Jorn Weisbrodt, Artistic Director for Luminato Festival photographed at home in, Toronto April 11 2012. Mr. Weisbrodt will step down as director after his fifth Luminato in June 2016.Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail
Luminato Festival is going electric.
The annual Toronto arts happening announced Thursday that it will turn the lights back on at the Hearn Generating Station, an imposing power plant on the city's eastern waterfront. The mothballed facility, noticeable for miles by its sky-poking smokestack, will be transformed into a public art centre for the festival's 10-day run in June, 2016.
The event's entire ticketed program will operate on the industrial site, while other happenings will be held in various locations in the city's downtown, as in years past.
On his blog, Luminato artistic director Jorn Weisbrodt shared the first major news about the international festival's 10th-anniversary edition. "Every architecture student, architect, and urbanist in Toronto has probably dreamt about what the Hearn could be," he writes. "In 2016 Luminato will turn on the Hearn."
The flick of the switch marks the fifth and final festival for Weisbrodt, the German arts administrator whose partner is Canadian pop musician Rufus Wainwright. It was announced earlier this year that 2016's Luminato would be his last as director.
Built in 1951, the colossal Richard L. Hearn Generating Station was a coal-fired electrical generating station. Converted to burn natural gas in the early 1970s, it was decommissioned in 1983.
In 2014, Luminato turned on the city's cultural and financial elite by holding its Big Bang Bash Gala at the plant, and last year the Hearn held an industrial music event, the 48-hour Unsound Festival.
In his blog post, Weisbrodt, who describes the Hearn as a "majestic abandoned industrial cathedral," divulged no specific programming. He expressed the wish to "create the world's largest multidisciplinary generator of art and culture," and that the space of the Hearn would not be divided into distinctly different areas but would feature "fluid interlocking inseparable areas" for stages, exhibitions and entertainment.
The 10th-anniversary Luminato begins on June 10, 2016.
Brad Wheeler