Nuit Blanche: Hopes and Fears Assembly

Karaoke Practice!

By Prem Krishnamurthy / Department of Transformation

As a readymade format, karaoke can generate varying levels of discomfort in people while also demonstrating that person’s virtuosic potential. Karaoke creates community through a shared sense of vulnerability and mutual support. Whether you are a pro or novice or simply love a good time, we invite you to our fun-filled karaoke gathering.

Empty Stage / Play with Me

By Nadia Ross / CJ Fleury / George Acheson / Sam Johnson / STO Union

With its origins in Berlin, the Empty Stage is where we share what’s in our imaginations. Inviting the public to share their ideas and creativity, the blank stage becomes your canvas to colour, draw or write, drawing inspiration on what stories best reflect the times we live in. This public forum of expression reminds us that there are so many stories and inspirations we all carry and that sharing them is how we connect with each other.

Phantom Opera

By RYTHM CORP

The Phantom Opera is not just an event, but an immersive journey that blurs the boundaries between sound and sight, audience and performer, reality and illusion, past and future. This immersive nature is what sets the Phantom Opera apart and makes it a must-attend for art enthusiasts, music lovers and anyone interested in unique experiences.

Throughout the night, members of Rythm Corp will utilize live field recorders to capture an array of sounds. These recordings will include the murmur of the crowd, interactions among guests, the ambient sounds of the installations and the overall environment. These auditory snapshots will be woven together post-midnight, transforming into a live, real-time sonic experience.

Audience members are invited to become part of this experimental phantom jam by contributing their voices through a dedicated microphone setup. This collaborative creation will be accompanied by dynamic, real-time visuals that will showcase the hopes and fears submitted by attendees throughout the evening, set against mesmerizing backgrounds and effects.

People Watching Station

By Nadia Ross / STO Union

This simple game puts you in the driver’s seat of your self-improvement journey.

The “‘inner judge” ‘often rules our actions on the theatre stage and in life.  This ancient psychological mechanism is meant to help protect us, but left unchecked; it can take over the show.

Often, these judgments arise from a desire to protect ourselves, relying on tactics like self-criticism or self-aggrandizement, under the illusion that achieving a goal will silence the inner critic. However, it’s important to remember that awareness is the first and most powerful step in managing this relentless judge.

Wish You Were Here

By Lisa Klapstock / Something to Think about

Wish You Were Here is a participatory art project commemorated with a formal photographic portrait of an encounter between two species: a human and a plant. This symbolic project invites us to reflect on our relationship with nature and how we perceive non-human beings. By acknowledging a plant as a living being worthy of our attention and care, we are reminded of our interconnectedness with nature and the importance of peaceful, considerate coexistence.

Entwined/Distilled

By Harri Thomas / Other Hearts

A unique live performance piece created for the Hopes and Fears Assembly, this immersive experience is where creator, performer and mixologist Harri Thomas (they/them) invites guests into a ritual of intimacy and memory within a deconstructed living room setting. Central to the experience is custom micro-martinis, meticulously crafted to each guest’s preferences. These bespoke cocktails can be with or without alcohol. Thomas creates these drinks based on heartfelt conversations with guests, focusing on their cherished memories and the sensory details of those moments. Upon serving the drinks, there’s a ceremonial “entwined toast,” bringing artist and guest together in a moment of intimacy and connection. A preferred toast the guest offers is an alternative gesture to the same end.

If there is Light, we can Play

By Nadia Ross / STO Union

As long as there is light, we can play. Sometimes, we have access to spectacular lighting, and the public is invited to create equally spectacular shadows. Other times, the light is as simple as a bedside lamp. When funds for grand lighting are not there, we make do with what we have. But regardless of the source, as long as there’s light, we can play.

Merch

By Nadia Ross / Harri Thomas / STO Union

In Merch, students collaborate with professional artists, learning how to create “merchandise” while exploring various production methods and the economics of art. Every donation supports the School Visits program, which provides essential arts education. (The event will be recorded, filmed and streamed.)

Aphorisms

By Nadia Ross / STO Union

Receive an aphorism created by some of the wisest people we know: George Acheson, Marietta McBride and Andrea Davis.

STO Union is an award-winning company founded by Nadia Ross.  This artist-driven company aspires to understand how the arts change and share insights about these fundamental transformations in creative and engaged ways. Founded in 1993, the company has produced prolifically and has shared live productions, videos, and other types of creations at theatres, galleries, festivals and different kinds of live and digital places worldwide. Projects connect artists of all experience levels and engage all art forms to create public experiences that resonate with realness and intimacy. Projects come in many sizes, from larger mainstage touring shows or extensive community collaborations to smaller, intimate black box performances or small community-engaged actions. STO Union is located in the Outaouais region in western Quebec on unceded Algonquin territory.

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Nadia Ross is the 2016 recipient of the Siminovitch Prize, Canada’s most prestigious theatrical prize. She has also been awarded a Contra-Guy Award, a Dora Mavor Moore Award and is the co-winner of the Chalmers Award. Her work has been presented at venues and festivals in Canada and across four continents. Ross has chosen to create her work on the periphery: born, raised and returned to the rural Outaouais region of Quebec, she often engages the residents of her small town as inspiration for STO Union’s national and international touring productions. Recognized for her fierce vision, Ross’ projects consistently challenge what we think a stage is and what kinds of stories are being told. Under Ross’ direction, the company produces unique creations bringing together amateurs and professionals, rural and urban, anglophone and francophone, and a kaleidoscope of art forms to create public experiences that resonate with realness and intimacy.

Prem Krishnamurthy runs the Department of Transformation, an artist-organized group that explores art as an agent of transformation for individuals, communities and institutions. His multidisciplinary work manifests in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts and workshops. He received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communications Design in 2015 and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s “A Year With…” residency fellowship in 2018. Krishnamurthy has curated several large-scale exhibitions, including FRONT International 2022: Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows. His book-length epistolary essay, On Letters, was published in 2022. Having previously founded Project Projects and P!, he is currently a partner in the design studio Wkshps. 

Department of Transformation (DOT) is an artist-organized group that prototypes new formats for togetherness and mutual learning. Through workshops, events, publications, consulting (and karaoke!), DOT supports individuals, communities and institutions in their own processes of change. DOT is transforming art and design in order to transform the world. Recent projects include the Spring 2023 Teaching Tour to art schools, museums and non-profits across the United States to share collaborative tools for listening and conflict artistic direction of the interdisciplinary symposium. How can we gather now? with Washington Project for the Arts (2023), experimental public events at festivals such as Fusebox 2023 and Centre Pompidou/Villa Albertine’s Night of Ideas Jersey City 2024, featuring a participatory talk, soil-making workshop, sound healing bath and vocal workshop, as well as ongoing creative consulting to individuals and institutions.

Rhythm Corp is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary collective creating accessible sonic experiences through new visual and sonic media. Our talented team of DJs, producers, vocalists, instrumentalists, new media artists, filmmakers and digital artists come together to craft immersive and experimental experiences. We’re pushing the boundaries of techno-organic symbiosis, exploring new ways to experience art.

Atharva Jadhav (AJ) is a dynamic and innovative digital artist and technologist with a degree in Digital Futures from OCAD University. His artistic style is experimental and exploratory, using digital algorithms and illustrations to create fantastical art. He has written and directed award-winning short films, exhibited artwork at New York Fashion Week and Toronto’s Collision Gallery and created real-time visuals for events. A certified PADI rescue diver, Jadhav is also passionate about marine life. He continues to push boundaries in digital art, promising an exciting future.

Watchyourtemper: watchyourtemper is a moniker of Toronto software engineer and musician Achu Mukundan. The project fuses ethereal ambient auras, deconstructed club textures and trap rhythms to transport you to a world of raw expression. Melancholic moments reach out to you offering solace, all the while visceral bursts of rage barrage you with shards of sound as sharp as glass.

Huang SiFu: Huang SiFu is the vocalist of Chin Metal, a band that fuses the rebellious energy of heavy and black metal with the rich cultural depth of Beijing opera. Passionate about vocal experimentation, he loves creating weird alien texture sounds that add a unique dimension.

Luis is one of the best electric guitarists in Toronto.

Numi is an architect of numinous things, Numi offers alternative perspectives to ordinary experiences.

Arun is a multidisciplinary creative with a background in audio/visual media. He is currently focused on finding innovative and accessible ways to create experiences centred around music and visuals.

PEAV is an artist whose work is driven by the desire to express emotion through different mediums such as music production, DJ sets or photography. Inspired by his origins in Cambodia, PEAV looks to incorporate avant-garde, third-world influences into his work at the intersection of emerging technology to push sonic boundaries.

Lisa Klapstock is a lens-based artist whose work explores visual perception and the role of the camera in affecting how we view and experience the world we live in. Her projects typically involve spending months or years in a chosen place, using photography and video to engage with and depict the environment. The subject matter includes Toronto’s urban laneways and private gardens, artificial and natural landscapes, populated tourist sites, cultural bookstores, an Ontario forest and the Mediterranean Sea. Recent work explores the human relationship with nature. Klapstock has a BA (honours) in Communication from Simon Fraser University and has exhibited widely in North America and Europe including the Musée de la Photographie, Belgium; the Museet for Fotokunst, Denmark; the Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris; George Eastman House, New York; the Winnipeg Art Gallery; the National Portrait Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her show, Liminal, toured Canada and was accompanied by a catalogue of the same name. Recently, Klapstock published two artist’s books: Somewhere (2022), and Dreams of a Place We Have Lived (2023). 

Something to think about is an artist-led cultural initiative that brings practitioners from varied disciplines together with the public to explore themes related to our rapidly changing world. Diverse activities, including storytelling, music, exhibitions, performances, talks, screenings and workshops, occur at the STTA venue in a renovated 19th Century coach house in Toronto’s west end. The programming is developed through collaboration, focusing on a generative and iterative process and a collective experience for participants and audiences alike. The desire to expand communities and foster interdisciplinary communication is at the root of these arts-based interactions.

Harri Thomas (they/them) is a Trans/nonbinary, multi-disciplinary live artist working as a director, dramaturg and performance maker, as well as mixology and visual arts. A curiosity about the possibilities of hybrid performance forms drives their work. It is especially devoted to marginalized histories, the inventive use of bodies and objects, and memory performance. They are a National Theatre School of Canada’s Directing program graduate and a founding member of Other Hearts.

Other Hearts is a Toronto/Montreal-based performance collective comprising four members: Yousef Kadoura, Sebastian Marziali, Silvae Mercedes and Harri Thomas. Our work has been called “bold, challenging, raw and creative” (Slotkin Letter, 2024) and moves laterally across form and genre, ranging from puppetry and performance art to installation and experimental film. This versatility is supported by the diversity of our identities and lived experiences. Other Hearts seeks to blur the line between artists, the audience, and the world around them, creating liminal performances while exploring the creative potentials of accessibility, embodiment and alternative ways of being together.

cj fleury is an interdisciplinary thinker, educator and activist ci has explored the potential of collaboration with non-artists since the early ’90s, linking the human spirit and aha moments to agency in public space. Recognized for her groundbreaking, cross-sectoral approach, these projects have braided her into hives of grief, labour, ecology, education, immigration, feminist law, healthcare and forestry.  Equally diverse in scale and media, the resultant artworks have been expressed through flower petals, stone, bronze, performance, projected light or video. Of cj’s 20 permanent commissions, two downtown Ottawa monuments are well-known rallying and vigil sites for violence against women and, on City Hall’s lawn, for anti-poverty activism. In 2018 cj established an Artist in Residence program for Ottawa’s only critical-care hospital. She led an award-winning artist-patient collaboration, created an onsite gallery and mentored three new artists.  In 2020, with Dr.Carol Wiebe, cj was the co-founding Artistic Director of Radical Connections, a non-profit transforming healthcare through all kinds of arts. Public collections include the Canada Council Art Bank, City of Ottawa, Workers Heritage Museum, Daimon New Media Centre, DARC(SAW Video), Trent University and the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law.

George Acheson was STO Union’s associate artist from 2001 until his death in October 2020. He was integral to many STO Union productions, including the project on his life, 7 Important Things, which toured to four continents over eight years. Acheson created these aphorisms for STO Union’s 2015 Production, “What Happened to the Seeker.”

Isabelle Sain is an artist whose work delves into the sensory experiences of body and space, exploring how these interactions shape our understanding of the world. By creating experimental wearable objects, textiles and interactive sculptures, Sain seeks to represent the tactility of these experiences and examine human interaction within physical, political, social and spiritual contexts. She earned her BFA in Textiles and Fashion from NSCAD University, and her work has been showcased at Toronto, Halifax and Copenhagen exhibitions. Sain has also engaged in research projects on the future of fashion with KEA University and collaborated with brands and organizations such as Samsøe & Samsøe, Fashion Revolution and Threading Change. Her art practice emphasizes developing textile-based design processes and solutions that promote a more environmentally and socially conscious industry.

The Power Plant (exterior): What are you saying? (interactive installation) by Mishann Lau, Jim Ruxton, Lubo Brezina

Wave Deck: Lumi (interactive light installation) by 65 SQM, Sara Ibrahim, Ye Sul E. Cho, Heather Noble

Ontario Square: Fraction of Another Sun (multimedia installation) by Kara Springer

Check out Nuit Blanche’s website for more events.