Scotia
Bank Nuit Blanche: "Night School"
Saturday
29 September 2007
6:57 pm -
Sunrise
General
Idea, "Nightschool," 1989
Welcome
to Nightschool:
Hart
House is a one-night "school of the night." Performance,
installations, and instructional tapes explore subtexts of education,
including vernacular knowledge and slidings between the disciplines.
Guided to the school by Lisa Neighbour’s “Fire Alley,” visitors will be able to calm anxieties about performance through motivational
tapes; learn new moves through Adrian Piper’s funk lessons; and
find out how to be intimate in Japan. Instructions on the proper use
of kitchen utensils, attempts to teach a plant the alphabet, and other
lessons will culminate in a "Slow Dance with Teacher" night
by Darren O’Donnell. The lesson will continue with Will Kwan’s
kaleidoscopic journey through Western fantasies, and may end at Dean
Baldwin’s MiNiBAR where normal scale has gone awry.
Night
School Tutors will be available throughout Hart House to lecture on
topics integral to the enhancement and expansion of the educational
experience. Subject matter addresses the necessary, but rarely discussed
underground, subset of skills and techniques necessary for survival
in the early years of institutional life. The Tutors will illuminate
such vital topics as Telling Lies Ethically, Experimentation in the
Sexual Realm, Creating and Delivering Convincing Excuses, and the rousing
Justification for Sleeping In.
NIGHTSCHOOL
PROGRAM:
Dean
Baldwin's MiNiBAR (until 4:00 am) / Early Bird Breakfast (from 4:00 am)
NIGHTSCHOOL
INSTALLATIONS:
Will
Kwan: presents
an over-sized kaleidoscope, a viewing machine flooded with mnemonics
from Western visions of Cathay: trade porcelain, chinoiserie, early
Far East photo-journalism, the Chinese garden, reverse glass painting,
godowns and factories filled with consumer goods, newswire photos of
assembly lines, and satellite imagery of container ports. The kaleidoscope
– itself a product of this same period – distorts and endlessly
reproduces this configuration of images, creating an unstable and disorienting
visual archive of a trans-oceanic trade in euphoria and addiction, technology
and technique, ornament and taste, cargoes and markets.
Amos
Latteier: Animal
House is a video installation by Amos Latteier that combines documentary
video about animal architecture with projected environments that viewers
can enter. The project will blur genres to create an interactive, humorous,
and educational exploration of how people and animals create and inhabit
environments. Example environments include Carl Hagenbeck’s pioneering
1907 Arctic Panorama at the Tierpark zoo in Germany, a backyard with
a dog house, an ant nest interior (greatly magnified to room size).
Lisa
Neighbour: All
Flies Welcome. Twenty-four light fixtures along the main routes
to Hart House will be transformed by Lisa Neighbour into a row of torches,
to signal the pathway for a procession or pilgrimage. Fire Alley
harks back to pictures of the traditional "clavie" or "cresset,"
which is a signal torch from historical times in the British Isles and
Europe. Spiderwebs made of light greet the visitors to the steps of
Night School.
NIGHTSCHOOL
PERFORMANCE:
Darren
O'Donnell: Slow Dance With Teacher. Teachers, protected
by velvet ropes and burly security guards, select lucky viewers, inviting
them to join them in sweaty embrace, and gently sway to the aching musical
selection of DJ Murr, in a dark room made beautiful by designer Rebecca
Picherack. Slow Dance with Teacher by Darren O’Donnell lets you
do what you always wanted to do.
INSTRUCTIONAL
TAPES BY ARTISTS:
Vito
Acconci, John Baldessari, Brenda Goldstein, Suzy Lake, Toni Latour,
Janet Merewether, Adrian Piper, Martha Rosler, Sterling Ruby, William
Wegman
Vito
Acconci: Under-History Lessons, 1976
From "Lesson 1: Let's Believe We're in This Together," to "Lesson
12: Let's be Oppressed," Acconci’s audio piece offers a series
of strange history lessons in which he acts as both teacher and students.
A satirical commentary on history and education.
John
Baldessari: Teaching a plant the alphabet, 1972
Using a common houseplant to represent nature and instructional flashcards
to represent the alphabet, Baldessari ironically illustrates the opaque
and artificial nature of language as a system of signs. This ironic
exercise in futility reveals the absurd nature drills and repetition
as tools of learning.
Brenda
Goldstein: First Kiss, 2004
A short biology lesson touching on metabolism, thermogenesis, and romance.
Suzy Lake: The Natural Way to Draw, 1975
Taking its title from the traditional drawing textbook by Nicolaides,
the artist literally draws her self-portrait on her own face, following
instructions read to her from the text.
Toni
Latour: You Can Do It!, 1999
Like a supportive friend, this satirical motivational video guides the
viewer through those tough times when self-doubt can hinder learning
and growth. Although satirizing the self-help industry, the artist’s
earnestness has a surprisingly comforting tone.
Janet
Merewether: Making out in Japan, 1996
This video intends to teach the language of Japanese intimacy in five
easy steps. The sublety of love is humourously regimented into dry language
drills, as Japanese television and iconography are deconstructed to
reveal an erotic subtext.
Adrian
Piper: Funk Lessons, 1983
A videotape piece based on an audience-interactive performance of Funk
Lessons. In the performance Piper teaches her audience how to listen
to this music and how to dance to it.
Martha
Rosler: Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975
From A to Z, Rosler demonstrates the ingredients of the housewife's
day, giving us a tour that names and mimics the ordinary.
Sterling
Ruby: Landscape Annihilates Consciousness, 2002
A celebrated landscape painter hypnotizes through brush stroke and voice.
William
Wegman: Spelling Lesson, 1973
The artist corrects his dog's spelling test ("You spelled it B-E-E-C-H")
in an endearing lesson between teacher and student.
Produced
by the curatorial team of Barbara Fischer, Ann MacDonald, Tejpal Ajji,
Maiko Tanaka, Aileen Burns, and Day Milman.
Thanks
to Video Data Bank, Vtape, Electronic Arts Intermix, and the financial
support of the Office of the Vice-President and Provost, the U of T
Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council.
Saturday 29
September,
the gallery will be open all night for Nuit
Blanche
6:57 pm - Sunrise
Sunday 21
October, 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm – Closing reception for Kelly
Mark: Stupid Heaven at Blackwood
Gallery University
of Toronto at Mississauga.
REVIEWS
David Moos: "A Curator's Top Ten Art Encounters in 2007." Digital Media Tree Blog, 2 January 2008.
REVIEWS
Elaine Smith: "Nuit Blanche Brings the Community to Campus." The Bulletin, PP 4, October 10, 2007
REVIEWS
Maria
Saros Leung: "Nuit Blanche Night School Turns Traditional Teaching
on its Head," The Newspaper (UofT), 27 September 2007
REVIEWS
David Balzer: "How Do You Nuit Blanche?"
(Interview with Barbara Fischer, Seamus Kealy, and Darren O'Donnell), Eye Weekly, PP 42, 27 September 2007
