Volume 28 Issue 1 | September 20 - November 8, 2022

A WORLD VIEW
Bridging the Space Between Us
NUIT BLANCHE
TORONTO 2022
ANDREW TIMAR
White Night Roots
While some cite Paris’ 2001 Nuit Blanche as
the concept’s ground zero, it likely had
its roots in Helsinki in 1989; Helsinki’s
nighttime festival of the arts, with all museums and
galleries open “until at least midnight” proved to be
contagious, steadily spreading to over a hundred of
the world’s cities, including across Canada, including
Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax,
Winnipeg and Saskatoon.
I well recall the buzz around Toronto’s premiere Nuit Blanche in
2006. I cut out the double-page downtown event map in NOW magazine
to facilitate my bicycle-driven art crawl to well over a dozen
events and installations. Dubbed Scotiabank Nuit Blanche for its title
sponsor, it is today the City of Toronto’s baby, after the bank withdrew
in 20125, saying the event no longer aligned with its sponsorship
priorities. By then, it had “grown into one of the largest public
art exhibitions in North America,” according to the city’s website.
How large? In 2015 the city claimed in a promotional video that “Since
the inaugural event, more than 9.5 million people explored 1,200 art
projects by 4,500 artists.”
Nuit Blanche Toronto 2022
As they did to all other in-person events, the last two pandemicridden
years put a damper on Nuit Blanche too. The good news is that
this celebration of contemporary art returns this year “bigger than
ever,” from sunset on October 1 to sunrise on October 2.
Past Nuit Blanche exhibitions have been primarily sited downtown,
with occasional nods to Scarborough venues. This year that geography
has been substantially expanded to include numerous installations in
Etobicoke and North York. A total of some 162 artwork locations are
listed on its website map.
Led by artistic director Dr. Julie Nagam, Canada Research Chair in
Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media at the University
of Winnipeg, Nuit Blanche Toronto features more than 150 artworks
by local, national and international
artists. This year’s ambitious
curatorial theme, The Space
Between Us, “reveals the space
between us as a potential site for
sharing knowledge” and invites
artists to “transform the city by
creatively sharing stories about
their connection to place while
bridging cultures and connecting
with communities and the
Artistic director Dr. Julie Nagam environment.”
Tanya Tagaq
Ajagutaq/Parhelion
Nuit Blanche Toronto generally privileges visual experiences.
(All-night outdoor music is by its nature problematic.) In fact “Music”
doesn’t even appear among the 19 “Mediums” listed in the pull-down
program filter on this year’s website, though there are eight events
under “Sound Installation.”
One of these caught my eye; the intriguingly multifaceted Ajagutaq/
Parhelion by award-winning Inuk artist, improvisational diva,
composer and novelist Tanya Tagaq and her team. Tagaq’s work at the
Harbourfront Centre was inspired by a dream she recounted in her
novel Split Tooth.
In Ajagutaq/Parhelion the Nuit Blanche audience is “transported to
a magnificent landscape in Nunavut, where Arctic beings and spirits
become one. The storm has caused a whiteout… The light is blazing. It’s
the New Sun. Hungry for justice, hungry for truth, hungry for sustenance.
Walk the frozen tundra, embraced by brilliant light as ice crystals
form, and surround yourself with the beauty of seven sun dogs.… It’s a
story of redemption, a story of survival. The awakening of self.”
Digital multimedia artist Driftnote (Omar Rivero) directs Ajagutaq/
Parhelion, virtually transporting attendees to an arctic landscape. As
the “audience’s ear” composer Daedelus (Alfred Darlington) “translates
time and space,” transforming each listener into a “bear and
human lover, ice pleaser.”
“You will live another year,” is Tagaq’s optimistic promise, at the
end of her program notes.
Music at the Aga Khan Museum
The Aga Khan Museum has curated an extensive series of exhibitions
and performances including visual art, music, dance, ritual and
music for its Nuit Blanche card. Titled Collective Effervescence, it’s
designed to celebrate the joy of being able to perform in-person and to
communally gather to experience the arts once again.
In a commercial stretch of the Don Mills neighbourhood of North
York the architecturally striking Aga Khan Museum has been a home
for inclusive, transcultural music performances ever since it opened
its doors in 2014. Early this September I spoke to Amirali Alibhai, head
of performing arts at the AKM. He outlined a rich series of live music
Bagshree Vaze
26 | September 20 - November 8, 2022 thewholenote.com