Kim Simon [statement]
The area framed by Toronto's McCaul Street and University Avenue is a microcosm of
perpetually developing urban activity. Alongside seemingly public spaces like numerous
parks, swimming pools and our streets themselves, the area is a sprawling mix of private
residences, key cultural institutions, world-renowned education, medical and research
facilities, and hulking government and corporate centres.
We often take for granted the ways that we move through and inhabit the spaces of the
city. Thinking about the range of behaviour and experience that can happen, we might
come to see that all of our spaces are both legally and socially regulated. The result of this
often-unconscious conditioning is that we learn very particular ways of being and
engaging in our city.
Restless in the face of our habitual urban experiences, the artists of Nuit Blanche help to
pierce through our routines. Inviting a celebratory and productive insomnia, Nuit Blanche
provides an opportunity to slow the fast pace of Toronto's perpetual state of becoming
and, perhaps in new ways, take a look around. Here the engagement of contemporary art
becomes widely visible as a catalyst for the production of civic space in Toronto,
provoking a consideration of the quality of relationships people have to each other and to
our institutions.
The many artists and performers responsible for these eight commissioned projects all
create with an acute sense of play and joy, exposing or transforming aspects of the ways
we are in our city. A playground of urban fantasy, visions and encounters will greet those
who venture out this night. Towards collectively creating personal memories of public space
and visceral experiences of physical and conceptual institutions, Nuit Blanche asks us to
look and listen closer through twelve sleepless hours, wandering in a state of wonder.
Kim Simon
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