Everyone’s favourite arts festival is back! This year, Nuit Blanche has expanded from a one night event to a month-long celebration, allowing the community to participate in live events and engage with art installations for the duration of Culture Days. These multi-day explorations of contemporary art are entirely free.
The Exchange District is the hub of Nuit Blanche and hosts the majority of installations and projects, but there are also events that spill into neighbouring areas including Downtown, St. Boniface and The Forks. Find all Nuit Blanche Winnipeg events here.
Illuminate the Night
Every year an open call is held for local artists to propose art projects for Nuit Blanche Winnipeg. Projects are selected by a jury of artists and art professionals, then featured in Winnipeg’s downtown core. It invites artists working in all artistic mediums to submit projects – performance artists, installation artists, textile artists, graphic designers, media artists, architects and general creative thinkers – with a performance, exhibition or installation that will create an unforgettable experience for Winnipeggers.
Luv Lite
The Exchange District BIZ
492 Main Street
From September 24 to October 24, the Exchange District BIZ hosts Luv Lite, an augmented reality experience by local artist Joshua Banman.
Luv Lite is an interactive, augmented-reality art installation. In a window display, the audience sees about a dozen CRT televisions. Only one television has rabbit ears. One of the audience members walks up to the television with rabbit ears and looks closer. Their face is displayed on every single television in the window display. Their face is shooting light beams from their eyes. The audience member raises their hands and they see light beams shooting from their hands. Their jaw drops and a series of halos fills the background.
Luv Lite is making use of a hidden camera inside of the rabbit ears. The camera is connected to a computer that is running augmented reality software and broadcasting software. The live image of the audience member is being processed in the augmented reality software and then broadcast to the televisions in real-time.
Luv Lite is an exploration of screens and an audience’s expectations of interaction with them in a playful way. Using CRT TVs I hope to evoke a sense of nostalgia for a technology that is familiar but no longer available to consumers. As well, the expectations for this style of screen is not to have interactive elements, so by layering in augmented reality interaction, I hope to surprise and delight the audience. The staging of Luv Lite is also designed to maximize selfie-taking from audience members. The proposed augmented reality mask is light beams emitting from the users eyes and hands – evoking a narrative that the light we need to see comes from within.
Resiliency in Joy
Tara David Studio
246 McDermot Ave
From September 24 to October 24, Tara Davis Studio hosts a garden of assemblage sculptures by artist Darci Madlung.
Resiliency in joy | the importance of happiness
Repurposed and found materials show potential and hope.
Layers of scale between inside, outside, glass, ceiling, floor.
Light projecting outward and inward, reflecting shadows and iridescent magic.
Bubbles floating in-between just for a moment before they pop.
Growing like resilient plants from the forest floor, into the clouds above, making magic out of the falling rain with rainbows growing from the fallout.
This installation will be a garden of assemblage sculptures extending between both shop windows. Iridescent rainbows grow from this base layers with paper sculpture clouds along the ceiling. Strings of color, texture and light fall from the clouds down to the rainbows below. Reflections and light will bounce onto the sidewalk and light up the inside of the shop. Iridescent bubbles will reflect the installation right to the viewer and bring them closer to see the tiny details inside to escape for a second into this tiny happy world. Pull up a little step stool outside and peek right into the magic, changing between the light of day and dark of night with new things to see and experience.
PanoptiBot: Defacement in the Surveillance Age
Little Brown Jug Brewing
336 William Ave
From September 24 to October 24, Little Brown Jug hosts an interactive sculptural installation which explores surveillance capitalism. Presented by Toxic.
Panopticon /pa’näpti’kän/ noun: a circular prison with cells arranged around a watchtower, from which prisoners could at all times be observed without knowing whether or not they are being watched.
The modern panopticon of surveillance capitalism is constantly watching us, drawing us in, and coercing us to make decisions we think are our own. By tempting people to interact with the installation, Toxic is trying to show how their everyday actions are recorded and used to deface the way they see themselves and the world.
PanoptiBot, will be a series of giant robotic faces on free standing walls made of lights, monitors, mirrors, wires, and tubes. Viewers will be able to engage with the CCTVs and monitors fixed to the faces touch-free and socially distanced. The sculptures will look like beasts that became self-aware and assembled themselves from a pile of electronic waste (and will actually be constructed of recycled materials). This is meant to represent how the trappings of surveillance capitalism serendipitously united into a monster capable of mass manipulation.
Scopophobia, Outdoor Film Screening
Parking lot behind Willis College
35 King St
This screening will take place Saturday Sept. 25 in the parking lot behind the Willis College Building which is located at 265 Notre Dame, between King and Arthur Street. Organized by Lasha Mowchun.
Two actresses become ensnared in a power struggle when they must compete for a single self image.
In film, the female body is often seen in small pieces. Close ups of full lips, sexy eyes, long legs, etc, are cut together to suggest a convincing whole. But what if we took the pieces apart and found they didn’t belong to the same person?
Runtime 10:34 Screenings every half hour: 7:30, 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30 PM
Other Events + Projects
Sept 24 – Oct 24: Textile Waste Reimagined at Lennard Taylor Design Studio
Sept 24 + Oct 22: Hybrid Human, Dance Projection on the second floor window at The Rachel Browne Theatre, facing Old Market Square
Sept 25 – Oct 3: See Hear Speak Inflatable by Paul Robles in Old Market Square
Sept 24: Spark Creativity with Tokyo Smoke, Urban Shaman and Tanea Brown at Tokyo Smoke
Sept 24 – 26: Native Prairie Mural at Wink Studio Ink.
Sept 24 – Oct 2 (daytime): Tailings Pool | A temporary public art project by Tsema Igharas at the Parking lot of 87 Higgins Ave
Oct 1 – 2: Project Jazz in and around Old Market Square
Oct 15: Bannock Babes x ArtsJunktion live performance at ArtsJunktion
Oct 2, 9, 13, 17 + 22: Nights of Intrigue: A Rope Performance by Knotyourpeach is a pre-registered event at Bevvy Teyems (224 Notre Dame Ave)
Sept 25: WSO Community Celebration concert at Centennial Concert Hall
Sept 24 – Oct 24: Braids & Brows at Aveda Institute Winnipeg