Creation : Destruction
Curated by Layne Hinton and Rui Pimenta
Fort York Neighbourhood

The Bentway will be a location hub for Nuit Blanche Toronto this year, as part of the exhibition Creation : Destruction, curated by Layne Hinton and Rui Pimenta (Toronto), the curatorial duo behind Art Spin. The projects use the geography of the site as a way to explore the cycles of creation and destruction in nature and beyond.

All things reside on the borders of creation and destruction.

Inspired by its geographical area, this exhibition will challenge our understanding of these seemingly contradictory concepts. They are extensions of each other, forces that both deplete and feed one another. There is nothing more primal, more essentially human, than the paradoxical relationship between creation and destruction, it is the essence of the natural world and our place in it.

Halcyon

Artist: Francesca Chudnoff
Medium: Performance
Location: Strachan Gate
Drenched in blue light, dancers will interact with a sound and video installation to explore the relationship between desire and distance.

“Halcyon” is a video and dance performance designed to question the range of ways in which we constantly tune and adjust our self-presentation, both onscreen and in real life. How do we translate what we feel in our bodies into something material? Can we turn it into a colour, a pattern, a sound? Immersed in a deep blue field of colour, live dancers will trigger a cascade of melodic sounds with the movement of their bodies. Nearby, a backdrop of glitching, looping video will evoke an unending process of creation, mutation and disintegration. The result will be an intimate, embodied performance set against a fragmented data-moshing screen. A 12-hour performance that evokes questions of labour, fatigue and the limitations of the body, “Halcyon” promises to be a meditation on the accumulation of memory, the disintegration of movement, and the relationship between desire and distance.

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About the Curators
Layne Hinton and Rui Pimenta are the curators behind Art Spin. Since 2009 they’ve been activating decommissioned venues and unique public spaces with large-scale group exhibitions. Their curated bicycle-led art tours also showcase a range of new art in alternative sites. Notably, they reanimated Ontario Place’s West Island for “in/future” in 2016. At the heart of their curatorial practice is a passion for pushing the possibilities of what constitutes public art, and doing this through site-specific/site-responsive practices and ephemeral approaches.

About Francesca Chudnoff, Toronto, Canada
Francesca Chudnoff is a Toronto-based millennial with a BFA in performance. She is a dance artist, filmmaker, photographer, shrine maker and collector of all things shiny. She is currently an Emerging Artist in Residence at Dancemakers Centre for Creation (2018–2020), and a member of the multidisciplinary art collective Lost is Found.

About Nuit Blanche
Toronto is transformed by artists on Saturday, October 5, 2019. Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s free all-night contemporary art event invites adventurous residents and visitors to take to the streets from sunset to sunrise. Experience Toronto transformed by hundreds of Canadian and international artists. One night only, all night long.

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