Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | C | C: International Contemporary Art

Enthusiasm at the limit: an event that deploys contemporary art and populism simultaneously, Nuit Blanche risks failure by either standard. Nicholas Brown on Jon Sasaki and Nuit Blanche.

Article Excerpt
For I Promise It Will Always Be This Way a few dozen costumed team mascots will take the field at Lamport Stadium and work to whip the crowd into a fervent frenzy. They will pull out all the stops with their mascot shenanigans, while stadium rock plays over the loudspeakers. However, as the night progresses and fatigue sets in, the mascots will require cigarettes, naps, snacks and bathroom breaks. As plush beads are set aside, illusions will be broken, the enthusiasm will dwindle, and the music will be slowed down accordingly to mirror their lethargy. The true subjects of this celebration will be futility and pathos. (1)

It's a bit ungenerous to judge an artist's work by the promises made in his press release, but when Toronto's annual Nuit Blanche first releases details about the event it's hard not to let expectation creep to the forefront. The one-night presentation of art puts Toronto's art community in the service of crowds numbering up to a million. Saddled with the pressure to live up to the hype, Nuit Blanche has become a yearly source of performance anxiety.

When Jon Sasaki proposed to fill Lamport Stadium with mascots eager to perform for 12 uninterrupted hours, hype itself became the subject of the work. Emptying the field of athletes, Sasaki brought the mascots--hype-men and women who are there typically to rally support for a team--to centre stage. Naturally, people began to speculate about the outcome. Would the performers hold up throughout the night? Would Sasaki garner enough of an audience to generate the energy of a mainstream sports spectacle,...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!