1  

The  Past,  Present  and  Future  of  Toronto’s  Nuit  Blanche  from  the  Perspective  of  

Artists  and  Curators  

 

by  Gwen  MacGregor  

 

Abstract  

This MRP outlines the stages that have led up to the current Nuit Blanche visual art

festival in Toronto struggling with its own success. I will begin by addressing the City’s

whole-hearted acceptance of Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory and its

relationship to the festival. Toronto’s acceptance of the Floridian understanding of

culture as an economic driver has made the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche festival vulnerable

to influences that have nothing to do with creative criticality. Pierre Bourdieu’s

understanding of fields will be used to frame how these organizational changes make the

festival vulnerable to unintended or even undesirable changes in the way the audience

interacts with the work and the artworks themselves. Finally I will offer a possible

strategy of how to shift the future direction of the festival using M. de Certeau’s writing

‘Walking in the city’ and Reynold’s further articulation of ‘transversality’ to allow for

more diversification in viewership and the artworks themselves.

08  Fall  

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Table of Contents  

Introduction p 2

Theoretical Framework p 5  

Early Years p 11  

Middle Years p 16  

Conflicting Interests p 18  

Growing Pains p 28  

Future of the Festival p 31  

Conclusion p 38  

Bibliography p 41

Appendix p 48  

 

 

 

 

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Introduction  

Every year on a night at the beginning of October I follow hundreds of thousands of

other people out onto the streets of Toronto to experience Nuit Blanche–a one-night

contemporary visual art festival that first started in 2006. Galleries and museums keep

their doors open for the night and, more importantly, the City of Toronto commissions

artists to create site-specific art works that are installed in downtown public and private

spaces, indoor and on the street. While the festival has been heralded by the City as a

huge success, it is struggling to manage the over 1 million people who visit the festival,

while continuing to offer critically engaging contemporary art. There are also signs of a

growing disinterest in the festival by artists themselves.

This Major Research Paper examines the experience of Nuit Blanche from the

perspective of the artists and curators involved. I argue that the expanding popularity of

the event, and its management, has weakened its creative criticality. Thus, ironically,

while Nuit Blanche ostensibly celebrates the culture and creativity of the city, the artists

and curators who are at its core are turning away. This paper will examine the stages that

have led up to the current situation in which the festival finds itself. I will begin by

addressing the City of Toronto’s embrace of Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory,

and its relationship to the festival. I argue that the Floridian understanding of culture as

an economic driver in the context of Nuit Blanche, has resulted in the prioritization of

the city’s economic development over its creative criticality. Why this is a problem for

the city and the art community will be addressed using Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding

of fields, habitus and cultural capital. His writings on the cultural field specifically, and

its relation to other fields, provides insight into the dynamics of the symbolic and

cultural capital of the art community not as an economic driver but as a complex system

that in many ways operates in an inverse direction to the economic drivers Florida

purports (Bourdieu 1983). Bourdieu’s writing offers a more complex and nuanced

understanding of the actors, their respective agency in the festival and how this is

affecting the realization of the artworks and their reception.

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I will build upon this analysis to offer a possible strategy of how to shift the future

direction of the festival. Here I will draw upon de Certeau’s writing ‘Walking in the

City’, and Reynolds’ further articulation of ‘transversality’, which builds upon de

Certeau’s writings. These approaches provide an alternative way for engaging in the city

that challenge state imposed power structures while providing a geographic strategy of

walking to change physical space (Reynolds 1998: 73). This reframing of urban

engagement could allow for more diversification in the creation of the artworks and how

they are viewed. The recognition of opposing economies at play within Nuit Blanche

coupled with implementing more strategies of ‘tranversality’ would help to ensure the

ongoing cultural criticality of the festival.

Methodologies used for this paper are primarily qualitative in nature. Data was

collected through a series of 20 one-on-one interviews with artists and curators ranging

in ages from 24 to 60, who have participated in Nuit Blanche across every year of the

festival. They were asked a series of questions about the entire process, from the initial

contact from the city to the completion of the project. They were also asked a set of

questions that related to their expectations of the event and if they were met. Finally they

were asked how Nuit Blanche’s credibility and status fit into their art career and the

broader art community. Six city staff members were also interviewed, including

production staff who work directly with the artists, management staff and members of

the advisory committee. They were asked a series of questions about their budgets and

responsibilities, and how well they felt they were able to carry out these tasks. The

future direction of the festival was also discussed and how they would like to see it

develop and change over time. I am also drawing on my own personal experience as an

exhibiting artist at Nuit Blanche in 2012 and 2013 and as a member of the viewing

public every year since its inception. I also rely on a less easily quantifiable set of

knowledge as a practicing artist and active member of the Toronto art community for the

last 30 years. Finally, I also undertook a literature review of relevant articles from

Toronto daily newspapers, the critical art press and reputable blogs as well as interviews

with two writers from daily newspapers. There has been surprisingly little media

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coverage of Nuit Blanche, mostly clustered in the days around the one-night event. I

reviewed all Canadian newspaper and arts magazine reviews between 2006 and 2013.

City of Toronto reports Live With Culture 2005 and Culture Plan for a Creative City

2008 were also reviewed as they were the original reports that recommended the

development of Nuit Blanche in Toronto.

Theoretical Framework In 2002 urban theorist Richard Florida published the book The Rise of the Creative

Class. He put forward the argument that creativity is not only important, but has become

the ‘defining feature of economic life’ and that if a city is going to compete it must

attract a highly mobile ‘creative class’, as he coined it, who insists on a quality of life

that includes the arts (Florida 2002: 21; City of Toronto 2003). He argued that creative

people are an important driving force for the economic development of cities because of

the services and amenities they seek out. He went further to suggest that the creative

class will move to cities that provide their desired amenities, leaving those places

without them to ‘wither and die’ (Florida 2002: 13). By creative people he included

those working in engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music, new

technology as well as creative professionals working in law, business, healthcare and

related fields. Florida suggested that what this broad group shares is a ‘common ethos

that values creativity, individuality, difference and merit’ (Florida 2002: 8). With this

definition he does not just include those individuals who self-identify as artists, but

anyone who is not in a labour or service-oriented job who has some kind of creative

capacity within their professional working lives.

Florida developed several indexes including ‘The Creative Index’, ‘The Gay Index’

and ‘The Bohemian Index’ to track economic growth and prosperity of neigbourhoods

(Florida and Gates 2005: 131). The Creative Index measures regional economic

potential using the major factors of technology, talent and tolerance. By ‘technology’ he

means the number of technologically related jobs available in the area; ‘talent’ refers to

the number of ‘skilled, ambitious, educated and entrepreneurial people’ living in the

vicinity; and ‘tolerance’ refers to neighbourhoods that are ‘welcoming to immigrants,

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artists, gays, bohemians’ (Florida 2002: 233). ‘The Gay Index’ is based on the work of

demographer Gary Gates, who, starting in 1990, tracked the economic prosperity of gay

American neighbourhoods in major cities. Florida developed the work further and

concluded that there are regional ‘clusterings and concentrations’ of high-tech industries

in large urban centres with a large gay population (Florida 2002: 238). The ‘Bohemian

Index’ charts the locations and concentration of “working artists, writers, designers,

musicians, actors and the like” (Florida 2002: 240). Florida suggested that the three

indexes make it possible for cities to measure their success in creating conducive

atmospheres for attracting members of the ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002: 244).

There have been many major criticisms of The Rise of the Creative Class by

geographers and urban and cultural theorists stating, amongst other things, that the

economics don’t add up and that there is little evidence that creativity is a reliable

marker of the economic development of a city (Peck 2005; Kendell 2006; Catungal et al

2009; Edensor et al 2010; Derksen 2012).1 Whether or not Florida is correct with his

economic calculations, I am more interested in the problematic understanding of

creativity that Florida uses that casts a very wide and rather dubious net and then renders

it as an economic indicator and not much else. He has no interest in the processes and

practices of creativity. With respect to artists, for example, he demonstrates little

concern for the artworks themselves and the people who make them. By doing so, he has

removed creativity from its historical context that, since the early 20th century, has been

mobilized as “an antidote to dehumanizing relations and modes of economic production”

(Derksen 2012: 5). Instead, he sees creativity as a way to promote urban economic

development. Creativity is twisted into a tool for self-management of citizens and is

recreated as a divisive class indicator that differentiates between those who are creative

and those who are not (Derksen 2012: 5).

Many cities across North America and around the world have embraced Florida’s

vision. He has been toasted at city conferences from Toronto to Auckland as they

                                                                                                               1 There has been an extensive critique of Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory. I have cited a number that most directly relate to the framework of this paper.  

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transform their policies to improve their stature within this new economic framework

(Steigerwald 2004: 1). Toronto was one of the North American cities that

wholeheartedly embraced Florida’s vision, seeing an opportunity to champion the

thriving art community in ways that would appeal to economists. Historically the city

had been supporting art programming through The Toronto Arts Council since its

inception in 1974 (Toronto Arts Council 2009). However in 2002 Rita Davies,

Executive of the Toronto Arts Council, recognized that as the city was in the process of

developing a new economic plan, there was an opportunity to argue that contemporary

art should be included not as a drain on the city budget but as an economic driver. The

creation of Nuit Blanche came out of that plan. But the festival’s success in the first few

years was largely based on the prioritization of creativity over the economics–curators

and local artists were given considerable autonomy to produce site-specific artworks of

their own imagining. As the festival has seen its popular success and economic benefits

grow, it has started to put its very centre in jeopardy. To understand this process and

how the economic success is working against the creative viability, it is helpful to turn to

the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. More than anyone he has articulated and

mapped out the peculiarities of the cultural field as a mirror image of the economic field

(Jenkins 1992).

In a similar vein to French theorist Michel Foucault, Bourdieu understands power to

be diffuse and often concealed in unquestioned ways (Johnston 1993: 2). Unlike

Foucault however, he insists that there needed to be an emphasis on the linkage between

structure and action, fusing structural and phenomenological approaches, to understand

different kinds of power and how it shifts both for individuals and groups (Wacquent

1989: 25, Bourdieu 1993: 179). He parsed power out into three main categories–

economic, cultural and social capital. (Jenkins 1992: 10; Johnston 1993: 2).

Economic capital, is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be

institutionalized in the form of property rights; cultural capital, [is] convertible, on

certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of

educational qualifications; and social capital, made up of social obligations

(‘connections’), convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may

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be institutionalized in the forms of a title of nobility (Bourdieu 1986: 243).

He later added ‘symbolic capital’ to these three and described it as resources

available to an individual on the basis of honour, prestige or recognition (Lash 1993:

200). Symbolic and cultural capital are particularly important for the art community. In

this context symbolic capital refers to a degree of accumulated prestige and ‘cultural

capital’ refers to forms of cultural knowledge and competances (Johnston 1993: 7).

‘Cultural capital’ is further divided into ‘embodied’, ‘objectified’ and ‘institutional’

forms. The embodied form presupposes a personal investment, through the body in time

and effort to acquire skills that includes some personal sacrifice. The objectified form is

the materiality of the embodied form–the physical object such as a piece of writing or

artwork produced. The institutional form is an external recognition of the agent’s

cultural capital by an institution such as a university (Bourdieu 1986: 242 – 250).

Each of these types of capital can be converted from one into another, but vary in

their possibility of transmission and the degree of loss (Bourdieu, 1986: 250). These

understandings of capital are closely related to Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘fields’ and

‘habitus’. Fields are social groupings based on relations between individuals and can be

economic, educational, political or cultural, all with their own laws and structured space.

Each field is relatively autonomous and ever shifting, based on the relative positions of

the agents in the field and the struggles to access specific resources (Bourdieu 1993:

108; Wacquant 1989: 39). These resources are not necessarily material or about

economic gain, in fact in fields such as literary or the visual arts the resources are

recognition and prestige (Johnston 1993: 7). For Bourdieu the fields are always

hierarchical, “determining all sorts of effects of symbolic domination.” (Bourdieu [1996]

1992: 199). Within each field there are those who are dominated and those who

dominate. For those within it there are ongoing struggles to determine their position

within the field based on their symbolic and cultural capital. (Bourdieu 1993: 164). At

the same time, there is an interconnectivity between these fields, and the artist, for

example, is not an isolated, contained entity but part of ‘social relations’ in which the

social condition of the production of art is linked to its meaning and will change

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automatically with any change in the field (Bourdieu 1993: 313). The boundaries of each

field are where the effects of the field cease (Wacquant 1989: 39). There is also a

hierarchy between fields, with the political and economic fields holding more power

than, for example, the cultural field (Bourdieu 1993; Jenkins, 1992: 86).

The habitus relates to fields, as it is a set of transportable dispositions, classifications

and generative schemes that inclines agents to act and react in specific ways without

explicit rules. It is created through a social rather than an individual process over a long

period of time (Bourdieu 1993: 65; Jenkins 1992: 80; Johnston 1993: 5; Navarro 2006:

16). Bourdieu refers to this in another way–as individuals having ‘a feel for the game’,

learned more by experience than by teaching. The habitus is not connected to any

specific field but does contribute to its value and in return the field structures the habitus

(Wacquant 1989: 44). An individual takes their dispositions with them when operating

in different fields (Bourdieu 1993: 189; Johnston 1993: 5).

For the purposes of this paper it is Bourdieu’s understanding of the cultural field and

its relationship to the economic field, that is most useful as it is a nuanced and

appropriately complex model that helps to critique the development of Nuit Blanche and

the City of Toronto’s support of the Florida ‘creative class’ theory. Bourdieu recognized

that while the economic field is, for the most part, the most powerful as economic

capital is easily transmitted between fields, the cultural field is unique as it functions

primarily through a ‘form of belief’. Bourdieu explains that a “work of art is an object as

such that only exists by virtue of the (collective) belief which knows and acknowledges

it as a work of art.” Capital is gained within the field through a critical discourse about

the art that affirms its value (Bourdieu 1993: 317).

Within the cultural field there are two main subfields–Restricted Value [FRV] and

Large-scale Cultural Production [FLP], each with their own symbolic, cultural and

economic capital. Bourdieu gave examples of the pairings of these subfields as ‘pure

art’/’commercial art’, ‘bohemian/bourgeois’, ‘left bank/right bank’. (Bourdieu 1993, 64).

Those artists working in the FLP rely on the distribution and purchase of their artwork

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outside of the cultural field and can potentially be required to compromise their work, to

be understood and accepted outside the field. Artists working in the FRV, however, are

most interested in their symbolic and cultural capital within the field and see those artists

who work outside the field as compromised (Bourdieu 1985: 13, Bourdieu 1993: 185,

Johnston 1993: 15). For those working in the FRV, it is not just the production of an

object [the objectified cultural capital] that matters, but recognition from the actors [the

embodied cultural capital] in the field (Jenkins 1992: 10). Bourdieu goes further to

suggest that the subfield of FRV has an opposite system to the ‘the dominant principles

of hierarchization’ evident in the economic field (Bourdieu, 1993: 320). In the FRV

there is actually a ‘tipping point’ for artists if they become too popular outside the field

without enough capital in the form of knowledge or respect (Wacquant 1993: 239).

Where exactly this ‘tipping point’ exists varies depending on place and the time in

history but regardless the effect is the same–too much economic and popular success can

severely diminish the cultural and symbolic capital an artist will have within the FRV

(Johnston 1993: 17). Their cultural and symbolic capital first has to be built through

respect from other artists and writers who critique the work, as well as sales to respected

collectors (Bourdieu 1985: 17). It is possible for artists to operate both in the FRV and

FLP, but it is extremely difficult to maintain as the ‘tipping point’ constantly shifts

across time and space (Johnston 1993: 17).

This phenomena is real and present in both the Toronto and the Canadian

contemporary art fields which operate as part of the FRV. Artists build their reputation

by being invited to exhibit in respected public galleries and being reviewed by writers in

art publications. Even when an artist is represented by a commercial gallery it is far

more important to pick a gallery that is respected by artists, curators and writers in the

field than one that is accomplished at selling. There are powerful curators, galleries and

collectors that establish and maintain which galleries are considered to hold substantial

symbolic and cultural capital. In a somewhat circular relationship, however, artists who

are already established in the field are needed to endorse the continued status of

organizations. Canadian artists, for example, who are most interested in being

recognized within the FRV tend to shy away from popular and economic success that

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could undermine their symbolic and cultural capital as there is a high degree of

suspicion of economic success within the Canadian FRV. In contrast it is more possible

for artists in America or the UK to operate in both. In the UK this is partially because of

a much longer history of economic support of critically challenging contemporary art. In

America it is part of a broader acceptance of artists as being part of the economic field

of entrepreneurs.

In Toronto, Nuit Blanche, was made relevant to and accepted by the art community

in the first few years as part of the inverse ‘economy of belief’ (Bourdieu 1993: 317) in

the FRV. In what follows, I will explain how the festival achieved this credibility

initially, only to begin to loose it by the third year. I argue that as the festival has

become more enmeshed in ideas of economic development it has become increasingly

irreconcilable with the belief systems of the artists. In the following sections I describe

the early and middle years of Nuit Blanche, paying attention to some of its key successes.

I then turn to examine the irreconcilability of fields with an analysis of the role of City

of Toronto staff in festival planning.

Early Years ‘The City of Toronto Official Plan’ adopted in November 2002 set out the

direction for growth and development of the newly amalgamated city for the next 30

years. Arts, culture and heritage featured prominently in the plan as central motivators to

attract ‘educated, mobile newcomers’. As part of this initiative, city council directed the

Cultural Division to come up with a cultural development strategic plan for the next 10

years (City of Toronto 2003: 7). In 2003 the City of Toronto produced a report entitled

Culture Plan for a Creative City that recommended that Toronto “use its arts, culture

and heritage assets to position itself as a Creative City, a global cultural capital” (City of

Toronto 2003: 1). The report endorsed the idea of pairing the Cultural Division of the

city with the Tourism and Economic Divisions to implement its recommendations.

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As a result of this report, and the support of Mayor David Miller, the newly elected

mayor who strongly supported the arts,2 the year 2006 was designated to be a year to

‘celebrate creativity’ as a way to make the arts accessible to the public (City of Toronto

2005). The TO Live with Culture campaign was launched with funding from the City of

Toronto and substantial corporate sponsorship from Scotiabank. The first iteration of

Nuit Blanche was launched as a one-time event as part of this initiative (Scotiabank Nuit

Blanche 2012).3

The TO Live with Culture campaign included a number of events and a marketing

strategy that were rolled out over the year. The programming included public

performances in the transit system as well as the Nuit Blanche festival. The marketing

included weekly ads in bus shelters for the entire year, public banners on major city

streets and a website. According to the city marketing department these were well                                                                                                                2 Interview with Jenn Goodwin and Marilyn Nicol 3 Conversation with Marilyn Nicol–Director of Marketing, Special Events - Economic Development and Culture, City of Toronto

Hold that Thought by Kelly Mark. . Photo Credit, Kelly Mark.

 

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received by the public but there was some criticism by the art community for its use of

culture to brand the city without adequate accompanying programming. Their feedback

was that the money would be better spent on art projects, putting the money in the hands

of cultural producers, rather than the majority of the funding going to marketing firms

for public ads.4 The emphasis on marketing rather than programming evident in Toronto

is part of a larger trend that has developed over the last decade. The promotion of public

participation in cultural events has increasingly been seen as part of a development of

‘City Branding’ used in cultural tourism and is part of the neoliberal agenda of economic

development for cities (Grundy 2008: 351; Lovatt 1996: 145). Is it a venue, an

advertisement, a public art project or a monument (Evans 2003: 418)? This blurring of

lines is a strong indicator to artists that the city is more interested in the economic field

than culture.

The city of Toronto was not the first to offer Nuit Blanche, the idea came from

Paris’s Nuit blanche started in 2002, and included public access to museums and

galleries for one night (Time Out 2012; Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2012). Paris was very

keen on Toronto becoming the first North American city to take on this event and

worked closely with city staff to put together the proposal. Rita Davies, of the Toronto

Arts Council, proposed that the Toronto iteration be much more of a street festival of

commissioned artworks that could be viewed in the public space of the street, or in

parks.5 Nuit Blanche opened for one night in October 2006 under the tagline ‘A

Contemporary Art Thing’.6 From dusk until dawn, museums and galleries opened their

doors to the public and 27 contemporary art projects specifically created for the event

were available for viewing in three zones in the downtown core – Yorkville,

University/Spadina Ave and Queen St West. To the credit of the Cultural Division of the

City they chose seasoned, well respected curators who commissioned critically engaged

artists to create works within the thematic framework of each zone, many of whom

engaged with the specifics of the architecture in their designated neighbourhood. Zone A,

                                                                                                               4  Conversation with city staff Marilyn Nicol  5 Interview with city staff Marilyn Nicol and Jenn Goodwin–Programming Supervisor Special Events - Economic Development and Culture City of Toronto 6 Interview with Jenn Goodwin.

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in Yorkville, was curated by Fern Bayer, Peggy Gale, and Chrysanne Stathacos. They

developed the zone parameters based on their personal knowledge as long-time residents

in the area. Central to the premise of their curation was that artists activate specific

locations–they encouraged artists to develop works in lesser known locales within their

zones.7 Japanese artist, Fujiko Nakaya, for example, created Fog in Toronto #71624 in

Fog in Toronto #71624 by Fujiko Nakaya. . Photo Credit, TO, October 1st, 2006.  

Philosophers’ Walk on the University of Toronto campus. A series of metal rods with

nozzles that sprayed an artificially produced water fog were placed along the walk.

Adding to an already rainy, cool night, the artwork completely transformed the outdoor

space into an immersive, intimate environment. Viewers were also treated to Counting

Sheep created by Michael Snow, a whimsical image of grazing sheep on the

decommissioned Planetarium Dome on University Ave (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, 2012).

Somewhat to the surprise of the city, the curators and the art community the first year

saw over 450,000 people spending the night wandering the streets engaging with each

other and the contemporary art on view. There was almost an air of giddiness as friends                                                                                                                7 Interview with curator Peggy Gale.

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and strangers reveled in the nocturnal art experiences. As Sarah Milroy, an art critic for

The Globe and Mail noted at the time, ‘The event was genius on a shoestring, ephemeral,

generous in spirit, profoundly human, a pirouette beneath the streetlights of a city made

suddenly magical. We won’t soon forget it’ (Milroy 2006).

The first year was referred to as magical, not only by the press, but by the artists

and curators I interviewed about the event. This shared description seems to be based on

everyone’s surprise that it was embraced by both the art community and the general

public. Many of the artists that attended the event as audience members, including

myself, were skeptical and worried that as it was organized by the city, it would not be

engaging enough for contemporary art practitioners and experienced art viewers. City

staff worried that a contemporary art festival, something they had not organized before,

would not be attended by the general public.8 There was also concern by city staff that

the rainy weather would prevent people from coming out but in fact it enhanced the

event. While recounting the experience of engaging with Nuit Blanche that first year,

everyone I interviewed mentioned the weather as a positive contributing factor. It

brought everyone together and made the event an adventure on a cold autumn evening.

These different concerns of the visual art community and the Special Events/Cultural

Services Division of the city are indicative of the two differing fields. While the City of

Toronto and the art community have a shared interest in contemporary art, they operate

with different cultural, symbolic and economic capital. In that first year, however, Nuit

Blanche managed to succeed across these and other fields. The city gave the curators

complete curatorial control, ensuring credibility within the contemporary art field. The

public embraced the opportunity to share in a collective viewing experience of engaging

and challenging contemporary art.

Based on its resounding success, the festival was expanded in 2007, with the same

three geographical zones, but with the incorporation of 32 commissioned artworks and

two new categories of projects. An Open Call was put out inviting professional artists to

submit a proposal. Curators were required to pick several of the projects that would be

                                                                                                               8 Interview with city staff Jenn Goodwin and Marilyn Nicol.

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incorporated into each of the curated zones. This increased the potential for lesser

known artists to participate in the event and showed an increased level of transparency

by the city as to how artists were selected. The artist fee was substantially smaller than

that offered to artists chosen by the curators but there would be some technical support

from city staff. A call for Independent Projects was also put out. These did not receive

any financial support but were selected by the city and flew under the banner of Nuit

Blanche to benefit from the city-organized publicity. This allowed for even greater

participation by local individuals and groups without a substantial financial contribution

by the city.9 In anticipation of the large numbers of viewers, the City of Toronto kept the

subway open all night and closed lanes on Bloor Street for pedestrians. Even with this

preparation the city could not have anticipated the over 800,000 Torontonians that took

to the streets to view contemporary art. This resounding support from the public coupled

with the $4.5 million in tourist related revenue secured Nuit Blanche as an annual

Toronto festival (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2012).

Middle Years  

Judging from the first two years of the festival it seemed that Toronto’s endorsement

of Florida’s ‘creative cities’ strategy as part of its strategic plan for economic renewal

was putting the city on the right path. These ideas were developed further in a report in

the City of Toronto’s 2008 ‘Creative City Planning Report’ (City of Toronto 2008).

Again Florida’s ideas featured prominently, including Toronto’s ranking as seventh in

Canadian cities on the ‘Creativity Index’ (Florida et al 2011). The report went so far as

to celebrate Florida’s move to the city of Toronto as another indicator that the city was

on the right path (Whyte 2009). In the report, creativity is seen as being at the heart of

the city’s economic development and Nuit Blanche is mentioned specifically as one of

the festivals that will play an important role (City of Toronto 2009: 16). ‘Creativity and

culture are the new economic drivers... Quality of place is a now core competitive

advantage because business and investment follow people–not vice versa’ (Creative City

2009: 21).                                                                                                                9 Interview with Asad Raza - Independent Projects organizer for The City of Toronto

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While the City of Toronto has embraced Florida’s ideas, it is questionable whether

an ‘authentic neighbourhood culture’ can be created, as Florida suggests, through

deliberate public policy interventions. Instead these neighbourhoods run the danger of

becoming what Peck refers to as ‘faux-funky’ attractions with a ‘disneyesque’ feel that

are spurned by creatives (Peck 2005: 740). In this scenario, creativity is seen as a tool to

hardbrand the city as a unique tourist experience (Rantisi and Leslie 2006: 366) using

small amounts of public-sector money for ‘culturally appropriate forms of gentrification

and consumption’ (Peck 2005: 760). None of these legitimate concerns are evident in the

City of Toronto reports and with wholehearted enthusiasm Nuit Blanche was created as

part of the implementation of the ‘Creative City’ reports.

In subsequent years Nuit Blanche began to show signs of strain as the festival grew

exponentially (Demara 2008). Audience numbers had grown to over 1 million visitors in

the fourth year, making it difficult to manoeuver around the city and causing traffic jams

on major streets. Even by the second year there was criticism from the media about the

unwieldy crowds, making it difficult to even see the work (Smith 2007). In 2008, as a

way to alleviate the problems, city organizers made structural changes that started to

privilege larger scale works that could be more easily viewed by large crowds. Rita

Davies, explained that ‘we’ve added more large venues with large-scale installations and

we’ve really planned it along the TTC routes. With these large installations in these

public spaces, crowds can have a really great experience of the art’ (DeMara 2008).

Rather than thinking of how to change the audience and the way it interacted with the

work, the decision was made to change the artwork to accommodate the audience. Here

was the first major sign that the field of contemporary art was losing out to the fields of

city management issues.

In 2009 there was the addition of a new category of artwork. Each zone included

one ‘monumental’ work, a phrase used by the city, that was given a substantially larger

budget and was meant to have a greater visual impact.10 By 2010 the city reorganized

                                                                                                               10 Interview with Julian Sleath - Managing Director Special Events, Economic Development and Culture, City of Toronto.

  18  

the zones again, eliminating any of the official artworks in the west end areas of

Parkdale and Liberty Village, leaving these areas for the independent projects and

concentrating on the three zones in the core of the downtown near the business district,

adjacent to the north/south artery of the subway (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2012). This

was primarily to alleviate traffic congestion but was also for financial reasons as there

had been limited success in procuring business sponsorship in the west end

neighbourhood of Liberty Village.11 The shift in location resulted in a more

geographically contained festival with audience members compressed within a central

part of the city. It was easier to walk from one work to the next but the audience no

longer engaged with as many neighbourhoods and the large crowds made it almost

impossible for quiet or ephemeral works to be appreciated.. How did these changes to

the festival come about? And whose interests were they serving? These are the questions

that I turn to in the following section.

Conflicting Interests To understand the extent that these institutional shifts have had on the realization

of the art itself it is helpful to understand in some detail the agents involved in the

festival and their motives. The Special Events section of the Economic Development

and Cultural Division of the City of Toronto is responsible for organizing the festival.

They develop the physical parameters of the festival and adjust the physical boundaries

of each zone for each year.12 They work closely with an Advisory Committee made up

of representatives from the art community, funders and city staff, which gives

recommendations on the choices for curators, zone locations and general direction of the

festival. While only advisory in status, this committee for the most part seems to have a

collegial relationship with the city staff. Together they develop a short list of possible

curators who are invited to submit proposals to the city. Once selected the curators are

given complete control as to the artists they want to invite and the works the artists want

to realize. 13 This is not the case of the original Paris iteration where the mayor of Paris

                                                                                                               11 Interview with Julian Sleath. Private sponsorship makes up 70% of the festival’s funding. 12 Interviews with city staff Julien Sleath and Joe Sellors – Production Supervisor Special Events - Economic Development and Culture City of Toronto. 13 Interviews with curators Christina Ritchie, Makiko Hara, Fern Bayer, Peggy Gale, Sarah R. Sheridan, Dave Dyment.

  19  

must personally approve every artist14. This difference is one of the central strengths of

the Toronto iteration as it is a recognition by city staff that the curators bring specific

knowledge and cultural currency from the artistic field that cannot be duplicated by city

staff. It also gives the festival credibility within the artistic field.

It is important that the Special Events department of the City of Toronto not be seen

as a single homogenous field. The staff in the Programming and Production sections of

the department, which constitute their own sub-fields, work most directly with the artists.

Without exception everyone that was interviewed praised them for their commitment to

the curatorial and artistic concepts and their genuine enthusiasm to do everything they

can to realize the work as imagined by the artists. This same level of understanding of

artistic integrity is not as clearly evident in the management sub-field as there are factors

other than the critical viability of the artwork that they are responsible for managing.

Moreover, their measurements of success have little to do with the cultural and symbolic

capital of the artwork. Dollar amounts contributed by sponsors, numbers of tourists from

outside Toronto and the amount of media coverage are some of the major benchmarks

used to analyze success by the festival’s management.15 Unfortunately, large numbers of

visitors and money brought into the city by tourist dollars do not translate into success

for a contemporary artist. More important to them is being recognized within the critical

press, as this is one of the ways their cultural capital is increased, transporting the work

of art from being simply a temporary art experience to becoming part of a more lasting

critical dialogue with other contemporary artworks.

Marketing is one of the management sub-fields and has been instrumental in

developing Nuit Blanche from the very beginning. It is their role to promote the event

locally and internationally16. Historically the department has had limited experience and

understanding of the particularities and peculiarities of the contemporary art critical

press. City of Toronto Special Events/Cultural Services management have stated that

                                                                                                               14 Interview with city staff Julian Sleath. 15 Interview with city staff Julian Sleath and Marilyn Nicol. 16 Interview with city staff Marilyn Nicol. Interestingly MN of the Marketing department was one of the two people who first developed the idea of Nuit Blanche.

  20  

contemporary art publications are of little consequence. While this is correct in terms of

the sheer numbers who read the publications, it misses the point that these are critically

important benchmarks within the contemporary art field.17 There has, however, been

some recognition within Marketing in the last several years that promoting

contemporary visual art is a specialized field that requires specific skills that may not be

transferable even from other arts such as dance and music.

The Sponsorship department also plays a key role, as Nuit Blanche is 70%

funded through private sponsorships18. From the beginning Scotiabank has been the

primary sponsor, branding the event as Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, but there are also other

smaller corporate sponsors. They have different levels of visibility at the event,

including booths to promote their products. At times these have had a substantial visual

presence at the event, to the point where visitors, especially those unfamiliar with the

exhibiting artists, have mistaken the advertising for the art. This has been further

confused, starting in 2011, when the city offered several corporations the opportunity to

‘curate’ a project themselves. The city suggests artists whom the corporations can work

with and they in turn work with marketing to develop a project that somehow highlights

their product. There is no involvement with any of the curators of the three zones and no

relationship to any of their curatorial frameworks.19 This kind of hybridization between

advertising and artistic practice sends up a red flag for most cultural producers

functioning within the artistic field. It is an indicator that the City has compromised the

autonomy of artistic creation beyond an acceptable level. A degree of arm’s length

between corporate sponsorship and artistic creation is necessary to maintain the artistic

credibility of the festival as well as the individual cultural capital of the individual artists.

Another indication that sponsorship has affected the festival’s curatorial

credibility is that, as mentioned earlier, after 2009 the zone in Liberty Village was

scrapped. In an interview with Julian Sleath, City of Toronto Managing Director of

Special Events, he suggested that one of the major reasons was because it was difficult

                                                                                                               17 Interview with city staff Julian Sleath. 18 Interview with city staff Julian Sleath.  19 Interview with Asad Raza.

  21  

to secure any sponsorship from business in the area. This zone was widely understood

within the art community as offering some of the most critically engaging artworks. This

was due in part to the thoughtful responses to the particularities of the architecture and

history of the neighbourhood made by the curators and artists. The area has a layered

and complex history. Initially buildings were mostly light industrial brick buildings

constructed between 1880 and 1920. There was also Toronto Central Prison built in

1873 and the notorious Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women built in 1872. With the

decline of the industries after WWI and because of the proximity to the railway, the area

was used heavily by hobos until WWII when there was a resurgence in industry.20 The

prison was torn down in 1920 and the land was used for the railroads. The area remained

a light industrial area until the 1960s but then began to decline as businesses closed or

moved out of the area. Lamport Stadium was built on the King Street side of the area in

1969 after the notorious Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women was torn down

(Liberty Village). Up until the 1990s the buildings remained empty or were used by

local artists as studios or for squatting. Only after that did the area begin to be

redeveloped into office space for small businesses (Catungal et al 2008: 1099). This

layered spatial use and history allowed for a rich range of works such as Tom Dean’s

‘FIRE AND SAUSAGE: Small Mercies’, a social sculpture presented in a parking lot in

2009. It engaged people through a variety of activities, such as congregating around a

fire, a cooking station, a piano, a chess game. ‘All the complexity and richness and

pathos of a social cluster, strangers and friends with some common purpose and focal

point, a clustered audience before a spectacle and themselves a spectacle, figures joining

and departing the cluster and flowing from one site to another’ (Scotiabank Nuit

Blanche 2009). Another installation in the same zone was Jon Sasaki’s ‘I Promise it Will

Always Be This Way”’ presented in Lamport Stadium in 2008. Sasaki hired twenty

people to dress up as sports’ team mascots and occupy the playing field. Viewers were

allowed into the stands and cheered on the mascots throughout the night. The mascots

could take a break whenever necessary and lie down on a cot. Sasaki had anticipated that

as the night progressed the enthusiasm of the mascots would wane and by the end of the

night most would be on the cots. What happened instead was that the crowd was so

                                                                                                               20 Interview with curator Makiko Hara.  

  22  

enthusiastic that they spurred on the mascots, encouraging them to be even more lively

at the end of the night. When Julian Sleath was questioned about the loss of the zone in

terms of its rich architectural and historical possibilities he downplayed the importance

for the need for site-specificity in the creation of the artworks. This opinion is not shared

by the production staff who do seem to fully understand the intrinsic relationship

between the specificity of site and its effect on the critical credibility of the artwork for

the artists and an experienced art viewing public.21 This is an example of how the

subfields within the Special Events/Cultural Services do not always share the same

values.

Beyond Production, Programming, Marketing and Sponsorship of Special Events

there are a plethora of city departments through which Nuit Blanche projects may or

may not have to be vetted. As an example, I was part of a project in 2013 called ‘The

Little People’ presented in the front lobby of City Hall. The installation included 4000

kinder toys that were marching into city hall carrying tiny placards that said “Not Good

Enough”. Both protests and placards are illegal in city hall, at any scale. To make sure

we would not have a problem our Programming Supervisor Jenn Goodwin, vetted the

project through Strategic Communications. This is the office within city hall that deals

with the media if there is any contentious information coming out of city hall. It was

also vetted through the mayor’s office, something not done with most projects, because

the placard slogan ‘Not Good Enough’ could have been read as a comment on the

conduct of Mayor Rob Ford. There was some trepidation but the project was allowed to

go through.22 It should be noted that from my own personal experience and the artists

and curators I interviewed, it is clear that the programming and production staff are

committed to a ‘noninterference’ policy when it comes to the political content of the

artworks. They are diligent to avoid any appearance of censoring the work and instead

see their role as problem solvers for the artists, guiding the approval process of the

artwork through all the city departments.

                                                                                                               21  Interviews  with  city  staff  Jenn  Goodwin  and  Joe  Sellors.  22  Jenn  Goodwin  was  our  Programming  Supervisor.    

  23  

Other organizing partners include Municipal Licensing & Standards, Parks,

Forestry & Recreation, Solid Waste Management, Toronto Emergency Management

Services (EMS), Toronto Fire Services, Toronto Hydro, Toronto Parking Authority,

Toronto Police Services, Toronto Public Health (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2012). This is

a complex set of powerful fields, each with their own concerns that have to be

negotiated. As the festival has shifted spatially to accommodate large numbers of people

in outdoor spaces these fields have become more involved. As an example, if an artwork

requires space on the street, Special Events needs to negotiate with Transportation

Services, EMS, Police and Fire Departments to arrange appropriate road closures. In

2009 I was invited to participate in Nuit Blanche with artist Sandra Rechico. Part of the

project required a section of University Ave to be closed to car traffic. While we had

support from the curator, who had asked us to ‘think big,’ the project was never realized

because of the logistical difficulties of the required road closures. To the credit of the

city staff, half of University Ave was closed in the 2013 version of the festival. In

conversation in January 2014 with Joe Sellors, Production Supervisor of the City of

Toronto, he explained that the city staff, Department of Transportation and police “just

weren’t ready” for the scale of the request in 2009. He also noted that police and city

staff do not always agree on road closures–the police feel that closures cause too many

problems whereas the city staff see it as aiding the flow of people around the city.

In 2012 the festival reached a watershed year. The audience numbers went from

about one million the previous year to 1.4 million (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013). For

the first time artworks were vandalized and there was an unprecedented number of

emergency calls to EMS.23 Sellors referred to the year as having ‘a perfect storm’ of

circumstances; unusually good weather, a Blue Jays home game and a full moon. In

response, city staff made a number of changes for the 2013 iteration. Based on

recommendations by the police, Yonge Street was removed as a zone to avoid

immediate contact between people coming out of bars at 2am and Nuit Blanche artworks

and viewers.

                                                                                                               23 Interview with curator Christina Ritchie. Work by Peter Boyers was vandalized during the evening.

  24  

The festival was also upgraded by police to ‘Major Event status’, allowing the

evening’s events to be monitored in real-time from MICC [Major Incident Command

Centre]. This is a police operations centre that uses surveillance monitors, a SWAT

truck with cameras and live messaging to officers to police the event.24 While this

centralized, ‘panoptic’ approach to crowd control makes it easier for the police and the

city, it also means that any spontaneous unsanctioned events can be more quickly

controlled. In an interview with 2009 curator Makiko Hara, she commented that the best

artworks are somewhat structured but also allow room for the work to get out of control.

In future years as the festival continues to be coordinated from MICC there is the danger

that the curators, who spend the evening in each of their zones, will be marginalized

when decisions need to be made as to when it’s time to reign in activity.

                                                                                                               24 In conversation with Joe Sellors.

Looking  north  on  Yonge  Street  with  Kim  Adam’s  Dodge Ram Laser Cut Auto Lamp  in  the  background.,  2010.  Photo  Credit,  Gwen  MacGregor.  

  25  

It is not only city departments and related services that have an involvement with

the festival. When the zones function mostly around the business district, the city has to

negotiate with large corporations for the use of their spaces. They make the final

decision as to whether or not the work can be exhibited, and they have the right to turn

down work they feel does not reflect their corporate culture or is too political.25 While

the Special Events department of the city does its best to find alternative sites for

contentious artwork, it is limited to the choices available within the business district.

The result has been that there is little room for works such as Tom Dean’s ‘Fire and

Sausages: Small Mercies, presented in Liberty Village’ in 2009. A complex, politically

engaged, moving work, this installation required a quiet contemplation that would not

have been possible in amongst the crowds in Nathan Phillips Square. Moreover its

strong political statement about poverty and consumerism might not have been welcome

in the business district. Instead, there are an increasing number of large spectacles such

World Without Sun by Christine Davis, presented in 2012 in Nathan Phillips Square.

This multi-channel, large-scale video projection was presented on six circular disks that

towered 30 feet above the square (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013). The work was easily

viewed by large groups of people but any political content was overwhelmed by the

shear spectacle.

The larger implications of these decisions are that actors outside of the Special

Events department of the city, with no experience with contemporary art, have major

involvement in decisions relating to cultural policy (Rantisi and Leslie 2006: 366). I am

not suggesting that this is intentional; in fact I am suggesting that it has been an

unintentional consequence of the city grappling with growing pains and real safety

issues related to the festival.

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘fields’ can once again be useful to understand these

unintended curatorial contributions from non-curatorial actors. Senior staff of the

                                                                                                               25 In 2011 the city had to approach 12 different sites for one particular work before a private business agreed to show the work. The work was about censorship and the 11 other businesses found it to be too provocative to support.

  26  

Special Events department of the city, as well as the police, the fire department and

private business owners, amongst others, are operating from fields of superiority in

comparison to the curators and artists–their concerns may take precedence over the

creation of the artwork. This hierarchy has a more insidious effect on the art than simply

whether or not it can be presented. As the works are produced specifically for the

festival and a particular site, any change in the location and viewing circumstances not

only affects where the art will be seen but the inherent nature of the work itself. The

choice of materials, the scale of the work or the political content might have to be

adapted to accommodate more powerful fields. It is inevitable that this shifting policy of

the city, intended to address logistical and political concerns, is having far reaching

effects on the art production.

Within the field of contemporary art, the artists and curators participating in Nuit

Blanche do not operate equally within their field. There is a distinct hierarchy between

the curated, open call and independent projects. Curated projects for example, are

chosen by one of the invited curators and are given a production budget of $10,000.

Starting in 2009, there has also been one ‘monumental’ project in each zone, a term

coined by the city, that receives $30,000. Moreover there is one work in Nathan Philips

Square that is given a budget of at least $100,000. This was initiated by the Economic

Development Department of the City in 2009 because of fears that the Toronto public

was identifying the festival too closely with Scotiabank and not the City of Toronto.26 In

the first year this was undertaken, artist Kate Harvey had to change her proposal

completely because of this decision. Initially she had been working with curator Gordon

Hatt on a proposal for an installation in the fountain in Nathan Phillips Square. When the

monumental budget became available to another artist, she was ‘bumped’ from her

location to accommodate Berlin art collective D.A. Therrien who was invited to create a

huge light installation in the windows of city hall. Harvey expressed her initial

frustration with not being offered the larger budget herself but adapted and moved on to

create a completely new work in the Hydro building at College Street and University

                                                                                                               26  Interview  with  Joe  Sellors.  

  27  

Avenue. 27

All curators are obliged to include several of the ‘Open Call’ projects in their zone.

Most of the curators interviewed were quite frank about their disinterest in the open call

projects and stated that they would have preferred to not have had to include any of this

work. They felt it was quite difficult to find projects to fit into an already existing

curatorial premise and lineup of artists. The one exception to this was Vancouver based

curator Makiko Hara, who found the Open Call helpful to introduce her to Toronto

artists she wasn’t already aware of.28 In 2013 curator Ami Barak, worked around the

issue by inviting artists to apply to the open call and ignored any other of the

applications. It was through this process that I participated in Nuit Blanche in 2013. In

many cases those artists who do exhibit through this process end up funding most of the

project through their own personal funds as the city funding is not usually sufficient.29

With the Independent Projects that receive no funding whatsoever, some of the

participants have been less committed to staying the course for the entire night.

This three-tiered system causes a clash of priorities between two fields. The city

wants the appearance of an open accessible process for participation and wants to give

lesser known local artists a chance to be involved. For an artist, being invited by a

recognized curator or gallerist is the most desired way of participating in any

exhibition.30 This translates into cultural and symbolic capital, which in turn can result

in artworks being more desirable and valuable to private collectors and museums. For

curators, credibility is gained from their curatorial vision and its realization.

Shoehorning artists into an exhibition can undermine the possibility of its success.

Cultural and symbolic capital are further undermined for both curators and artists when

juxtaposed with the Independent projects without any visual distinction.

                                                                                                               27 In conversation with artist Katherine Harvey. 28 Interview with curator Makiko Hara. 29 Interview with artist Katherine Harvey who used OAC and CC funding and artists John Sazaki and Alexis Mitchell who used their own money.  30 While visiting a new gallery in London England several years ago I asked a friend, who lived in London, if the gallery accepted applications for exhibitions. His response was “If you have to ask you are already screwed.” This is an example of the exclusivity cultivated by galleries within contemporary art.

  28  

Growing Pains Nuit Blanche has been seen as a huge economic success by city organizers as well

as the general public (Medley 2006). Even the business community has embraced the

event and sees it as an occasion ‘to critically engage in opportunities for growth’ (Maga

2012). The event continues to build Toronto's profile as a creative hub–with media

coverage spanning the country and spreading globally, hotels fully booked in the

downtown core, and the phrase ‘Nuit Blanche’ trending on Twitter in Canada for days

leading up to the event (Canadian Newswire 2010; O’flynn 2012: 25). In the last two

years, the Marketing department noted that the event had what they refer to as a ‘blip’ in

the New York market, meaning a noticeable spike in media coverage of the event.31 In

statistical terms, success can also be quantified by the growing number of visitors. The

first year the festival enjoyed an audience of 450,000, which far outperformed the

expectations of the organizers (Medley 2006) and by 2013 there were 1.4 million

visitors with 120,000 from out of town. The festival has also been heralded as a financial

success, as in 2011 it brought in over $37 million dollars and it increased to 39.5 in 2013

(Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013).

Critical success has been somewhat more elusive. While the newspaper critics seem

positive, it has been in response as much to the overall event and the general idea of the

city being open for the evening rather than specifically offering an in depth critique of

the artworks (Milroy 2006). Many of the criticisms of Nuit Blanche have centred around

the makeup of the audience and how they interact with each other and the artworks. As

journalist Murray Whyte noted, ‘Out on Yonge St., meanwhile, magic was a little harder

to find. Part of it was the crowds, part of it was the cluster of promotional tents handing

out freebies like energy drinks’ (Whyte 2010). There also seemed to be signs even in the

first few years that the scale of the festival could be getting in the way of the artwork

‘some of the real delights of the evening were the small things’ (Milroy 2007).

As well as increased numbers, the demographic of the audience has changed from

the first year (O’Flynn, 2012: 23). By 2010 there was a noticeably younger crowd with a

                                                                                                               31 Conversation with Marilyn Nichol.

  29  

conspicuously drunk contingent in evidence.32 In an interview with one of the curators,

Christof Migone, The Globe & Mail reporter Micah Toub asked which of the artworks

would be better viewed when drunk. Migone’s response ‘That depends on what kind of

drunk you are’ (Toub 2010). Although intentionally flippant, it did not diminish the fact

that both the reporter and curator accepted the reality of the presence of this

demographic. From the same year Toronto Star reporter Murray Whyte passed on a

conversation he overheard while unlocking his bike to get to the next venue. ‘A telltale

sign of the true art lovers’ priorities here: ‘F--- it, man, the bars are open until 4 – let’s

get some beers!’ Ah, culture’ (Whyte, 2010). The next year the same reporter seemed to

be giving up. ‘Up there all alone, the City Sleepover became that rarest of Nuit Blanche

things - a sincere social experiment not overtaken by the unreality of unrelenting throngs.

It worked. Nuit Blanche is impossible to characterize as a whole, but am I the only one

seeing an undercurrent of futility and dread’ (Whyte 2011)? Even the less critical press

seems to be hard pressed to stay positive about Nuit Blanche. ‘After this year’s edition

unleashed over 150 art exhibitions and many, many more people onto Toronto’s

downtown streets, we’re tempted to say that Nuit Blanche has now transformed into an

all-night contemporary-art drunken King Street nightclub’ (Maga, 2012).

For the last several years Nuit Blanche has been placed mostly within the business

district where the space does not ‘read’ as an inhabited neighbourhood but a corporate

place of work that has emptied out for the evening. This kind of space works to

encourage a “passive subject in a carefully controlled corporate spectacle” and

intentionally fosters a ‘homogenized public’ (Mitchell 2003: 141). The audience

members are no longer autonomous individuals, but the product of their interaction with

the existing environment who become a singular ubiquitous viewing subject (de Certeau

1997: 127; Reynolds 1998: 65). Unfortunately, this subject seems to be increasingly

drunk and less and less interested in the art, but this is understandable, as there are few

opportunities to enjoy the streets of Toronto in an all-night festive atmosphere. The

seduction of this possibility can easily overpower the more subtle experience of viewing

                                                                                                               32 I have attended Nuit Blanche every year and visited all three zones. The change in the kinds of attendees is perceptible.

 

  30  

a piece of art.

Criticisms of the artworks themselves have related to their increasingly spectacular

manifestations. The artworks chosen have become more large-scale in an attempt to

adapt to the change in site and increased audience numbers. In so doing a greater

proportion of the festival has become “an instrument of spectacularisation…. that

functions to revitalize the city as advertised, forming a spectacle to be consumed”

(Monclus 2006: 246).33 The danger is that the festival is increasingly becoming a

“performed tourism” (Hannigan 1999: 71) while losing sight of the original intent of the

festival.

Another problem for art critics is logistical–they are not often given enough room in

publications for any in-depth criticism of such a large festival, leaving them with little

choice but to write overviews and general descriptions. The scope of the festival seems

to also make many writers uncomfortable. They feel pressure to comment on the

audience response, the ebb and flow of people and other aspects of the public event as

they would for something like the Santa Clause Parade. For most contemporary art

writers this is beyond their expertise.34 Finally there is the issue of the critic’s position

within the contemporary art field. They gain cultural capital by critiquing artists and

exhibitions that already have some cultural capital (Bourdieu 1996). Too closely

associating themselves with an event such as Nuit Blanche does not necessarily translate

into respect for them within the contemporary art field.

This outlines the rather circular relationship between artists and art writers. Each

relies on the other to increase their cultural capital within the field. It also relates again

to the ‘tipping point’ and the dominant principles of hierarchization within the field that

can diminish an individual’s capital (Bourdieu 1985: 17, Johnston 1993: 17). For Nuit

Blanche this has meant that as the festival has become more popular, the art objects

                                                                                                               33 The use of the term spectacle is used here in direct reference to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle: ‘The

spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. The relation to the commodity is not only visible, but one no longer sees anything but it: the world one sees is its world.’ (Debord 1970: 25). 34 Interview with art critic Leah Sandals.

  31  

themselves can potentially loose cultural capital within the art field, decreasing the

interest by other artists, writers and a more informed public.

Future of the Festival At this point it is important to revisit Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory in relation to

the concerns about the festival’s potentially decreasing cultural capital. Florida tends to

conflate cultural and economic fields, not allowing for their unique modes of logic or

specific qualities (Hinde and Dixon, 2007: 411). Bourdieu’s articulation of different

fields and the very specific rules of the game for the economic and cultural fields

problematizes Florida’s conflation of economics and culture. For Bourdieu, in an

economic field “agents struggle to acquire money, to ensure the value of their assets and

to maintain their capacity to continue to own and acquire such things. In the cultural

field, people compete for cultural capital, or the ability to appreciate, produce and

understand ‘legitimate’ forms of knowledge” (Hinde, and Dixon, 2007: 411). It is

apparent in the case of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche–as the festival becomes more popular

and the city adjusts the programming to accommodate the large numbers of people

without equal attention to increasing its ‘cultural capital’–the festival is losing credibility

within the cultural field and is hitting the ‘tipping point’. This in turn is threatening the

quality of the festival as artists and critics are becoming more reluctant to support the

festival.

How can Nuit Blanche be shifted to accommodate large number of people while still

allowing for a diversity of art and a varied viewing experience? In the last few years of

the festival there have been an increasing number of Independent Projects presented in

public and private spaces along Queen Street, in Parkdale and the west end of the city. In

effect the projects are in many of the areas that Nuit Blanche abandoned after 2010 and

these independent works tend to be smaller scale and of a more intimate nature. In 2010

Toronto art critic, Murray Whyte wrote an article about Nuit Blanche entitled “Ennui

Blanc” after an artwork by the same title. The work created by An Te Liu, consisted of a

white neon sign on the front of a building on Queen Street. It was not part of the official

festival but part of a growing number of independent projects that are shown on the

  32  

same night as Nuit Blanche in neighbourhoods that the official festival no longer uses.

Many of these works are consciously trying to offer alternatives to the ‘spectacles’

commissioned by the city (Whyte 2010; Canadian Art 2012). The ‘Ennui Blanc’ sign

visually encapsulated the wavering interest of some participating artists and the art

community in general.

In 2012, I was invited to participate in one of these projects, “Out of Site,” curated

by Earl Miller, and funded through the Queen West Business Association. Miller

selected a series of site-specific works in the store windows of businesses on Queen

Street West in one of the areas that the city no longer curates. My contribution, a

collaborative work created with the collective Workparty, was presented in the store

window of Duke’s Cycle. Entitled ‘Dire-Rama’, it offered a dystopic view of the city in

miniature form, including a scathing commentary on the current state of local politics

and the mayor Rob Ford.35 The feedback from many of the viewing public, as well as

the small business association was that they enjoyed the project because it offered an

alternative in scale to most of the officially sponsored works and it harkened back to the

first few years of the festival.

While there is support for these projects, there have also been complaints by viewers

that when they went to some of the sites in the late hours, the project organizers had

already packed up and gone home.36 To try and address this, in 2011 the city began

hiring individuals to monitor and assess the Independent Projects. Rather than policing

the artists, the city should scale back the number of projects and give them more

logistical and financial support to encourage a greater commitment over the entire

evening.

More important than these practical considerations is the loss of something much

harder to quantify that most people I interviewed described as the ‘magic’ of the first

                                                                                                               35 Participating artists in Dire-Rama were Bonnie Devine, Mike Dudek, Martina Hwang, Gordon Hicks, Christina Hotz, Paul Kawai, Ryan Legassicke, Brianna Lowe, Lena Rubosova, Stephen Fisher, Lewis Nicholson, and Emma Wright. 36 Conversations with Layne Hinton and Asad Raja.

  33  

two years. De Certeau’s theories of encountered and experienced space grasps the ways

that places are fragmentary, unfolding like stories and change through the spatial

practice of walking (de Certeau 1984: 108). The artworks that were produced in the

early years of Nuit Blanche more fully encouraged from the audience, these kinds of

experiences of space. Geographers Brian Reynolds and Joseph Fitzpatrick, in writing

about de Certeau’s ‘Walking in the City’, echo this idea in what they call ‘transversal

territory’ .37 They invite people to deviate from the vertical, hierarchicalizing and

horizontal, homogenizing assemblages of any organizational social structure and enter

the disorganized yet smoothly infinite space of ‘transversality’ (Reynolds and Fitspatrick

1998: 73).

They are referring discursively to the organization of power structures that are

imposed by the state to create a homogenous subject but he is also suggesting a

                                                                                                               37 Reynolds source for the term is Félix Guattari’s discussion of group desire in the essays collected in Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. Reynolds explains that in appropriating Guattari’s term he also “extend[s] [Guattari’s] definition of transversality to conceptuality and its territories and allow[s] it to apply to the existential processes of individuals as well as of groups” (Reynolds 1998).

Viewers  looking  at  Dire-­‐Rama  by  the  collective  Workparty.  Part  of  Out  of  Site,  an  independent  project  in  2013  curated  by  Earl  Miller  that  placed  artworks  in  store  windows  on  Queen  St  West.  Photo  Credit,  Workparty.  

  34  

geographic strategy – literally walking through the city can be a transgressive act that

changes the space. This transgression was present in the first few years of the festival.

Interestingly when Tom Dean described his proposal for FIRE AND SAUSAGE: Small

Mercies in 2009 to curator Makiko Hara, he said he wanted it to function with horizontal

rather than vertical monumentality.38 Part of the work included viewers lining up in a

manner reminiscent of a bread line for sausage and hot chocolate. Everyone was then

handed a grey blanket with the word ‘Mercy’ written across the middle. I saw this

blanket across people’s shoulders throughout the night and the word ‘Mercy’ began to

act as a commentary on the other works and the festival in general. I also have seen it

since the festival in people’s homes – simultaneously acting as a reminder of the night

but also taking on a whole new set of possible meanings based on its current placement.

In presenting this work Dean offered the viewer a kind of ‘transversality’ by being able

to experience the work on the night and creating the means for it to continue to resonate

and change for the viewer over time and space.

This strategy of ‘transversality’ described by Reynolds and enacted by Tom Dean

could be more fully embraced by Nuit Blanche organizers both discursively and

geographically. The city and its agents could adopt a more varied organizational strategy

to allow for different creative strategies by artists in a greater variety of spaces. They

should also allow audiences to move and flow through more of the city. Creating an

east/west walking corridor would connect all the west-end participating neighbourhoods

and would disperse the viewers over a greater part of the city, move them out of the

business district and into neighbourhoods that historically have been central to the art

community. There would also be the opportunity to include other parts of the city, such

as the suburbs, which have not usually been included in official Toronto celebrations,

and by default are assumed to have no cultural capacity. Allowing more neighbourhoods

to participate and encouraging more walking as well as public transit, would foster a

kind of ‘transversality’ acted out through the daily practice of walking in the city “to cut

across the striated, space of subjectivity” (Reynolds and Fitzpatrick 1998: 74). This, in

turn, would be conducive to creating an environment that supports more diverse artistic

                                                                                                               38 Conversation with curator Makika Hara.

  35  

practices while encouraging a more engaged and varied viewing subject. On a practical

level the city of Toronto will have to continue to manage serious law and order issues

that take precedence over art. But by embracing ‘tranversality’ and a more horizontal

understanding of monumentality there could be the possibility of more varied artworks

that are not meant to be viewed from a single vantage point or captured in an image that

can be shared on social media. It would also encourage a more varied viewership.

There are hopeful signs that in 2014 there is going be a more dispersed Nuit Blanche.

The zones are moving westward, away from the business district and as far west as Fort

York. Joe Sellors explains that it is due to ‘venue fatigue’, suggesting that both the

owners of spaces in the business district and the viewing audience are looking for a

change. While not articulated in the language of ‘transversality’ it appears the Special

Events department is recognizing the need to make changes to the physical space that

the festival inhabits.

Beyond reimagining the physical space the city needs to better recognize that

Nuit Blanche functions in more than one hierarchical field, each with different symbolic

and cultural capital. Understanding the festival’s discursive complexity could help to

ensure that the needs of the artists and curators through the Cultural Division of the City

take precedence over the other fields. The high, uncompromised quality of the artwork is

what made Nuit Blanche successful right from the beginning and it is imperative that

this is protected. In practical terms this needs to translate into greater care to keep the

sponsorship and the curatorial demands completely separate. The hybrid projects

‘curated’ by sponsors, for example, are a bad idea that should be scrapped. This further

conflates the economic and cultural fields–undermining the festival’s cultural capital.

The Marketing department does seem to be realizing they need to interact with visual art

publications differently than other kinds of arts media. To address the gap they have

hired more staff who are specifically familiar with contemporary art publications and

know how best to engage with them individually and separately from the department’s

overall marketing strategy.39 Part of the challenge will be to convince the press that there

                                                                                                               39 Interview with curators Sara R. Sheridan and Marilyn Nicol.

  36  

is merit in reviewing the festival not just as entertainment but critically, as they would

for a visual art biennial or, for example, the Skulptur Projekte Munster.

What about different strategies in relation to the curatorial programming to allow for

differently scaled experiences of the audience? The festival could look to the

programming of Barbara Fischer, curator of Justina Barnicke Gallery at Hart House,

University of Toronto, a gallery that has participated in Nuit Blanche every year. Fischer

has understood the need to create programming that is appropriate for both general and

cultural audiences without resorting to spectacle or the monumental or the expectation

that every work is interesting or appropriate for everyone. By using both the gallery and

Hart House she has programmed spaces with a kind of ‘tranversality’ that allows for a

variety in scale and has consistently created spaces that have a nuanced understanding of

the event. From experience she has noticed, for example, that when viewers come in

from the cold into one of the Hart House rooms where a fire is lit, they slow down and

interact differently with the work in those rooms.40 Murray Whyte, critic for the Toronto

Star has praised Fischer over the years for her strategies. ‘The Barnicke Gallery was the

only institution intent on creating an experience, not a spectacle. As ever, it looked good

on them’ (Whyte, 2010). In essence this is an opposite strategy to the vertical

monumentality that has been offered by the city management. Rather than make the

artwork fit the crowd, artists create the environment to change the response. While staff

within city management seem content with the status quo, the production staff and

members of the advisory committee more openly admit that perhaps it’s time for the

festival to shrink a bit, offer more intimate viewing possibilities and disperse the projects

over more of the city.41

Another area of concern, pointed out by 2010 curator Christina Ritchie, is that

Nuit Blanche, over time, is exhausting the local art community. Most artists who

participate find it a grueling event and hesitate to participate more than once.42 Some

                                                                                                               40 Interview with curator Barbara Fischer 41 Interviews with city staff Jenn Goodwin, Joe Sellors, Assad Raja 42 This is based on artists interviewed for this paper, conversations with many of the participating artists over the years and my own experience.

  37  

more experienced artists such as Kelly Mark and Bill Burns have participated in Nuit

Blanche, knowing that it does not offer cultural or symbolic capital and instead have

seen it as an opportunity to make an expensive work that can then be shown again in

another context that will have a more lasting effect on their careers.43 Less experienced

artists such as Alexis Mitchell have come out of the experience of exhibiting unsure if it

was worth the time and money.44 In the end it is as much the possibility of working with

a larger budget than usual more than having access to a large audience that lures artists

back.

All the curators interviewed also said they would not participate again as the

event ultimately was not enough about curation. There is no platform for them to write a

critical text that can outlast the event, an important cultural currency for curators

building a career. In fact, I was present during a public talk in September 2013 given by

curator Ami Barak when an audience member, Vera Frankel, an experienced and well

respected artist, questioned why there wasn’t going to be a publication as the marketing

material put out by the city did not do justice to Barak’s curatorial premise. Ensuring

there is a lasting, critically engaging publication would help the festival increase its

cultural and symbolic capital from within the contemporary art field.

A related question is who is the audience for Nuit Blanche and do they return

from year to year? The marketing department does conduct polling after the event,

however, currently the polling focuses on out of town viewers and the money they spend.

The Special Events/Cultural Services department does poll participating artists each year

to get feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of their experiences as a participant.

Responses have resulted in the city trying to raise the artist fees every year so that artists

are not using their own funds to produce the work and giving Open Call artists more

technical support.45 What is not being tracked is the shifting demographic of the

audience and whether or not they are experienced art viewers. There is much anecdotal

information that the art community and experienced art audiences are drifting away but

                                                                                                               43 Interviews with artists Kelly Mark and Bill Burns.  44 Interview with artist Alexis Mitchell. 45 Interview with city staff Jenn Goodwin.

  38  

there is no quantitative data to back this up.46 More detailed polling would better track

the shift in audience demographics rather than having to rely on anecdotal information.

Conclusion There is an irony in Toronto’s acceptance of Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory. For

the first time it offered the city a possible model that placed culture front and centre, as

not only important but necessary for the economic wellbeing of the city. Problems,

however, have arisen because the city embraced Florida’s model of the ‘creative class’

without being critical of its neoliberal understanding of culture as only an economic

booster. This absence did not address that the hard-branding style of Floridian creativity

leaves little room for grassroots and informal models or an acceptance of the specific

nature of ‘cultural capital’ within the art community (Rantasis and Leslie, 2006). In

January 2013, Richard Florida wrote in The Atlantic Cities that perhaps his creative class

theory has not been as effective in regenerating downtown areas as he originally

proposed: “On close inspection, talent clustering provides little in the way of trickle-

down benefits” (Florida 2013). While many of his critics have seen this as an admission

to the flaws in his theory, he seems to have backtracked somewhat in light of the

criticism and now claims the critics misunderstood his admission. In any case none of

this speaks to the fundamental problem of his conflation of the economic and cultural

fields. However, perhaps it could stand as a red flag to those governments who have so

enthusiastically taken on board his creative class theory as to its questionable

understanding of the complexity of how creative communities function within a city.

Toronto’s Nuit Blanche will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2016. Discussions

have begun with city staff about how to recognize the anniversary and what is the

event’s legacy, if any.47 Since it started as a one-time event, this was not part of the

discussion at the beginning; as it has become an annual festival, it is becoming

increasingly important. In an interview with curator Barbara Fischer, she compared Nuit

Blanche to Skulptur-projekte in Munster Germany. The project began in 1977 by

                                                                                                               46 Interview with city staff Marilyn Nichol.  47 Interviews with artist and curator Dave Dyment, and city staff Marilyn Nicol and Jenn Goodwin.

  39  

commissioning nine artists to create new site-specific artworks to be presented in public

spaces around the city for a four-month period. It has continued with iterations once

every ten years. But unlike Nuit Blanche, 39 of the artworks are permanent (Skulptur-

projekte). This permanence means that the project’s history is embedded in subsequent

iterations which offers a more lasting visibility for exhibiting artists. It also allows for

works to develop and change over time, offering a contrast to the new works. Herman de

Vries’s Sanctorium from 1997, for example, relies on its own transformation over time.

It is a brick circular wall that offers sanctuary to nonhuman life. Its interior is dense with

trees, plants, birds and insects that can only be glimpsed through four oval portholes

while its exterior is covered with graffiti (Smith, 2007). In 2013 Nuit Blanche made a

small step in this direction by keeping up 10 artworks for a month after the exhibition.

Imagine, however, if even a small selection of works presented each year were made

permanent? Toronto would now have a substantial collection of outdoor contemporary

artworks available for viewing throughout the year.

What is not yet clear is the effect Nuit Blanche will have on the long term

relationship between contemporary art and a viewing public. Initially large museums

like The Art Gallery of Ontario were reluctant to participate in Nuit Blanche: they felt

the added cost to keep a large institution open was not worth it. After several years,

however they did start programming specific events and kept part of the gallery open for

the evening.48 So far, however, there has not been the anticipated translation of viewers

from Nuit Blanche into a noticeable increase in audience numbers throughout the year in

art galleries and museums in the city.49 There is however, anecdotal information from

city staff that leading up to Nuit Blanche and for about a month after there is a

noticeable increase in visual art press and ‘water cooler’ chat about contemporary art.50

Part of the problem is the logistical challenge of helping the audience connect the work

they are seeing during Nuit Blanche with possible viewing experiences on other

occasions in art galleries. While investigating the use of social media during Nuit

                                                                                                               48 Interview with curator Michelle Jacques who, as well as working as a curator for Nuit Blanche in 2006 worked as the Assistant curator in the Contemporary Art department of The Art Gallery of Ontario from 2003 to 2013. 49 Interviews with city staff Marilyn Nicol and curator Sara R. Sheridan. 50 Interview with city staff Jenn Goodwin.  

  40  

Blanche 2013, I came across a comment from a contributor to the blog associated with

Tribe Magazine. One of their comments was “Saw the bicycles at Nathan Phillips and

the Toy Protest in city hall, both of which were very cool” (Tribe 2013). From the

description I know that they saw the installation by Ai Wei Wei and my own installation

with the collective Workparty. Without the knowledge of the artists’ names or the title

of the work will they ever connect those works with other contexts? Curator Barbara

Fischer feels that the lack of retention of detailed information is not what is important.

She is more interested in the broader transformative affect as a generation of children

who have viewed Nuit Blanche as part of their regular childhood events, grow up and

engage with other cultural activities in the city.

It is too soon to say whether changes proposed by the city will be substantive enough

to increase Nuit Blanche’s cultural and symbolic capital within the artistic field. But for

a moment consider the possibility–what if for one night the realization of artworks really

was more important than traffic flow in the west of the city or that 400,000 people more

than last year attended or that every hotel room was full. And instead what really

mattered is a quiet, small moment of interaction between a viewer and an artwork in the

middle of the night on a Toronto street without any product placement, monumental

projects or overwhelming crowds. That was the promise of the first two years of Nuit

Blanche that made it magical and unique and that is what Nuit Blanche should be

striving for to keep both the audience and contemporary artists engaged.

  41  

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Appendix A

List of Interviews

City of Toronto Staff – Special Events/Cultural Services Division

Jenn Goodwin – Programming Supervisor, Special Events

Lane Hayes – Independent project assessor, contract

Marilyn Nichols – Director of Marketing, Special Events

Joe Sellors – Production Supervisor, Special Events

Julian Sleath – Managing Director, Special Events

Asad Raza – Independent project organizer, contract

Nuit Blanche Curators

Fern Bayer 2006

Dave Dyment 2008

Peggy Gale 2006

Makiko Hara 2009

Michelle Jacques 2007

Sara Robayo Sheridan 2010

Helena Rechitt 2012

Christina Ritchie 2012

Barbara Fischer – every year for Justina Barnicke Gallery, U of T

Artists

Bill Burns – curated section 2011

Dave Dyment – independent 2010, curated section 2012

Kate Harvey – curated section 2008, open call 2012

Michael Klein – curated section 2012

Alexis Mitchell/Sharlene Bamboat – open call 2012

Kelly Mark – curated section 2006, 2007, 2012, open call 2014

John Sasaki – curated section 2008, independent 2012

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Katherine Yass – curated section 2012

Galleriest

Michael Klein

Art Critic

Leah Sandals – has written about Nuit Blanche for Canadian Art, NOW Magazine,

Globe and Mail and The National Post.