For a few brief, shimmering moments Sept. 21 it seemed like Ottawa was going to embrace its quietly underrated arts scene thanks to Nuit Blanche. However, as with many planned all-nighters, the city was sloppy drunk and passing out as 1:30 a.m. rolled around.
The night started out with so much promise. Droves of people flocked to George Street, which had been taken over by art installations for the evening, alongside sites in Hintonburg and Gatineau. They all wore white cardboard orbs made of strange patterns and wandered around wide-eyed, gawking at the creativity put together by the festival.
A stilt walker dressed as if she were riding a giant quilt ostrich sauntered through the crowd. Beside her, a steamroller pressed paper over inked etchings to create elaborate, haunting pictures. At the corner of George and Sussex, people wandered through a labyrinth made entirely of different kinds of chairs swirling around each other in single file. The early goings of the night felt magical and strange.
“It’s really wonderful to be standing here on George Street completely shut down with experimental projects around us,” creative director Megan Smith said. “We have projections, installations, we have two thousand commissioned paper orbs. There’s a really intense program in all of our zones this year and I feel proud of it all.”
The theme of the night was “bypass,” which came through more clearly in some art than others. One piece at Nuit Blanche, called “Six Artists Whose Work Bypasses Your Expectations (Number 5 Will Blow Your Mind!),” provided an interesting commentary on our collective technology addiction. The six artists sat in silence, creating a patchwork sculpture and only communicating to each other via hashtag. Digital screens were all over the installation, while Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were projected in a ghastly glow over the artists.
David McDougall and Sasha Phipps’ exhibit, “Right of Way,” was hundreds of miniature traffic cones meant to redirect the flow of pedestrian traffic.
“It represented the subtle ways we’re controlled in the street and society in general,” McDougall said.
The experiment worked to begin with, but things quickly took a turn.
“After about an hour and a half people started to play with the cones as if it was an interactive piece,” McDougall said. “Shortly after that people started to walk over them and actually stand on them. Then within maybe 20 minutes, hundreds of people were lining up to walk over them. This really ordered piece we created was reduced to rubble.”
This didn’t dissuade the artists, though.
“In a very short amount of time it kind of exploded and sort of became its own thing.” Phipps said, “I think I’ll need a bit of time to reflect on it.”
Around the time that the crowds were finishing up with the piece, the night started to fall into a lull. The sky opened up and poured down and the exhibitions packed up one by one and disappeared. The vibrant artistic metropolis quickly became a ghost town. Sole installations stood out on the wet pavement. The scene became haunted by the zombie walkers of the club scene, spilling out of the bars stumbling and puking.
Nuit Blanche was billed as an all night art party, but it seemed to end on a quiet lull at 2 a.m.
Ottawa is a city with remarkable artistic talent, however the oft-heard narrative of “the town that fun forgot” will continue so long as the city isn’t willing to put effort into embracing that talent. A Nuit Blanche that actually goes all night would be a good first step.
