flickering pictures

If you’re a regular reader around these parts, you may know that I can sometimes be a little harsh when it comes to the fine city of Toronto. So to restore a bit of balance here at flickeringpictures, and as evidence of my journalistic integrity, here’s a positive post for a change — one that portrays the sprawling, constipated cesspool that is Canada’s self-proclaimed capital in the favourable light it occasionally deserves.

This past Saturday, Toronto held an all-night art festival at venues around the city — everything from light shows and funky balloons to interpretive dance and albino-squirrel-knitting. From precisely 6:52 p.m. until sunrise, a million people took in what actually appears to have been a pretty cool event. I have to hand it to you Toronto: unlike your hockey, baseball, soccer and football teams, this doesn’t seem to have sucked at all.

From the CBC:

The attendance has doubled since the event’s inception in 2006, according to organizers, attracting both art lovers and people who wouldn’t ordinarily attend such events.

“It’s just gained so much popularity … we thought, let’s come. Let’s check it out,” said Brian Wilkinson as he stared at Into the Blue, a massive, translucent balloon piece floating above the crowds at the Eaton Centre.

One exhibit, at the fascinating-sounding Bata Shoe Museum, invited art-loving Torontonians to paint-by-numbers on a 12-metre-long picture of feet. Another, called “SNIFF, LICK, PINCH, NIBBLE, SWALLOW,” explored “the female landscape” and was made entirely out of food. And another one had zombies in it, so extra points there.

Though this year’s event seems to have gone smoothly, the Toronto Star reports that back in 2007 “an installation called Ode To The Porcelain Gods, made up of a gleaming group of toilets,” attracted several art lovers who plopped down, newspapers in hand, to do their business. Working to outdo herself at this year’s event, the public potty art’s creator put 1,000 rubber duckies in a public pond in order to “watch viewers react.” Only in Toronto could something so hip and quirky happen without a permit.

So congratulations, Toronto, on doing a cool thing — even though you stole the idea from us Montrealers, who for six years have held our own way cooler Nuit Blanche — and in the dead of a bone-chilling Canadian February too, to show everyone how badass we are. Really, what’s an all-night city-wide rave/gallery/exhibit/concert/circus/fireworks display/foodfest/torch procession, when you can paint cardboard feet in the dark?

Balloon image via Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto.
Zombie image via the CBC.

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