Originally launched in Paris with the goal of bringing contemporary art to the masses, Nuit Blanche has established itself as one of the highlights of Toronto鈥檚 annual cultural calendar. Each year, this free dusk-to-dawn event enlivens and transforms the city with original art projects ranging from intimate encounters to large-scale spectacles.

More than one million visitors are expected to turn out for this year's edition, which takes place from 6:51pm Saturday, Oct. 5 to sunrise on Sunday, Oct. 6. Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013 will feature more than 100 exhibitions, performances and experiential events in indoor and outdoor venues throughout downtown Toronto. 91亚色 artists are among those contributing one-of-a-kind works to this celebration of creativity and community engagement.

Visual Art & Art History Professor is part of the team behind , a "portrait petition" to bring attention to the continuing detention of Canadian humanitarians Dr. Tarek Loubani and 91亚色 film Professor John Greyson, who were arrested on the street in Cairo, Egypt, on August 16. Nuit Blanche will mark the 50th day of their imprisonment. The website gathers images of individuals from around the world holding written messages of support, calling for the release of Greyson and Loubani.

Images from the freetarekandjohn tumblr

Nuit Blanche visitors are invited to contribute to the portrait petition at photo booths located at Toronto City Hall, 401 Richmond Street West and the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. West). The booths will run a live feed of the growing petition and a video featuring the first 250 portraits uploaded to freetarekandjohn.tumblr.com. The tumbler site will continue after October 5 and includes directions on how to upload your photo from home or mobile.

91亚色 visual arts alumna (BFA 鈥�97) recruited 100 regional beekeepers for her installation , billed as a massive collective meditation. As the keepers meditate in their bee-suits, viewers are asked to consider the relationship of temper to weather. The beekeepers will silently meditate on notions of 鈥済ood weather鈥� for the bees and for all of us, attempting to transform environmental conditions with their minds. While exploring the tangible effect of collective meditation, the work creates a public platform upon which to reflect on the health and temper of bees and their keepers, and on the policies and environmental conditions that affect our shared future.

Your Temper, My Weather will be performed from 7pm to midnight in the Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas St. West), where Borsato is currently artist-in-residence.

Right: Night Shift, 2013

Sobey Art Award finalist (BFA 鈥�02) takes inspiration from Le Ballet de la Nuit, a 17th century 13-hour court ballet that was most notable for the involvement of the young Louis XIV of France, for his durational performance . Fernandes has re-contextualized the ballet into a contemporary dance performance in which dancers endure from dusk until dawn, dancing and making golden confetti in anticipation of the new tomorrow. Night Shift听questions notions of labour and time within the context of night changing into day as the dancer鈥檚 body endures and asserts itself in the process of performing.

Night Shift can be found both indoors and out around the Bay Adelaide Centre (333 Bay St., access from Temperance St). At dawn. in celebration of the new day, the accumulated piles of golden confetti will be thrown into the air to mark the conclusion of the work.

Right: Everyday Marvels, 2013

Dance artist and arts advocate (MA 鈥�05) conceived, created and directs at the Gardiner Museum (111 Queen's Park). The program features 16 miniature vignettes (or 鈥榤arvels鈥�) by eight local choreographers, based on The Book of Marvels 鈥� A Compendium of Everyday Things by Canadian poet Lorna Crozier. The objects interpreted in Crozier鈥檚 poems - such as 鈥榖owl鈥�, 鈥榲acuum鈥�, 鈥榝lashlight鈥� and 鈥榳heelbarrow鈥� - become the subjects of exploration through Litzenberger's cyclical, 12-hour performance piece. The cast features more than 50 professional and community-based artists. 91亚色 participants include dance MFA student Valerie Calam听 and alumni Julia Aplin (BEd 鈥�07) and Peter Chin (BFA 鈥�85).

Left: 12 hour dolly, 2013

On October 1, award-winning filmmaker and interactive artist (BFA 鈥�02) and his crew set up a circular dolly track in the middle of a busy Toronto street. At 7 pm, they began filming on the track and continued shooting non-stop until 7 am the next morning. Throughout this 12-hour cycle, spectators were invited to step in and interact with the space as they saw fit. The spontaneous performances of these impromptu participants was captured with beautiful cinematography and lighting, heightened by the cinematically epic movement of the dolly shot. Projected onto the atrium wall of TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King St. West) as an uninterrupted 12-hour film, invites visitors to spend time contemplating the participants in the film as well as the filmic apparatus itself.

Involved behind the scenes at Nuit Blanche is Kelsey Luxton, a masters candidate in Art History and Curatorial Studies, working as an events programming intern.

For comprehensive event info and a detailed schedule, visit the website.

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Stephen Gaetz (right), professor and associate dean in the Faculty of Education, has received more than $2.5 million in funding over seven years to lead 鈥淐anadian Observatory on Homelessness鈥�, with more than 27 researchers 鈥� including Professor Janet Mosher at Osgoode Hall Law School, Professor Valerie Preston in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) and Professor Stan Shapson in the Faculty of Education 鈭� and 29 partner organizations. The project, a non-partisan research and policy partnership, aims to evaluate current policy directions and programmatic approaches to preventing and reducing homelessness, address key policy questions, and support the development and implementation of effective and sustainable solutions to homelessness in communities across Canada. The goal is to mobilize research on homelessness so it has a greater impact on policy and practice, leading to more effective solutions to homelessness. The project, which will also receive more than $2.5 million in matching funding and contributions from partnering organizations, will leverage the collaborative, research and knowledge mobilization capacities of participating individuals and organizations.

Anna Hudson (left), professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts, has received more than $3.5 million over six years to lead a major project titled 鈥淢obilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage: a multi-media/multi-platform re-engagement of voice in visual art and performance鈥�, with 10 researchers 鈥� including Professor Susan Dion in the Faculty of Education and Professor Angela Norwood from the Faculty of Fine Arts 鈥� and nine partner organizations. The goal of the project is to conduct collaborative research on the contribution of Inuit visual culture, art and performance to Inuit language preservation, social well-being and cultural identity. The project will address the current disconnect for Inuit today between orality 鈥� being the voice that defines the self in relation to others 鈥� and materiality 鈥� being the environment in which one lives well together through three primary objectives: access to advanced information and communication technologies, connection of Inuit voice to objects of Inuit cultural heritage and expanded creation of Inuit cultural capacity. It will receive an additional $1.9 million in matching funding and contributions from partnering organizations.

Leah Vosko (right), Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender and Work and political science professor, LA&PS, has received more than $2 million in funding over five years to lead a major national project with 33 researchers 鈥� including Professor Mark Thomas in the Department of Sociology and Professor Eric Tucker at Osgoode Hall Law School 鈭� and 16 partner organizations. The project, titled 鈥淐losing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protection for People in Precarious Jobs鈥�, will examine the role of employment standards enforcement in ensuring minimum conditions in areas such as wages, working time, vacations and leaves for workers in precarious jobs in Ontario, characterized by job insecurity, low income and limited access to regulatory protection. The objectives of the project, which will receive more than an additional $1.3 million in matching funding and contributions from partnering organizations, are to map the nature and scope of employment standards violations and document enforcement practices to identify regulatory challenges and develop alternative models of enforcement that may be applied in Ontario and other jurisdictions within Canada and internationally.

鈥淲e are delighted by the results of these recent SSHRC competitions, enabling 91亚色 to maintain our track record in leading the country in the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada鈥檚 large-scale awards competitions valued at $1 million or more,鈥� said Robert Hach茅, 91亚色鈥檚 vice-president research and innovation. 鈥淭he projects led by 91亚色 Professors Stephen Gaetz, Anna Hudson and Leah Vosko enable our researchers to work together with research partners to address persistent, social and economic challenges facing our society today. It will also enable our researchers and graduate students to make important contributions to our country鈥檚 knowledge base.鈥�

Two 91亚色 researchers were also awarded more than $397,000 in SSHRC funding through the Partnership Development Grants program.听The program encourages applicants to work collaboratively with partners to develop research in the social sciences and humanities.听This funding will support partnerships between 91亚色 researchers and Canadian and international universities, a charitable organization and an international association.

Gary Goodyear, federal minister of state for science and technology, announced the funding on Friday, May 31, at the launch of the annual Congress of the Humanities & Social Sciences.听 In total, more than $63 million is being awarded over a period of seven years to support 78 research teams across the country through SSHRC鈥檚 Partnership Grants and Partnership Development Grants. An additional $104 million from SSHRC鈥檚 Talent Program will support more than 3,700 master鈥檚, doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships and fellowships.

An analysis conducted by the Strategic & Institutional Research Initiatives Unit, in the Office of Research Services at 91亚色, revealed that between 2006 and 2013, 91亚色 researchers received more SSHRC awards valued at $1 million or more than any other institution in Canada. SSHRC鈥檚 large-scale awards offered between 2001 and 2013 have included the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA), Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI), the Strategic Knowledge Clusters and the SSHRC Partnership Grants.

For a complete list of Partnership Grant and Partnership Development Grant awards, visit the website.

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Dynamic and contemporary, the works were given by 37 of the society's members. They include watercolours, oil and acrylic paintings, photographs and drawings representing a wide variety of subject matter and styles.

Above: A Harmony in Grey and Yellow, 1897 by Mary Augusta Hiester Reid, OSA. Oil on canvas, 34.3 x 90.2 centimetres. Government of Ontario Art Collection, Archives of Ontario 619739.

The OSA has a long and impressive history of encouraging, supporting and promoting the province鈥檚 visual arts community. Founded in Toronto in 1872 by seven artists, the society鈥檚 goal was to provide better public access to art and art education. Its first exhibition was held in 1873 and featured 252 works by 22 artists. More than 5,000 people attended the inaugural exhibition.

A strong link between the society and the provincial government was formed at the 1873 exhibition when the government made some of its first art purchases there. Well over 200 years later, works from the OSA are finding homes in the Government of Ontario Art Collection.

Gifted is curated by the Archives of Ontario鈥檚 Outreach Officer Stewart Boden, and runs until Oct. 12 in the Helen McClung Exhibit Area at the Archives of Ontario building on 91亚色's Keele campus.

Members of the 91亚色 community are invited to view the exhibit. The Archives is open Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5pm, Tuesday and Thursday to 8pm, and Saturday, from 10am to 4pm.

For more information, visit the website.

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Hosted by the 91亚色 Libraries, interPLAY will take place Monday, March 26, from 9am to 7pm, in听the Senate Chamber, 940 South Ross Building, and the Scott Library on the Keele campus.听

The symposium is informed by the ongoing publication of the , an experimental online catalogue raisonn茅 (or complete list) currently being developed at the 91亚色 Libraries by Adam Lauder听(left), the University's inaugural听W.P. Scott Chair for Research in e-Librarianship.

Lauder is working to develop the catalogue raisonn茅 with听Canadian Conceptual artist (the artist recently added the ampersand to his name),听and an international team of collaborators.听The development of the catalogue offers an ideal听opportunity to respond to the visionary information art of IAIN BAXTER& with fresh approaches to information, information technology, and library and information science from across the disciplinary spectrum.

Inspired by Canadian scholar and philosopher Marshall McLuhan鈥檚 transformation of information theory, from a 鈥渕atching鈥� model of communication to one of active 鈥渕aking鈥�, IAIN BAXTER& began in 1966 to explore the creative possibilities of 鈥渋nformation鈥� as a medium.听The 45-year process of exploration that followed has led听the听conceptual artist听to engage with, and creatively reinterpret, information concepts across a range of disciplines, including business, computing, and linguistics.

Marshall McLuhan

University听of British Columbia English Professor听Richard Cavell, author of McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography (University of Toronto Press, 2003) will present the symposium's keynote address. Cavell's book was the first to听propose that Marshall McLuhan be read as a spatial theorist.

To learn more about other presenters and symposium proceedings and to register, visit the website.听听

More about Adam Lauder

Lauder has joined the Libraries for a two-year term as the first W.P. Scott Chair for Research in e-Librarianship. He holds a master in information studies听from the University of Toronto and a masters in听art history听from Concordia University.

His research project encompasses many areas of e-librarianship including critical information studies, digital archives, scholarly communication and metadata standards. Lauder is applying听the catalogue raisonn茅 publication model in an online environment, with a focus听on IAIN BAXTER&.

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The history of Vietnam lies in this bowl, for it is in Hanoi, the Vietnamese heart, that pho was born, a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French, who turned their cows away from ploughs and into bifteck and pot-au-feu.听The name of their national soup is pronounced like this French word for fire, as Hung鈥檚 Uncle Chien explained to him long ago鈥�听

from The Beauty of Humanity Movement
by Camilla Gibb

While most people come home from vacations with inspiring photographs, writers often return with the inspiration for their next novel.听This is what happened to Camilla Gibb (right)听when she traveled to North Vietnam for a much-needed holiday. The result was The Beauty of Humanity Movement, a novel that was on the short list for the Giller Award.听Gibb recently shared her thoughts on this book and the writing experience at the Canadian Writers in Person series.

Gibb听said she听was initially "blown away" by the youth culture of Vietnam.听Her first point of contact was a young man named Phuong who became her tour guide and friend.听In some ways, she said,听he was not much different than a North American person in his mid-20s: he wore Nikes, watched MTV, and was up to date on Western pop culture.听Unlike those of previous generations, he had grown up with a different frame of reference, one based not on war but on consumer desire and entrepreneurial spirit.听As one of her characters states, "we鈥檙e not looking for forgiveness, we鈥檙e looking for a way forward."

Gibb said that Phuong was nonetheless aware that many Western visitors come with expectations based on the war of听40 years ago.听As a tour guide, he had to take the resulting feelings of guilt and discomfort and make his guests feel at ease.听In fact, Vietnam has a thriving war tour industry, where one can visit old battlegrounds, fire an old Kalashnikov rifle, or even crawl through the same tunnels the Vietnamese soldiers had used.听Gibb recounted to students with some amusement that the tunnels are not exactly the same because they have since been widened to accommodate the North American posterior.

When Gibb began to write her novel, she deliberately didn鈥檛 make it about the war: "When you set aside the war, you realize you know nothing. I wanted to start from nothing because then opportunities for other stories open up,"听she said. One of these stories is about Hung, an elderly pho-maker who bridges the gap between the present and the past.听Through his eyes, the reader experiences the vibrant cafe culture of 1950's Hanoi where artists and intellectuals discussed art and politics.听Because of the lack of resource material, Gibb found herself liberated to explore and imagine how this world was rendered.听听

Gibb nonetheless had to do some research on the traumatizing land reforms that affected village life in North Vietnam.听She did this because she said that she听"needed Hung to go back, to witness the aftermath.听Otherwise, it would read like a news story and I needed to personalize the history and politics by putting him there."听By doing this, the reader also feels the impact and the story is not felt from the "top down but from character out."

The story has a reasonably happy ending as does the real-life friendship between Gibb and her tour guide Phuong who became the template for a similar character in her book.听As he consulted on the details of her novel, she helped him fulfill his dream of opening his own family pho restaurant.听When he had his first child, he asked Gibb for an English name and he likewise offered a Gibb a Vietnamese name when her child was born, cementing the link between their two cultures.

Through this friendship and the process of writing her novel, Viet Nam became for Gibb听鈥渁 country I love.听I can鈥檛 claim to know it or its history but I know the characters very well, my ultimate defense as a novelist.听They feel very, very real to me.听Hung in particular is a man I love.听I hope he鈥檚 still there, doing what he does, and serving pho.听He feels like everyman to me, every man who has a right to have a story.鈥�

The Canadian Writers in Person series of public readings at 91亚色, which are free and open to the public, is also part of an introductory course on Canadian literature. It is sponsored in part by the Canada Council for the Arts.听Readings take place on Tuesdays at 7pm in Room 206 of the Accolade West Building.听On Feb. 7, poet and author Sheniz Janmohamed will read from her first book Bleeding Light (TSAR Publications, 2010).

For more information and a detailed schedule, visit the Canadian Writers in Person website.

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[1.] 91亚色, Canada

91亚色鈥檚 Department of Film [Faculty of Fine Arts] is Canada鈥檚 first, largest and most comprehensive university-based film school. Film programs are taught by 40 award-winning filmmakers and prominent scholars, all active in their field. Students benefit from comprehensive, professional training that blends theory and practice in a free-thinking and creative environment. Five hundred-plus students work in modern learning, production and screening facilities in Toronto, one of the world鈥檚 leading film capitals. 91亚色 offers a mix of graduate and undergraduate programs covering a range of topics. Students explore everything from the role that film and television play in society to genre-specific topics such as the vampire in cinema or crime film.

Asian students with international filmmaking aspirations have a couple of major avenues to choose from. They can give into the Hollywood paradigm and study in LA, where they will be encouraged to conform to the system and join the filmmaking masses. Opposite this, they can seek out smaller, counter-cultural schools that put a priority on the modern film as work of art.

For those intent on pursuing the latter, a school like 91亚色 is an excellent option. Based in Toronto in Canada, it offers all of the advantages of a North American education without cornering aspiring filmmakers in the Hollywood mindset.

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The AGYU invites you to "surge out there" as it joins with Raqs Media Collective: technological poets for an India in transition, to present their newest exhibit 听Surjection.

Of the current generation of Indian artists, the from New Delhi (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta) are among the best known and most widely exposed in the west 鈥� and certainly the most media conscious. Having started as documentary filmmakers, over the past听20 years they have evolved a sophisticated, and sometimes performative, practice that combines film, media, audio and text, all of which draw upon philosophy and political theory, in installations of an unresolved poetics.

Right: Members of the Raqs Media Collective, from left, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi and Monica Narula

The Raqs Media Collective exhibition, Surjection, opens with a free public reception tonight, from 6 to 9pm at the Art Gallery of 91亚色. The听artists will be at the reception.

The collective describes their听AGYU exhibition this way:听鈥淩aqs Media Collective delights in transposing the plenitude of the incalculable onto the fabric of the ordinary. By counting to infinity, sensing animation in stillness and speaking in the language of silence, Raqs will breathe numbers, figures, proverbs and stories into the galleries of the Art Gallery of 91亚色.鈥�

In this exhibition of entirely new work, the artists start with traces that are minimal but that contain great amplitude within them, such as the palm print of Raj Konai 鈥� the ancestral trace (from 1859) of the entire history of forensic identification 鈥� that hovers over the exhibition. Now animated, this image of a counting hand initiates a series of moves that the viewer animates through the exhibition. At the same time, the viewer witnesses other evolutions in video projection where stillness itself slowly is animated. Surjection begins outside, in AGYU Vitrines and occupies both galleries.

The elements of the exhibition are in a surjective relationship to each other. 鈥淪urjection鈥� is a mathematical concept devised by the Bourbaki Group, whereby the elements of one set are applied, transposed, or mapped onto those of another set. Surjection continues until Sunday, Dec. 4.听听

Surject yourself onto the Performance Bus

It鈥檚 an entirely different experience of numbers and letters on the Bingo Dilemma Bus. The game starts tonight at 6pm sharp when听the Performance Bus departs the Ontario College of Art & Design University campus at听100 McCaul St.. Riders听gather the clues to the game on the way to the Raqs Media Collective exhibition opening at the听AGYU. Artist and game host听Oliver Husain will be on the bus calling out the game clues. Performance Bus returns downtown at 9pm.

Math too tough for you? Go back to school with听AGYU @ Art Toronto

The AGYU tricks or treats fair patrons with one of its specially commissioned installations featuring Toronto novelist Derek McCormack and Toronto artist Ian Phillips. The haunted schoolhouse is the outcome of an听 four-year project supported by the AGYU of H.A.M.S. (Holiday Arts Mail-Order School), which is a correspondence course (for the 1936-1937 school year) devoted to the holiday arts. Hallowe鈥檈nologists will be on hand to take your questions and offer demonstrations. Alumni are welcome.听听

Virtually AGYU

The surjective relations continue online with the听 as independent Toronto curator Su-Ying Lee visits the studio of New 91亚色-based artist Alexandre Singh, whom she met in Paris this past summer while travelling in Europe. on her travels through Europe.听听

Writing from the ash-filled Grimsv枚tn sky, Toronto artist counts down the rest of her days in Iceland as she听writes about听contemporary art and generous helpings of never-ending splendour, mind-blowing sunsets, migratory birds, half-shorn sheep, geothermal pools and more.听

For more information, visit the AGYU website.

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But it wasn鈥檛 until 2006, a year after he was appointed director of the Dulwich Gallery, that Dejardin had a chance to visit Canada and view first-hand the works of Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston, Franklin Carmichael, A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. (Thomson is associated with the group but was never an official member.)

Then two years later, the doors began to open, thanks to Canadian art patron David Thomson, who introduced Dejardin to the two Canadians who would become his co-curators for the European tour: Katerina Atanassova, chief curator of the McMichael Collection, and Anna Hudson, professor of Canadian art & curatorial studies at 91亚色 [Faculty of Fine Arts].

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