This year, we are partnering with the Gardiner Museum
and the Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts to present a joint project called
Future City – an imaginary public square of a future Toronto, if it were run by artists. In this future city, your civic responsibility is to give a little art in order to get a little art.
In DD’s corner of the City is “Nice Bumping Into You,” co-created by spoken word artists Heather Hermant and glass artist Melina Young, and we asked them explain the installation in their own words. Here is part three of a three-part interview.
DD: How are the preparations going?
Heather: Production designer Heather Kent and her students at Humber have been incredible. Under Heather's guidance, the students have built us the light table, and they are also building what we hope will work out as the projection surface. (I don't want to give away that part!) We'll be running some tests in the lead-up out at Humber, and sorting out the logistics of sound, video and light with the essential help of our tech guru David Findlay, as well as the great folks at Gardiner. But really, you just can't prepare for what will happen when you don't know what will happen till it's up and running!
DD: What can people expect to experience that night?
Heather: Funny that that's the next question! Well, the thing about Nuit Blanche is that everything depends on what the people do who come into contact with the work throughout the city. In the least, people who visit Nice Bumping Into You will experience the sight of moving colour and hands as the activity of the table is projected. They'll experience this against the backdrop of the city at night as seen from the wide open window space of the Gardiner restaurant. Those who are drawn in to the table itself--and I hope many will be--will at first witness others engaging, like they're watching a kind of chess game or something.
They can then step in to experience the tactility of the glass themselves, and the moment of the glass and the words and doodles of others inspiring their own impromptu response(s) on the glass. Like a chat, with the time available to just stay, find the words, compose. Those who are drawn into the exchange might also experience moments of collaboration with others. And maybe some of those collaborations will involve spoken word performance.
DD: What do you hope will happen?
Heather: I hope people will be engaged by the installation and want to contribute to it -- by writing or drawing on the tiles, by moving the tiles around, by collaborating with other people around the table, and/or by collaborating on the mic in performance, with each other, or with me. Or all the above. I hope the gorgeousness of the tiles will do something to highlight words in a new way, their meaning, their weight, their worth, potential and power. I hope the table of tiles will be like a collective journal, as intimate, lighthearted, serious or profound, as critical, moved or silly as people may feel in the moment.
Melina: My work is done but Heather's going to be performing live throughout the night with spoken word. I hope people will play with the tiles and text and also feed from the performance. It'll be a loop, a creative play between performer, glass tiles and participants. It's a beautiful space at night with a gorgeous view of Toronto. When we created this piece we were mindful of the way the projection,performance, glass and light table could create an ethereal sense of being part of the city just by being in the space.
DD: Tell us a bit about your other creative work.
Melina: I love working with glass and I'm going to continue creating glass work using especially warm glass techniques. I'm also a video maker and have a video to finish about Lesbos, the actual Greek island from where we get the word "lesbian". Heather and I have invitations to do video production workshops from Athens Pride in Greece and from a lesbian group in China.
Heather: I'm just about to head to Montreal for a run of a stage adaptation of my multidisciplinary performance installation, ribcage: this wide passage, at Le Mai (Montreal Arts Interculturels) at the end of October. This piece incorporates spoken word, physical theatre, live fiddle music by Toronto composer/player Jaron Freeman-Fox, and live videomixing by Kaija Siirala, another Toronto artist. Melina did much of the videography for the live videomixing. ribcage is based on an historical tale of a Jewish woman who came to Canada in the 1730s passing as a Christian boy and was then deported. I also do community-based work, largely through Toronto's backforward collective, and as a Resident Artist of Vancouver's urban ink productions. I dabble in curation, sound work, video and writing of many forms, and have been teaching at York University for the Community Arts Practice certificate since 2006, taking a teaching hiatus this year though to start a PhD.
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