Zone 1
6 PM
Sovereignty, Becka Viau, Aaron Weldon, Bonita Hatcher, Scott Saunders, Kat Frick Miller
Anna Leonowens Gallery
1891 Granville Street
Five emerging fine artists explore the idea of sovereignty in the Canadian context in this exhibition and conceptual installation. An investigation of Canada's colonial past and the history of our nation's development led Weldon, Hatcher, Saunders, Frick Miller and Viau to examine current and historical notions of sovereignty and identity, offering interpretations of a nation both young and complex.
--Kathleen M. Higgins
7 PM
Chaos & Co, Peter and Jesse Walker
Granville plaza stage, 1858 Granville Street
Veteran visual artist Peter Walker brings a number of his recent sculptural works to life in collaboration with his son Jesse in this dynamic project. Father and son have been playing music together for 15 years, and Jesse saw Nocturne as an opportunity to develop their "first formal collaborations, to bring together our visual and musical art practices." The centerpiece of this project is the enormous Chaos Boat, a chained, rusted 30-foot hull that will serve as home and inspiration for a musical collaboration between both artists, and a number of other musicians. The musical performance will engage its audience as participants, inviting them to play along with the scored and improvised soundscapes using percussive tools. These sound pieces will use a number of different instruments and tools, including body and voice, to engage the metal and concrete sculptures themselves. Percussive tools will be provided to audience members interested in joining in. --KMH
9 PM
L'Nuk (The People), Ursula
Johnson and Jordan Bennett
Anna Leonowens Gallery
1891 Granville Street
L'Nuk, which translates as "The People" in Mi'kmaq, is a collaborative performance piece developed between First Nations artists Ursula A. Johnson and Jordan Bennett. Originally part of the Anna Leonowens Art Gallery's regular programming, Johnson and Bennett have modified their project's finale in order to perform it non-stop through Nocturne. L'Nuk explores "spectacle" in terms of public versus private spaces, connecting traditional and contemporary practices. --KMH
10 PM
Club 1869, Jonathan Legate
Gallery Page and Strange
1869 Granville Street
Jonathan Legate's interactive piece developed from his desire to create a "conceptual installation that would cause observer participants to react and to question." Viewers will be segregated by gender and ushered into one of two highly stylized rooms, each inspired by traditional gender roles. Video feeds in each room will allow for a very limited observation of the "other" space. These rooms, along with a third, non-gendered space, will challenge audiences to examine their notions of gender and self-segregation. --KMH
11 PM
Landscape at Night,
various artists
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
1723 Hollis Street
The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia invites Nocturne-goers to get inspired by Canadian Pioneers: Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, J.W. Morrice and the Group of Seven--- Masterworks from the Sobey Collections, 60 pieces featuring some of Canada's most iconic artists. Visitors can put their own creative spirit to use in a number of hands-on studio workshops and activities throughout the evening, and can peruse the gallery's Nocturne-only projects, as well as their other collections. --KMH
Zone 2
7 PM
Neighbourhood Watch,
Andrea Puszkar
1475 Lower Water Street, green space next to Bishop's Landing
Lawn ornaments have a two-fold effect. First, caught out of the corner of your eye, you may feel the brief excitement of having seen a real animal, only to smirk at the trompe d'oeil. These accessories also serve to take the wildness out of the outdoors, turning a front lawn into a tame collection of tchotchkes. Ceramics instructor Andrea Puszkar's collection of clay rabbits dot the space by Bishop's Landing, highlighting our relation to nature in a playful way. --Stephanie Johns
8 PM
Ships in the Night, Zoe Nudell, Ben Gallagher, Francis Mullins
parking lot across from
Brewery Market
Ships in the Night brings the harbour ever closer, with three tantalizingly interactive simulations of ships, complete with portholes, cabins and nautical instruments. Glowing bows and sterns beckon from the "concrete ocean," allowing you to play sailor for a minute on your travels. Themes of communication and connection, and their elusiveness, really keep this installation afloat. --SJ
9 PM
Inside Poems, Tanya Davis
collaboration with Ships in the Night
It's two-for-one art fun! Ships in the Night contains poems of interest lovingly gathered our poet laureate Tanya Davis, let the words send your mind on an all expense paid cruise, but, like, a cool one with hot tourists. There may be dancing, and the intense sensation of being "inside a poem, its living, breathing guts." Don the scrubs and squish around. --SJ
10 PM
Walls,
Dudes and Ladies Arts Society
Halifax Seaport, 1209 Marginal Road
So everyone went to the haunted corn maze last weekend and you couldn't go. Whatever, right? You had fun hiding around the corner and scaring your cat when she came around. The irrepressible Dudes and Ladies Arts Society make up for a lifetime of missed mazes with Walls, a maze by the Seaport corridor with a real trippy vibe of "a small, constantly shifting and mesmerizing world within its walls." Distorted cameras capture everyday sights in a fresh way. --SJ
11 PM
Shaping Canada: Exploring our Cultural Landscapes, Naomi Harris
The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, 1055 Marginal Road
Harris has the enviable accolade of having taken my favourite photograph of 2012, Sikh Motorcycle Club. Pier 21 features her portrait photography until November 18, as well as archival images and oral histories. Harris explores how groups and individuals carve out identities, showing the shifting landscape of cultural identity in a new country, and how it can morph into something complex, shared and beautiful. --SJ
Zone 3
6 PM
Tweetris: Play with me,
Derek Reilly, Dustin Freeman, Fanny Chevalier, Emma
Westecott, Kate Hartman
Goldberg Computer Science
Building, 6050 University Avenue
Tweetris is exactly as it sounds---a game of Tetris played with human bodies and transmitted via Twitter (@TweetrisHal). Audience members compete to make Tetris shapes with their bodies, organizer Derek Reilly explains. When a shape is made, he and his fellow artists tweet a snapshot. Then audience members play Tetris using the photos projected onto a wall. --Hilary Beaumont
7 PM
FIELD, Michael McCormack
Garrison Grounds, Sackville Street and Bell Road
FIELD creator Michael McCormack's grandfather, Berton Cosman, discovered shortwave radio as a young boy in the late 1930s. He became a lifelong enthusiast, first as a hobbyist and later as a telecommunications engineer. Today, McCormack says, shortwave radio is an endangered form of communication. It helped Canada through the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Cold War, and is still used in search-and-rescue and military operations around the world---but new forms of social media have largely replaced it as a mainstream communication tool. The night of Nocturne, McCormack's live shortwave broadcast and interactive light show in the historical military setting of the Garrison Grounds will bring viewers back to the medium's glory days. "My hopes from this piece is that people will experience the medium of shortwave within a similar environment that many shortwave enthusiasts have experienced it, in shed like-structures with technological bling," McCormack says. --HB
9 PM
Capture, Gerald Beaulieu
Victoria Park
In Victoria Park this Nocturne, Gerald Beaulieu really wants to capture his audience. He'll do this with a 150 square-foot spider web coated in a sticky, gelatinous wax. "It will be both visually stunning and tactile to the touch," he says. "People look then touch and to their surprise find that they stick to it." Beaulieu's web was a hit at Charlottetown's Art in the Open Festival, where people took photos of themselves and friends caught in the web. --HB
10 PM
Les Verger des Oiseaux,
Francois Gaudet and
Robert Finley
Public Gardens, Spring Garden Road and South Park main gates
If you ask Robert Finley, one of the artists behind Les Verger des Oiseaux, the Public Gardens are "one of the city's oldest and loveliest art installations." Its front gates are the perfect setting for the pair's video project, which roughly translates to "orchards of the birds." His partner, Francois Gaudet, has created a film about the gardens, with spoken text about memory and place. Pieces of this film have been featured at previous Nocturnes. --HB
11 PM
Arrhythmia, Phantom Limb, Kirsten Taylor, Sarah Douglas
DANSpace, 1531 Grafton Street
Conceived and rehearsed in the Public Gardens and filmed in various locations in Nova Scotia, Sarah Douglas and Kirsten Taylor hope the imagery in their dance film will connect with a Halifax audience. "Concepts of love, wind and the human heart inspired much of the movement vocabulary and the subtle narrative of the film," Douglas says. Interested? Enter
the exhibit through the elevator at 1531 Grafton Street and watch the film against a black backdrop in the DANSpace. --HB
Zone 4
6 PM
Paperbox of the People
The Coast, 5567 Cunard Street
Start your north-end Nocturne adventure off with a stop by The Coast to do a little doodling. Three blank newspaper boxes will sit patiently alongside some art supplies, just waiting to be elevated into stellar street art. Keep it clean, people. Conveniently located across the street from Charlies, should you need a little help to get the creative juices flowing.
--SJ
7 PM
It's My Dream, Qahtan Ibrahim
Mid-East Food Centre
1595 Agricola Street
At the corner of Agricola and North, the Mid-East Food Centre plays host to Baghdad-born artist Qahtan Ibrahim's exhibition It's My Dream, which aims to capture the Iraqi experience from Ibrahim's uniquely cross-cultural perspective. Since 1988, Ibrahim has been showing his landscapes, still lifes and colourful abstracts overseas with shows in Iraq, Jordan, Tunisia and Indonesia, as well as local exhibitions in Halifax and Mahone Bay. --Kevin Hartford
8 PM
FRED. Ted Higney, Magnus von Tiesenhausen, Jesse Mitchell
FRED. beauty food art
2606 Agricola Street
Kitty corner from Mid East Food Centre is FRED, which, when not busy launching the careers of potential mayors, does triple duty as a hair salon, cafe and gallery. Unwilling to do anything the conventional way, FRED will be showcasing works by emerging Nova Scotian artists both indoors and on the sidewalk outside the building, so take your coat off and then put it back on as you check out the work of up-and-coming local talent. --KH
9 PM
Let Art Elevate You..., William Robinson and various artists Blackwood Gallery
1575 Brunswick Street
You might remember NSCAD graduate William Robinson's striking installation Young Prayer from last year's Nocturne: a guitar rising and falling in a dimly lit, feedback-filled church on Barrington. This year he's working with students of Spryfield's J.L. Ilsley High School to create a new installation combining physics and woodworking at the Blackwood Gallery. If that's not your thing, you can check out the diverse performance art happening at the fallery's service elevator. --KH
10 PM
Travellings/Geolocations, Bertrand R. Pitt, Larson Shindelman
Eyelevel Gallery, 2159 Gottingen Street
The opening reception for artist Bertrand R. Pitt's installation Travellings and artists Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman's exhibit Geolocations will take place at the Eyelevel Gallery. Travellings is an interactive experience crafted by Pitt, a video artist based out of Montreal. Bright, blurry, moving colours transform into footage of city streets, stretches of highway and railroad vistas depending on where the viewer sits or stands while watching. At Le Bande Video in Quebec, Travellings consisted of 10 videos. At SESC Pinheiros in Brazil, there were 13. Who knows how many will be there this time? Larson and Shindelman's Geolocations explores cities through Twitter. Using GPS information to cull tweets from a specific geographic region, the duo combines select tweets with site-specific imagery to create an entirely new message, sometimes fitting, occasionally perplexing. Travellings/Geolocations will run from October 13 through November 17. --KH
Zone 5
6 PM
Laughter Project, Jasmine Oore
Undetermined location
Jasmine Oore's charming one-minute bowel disease comedy Glamour Guts won CBC's Short Film Face-off contest in 2009, so expect something unusual and delightful from Oore and collaborator Aram Kouyoumdjian's Laughter Project, taking place at an unspecified locale in the city. Inspired by Inuit laughing games, small groups will be encouraged to bust a gut, with their guffaws broadcast over loudspeakers throughout the evening. We can't tell you where it'll be happening, but you'll know it when you hear it. --KH
7 PM
Nocturnal Taxi, Liz MacDougall
Mobile project
Flag down a cab bearing a Nocturnal Taxi sign and in addition to a free commute to your next Nocturne exhibit, you'll be treated to an audio recording of the inner workings of a cab driver's mind. Highlighting the disconnect between client and consumer, Nocturnal Taxi is the brainchild of NSCAD graduate Liz MacDougall. Confront your fears about the stranger behind the wheel, or just stick your fingers in your ears and enjoy the ride. --KH
8 PM
artsScene Fusion Halifax
48-hour film contest
artsScene Fusion Halifax
If you notice any wandering thespians trailed by camera crews during your Nocturne travels, you may have stumbled upon entrants in Fusion Halifax's 48-Hour Film Contest, which gives aspiring filmmakers a full two days to deliver a completed 10-minute film for competition. To dissuade cheating, competitors are given a location, song, article of clothing, prop and line of dialogue to work into their film. The contest begins October 12 at The Hub at 1673 Barrington Street, second floor. —KH
9 PM
Puppets Et Cetera!,
various artists
Alderney Landing
2 Ochterloney Street
Artist collective Puppets Et Cetera! will host a family-friendly evening of puppet-making, skits, and political and environmental intrigue in the ground-floor market space at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth. Puppets Et Cetera! employs comedy and theatrics to provoke debate on issues surrounding sustainability and government policy, this time with hands-on activities for the kids. If there's a budding politician in your household, this might be the event for you. --KH
10 PM
Steamroller!, various artists
Alderney Landing 2 Ochterloney Street
If the life-size felt version of Darrell Dexter proves too disturbing for you, saunter over to Steamroller!, also on the ground-floor market space of Alderney Landing, where NSCAD printmakers will be using an actual steamroller to make oversized prints. If you find the idea of art students operating heavy machinery questionable, fear not: they'll likely only be providing the engraved wood blocks necessary for the creation of four--by-eight-foot relief prints. Unless NSCAD does steamrolling courses now. --KH
11 PM
Light Contact, Gregory Lasserre and Anaïs met den Ancxt
Another Alderney Gate attraction, Light Contact promises to dazzle two or three attendees at a time by using their bodies to determine the course of shifting coloured lights hanging over their heads. Artists Gregory Lasserre and Anaïs met den Ancxt are two halves of the duo Scenocosme and they employ visuals, sound, technology and interactivity in their installations. Light Contact has already won them an award at the Festival APART in their native France. --KH
