Nuit Blanche celebrates art from dusk to dawn
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Get ready to paint the town ... white?
Nuit Blanche is set to transform downtown Ottawa and Gatineau into a living, breathing interdisciplinary art installation in five distinct neighbourhoods across the region, showcasing the best and boldest the creative class has to offer.
A free event with more than 70 projects on offer — from a Finnish sauna with “clothing optional” after dark, to a street-level obstacle course, to a chorus of cheerleaders who randomly and spontaneously applaud passersby, to a collaborative artwork where — the “dusk-til-dawn” festival takes over downtown Gatineau and the Byward Market Saturday, starting at 7 p.m. an running til the wee hours.
Creative director Megan Smith breaks down the fourth edition of Nuit Blanche:
How would you describe the festival for the uninitiated?
It’s an all-ages event for everybody to enjoy. It’s entirely free and we offer shuttles around all of the core areas, and the really nice thing is for someone curious about the arts, this is a great way to experience it. We have theatre, projections, performance, stilt-walkers, installations and sculptures, one after the other. So as you walk through, you can encounter so many different forms of art.
How is the festival organized?
We’re a not-for-profit organization with a team of volunteers who put the entire event together. We work with a lot of the same partners every year, because it’s very exciting to build something like this in the city. So the Ottawa Art Gallery and SAW Gallery, but as well the Byward Market BIA is very involved in helping us, closing two streets (several blocks of George St. and William St., and Daly Ave. in front of Arts Court) and hosting about 30 projects in the Byward Market, and we have projects in Gatineau, and Arts Court is a major hub.
What’s the spirit of the festival?
It’s incredibly collaborative. We’re a very different event — it’s not a ticketed, fenced off structure. We’re a pedestrian event, and we have such a short window of time — the dusk ‘til dawn idea is really different, so it makes it a pop-up festival.
What’s new this year?
This year we’re working with the CityFolk festival and their Marvest, which is offering 14 venues with free music for the night.And Parliament Hill is showing a light show, and we’ll be running a shuttle up there. And we have a program called Access Nuit Blanche, for anyone with mobility contsraints or the elderly — and their friends and family) are invited onto an accessible tour bus, with a one-hour tour to various stops, animated in English and French.
How are the projects chosen?
We have an open call thaat goes out in the winter, and we convene a jury to choose a variety of pieces, and then we work with partners like the Ottawa Art Gallery who bring in artists for the program.
Twitter: @OttSunHelmer
Megan Smith’s Nuit Blanch best bets by venue:
Arts Court, 67 Nicholas St. / Techno Sauna
“The Techno Sauna project is really pushing contemporary arts culture, and it’s for anyone interested in sauna culture, and there’s DJs from Ottawa and Montreal, and video performances.”
The project is listed as family-friendly from 7 to 9 p.m. (bathing suits mandatory) and then is restricted to 19+ for the after-dark “clothing optional” portion running til 4 a.m.
Byward Market, George St. / The Applause Choir
The Amelia Louis project features a group of performers on bleachers providing a “spontaneous burst of applause” for the unsuspecting public.
“I’m very curious and really excited that there will be a group of people applauding our audience.”
Gatineau, 80 Rue Hanson / AXENEO7
Artists will build a village of five “transparent futuristic tipis” that communicate through use of colour code lighting.
“That’s a touring project, ad it;s important to have indigenous artsoists on our program, and they’re really pushing that envelope to bring forward and broadcast that culture.”
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