From CTV’s Breakfast Television Video

The fifth artistic performance is focused on the Roundhouse turntable and involves a few of our museum artefacts. Nuit blanche describes this event as follows:

5. The Shifting Space Around Us, 2014

“Megan and Murray McMillan’s work always requires teams of people to execute, a fact often true of filmmaking. However, what is unique about their work for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is that they are opening up their set for the people of Toronto to take a peek behind the curtain.

This new video, shot in front of a live audience at Roundhouse Park, consists of the artists as directors overseeing a film crew, actors and volunteers, rehearsing, doing retakes and getting the shot. Watch behind-the-scenes activity both in front of the set and also through live feed video projections of different takes over the course of the night.

The action centers on the train turn-around at Roundhouse Park, using train cars, actors, pulleys and scenic backdrops to enact a series of choreographed activities captured in a single tracking shot. These activities include the creation of sets through the use of pulleys and performers, to collapse and reform a series of design elements and changing theatrical backdrops. Actors, stagehands, camera crew and the artists all become part of the action as does the backdrop of the city of Toronto.

Megan (b 1975) and Murray McMillan (b 1973) have been married since 1997 and collaborating since 2002. Their work is a blend of sculpture, installation, video, performance and photography. They have exhibited at the Casa Masaccio Center for Contemporary Art [Italy], the Kunsthallen Brandts [Denmark], the State Museum of Contemporary Art [Greece], the National Museum of Art [Bolivia], and the RISD and deCordova Museums [USA]. They were recently featured during the Ikono On-Air Festival in Berlin.

Schedule

Jenn Valentyne of City TV’s Breakfast Television (BT) show visited the set of this fifth event and her video report can be viewed by clicking here.  There are four other videos on the BT site about nuit blanche as well.

If you can’t make this fifth event on Saturday night, feel free to come down from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Friday night when there will be a “dress rehearsal”. 

In conclusion ……………

There are well over 100 artistic performances in downtown Toronto. Most of them seem to be concentrated at Old Fort York, along Spadina Ave. along Bremner Boulevard and at City Hall.

Weather Forecast: As of 2:30 p.m. Friday’s forecasts, it appears that the rain being expected overnight Friday and during Saturday will clear up for this overnight event but it will be cool – about 8 degrees Celsius so bundle up!

Do come by and enjoy this unique and eminently affordable (i.e. free) experience.

To read the first TRHA News posting in this series, click here.