urbandreamer
recession proof
^I meet a hot artsy girl we live happily ever after
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smuncky
Senior Member
i'm going to try and make it out this year as my friend has 2 exhibits. last year i didn't go because it was raining i think. but i'll definitely stay out all night and see the interesting sights and sounds.
btw, the subway will be open all night that night for the first time. it will be...
btw, the subway will be open all night that night for the first time. it will be...
Tuscani01
Senior Member
I have high expectations from what I heard about it last year.
I'll be there for sure!
I'll be there for sure!
smuncky
Senior Member
there is a pre registration going on to go on top of the CN tower during nuit blanche.
http://www.cntower.ca/nuitblancheform/
http://www.cntower.ca/nuitblancheform/
marcus_a_j
Senior Member
Second year in a row i will miss it because of a field trip
FutureMayor
Active Member
NB Mississauga
I've been in talks with city staff about doing this event in Mississauga. My suggestion was to centre it around Square One, using the corridors and the parking lots.
The new Office of the Arts is looking into establishing such an event.
Louroz
I've been in talks with city staff about doing this event in Mississauga. My suggestion was to centre it around Square One, using the corridors and the parking lots.
The new Office of the Arts is looking into establishing such an event.
Louroz
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Relax, Darkstar, the Distillery District will be a venue for dance, installation/performance, film, and gallery shows this year.
Thank goodness they managed to come up with sponsors with deep pockets again this year. Toronto government's grants to the arts are among the lowest per capita of any major Canadian city.
Thank goodness they managed to come up with sponsors with deep pockets again this year. Toronto government's grants to the arts are among the lowest per capita of any major Canadian city.
smuncky
Senior Member
looks like the website is up and running with all the activities that will be happening this year in all the zones. check em out.
rdaner
Senior Member
From thestar.com 20-9-2007
A room with a point of view
Artist converts dumpster to a chic hotel room for Nuit Blanche as comment on gentrification
Sep 19, 2007 04:30 AM
Murray Whyte Staff reporter
Staff Reporter
Last fall in Brooklyn, the Toronto artist known as Swintak gave a talk called "The World is My Studio."
Audience members were coaxed to chase after moving cars, sprint through shops and, in one instance, plant their hands in gooey baking while Swintak trotted alongside describing how the world was her studio.
For the next 11 days, Swintak will be holed up in an abandoned building at a municipal waste disposal site in the Toronto portlands infusing a forlorn dumpster with a veneer of luxe.
"A little bit of beige, some white," says Swintak, running a hand along the glassy shellacked inner walls of her eventually posh receptacle.
When it's done, a suite of rosewood furniture, multiple-hundred thread count sheets and a two-item room-service menu will give the outsize garbage can a sheen of the luxurious.
The notion? A boutique hotel for one night only in an alley behind a Burger King at College St. and Spadina Ave. The installation is part of Nuit Blanche, Toronto's freshly adopted, all-night chaotic art spectacle on Sept. 29 from 7:03 p.m. to sunrise. It turns one this year. Even that wasn't meant to be. Conceived as a one-take shot shot-in-the-arm courtesy of the city's creative communities, public response was so overwhelming – 425,000 braved a rainy night, all night, for the first one – that the city committed to make it an annual thing.
"We didn't know how people would react to it," said Jaye Robinson, the city's director of events. "But when it was over, all the calls, the emails, we had to seriously think about doing it every year."
Easier said than done. Scotiabank, the event's main sponsor last year, hadn't planned its cash outlay – around $300,000, or 30 per cent of the event's total budget – to be an annual expense.
The city started negotiating with the bank in February; it secured sponsorship in the spring. The event had bad timing, the same weekend as a Scotiabank-sponsored Waterfront Marathon.
"We had to take into account it was a big weekend for us," said the bank's vice-president of marketing, John Doig. "If we get into something this big, we want to do it right. It's not just writing a cheque."
That's something the city knows well enough. Nuit Blanche takes a lot of cheques. From 195 individual art projects spread across three zones – bigger, broader and more inclusive than last year – it's the cultural equivalent of herding cats. To that end, the TTC is running shuttle services between zones and opening an all-night run for portions of the subway system.
The cost in cash, time and simple sweat equity is large indeed. If the city hadn't been able to secure funding from Scotiabank, year two would have been near-impossible.
Between Nuit Blanche and Luminato – the other all-encompassing arts festival in town – the strain on creative communities to perform can be great. Privately, many grumbled that the small stipends they received didn't cover the costs of the projects they executed at the city's behest.
The ephemeral nature of the evening caused a disconnect between urban culture at its grassroots and the city administration. Some wondered what such an event – mounds of garbage and hangovers notwithstanding – would leave behind to help foster the culture they had laboured to create.
"That's the Paris model – you never, ever repeat. It's always new," Robinson said. "You have 12 hours to see the art, and if you can't stay up you miss it."
Others see the event as essential branding for a city striving to become known as an international cultural destination.
This year, there will be a spare bed for cultural tourists behind the Burger King at Spadina and College – albeit at 10-minute intervals.
"I think that's a good amount of time," Swintak says, arranging buttons on a rolling spa bed she's building. "You can't have a boutique hotel without a spa," she says, indicating a hollow, cranium-sized notch at the dumpster's one end.
"It's kind of a new concept we're calling a head spa," she says, explaining that guests will wheel into the notch head first for their treatment.
The "treatment," of course, is of a city's upward spiralling economy and thirst for luxury in previously downtrodden urban corners. "Really, what I'm doing is gentrifying the dumpster," Swintak says.
A room with a point of view
Artist converts dumpster to a chic hotel room for Nuit Blanche as comment on gentrification
Sep 19, 2007 04:30 AM
Murray Whyte Staff reporter
Staff Reporter
Last fall in Brooklyn, the Toronto artist known as Swintak gave a talk called "The World is My Studio."
Audience members were coaxed to chase after moving cars, sprint through shops and, in one instance, plant their hands in gooey baking while Swintak trotted alongside describing how the world was her studio.
For the next 11 days, Swintak will be holed up in an abandoned building at a municipal waste disposal site in the Toronto portlands infusing a forlorn dumpster with a veneer of luxe.
"A little bit of beige, some white," says Swintak, running a hand along the glassy shellacked inner walls of her eventually posh receptacle.
When it's done, a suite of rosewood furniture, multiple-hundred thread count sheets and a two-item room-service menu will give the outsize garbage can a sheen of the luxurious.
The notion? A boutique hotel for one night only in an alley behind a Burger King at College St. and Spadina Ave. The installation is part of Nuit Blanche, Toronto's freshly adopted, all-night chaotic art spectacle on Sept. 29 from 7:03 p.m. to sunrise. It turns one this year. Even that wasn't meant to be. Conceived as a one-take shot shot-in-the-arm courtesy of the city's creative communities, public response was so overwhelming – 425,000 braved a rainy night, all night, for the first one – that the city committed to make it an annual thing.
"We didn't know how people would react to it," said Jaye Robinson, the city's director of events. "But when it was over, all the calls, the emails, we had to seriously think about doing it every year."
Easier said than done. Scotiabank, the event's main sponsor last year, hadn't planned its cash outlay – around $300,000, or 30 per cent of the event's total budget – to be an annual expense.
The city started negotiating with the bank in February; it secured sponsorship in the spring. The event had bad timing, the same weekend as a Scotiabank-sponsored Waterfront Marathon.
"We had to take into account it was a big weekend for us," said the bank's vice-president of marketing, John Doig. "If we get into something this big, we want to do it right. It's not just writing a cheque."
That's something the city knows well enough. Nuit Blanche takes a lot of cheques. From 195 individual art projects spread across three zones – bigger, broader and more inclusive than last year – it's the cultural equivalent of herding cats. To that end, the TTC is running shuttle services between zones and opening an all-night run for portions of the subway system.
The cost in cash, time and simple sweat equity is large indeed. If the city hadn't been able to secure funding from Scotiabank, year two would have been near-impossible.
Between Nuit Blanche and Luminato – the other all-encompassing arts festival in town – the strain on creative communities to perform can be great. Privately, many grumbled that the small stipends they received didn't cover the costs of the projects they executed at the city's behest.
The ephemeral nature of the evening caused a disconnect between urban culture at its grassroots and the city administration. Some wondered what such an event – mounds of garbage and hangovers notwithstanding – would leave behind to help foster the culture they had laboured to create.
"That's the Paris model – you never, ever repeat. It's always new," Robinson said. "You have 12 hours to see the art, and if you can't stay up you miss it."
Others see the event as essential branding for a city striving to become known as an international cultural destination.
This year, there will be a spare bed for cultural tourists behind the Burger King at Spadina and College – albeit at 10-minute intervals.
"I think that's a good amount of time," Swintak says, arranging buttons on a rolling spa bed she's building. "You can't have a boutique hotel without a spa," she says, indicating a hollow, cranium-sized notch at the dumpster's one end.
"It's kind of a new concept we're calling a head spa," she says, explaining that guests will wheel into the notch head first for their treatment.
The "treatment," of course, is of a city's upward spiralling economy and thirst for luxury in previously downtrodden urban corners. "Really, what I'm doing is gentrifying the dumpster," Swintak says.
Tewder
Senior Member
...and sure to plummet even further with the new cuts being announced. The latest communication from the National Ballet is already sounding the alarm bells.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Frankly, will we even notice? According to their own figures, the City only spends $16.61 of the property tax that they raise from an average priced home with an assessed value of $370,000 on " Economic Development, Culture & Tourism"!
Jdot
Active Member
Although I think that the city should be sponsoring culture and tourism events, I am glad to see that other sponsors are coming on board to help promote the city. Much was said about the city not sponsoring LuminaTO, but I was happy to see a new festival being ADDED to the slate of city-sponsored festivals. Not EVERYTHING has to be city-sponsored.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Not everything is sponsored by the city. I believe Shocker's point is that the city actually spends very little on culture when considering how much added value it brings to Toronto. Other jurisdictions spend more (like Montreal), and some spend less (like Ottawa).
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Very little is. They pat people on the head and hand out awards, mostly, which costs the City nothing - the recent City of Toronto Urban Design Awards, worthy though they are, are a good example example of that.
The excellent Summer Music Festival at the U of T Faculty of Music this year was entirely free of government funding and it was magnificent - the concert by soprano Karina Gauvin was one of the best things I've heard all year. Her last encore Ae Fond Kiss was most affecting.
The excellent Summer Music Festival at the U of T Faculty of Music this year was entirely free of government funding and it was magnificent - the concert by soprano Karina Gauvin was one of the best things I've heard all year. Her last encore Ae Fond Kiss was most affecting.
Tewder
Senior Member
I'd like to know where the city does spend it's money then, it's certainly not on infrastructure and street maintenace etc. Time for the city to open its books to public scrutiny, imo.