Will Robinson's Young Prayer

Going through Toronto’s Nuit Blanche website is somewhat akin to the childhood experience of maniacally ripping through Sears’ Holiday Wish Book. After cutting out photos of every game, stuffed animal, and doll came the harsh realization that there was no way anyone, Santa or not, was going to indulge that kind of greed. So, I’d reluctantly remove the less-desired items (sorry, Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces) from my wishlist collage.

Unless you’re Julian Higuerey Núñez or Henry Adam Svec, who are facing off in an attempt to critique every single project Saturday night, or you’re just going out to get hosed, Nuit Blanche requires strategic editing. Now’s not the time to get greedy.

What struck me with this year’s event is the increase of international artists and projects that rely on social media. While I think there is a lot of room for artistic experimentation using Twitter, Facebook et al, my standout memories from previous years are very physical experiences, like bouncing atop a 10-foot wedding cake with Cathy Gordon at her public divorce ceremony, or last year’s reenactment of the epic 1982 Wimbledon tie-breaking tennis match between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, as performed by artists Tibi Tibi Neuspiel and Geoffrey Pugen.

With that in mind, I have narrowed down my list to a few must-sees, and will leave the rest of the night to chance, so as not to be disappointed in the morning. There are about 1,000 ways to approach the night, but this year I’ve narrowed down the choices by theme, focusing on sound and music.

Gordon Monahan

The Piano, University of Toronto’s Hart House and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

In 2009, musician and sound artist Gordon Monahan rigged up Massey Hall with piano wires. He has also airlifted a piano by helicopter to the top of a hill over St. John’s Harbour, where it acted as a soundboard for piano strings that danced and played in wind – until he gloriously smashed the instrument two weeks later. This year at University of Toronto, Monahan, Michael Snow and five other artists pay homage to Elton John’s instrument of choice.

Kelly Mark, Scenes from a Film I’ll Never Make, with Alternate Scores

Kelly Mark is one of the artists who never disappoints—she’s like the Streep of the festival. With that in mind, her new video plays with music she “always felt would be great film scores or, alternately, music that she remembers from films because it has worked so well.”

William Robinson, Young Prayer

Will Robinson is one of the smartest artists and musicians working in Halifax today. For this irreverent installation, which takes place at Metropolitan United Church, Robinson uses an automated pulley system to pay homage to rock ’n’ roll’s greatest gift to humanity: the guitar smash.

Ruth Ewan and Maeve Brennan, Tremolo

There is a tiny cinema near St. Lawrence Market, and inside its lobby there is a piano. On weekends, musicians entertain the movie-going crowds. For one night, in a collaborative project with U.K. artist Ruth Ewan, the instrument will be taken over by Maeve Brennan, an accomplished pianist who suffers from severe performance anxiety.

Leif Inge, 9 Beet Stretch, Old City Hall

Norwegian artist Leif Inge stretched Ludwig van Beethoven’s “9th Symphony” to a 24-hour duration, which will fill Old City Hall with “suspended, seemingly glacial, sonorities” instead of its usual blowhard yelling.

If 24-hour marathons are your thing, I had a chance to watch a few hours of Christian Marclay’s day-long cinematic video mashup, The Clock, at the National Gallery, and the sound editing is beyond amazing. Nighthawkish film fans, please go to the Power Plant  at 4 a.m. and tell me what happens.

Toronto’s Nuit Blanche is an all-night arts festival with “a mandate to make contemporary art accessible to large audiences, while inspiring dialogue and engaging the public to examine its significance and impact on public space.”

However, despite these admirable intentions, Nuit Blanche’s corporate presence is simply too great. After all, Nuit Blanche, as the countless promotional posters endlessly repeat, is officially called the “Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.”

For those interested in a non-corporate alternative to Nuit Blanche that also celebrates art and showcases some of Toronto’s lesser-known artists, there is another event called “Les Rues des Refuses” or The Street of Rejects. Creator and curator Stephanie Avery describes the event as “realizing the spirit of Nuit Blanche…of making art more accessible and interesting for people.”

After her art installation didn’t make it into the 2008 Nuit Blanche, Stephanie did not back down. Determined to display her art, Avery decided to find and connect with other artists that weren’t officially part of Nuit Blanche but still wanted to share their art with the public.

This Saturday, October 3rd marks the 2nd annual Les Rues des Refuses. The primary goal, says Avery, is to “create publicity for alternative pieces that otherwise would be discovered only by happenstance during Nuit Blanche.” Sonya JF Barnett, Les Rues des Refuses media maven, firmly believes that “artists who aren’t as well known need some kind of voice,” which their alternative event provides.

This year’s Les Rues des Refuses involves a growing list of more than 30 artists. Like Nuit Blanche, some exhibits will be displayed all night. The program schedule is available on Les Rues des Refuses’ website and in artsy shops around Toronto (try Hartbeat 960 on 960 Queen St. W.) Avery and Barnett carry all costs associated with organizing and promoting the event, proving that corporate sponsorship is really not necessary. The response so far has been amazing; “people in general seem to react in such a positive way,” says Avery.

Artists that want to be part of this event are encouraged to consult the website or email Stephanie at ruesdesrefuses at gmail dotcom. It’s not too late to be part of the online program schedule.

Avery and Barnett were looking for an alternative to a corporate event and ended up making their own. “If you want something done,” they tell me, “you need to do it yourself.”

LISTEN: “200 Years Ago” from Tim Hecker’s An Imaginary Country

Cover of Tim Hecker's latest album, Imaginary Country. Released by Cranky, 2009.

On September 30, 2006, as part of Toronto’s interactive art celebration Nuit Blanche, Montreal musician Tim Hecker hid 10 speakers in the branches of a tree across from the Mercer Union art gallery. Each chattered erratically, spitting out bursts of sound sourced from his composition “Whitecaps of White Noise.” “It was an organic way to reconstruct a stereo mix within the tree,” he said afterward. The effect was a surreal merging of the natural and the electronic. “Apparently some woman spent her night on mushrooms there.”

A fascination with nature has inspired Hecker’s work since he began recording under his own name in 2001 (previously he recorded as “Jetone”). He’s composed suites in honour of desolate tundra and vibrant boreal forests, odes to water, and hymns to the Rocky Mountains. “I grew up in B.C., surrounded by rugged natural beauty,” he says. “It was compelling to have the ocean so close with immense waterways connecting small rustic islands.”

With titles like “Borderlands,” “Pond Life,” and “The Inner Shore,” on his recently released sixth album, Hecker maps the features of his native landscape onto each arrangement. Each song’s swirling harmonies conjure up vast ice floes, deep rainforests, and rippling shorelines. Underlying these ethereal sounds are his megalithic bass lines, like layers of rock and earth. With his latest album, Hecker has become to the Canadian landscape what Holst is to the planets or Tchaikovsky to the seasons.

In his sound, Hecker is fixated on the natural, but in method he favours the synthetic. Even when he records with a guitar or organ, a computer heavily processes each note. “I enjoy the ambivalent deadlock between techno-natural hybrids,” he says. In a 2002 essay, Hecker imagines “a middle ground between nature and technology, acoustic instruments, and synthesizers.” He envisions a time in the future when artists will use electronic instruments stripped of their rigid machine logic, guided by more organic processes better suited to the fluidity of human imagination.

In the meantime, as he strives to evoke the beauty of Canadian nature, Hecker bends and moulds electronic sound into new, more fluid forms, likening his composition process to sonic landscaping, fashioning chattering trees that one could trip out to.