Nuit Blanche makes long-awaited return

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This article was published 09/01/2024 (722 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon art and music lovers are in for a treat this weekend when the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba and Brandon University bring back Wheat City Nuit Blanche.

Lucie Lederhendler, curator at the AGSM, said the popular art festival will return on Saturday starting at sunset (5:04 to 10 p.m.) at the gallery in The Town Centre. Nuit Blanche, which translates to “White Night,” began as an evening or all-night arts festival in 1989 in Europe and now runs all over the world, including 120 cities in Canada.

Local musician Leanne Zacharias started the Wheat City Nuit Blanche in 2015. The last time the Wheat City Nuit Blanche was held was in 2019, and it ran 12 hours, filling the AGSM and downtown Brandon with art and music. Lederhendler said the AGSM decided to bring it back after many requests for its return, but a little smaller this time.

“I think everybody really missed it,” Lederhendler said.

This year’s Wheat City Nuit Blanche — the Sunset Edition is not a display of art. It’s an out-of-the-box creative opportunity for artists of all kinds, including painters, beaders and musicians to really flex their creative muscles and reveal their wild sides. Local artists and more than 15 groups of Brandon University students, faculty and staff — including music students and art students from the Ishkaabatens Waasa Gaa Inaabateg department of art at BU — will participate.

“What it is, is a chance for all of them to manifest the little weird ideas they’ve had. This is outside of school assignments. This is outside of formal stuff. It’s ‘wouldn’t it be neat?’” Lederhendler explained. “For example, there’s a jazz quartet who’s improvising along to the film, ‘Molly.’ And this isn’t something that’s necessarily in line with their academics, something that they’ve been thinking about. And that’s really what it’s about.”

While this event might be smaller than previous inceptions, Lederhendler said the whole AGSM will be accessible for the full expression of creative brains.

“Even professional artists are using this as a venue for experimentation. Yeah, and the quirkiness, right? The idea is just activating the entire space. Sometimes using a formal gallery to confine those activities and sometimes going out into the stairwell, sometimes going out into the hallways and classrooms,” Lederhendler said.

The professional artists include Chris Reid and Erica Lowe, who will be staging a durational performance in the AGSM staff kitchen titled “Their Way of Saying Bad Things Can Happen to Good People,” featuring impish characters from Ukrainian mythology called “zlydni.” Kevin McKenzie will facilitate a beading circle.

Visitors of all ages are invited to add to Jimmie Kilpatrick’s display in the public Main Gallery window, a vestige of the old Eaton’s department store, over the course of the evening. A cello quartet made up of Laura Jones, Leanne Zacharias, Ariadna Ortega and Carlos Castro, will perform “The Violet Hour,” a composition by the late Jocelyn Morlock, a graduate of Brandon University, at 6:15 p.m.

Wire + Bone, the music duo of Brendon Ehinger and Nora Wilson, will co-perform with a collection of living plants, beginning with an ambient sound installation from 5 to 6 p.m. and continuing with micro-performances from 6 to 7 p.m. and 8 to 10 p.m.

Ben Davis is contributing an immersive video installation titled “rupture,” which will run continuously through the evening.

The event is family-friendly and free to attend. Lederhendler said there will be multiple opportunities for guests to participate and enjoy the evening.

“We have a collective mural that is going to be built over the course of the whole evening and we have two violinists who are going to play for people who will be drawing them live,” Lederhendler said. “It’s called retro reverie. There’s a chance to just zoom around to this 1920s jazz soundtrack that will be played live with kind of an atmosphere.

“And then environmental music, which is great, where they’re going to be playing with plants,” Lederhendler said, adding another group will be replicating the sunset for the entire evening so people can “go have their kind of calming meditative break at that moment.”

» khenderson@brandonsun.com