OCAD University hosts film and video marathon and interactive mural for Nuit Blanche!

Image of video still from Treasure Hill Camouflage (2014) by soJin Chun
Tuesday, September 27, 2016 - 4:00am

Wander through the darkened classrooms and corridors of OCAD University and lose yourself in moving images, interactive art and augmented reality. OCAD U is the site of two large-scale installations for Nuit Blanche starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 1 through 7 a.m., Sunday, Oct. 2

Multiplex, curated by The Modest Eyes collective, is an all-night video and essay-film marathon of work by local and international artists and designers.

Sit in a theatre, join an on-site slumber party or use your mobile device to plunge into the streams of image, sound and text to experience the marathon in your own way. A list of programming, artists and artworks can be seen at The Modest Eyes website.

OCAD U is also the site of The Merging. Artist Nicola Verlato’s interactive mural on the front of the main campus building at 100 McCaul St. depicts two of Toronto’s most prominent historic figures: communications theorist Marshall McLuhan and mathematician Donald Coxeter. Using an app on their mobile devices, viewers can see elements of the mural float in space like 3D objects.

A second version of the mural inside OCAD U’s Great Hall lets people enter the painting using the app. The Merging is one of 10 projects in the city-produced exhibition Militant Nostalgia, curated by Paco Barragán.  

Location: OCAD University, 100 McCaul St., Toronto. Wheelchair accessible at front doors.

A few blocks away from OCAD U at Toronto’s City Hall, Michael Prokopow, Interim Dean of Graduate Studies, is co-curating an exhibition with Jeanine Marchessault. Oblivion presents the works of three artists: OCAD U alumna Floria Sigismondi, architect Philip Beesley, and Director X. Their interconnected works encourage reflection on “the immensities, vulnerabilities and breathtakingly terrifying realities of the universe.”

r u part of the art?

R U Part of the Art
Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 10:45pm to Sunday, October 5, 2008 - 11:00am

A Conceptual intervention during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche by OCAD student Farah Yusuf and Alex Stephan.

Text 'yes' to 647-989-7707 The public is invited to subscribe to mobile text alerts that are sent to their cell phones at regular intervals over the course of the night. The text messages are instructions that they are asked to perform -- some will require acts that are social or demonstrative in nature, while other instructions are vague and introspective. By allowing the collaborative unpredictability of the user experience, the interpretation of the work is entirely in their domain. It is at once both public spectacle and private contemplation. "r u part of the art” investigates the social dimension of participation in this highly networked culture. The use of the cell phone and text messaging as the delivery medium provides an immediacy of execution that transcends spatial boundaries. Participation is a key element to the piece. Whether that participation is physical or symbolic, the goal is to blur the line between performer and audience. No premium mobile fees apply to use this service. Regular carrier charges apply as per your individual service contract. Limited Enrolment.

Venue & Address: 
40 King Street West 40 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario

Ordinary People: Intervention

Ordinary People: Intervention
Sunday, October 5, 2008 - 4:00am

I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough, when they know those subsidies have actually gone up – I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people, Stephen Harper said in Saskatoon, where he was campaigning for the Oct. 14 election.

The artist collective Ordinary People rejects the recent statements made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and calls upon ordinary people to show their support of the arts.

This is a call to action for all ordinary people from ordinary people.

Join us in a public action during Nuit Blanche.

At midnight on Saturday, October 4, we ask you to STOP for 4 minutes 33 seconds and hold up a piece of paper displaying the word ART. (John Cage, 4’33”).

The artist collective Ordinary People believes that everyone benefits in a society that respects and promotes culture.

Ordinary People includes students from the Ontario College of Art & Design and the internationally renowned artist ORLAN.

Venue & Address: 
Everywhere in Toronto 100 McCaul St., Toronto, Ontario
Email: 
ordinarypeoplecollective@live.com
Cost: 
Free

Useless Beauty: Notions of Beauty and Utility<br>Part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche at OCAD

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 11:00pm to Sunday, October 5, 2008 - 11:00am

Useless Beauty, curated by OCAD Professor Johanna Householder and Jennifer Rudder, features work by artists KC Adams, Lois Andison and David Krippendorff that addresses notions of hybridity, gender, race, beauty, utility and fashion. The exhibition is presented in part as a response to ORLAN’S week-long residency at OCAD (part of OCAD’s Nomadic Residents program), and her video reading, presented at approximately 9 p.m.

The Works in Useless Beauty:

KC Adams: Cyborg Hybrids and Cyborg Hybrid Accessories
Winnipeg artist KC Adams explores the intersection of technological and socio-cultural evolutions. Adams presents a cross cultural-technological ideal, an intriguing interplay of contemporary race politics and analytical detachment. Useless Beauty showcases Adams’s Cyborg Hybrids photographic series, in which the artist theatrically stages celebrity-like portraits of models with mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry. The images belie their subversive and specific political edge. Her puns and double entendres, hand beaded and chosen by Adams’s subjects, speak to a shared politic in a way that is layered with cultural significance and poignancy. With her Cyborg Hybrid Accessories, Adams further animates her photographic works by subverting our obsession with portable, personal technologies with a sharp political and satiric edge.

Lois Andison: Camouflage 1 and 3 and maid of the mist
Toronto-based Lois Andison’s sculptural works examine the relationship of technology to nature and the body. With Camouflage 1 and 3, Andison proposes a kind of wearable technology that enables its wearer to employ actions of natural display, still only partly understood behaviors. Camouflage 1 is a stunning hybrid: a dress with an elaborate Elizabethan collar covered with Queen Anne’s Lace. The collar responds to a visitor’s approach by clicking into a series of positions, spectacularly articulating both seduction and protection. Camouflage 3 literally extends this metaphor in a couture garment with an extendible/retractable neck that spouts smoke, referencing both Sybiline riddles and prophecies and the joke of a woman blowing her top.

With maid of the mist, Andison twists a hatter’s steaming block into a complex metaphor for the female psyche by piercing an iconic portrait bust with holes that emit steam, finding a compelling vision inside the notion of a steaming brain.

David Krippendorff: Behind the Curtain and Night of 1000 Stars
Perhaps the strongest metaphor in the classic film The Wizard of Oz is the illusion of power. In Berlin-based artist David Krippendorff’s work Behind the Curtain we are presented with the slowed down movement of the curtain that hides the wizard himself. Here the “moment of discovery” is frozen — the curtain never opens to reveal the impostor behind it. The endless and mesmerizing motion creates a sense of expectation, which is never fulfilled.

One of the first signs of human existence found in outer space was the transmission of television signals. Space has therefore “witnessed” our existence through endless television shows, films, newsreels and soap operas. Krippendorff’s video Night of 1000 Stars considers human significance in the context of the infinity of space and time, in contrast to the greatest of Hollywood aspirations — to be a “star”.

About Johanna Householder, Curator, Useless Beauty
Co-curator and OCAD Professor Johanna Householder, is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She is a founder of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art which takes place in Toronto, Oct. 23 to Nov. 2, 2008. With Tanya Mars, she co-edited Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance by Canadian women, in 2004.

About Jennifer Rudder, Curator, Useless Beauty
Jennifer Rudder is the Curator of Gallery Stratford. From 2003 to 2007 she was Director/Curator. Rudder is Editor of the monograph Ordinary Marvel: Susan Kealey, published in 2003 by YYZ Books in Toronto and Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Alberta. She served as contributing editor for the art publications MIX and Canadian Art, and has written for Fuse and Lola magazines. As an independent, Rudder has curated numerous exhibitions including Crime and Punishment for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario which toured to Gallery 44 in Toronto and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Jennifer was Executive Director of the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition for five years and Director of YYZ Artists Outlet between 1983 and 1993. She is currently completing a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto and is an Instructor at Brock University.

Venue & Address: 
Auditorium 100 McCaul St., Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

ORLAN: video reading, part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

ORLAN
Sunday, October 5, 2008 - 1:00am

OCAD presents the exhibitions Useless Beauty and Design for the Other 90% alongside a performance by French artist and OCAD artist in residence ORLAN during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche on Saturday, October 4 from 6:52 p.m. to 7 a.m., October 5.

Useless Beauty, curated by OCAD Professor Johanna Householder and Jennifer Rudder, features work by artists KC Adams, Lois Andison and David Krippendorff that addresses notions of hybridity, gender, race, beauty, utility and fashion. The exhibition is presented in part as a response to ORLAN’S week-long residency at OCAD (part of the OCAD Professional Gallery’s Nomadic Residents program), and her video reading, presented at approximately 9 p.m.

About ORLAN, Nomadic Resident
From plastic surgery interventions and performances to photography and digital works, ORLAN has been a formidable presence in contemporary art for over four decades. Since the 1960s, her work has transcended the numerous “posts” and “isms” of the art world’s different movements, all the while interrogating our bodies and identities, questioning art’s relation to life, and testing the lines between the real and the virtual.

ORLAN joins OCAD as its third artist-in-residence in its Nomadic Residents program from September 29 to October 3, presenting a free public lecture on Tuesday, September 30, 6:30 p.m. For details and additional information about ORLAN, please visit www.ocad.ca.

Venue & Address: 
Auditorium 100 McCaul St., Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

Do Not Play on or Around

Play Image
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - 4:00am to Friday, October 10, 2008 - 4:00am

Coordinated by Printmaking student James Gauvreau, this exhibit will examine street art as an entity that has emerged out of, and has separated itself from graffiti and vandalism. It will include mixed media installations drawing inspiration from the city streets and urban art, posited in a gallery setting.
Held in conjunction with Nuit Blanche, October 4, 6:52 pm to sunrise.

Venue & Address: 
Transit Space 100 McCaul St., 2nd Floor (outside of Rm 230), Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

Concurrence

Concurrence
Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 11:00pm to Sunday, October 5, 2008 - 11:00am

CONCURRENCE at Nuit Blanche 2008 will transform one of Toronto's hidden community gems into a multi-sensory exhibition. You will have the opportunity to see painting, sculpture, installation, film, dance and live music performances by Canada's emerging talent. Experience the meeting of cultures in a fusion of sights, sounds and flavors - all in the celebration of creativity. Our artists will amaze and surprise with their collective story.

Artists include OCAD students Chris Parker, Mack Ross, Julia Olesiak and Adam J Horodyski, as well as alumni Brett Despotovich and Elzbieta Krawecka.

Venue & Address: 
206 Beverley Street 206 Beverley Street, Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

Design for the Other 90%

Design for the Other 90%
Saturday, October 4, 2008 - 4:00am to Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 5:00am

The OCAD Professional Gallery will host Design for the Other 90%, a collection of design solutions addressing the basic needs of poor and marginalized populations not traditionally serviced by professional designers.

The exhibition, organized by the New York-based Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and curated by Cynthia E. Smith, explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for the “other 90%” — that is, the 5.8 billion people (out of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion people) who have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted. Design for the Other 90% looks at how individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress — for example, nearly half of the other 90% do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter.

"Unconventionally, this exhibition highlights products that are economically self-sustaining, yet affordable to people living on a dollar a day — inexpensive irrigation systems for farming, for instance," says Charles Reeve, Curator of the Professional Gallery. "The new forms of ingenuity here focus on pressing issues like poverty relief and environmental sustainability, both of which are key themes in what we teach and research here at OCAD."

Launching as part of OCAD’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche programming, Toronto is the only Canadian stop for the touring exhibition, which is currently showing at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. An extensive website, including a blog, discussion forum and additional resources is available at http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/.

In addition to the exhibition at the OCAD Professional Gallery, the Design Exchange will present a complementary program of exhibits and events as part of Design for the Other 90%.
Gallery hours: Wed. to Fri., 1 to 7 p.m; Sat. and Sun., 12 to 6 p.m.

Design for the Other 90% is organized by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

The exhibition was made possible by The Lemelson Foundation. Additional funding was provided by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency, the Esme Usdan Exhibition Endowment Fund, and the Ehrenkranz Fund.

The exhibition's presentation at the OCAD Professional Gallery at the Ontario College of Art & Design is supported by the Toronto Arts Council.

Venue & Address: 
Professional Gallery 100 McCaul St., Level 2, Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche at OCAD

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 11:00pm to Sunday, September 30, 2007 - 11:00am

Make OCAD your destination during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, an all-night city-wide celebration of exhibitions, live performances and creative programs throughout Toronto. The event runs from dusk to dawn starting at 7:03 pm on September 29.
TESTBED
Curated by David McIntosh
Assistant Curator, Patricio Davila
TESTBED is an exhibition of new media works that converts OCAD's landmark tabletop building into an interactive platform for intensive artistic research, experimentation, prototyping and testing of real-time simulation models where virtual and material worlds collide to produce new meaning. The six installations that comprise TESTBED are all new works, most of them commissioned specifically for this exhibition, some of them new site-specific iterations of the artists' ongoing research and creation activities for the OCAD exhibition space.
All part of the OCAD community, as former students or as current or former OCAD faculty, the TESTBED artists have created works that explore the technological, philosophical and experiential tensions and resonances between immersive virtual digital 3D installation and the more traditional physical presence of material 3D installation. As a group, the works express a range of new forms of interfacing and translating across the narrowing 3D virtual/material divide. These works also test the limits of our understanding and occupation of our built environment ' our houses, our homes ' transforming them into powerful virtual memory structures. And it is important to note that these works are not simply structural investigations of hard and software linkages between material place and virtual space; they engage a range of social, political and aesthetic contexts that give the virtual/material discourse new directions.
Judith Doyle's Long Crescent : House Transformer offers a navigable performative virtual house, inhabited simultaneously by human presences and virtual avatars, that rests on her strong emotional and memory links to the represented house as her own childhood home. Robert Houle's Do not open until you get home brings his perspective as an abstract painter and First Nations artist, writer and curator to his reluming of horrific human and viral histories in a digital context. Lorena Salom''s Closeness embeds autonomous technologies inside kinetic sculptures to probe temporality, randomness and mutual destruction. Simone Jones and Julian Oliver's Unprepared Architecture invites us to play and to consider the philosophical relationship between the particularity of material space and the universality of virtual space, as well as the implications of new forms of remote control. Brenda Goldstein and Alissa Firth-Eagland's spin builds a dialogue concerning fate from virtual myths and embodied human undertakings, while Noam Gonick's Precious Blood models a physical site of social control ' a prison ' to serve as the surface for the projection of multiple insurrectional desires.
The TESTBED artists have employed a range of creative methods, from spontaneous, provisional and analogic imaginings to experiential, metaphoric and heuristic improvisations to create prototypical, evolving, immersive art that operates interdependently with the public. We invite the exuberant and engaged Nuit Blanche public to intersect, interact and experiment with us and with TESTBED all night long.
Currents
Curated by William Hodge
In welcoming back OCAD's Material Art & Design, Applied Art & Design, Material Arts alumni for a weekend of programming, OCAD presents an exhibition of work by alumni and faculty in OCAD's Great Hall, curated by Professor William Hodge. During Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, demonstrations will take place in the ceramic, jewellery and fibre studios until midnight.
Currents features the work of Beth Alber, Mildred Avendano, Patricia Bentley, Lois Betteridge, Carolynn Bloomer, Suzanne Carlsen, Ruth Chambers, Ying-Yueh Chuang, Ian Chung, Alissa Coe and Carly Waito, Marta Dal Farra, Jocelyn De Backere, Angelo di Petta, Michael Doxey, Martina Edmonson, Eva Ennist, William Hodge, Kate Jackson, Michael Jaroszewicz, Arounna Khounnoraj, Chung-Im Kim, Margaret Lim, Susan Low-Beer, Rory MacDonald, Michelle Mendlowitz, Dorie Millerson, Robert Mitchell, Julie Moon, Joni Moriyama, Kathleen Morris, Ken Nicol, Michele Perras, Anrea Piller, Greg Sims, Greg Sloane, Don Stuart, Mary Jane Varro, Ken Vickerson, Sarah Washbush Byrne, Laurie Wassink, Andr'e Wejsmann, Robert Wylie, Lily Yung, Susan Warner Keene, and Cybele Young.
An exhibition reception will be held Saturday, September 29 starting at 4 pm ($15 unless previously registered for weekend reunion events, cash bar. Tickets can be reserved online at https://secure.ocad.ca/currents/). Currents is presented in conjunction with Craft Year 2007.
Nomadic Residents: Rirkrit Tiravanija
Closing reception: reopening the OCAD Professional Gallery
Remarks from 7 to 7:30 pm; open all night
The OCAD Professional Gallery closes its inaugural exhibition. Last April, internationally acclaimed artist Rirkrit Tiravanija erected walls barring the entrance and exit to the gallery space. Now, the walls will come down and the exhibition's final component will be revealed.
Globe and Mail art critic Sarah Milroy describes Tiravanija's work as "'exemplar of 'relational aesthetics''or 'service-based art''work that intends to provoke new social relations in response to contradictions set up by the artist". OCAD Associate Professor Jim Drobnik describes this installation as "a radical change in Tiravanija's practice, and a renegotiation of his relationship to the art world."
World So Small
OCAD's Student Gallery presents an exchange exhibit between ceramic students from OCAD and the University of Regina in which they employ the material qualities and associative meanings of clay to investigate how we engage with others and the world. Previously shown at the 5th Parallel Gallery in the University of Regina, the exhibition is held in conjunction with Craft Year 2007 and continues until October 6.
Concept to Commodity
OCAD's Transit Space presents an exhibition of work by third- and fourth-year Material Art & Design students working in ceramics, fibre and jewellery. The exhibit focuses on the process of design from initial conception through to the creation of the finished object. The exhibition continues until October 5.

Venue & Address: 
Ontario College of Art & Design 100 McCaul St., Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

World So Small

World So Small
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - 4:00am to Saturday, October 6, 2007 - 4:00am

An exchange exhibit between ceramic students from OCAD and University of Regina in which they employ the material qualities and associative meanings of clay to investigate how we engage with others and the world. World So Small will coincide with Craft Year 2007 a nation-wide celebration of professional Canadian craft and was previously exhibited at the 5th Parallel Gallery in the University of Regina last winter. It is also being held in conjunction with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, September 29.

Venue & Address: 
Student Gallery 285 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario
Cost: 
Free

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