Clayton Hanmer for The Globe and Mail
Won't You Please Stand Up
Taking place in a simulacrum of a Toronto performance venue, a group of mediocre international artists - including a mediocre German pianist, a mediocre Russian ballerina, a mediocre Austrian opera singer, and a mediocre Israeli violinist - give middling performances of substandard works to an audience of actual Torontonians, who greet each rendition with an immediate and overwhelming standing ovation. As the night concludes, a meta-audience will be brought in to greet to each standing ovation with an even more enthusiastic standing ovation and screams of, "Encore!"
Tent of Endless Funding Announcements
In this award-winning installation that challenges conceptions of "ritual" and "gullibility," a seemingly infinite procession of municipal, provincial and federal politicians announce major infrastructure projects for the City of Toronto, including money to fix the waterfront, bury the Gardiner Expressway, construct a rail link to Pearson International Airport, and a subway link to York University. Each announcement is met by canned applause while a square of asphalt suspended next to the podium slowly crumbles.
The Ossington Hipster Project
In this ambitious and internationally significant installation, an Ossington Avenue patio is filled with hipsters wearing white Ray-Ban Wayfarers, sweatbands and ironic T-shirts, all eating locally made charcuterie and drinking Mill Street Tankhouse Pale Ale while listening to the Dum Dum Girls. In a stunning feat of group choreography, the hipsters remove their Ray-Ban Wayfarers at the stroke of midnight and simultaneously realize they all look like idiots, at which point they begin tweeting self-indulgently about their "epiphany," which they vow to commemorate with a knuckle tattoo.
Surrounded by Hate
The anti-Toronto griping of a Cape Breton fiddle player is regionally differentiated from the hate narratives of a Montreal Anglophone or the "centre of the universe" denunciations of a Vancouver sea kayaker. In this collaborative and poly-perspectival project that underscores the import of envy and schadenfreude to the Canadian experience, Torontonians step inside an echo chamber fitted with 1,528 speakers and are subjected to a chorus of angry anti-Toronto rants, including declarations of scorn from first nations people, Gulf Islands hippies, Quebecois, new Canadians, and Ezra Levant, all recorded specifically for Nuit Blanche.
Forest Hill Housewife Wax Museum
This city's most fascinating trophy wives are rendered in stunning verisimilitude while prerecorded interviews playing on a continuous loop divulge their opinions on raging Forest Hill controversies such as: Pusateri's or Whole Foods - which is better? What NOT to wear to this year's Brazilian Ball; and, the Recession: Will the help finally work harder or will they just steal the silverware? (Sponsored by Toronto Life magazine.)
A World Without Cheese
Here Torontonians wander through Dundas Square repurposed as a life-size recreation of the Entertainment District on a Saturday night, exact in every detail save one: the 905ers have all vanished. Absent the thumping base, puddles of vomit, souped-up Lexuses and constant smell of too much cologne, the exhibit forces downtown residents to re-evaluate our intriguing and intangible relationship with suburban peoples.
Special to the Globe and Mail