New departmental chair Paul Walde is participating in the October 4 dusk-to-dawn contemporary arts celebration that is Nuit Blanche Toronto. His recent video installation Requiem for a Glacier will be screened at University of Toronto’s Hart House as part of the choral exhibit All Together Now. All Together Now will consider the renewed interest in the choir format and its capacities for inspiring feelings of togetherness, communicating shared memory and history, and—occasionally—provoking less than harmonious results. Nine video installations and sound works by Canadian and international artists will resonate throughout Hart House, accompanied by on-the-hour performances by 10 choirs from the Toronto community.
Paul Walde recording on Farnham Glacier (photo: Pat Morrow)
Says Nuit Blanche: “Paul Walde’s massive video installation Requiem for a Glacier will engulf visitors in a panoramic portrait of BC’s Jumbo Glacier area, serenaded by a four-movement oratorio written to respond to the imminent threats of global warming and resort development.”
Walde’s piece is presented alongside acclaimed UVic Visual Arts alumnus Althea Thauberger’s sound piece Murphy Canyon Choir, a documentation of a choral performance developed by the artist and a group of spouses of active-duty soldiers in the largest military housing complex in the USA.
Originally conceived in Paris in 2002, Nuit Blanche is a 12-hour event with a mandate to make contemporary art accessible to large audiences, while inspiring dialogue and engaging the public to examine its significance and impact on public space. Nuit Blanche is both a “high art” event and a free populous event that encourages celebration and community engagement.
From sunset to sunrise city spaces and neighbourhoods are transformed into temporary exhibitions: unusual or forbidden spaces become sites of contemporary art open for all-night discovery and rediscovery, and cultural institutions—from museums to galleries to artist run centres—open their doors and offer free access to contemporary art. Now universally translated as “Sleepless Night,” Nuit Blanche has expanded its reach beyond Paris to more than 25 cities across the globe, each offering its own version of the all-night art extravaganza.
Fellow Visual Arts professor Vikki Alexander‘s photographs were a highlight of the 2012 Nuit Blanche Toronto.
A little closer to home, Requiem for a Glacier is also currently on view through to October 25 at the Art Gallery at Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam BC, and from there will appear at Université Laval’s visual arts gallery in Quebec City until the end of December.
You can read more about Walde’s Requiem in this UVic KnowlEDGE feature.
Walde’s “Interdeterminacy” offers art from mushroom spores
In other Paul Walde news, his work Interdeterminacy (for John Cage)—seen locally as part of last year’s Visual Arts faculty exhibit Paradox—is part of Open Sound 2014: Sonorous Kingdom at the Surrey Art Gallery in Surrey, BC. That exhibition runs until December 14, but Walde will perform with EMU: Experimental Music Unit from noon to 5pm on Saturday, November 15, at the Surrey Art Gallery. Elements from the concert Music for Mycologists will be on the program, including Interdeterminacy.