What's In a Night?

        The crowds are gathering for an annual all-night art celebration in Toronto, full of cheer. As I watch them going out and coming in through the subway doors, I wonder to myself: what the relationship is between art and city life? Are they travelling to learn about art? Are they artists themselves? Or are they simply explorers?

         On one building around Queen street, there is a holographic image projected onto a building, in which observers see projected an image of the building being demolished. Which of these images is the real building? The 'real' building appears to be a giant slab of windowed concrete, one which stands so solid and secure. But, could the image of its demolition simply be the projected image of its not-so-distant future? As I watch this so-called hologram, I am reminded that all things, no matter how sturdy and strong, are continually being constructed and taken down, only to be reconstructed in new forms. What I mean is, buildings are not simply 'there', as monolithic monuments to be side-skirted by unsuspecting pedestrians and passerby's. Rather, the buildings are there because people put them there, and they are later taken down when they no longer follow the function for which they were built. Onward and outward, this process repeats itself anew. So which is the illusion? I begin to think that perhaps the image I have of the tall, sturdy and unchanging building is the 'real' illusion. Seeing something as solid is only a snapshot in a wider context of what happens over time. It is not final. That sense of finality is only a trick of the mind, in a sense. But then again, everything is illusion; like the hologram, nothing stays, and everything is touched by the conditioned universe.

       Some people might think that many of the people going to the festival downtown aren't really serious to look at art. They are simply doing it as a way to get out of the house, to party with friends, or to just enjoy a night of wandering that doesn't end. But I believe that a lot of this probably has everything to do with art, because art is a communal process. There was one installation at City Hall where people descended down into the underground parking lot, only to find it transformed into a kind of small park, complete with trees, potted soil and sod on the ground. Looking at that sight, I was almost expecting a horse to emerge. No such horse did emerge, though I think I certainly had the image of the horse coming to mind as I smelled the wood chips and hay on the ground. Of course, I later discover, the entire exhibit is a play on a grammatical mis-construal: "Park Here!" only needs the accidentally added period to become "Park. Here!", and then we have a completely different concept altogether. The period in between becomes the galvanizing condition for an urban wasteland to become an idyllic nature scene. What does this say about the shifting nature of things?

    This kind of night allows art to emerge in a spontaneous way, through the right conditions and combinations of creators, media, and spectators. But I think it's the communal space of many coming together that allows the art to breathe. When people are not confined to any fixed notion of what they are supposed to see or interpret in the creations of others, there is a lot of room for artistic ways of being to proliferate. This could take the form of providing a commentary on someone's display, or simply being there to behold the space between artistic creation, city and other beings.