTopia, a performance and heart-wrenching meditation. A free-standing maze of construction scaffolding and architectural piping evokes a decaying residence suspended precariously over a pool of water, accompanied by a dense soundscape.
- Kathryn Andrews collaborates with Scott Benzel to transform City Hall's multilayered interior into an inverted theatre with Split Chorale for Viljo Revell. Visitors watch a panoply of video montages floating on the structure's central stalk, while simultaneously being viewed by a legion of choral singers engaged in a marathon drone.
- With Halflife, Shasti O'Leary Soudant creates a theatre of spectacle based on the notion of contagion. The artist empowers 100 glowing "carriers" to disperse throughout the city and "infect" willing participants with invisible UV reactive ink markers, peaking in a mass convergence on the Square.