You had to go looking for it

Provocatively titled You had to go looking for it, curator Nicholas Brown’s exhibition for this year’s Nuit Blanche transformed the spectacle and crowds that are symptomatic of the festival into a commentary on the physical and psychic effects of corporate capitalism. Located in the city’s downtown financial district, the exhibition manipulated imagery from the 2010 G20 protests that took place in that neighbourhood into new scenarios where the implications of public space, political demonstration, and surveillance could be examined. 

Several of the works took a playful approach to manipulating the pub-lic space around the financial centre, such as Curtis Grahauer’s I just know that something good is going to happen (all works 2011), which transformed an alleyway into a corridor of simulated rain, lights, and fog. Not only did the work replicate a Hollywood film shoot that offered passersby the prom-ise of glimpsing an exciting scene, but, as viewers gleefully sped through it under the protection of umbrellas, it also worked as a meteorological taunt, daring the weather not to cooperate with the outdoor event. Nearby, Jeremy Jansen and Niall McLelland’s installation Barricades reconfigured the materials typically used to block off streets, such as caution tape, road barriers, and large sheets of plywood hoarding, into captivating minimalist sculptures. Much like Grahauer’s piece, Barricades suggested preparations for the “real event” that was yet to come and questioned the threshold at which peaceful public assembly becomes civil unrest.