KAROLINA WISNIEWSKI
<Opinions Editor>
My feelings regarding Nuit Blanche were perfectly captured by Bite.ca’s posting of the Nuit Blanche Drinking Game. Among other clever instructions, players were invited to finish their drink whenever they regretted coming to the event. One of my friends reacted immediately by saying that if he played along, he would have consumed so much alcohol before getting off the subway on his way downtown that the consequences would be dire. I laughed and didn’t think anything of it at first. But upon reflection, it pointed to a deeper understanding of the ennui I was experiencing regarding Nuit Blanche.
To better illustrate my point, I’ll make use of an analogy. The most depressing moment, the moment where you feel so acutely that a relationship is indubitably over, is when you can’t bring yourself to care anymore. Though it may seem counterintuitive, fighting is healthy; disagreements, however difficult they may be to work through, are indicative of a mutual willingness to engage in discussion in the first place. It’s only the people who bear no importance to us that we don’t bother arguing with. Although, of course, no relationship should be entirely consumed by conflict, working through difficulties can actually be productive. When things don’t seem worth fighting for, on the other hand, the situation changes entirely.
For many years, Nuit Blanche annoyed me. I abhorred the drunken and obnoxious teenagers the event drew; I shuddered at the thought that the only way to ‘enjoy’ an artwork was to push through crowds, and I rolled my eyes each time an artist’s statement employed the words “ambivalent”, “juxtaposition” and “postmodern.” This year was different. This year, I didn’t sigh forlornly when my friends joked about their love/hate relationship with Nuit Blanche: I nodded in agreement. I didn’t feel phased by such sardonic accounts of the event, because I identified with them. I had stopped caring. After seven years, I had, unknowingly, broken up with Nuit Blanche. It wasn’t acrimonious; I wasn’t bitter. I was just done.
Maybe a more accurate way of characterizing this is to say that I parted ways with my idealized vision of Nuit Blanche. I had, once and for all, put to rest my expectations. I had ended all attempts at trying to jam the square peg of my idealizations into the round hole of reality. I had reconciled myself with the notion that Nuit Blanche would never break through its frustratingly self-perpetuating cycle of inflated expectations and disappointment to follow. Disillusioning as it was to come to terms with such a realization, it didn’t leave me entirely hopeless. Nuit Blanche may never live up to its full potential, but this doesn’t mean that it ought to be seen as having no merit.
The mediocrity of many Nuit Blanche artworks was the principle source of my aggravation. Many shake their heads at the millions of dollars they see as wasted on proposals that are unoriginal, poorly planned or unable to translate into actuality all that they promise on paper. There is truth to such sentiments. For starters, after seven rounds of Nuit Blanche, I don’t ever need to see another ‘audience participation’ piece, where my movements are shoddily translated into some sort of flickering light pattern above, below or in front of me. In similar spirit, I’ve developed intolerance for certain media. Contemporary artists seem to be collectively afflicted with the unawareness that projections (of any kind – on a wall, a window, a sidewalk, on the CN tower, over Lake Ontario) are never provocative or daring or any of the other pretentiously inflated synonyms used to describe them. It’s astonishing to see this method utilized countless times without the slightest bit of self-reflection or criticism, which, if taken up, would undoubtedly have indicated to the artist that they were hurtling themselves into the black books of critics.
Over the years, Nuit Blanche has come to be known as one of two things: to many, an excuse to meet up with friends, roam downtown aimlessly, drink with reckless abandon and ‘check out some cool art shit’ (as one attendee put it so eloquently). For the artistic community of Toronto, it’s seen as a celebration of mediocrity and an exposition of pseudo-artwork.
But perhaps this kind of an environment is necessary. Perhaps in a climate of ‘anything goes’, the volume of attempts allows for the emergence of true gems. Though Nuit Blanche is no stranger to poor artwork, neither is it uncommon to see a few standout pieces every year, each of which would fit in seamlessly with the collections of many world-class galleries. Brilliant ideas (and, more importantly, brilliant artworks) are very rarely one-offs or epiphanies. They come about as a product of tireless pursuit and a never-ending process of aesthetic development. By displaying works that aren’t entirely successful, both the creator and fellow artists in the audience are given the chance to refine their notion of artistic excellence, and are brought that much closer to their own breakthrough. So, although I’ve ended a certain kind of relationship with Nuit Blanche, in the process, I’ve come to appreciate a completely different way of approaching the event. And, in the end, this may be for the better.