October 1, 2016
Submission deadline: Monday, December 14, 2015, 11:59pm
Contemporary art will transform the city of Toronto for the 11th annual Nuit Blanche Toronto on October 1, 2016.
The all-night celebration of contemporary art, produced by the City of Toronto in collaboration with Toronto’s arts community, brings together the exceptional talents of artists, curators, galleries, museums, cultural and educational institutions, and neighbourhoods in a collaborative undertaking to transform the city.
Open Call Projects
Artists from around the world can apply to participate in one of three city-produced Exhibitions at Nuit Blanche Toronto through the Open Call Projects program. Up to six Open Call Projects will be selected by the curators— Paco Barrágan, Camille Hong Xin, and Louise Déry—in consultation with the City of Toronto. Funding and production support is provided.
The impressive calibre and diversity of Open Call Projects featured at the event over the years includes artists such as: Adrian Blackwell, Ame Henderson, Brandy Leary/Anandam Dancetheatre, Eleanor King, Faith La Rocque, Kelly Mark, Labspace Studio, VSVSVS, and Workparty.
The exhibitions accepting Open Call submissions for 2016 are:
Paco Barrágan: Militant Nostalgia or When History Meets Memory
Militant Nostalgia or When History Meets Memory tackles mediation and meditation on history and the passage of time. Nostalgia functions as an intermediary between the collective (history) and the individual (memory).
Unlike what was expected, the 21st Century has brought about, on the one hand, a moment of profound crisis, despair, and deception; and on the other, a discrediting of the big theories and ideologies (metanarratives) that have provided a solid and comprehensive explanation of our world. As a result, we as contemporary subjects feel disappointment and loss, and are in search of a narrative that gives sense to our lives and future. The future is not what we have been promised, and as such we long for the past.
Militant Nostalgia… is a kind of contradiction in terms, one which pursues a revolutionary and reflective exploration of the past, enabling a challenging and even utopian vision of the present-future.
Militant Nostalgia… allows us to look back at our past histories and memories, searching for unrealized projects, failed dreams, and unconsidered propositions in a prospective manner, envisioning alternative futures and un-marched paths wherein personal and collective memory meet.
Camille Hong Xin: And The Imagination Reveals
This exhibition addresses the chemistry between imagination and technology. Technology has two sides of a coin: while it advances innovation, facilitates imagination, and determines the impact of resource usage, it also consumes energy, produces waste, and arguably, reduces physical intimacy. Part of this exploration includes how digital art illuminates our inner beauty, conflict, and spiritual inquiries while also investigating the opposite side of the coin and offering alternatives.
Sustainability also needs imagination.
Sustainability’s immediate links are green technology, waste recycling, and renewable energy, but its organizing principles include four interconnected domains: ecology, economics, politics, and culture—the Circles of Sustainability.
This Open Call is intended for proposals of sculptures, installations, and interactive performance that align with the theme of imagination and technology but extend to resilient thinking and Circles of Sustainability. A sustainable world is founded on respect for nature, human rights, economic justice, and cultural/religious peace—which, in light of waste recycling and renewable energy, could serve as the geopoetic context, metaphorical reference, material approach, or conceptual strategy of your work.
Louise Déry: Facing The Night
Artists have always turned their eyes to the sky, and many of them today are following in this grand romantic tradition, standing as explorers with their heads raised towards outer space, observing its immensity and evoking its boundlessness while at the same revealing its poetry, mystery, and magic.
In a world where the sky is being sold by the piece to meet the demands of the communication industry, and in which formidable powers are busy hiding information or spying on the transmitted signals, artists will look at the night to reveal and to shape the invisible in its multiple dimensions: exploration of the infinite, contemplation of its intangible power, and consideration of its fragility. They will also contribute towards reinventing the geography of the night, as well as reminding us of the ambivalence of our relation with the night-world: a world of bright stars as much as black holes, of dreams as much as fear, of survival as much as apocalypse, of heaviness and weightlessness.
The sky begins level with the surface of the earth. It makes visible the alternation between day and night. As “night-walkers,” we enter into the vertigo of the nocturnal sky.
These three exhibitions will each select two Open Call Projects. Barrágan, Hong Xin, and Déry will select submissions in consultation with the City of Toronto’s City Cultural Events Team. Funding and production support is provided.
International artists are strongly encouraged to apply.
Applications are now being accepted. Further details, guidelines, and the Open Call application form can be found at www.toronto.ca/nuitblanche.
Contact for Open Call Project submissions: ocs [at] toronto.ca.
