On Sept. 22, Ottawa held its very first Nuit Blanche, an all-night festival where the entire city is supposed to transform into a museum.
Sadly, its outcome fell short of the hype. Or it would have, if there was any hype at all.
Ottawa has a consistent tendency to have art “cliques.” This belief was accentuated by the disorganized nature of the event as a whole.
Patrons walked along different ambiguously defined “zones,” with names like “Byward Zone,” “Hintonburg Zone,” “Outer Place,” and “Roaming.” To the not-yet-art-literate, what does this mean to them? It means that a night spent at home watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy sounds much cozier than trying to find scattered art exhibits in zones called “Outer Place.” Compare this lack of marketing to the ubiquitous and captivating ad campaign of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
This doesn’t only affect the viewers’ experience of Ottawa’s first attempt at an event of this scope, but it is a detriment to the artists. Installations and exhibits have been planned for months, to be displayed for one night, and the only people who find out are those already immersed in the arts community, or those who heard it by word of mouth. Others were even discouraged by the official website’s catastrophic layout. Although we can give its quirky website credit for being creative, its online medium is not the museum.
Unfortunately, in a world where advertisements control us, Nuit Blanche seemed to forget this basic tenet of any successful business venture: the power of communication.
