Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York 2011 from Nuit Blanche New York on Vimeo.

We’re gonna be honest with you… we were afraid you weren’t going to show up.

The odds were stacked against us- it was cold out AND rainy. Yet, despite the chilly temperatures, torrential conditions and lack of G train service, you came by the thousands to share a truly spectacular evening on the waterfront.

Our team could not be more grateful for the crowds assembled in Greenpoint for Bring to Light 2011. We are truly inspired and encouraged by our city’s unending support for the artists, curators and producers who made this night possible. What’s more, it is evident from our documentation from the evening that the true magic of this festival is cultivated by the audience. Watching all of you engage, interact, and play made all of the hard work worth it. We have been overwhelmed by the encouraging words sent to us by our visitors. Thank you all, we can’t wait to see everyone again for our next edition!

“What a nice treat to leave your troubles and woes behind for an evening of light and fantasy. I love New York for that!”

“My daughter and I had such a blast that night. I love when people put so much energy and love and creativity into an amazing event that I can just show up and see.”

So here’s the line-up for you! The space housing a light installation by Rolland Ellis and Andrea Cuius drew crowds throughout the night at Bring to Light and we’ve received many inquiries about the performances there.
See more from the artists you enjoyed below:

6:30-7:00
Maria Chavez/Stephan Moore/Suzanne Thorpe(members of Volume)

7:15-7:35
Shelley Burgon

7:50-8:10
Friend Roulette

8:25-8:55
Sky White Tiger

9:10-9:30
Bryce Hackford

9:45-10:00
Chris Chu(Morning Benders)

10:15-10:35
Timo Ellis

10:50-11:20
Mark Borthwick

11:35-11:55
Zach Layton

12:10-12:40
Pilottone

Whether by land or by sea, we’re excited to see you arriving in Greenpoint in just a few hours! Will you be taking photos? Bringing your smart phone? Let us know what you’re thinking and seeing live at the event in the following ways:

Facebook:
Find us at facebook.com/bringtolightnyc

Twitter:
Follow @bringtolightnyc
and tag your live Tweets tonight with our hashtag #btlnyc

Flickr:
Tag your photos from tonight under bringtolight2011
and join our group Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York

MyBlockNYC:
For those of you who don’t know, MyBlockNYC is a fun new way to post site-specific visual content around NYC!

Post content from the blocks of Bring to Light and join our group “Bring to Light NYC”

Vimeo:
Check our vimeo soon to view event videos at vimeo.com/nbny

We keep creating systems of what we should and should not do: how we should and should not walk, how we should cross a path. What interests me is the jump that can be made between what is allowed and what is not allowed, and how creative that can be. -Valeska Soares

With a respect for memory and a hint of sentimentality, Valeska Soares’s work strives to activate memories and individual narratives within viewers. In Tonight, Soares places dancing individuals in Oscar Niemeyer’s casino and nightclub, built in the 1940s. Today, the same building stands as the Museu de Arte da Pampulha. With seats emptied, lonely, ghostly figures move ethereally through the space, evoking the site’s history, encouraging a nostalgia for its past life. Occasionally paired with another individual through the superimposition of images, Soares imbues the work with a touch of magic and illusion.

Set along the Greenpoint waterfront, with the venerated New York skyline in the distance and surrounded by repurposed industrial buildings, Tonight incites questions in the viewers’ minds. Shall we reminisce on what once was? Or do we rejoice in what is yet to come in the evolution of our cities and technologies?

For more information on Valeska Soares’s practice, check out this interview from 2001.

Commuter from Nuit Blanche New York on Vimeo.

It is so rarely the case that the journey between a plan and its execution is obstacle-free. At best, we can hope to experience a few speed bumps along the way. At worst, the road drops off a cliff and we are forced to re-route.

But, if you are Alex Villar, there is only one way to get there. And that is strapped to the outside of the East River Ferry.

For his latest performance-based video, Splitting Image, Villar takes on the ritual of the commute. Instead of passively observing, recording and intervening with New Yorkers as they get from home to work and back again, Villar decided to put himself in their very same position. Well, almost.

Standing at the India Street Pier, Villar looked ready for a dive on the Great Barrier Reef rather than a 15-minute ferry ride across the East river. Geared up in a wetsuit and harness, one would be hard-pressed to mistake him for the average commuter. Yet commuting was exactly what he was there to do. Contending that the city we desire is not necessarily the city we are given, Villar set out to demonstrate how an urban reality may be reinvented through individual action and imagination.

While the rest of the passengers sat comfortably inside the ferry, Villar was negotiating with the boat’s captain. Told again and again that there was NO way he was attaching himself to the ferry, Villar persisted. After a few phone calls and a visit from a conspirator at the Ferry office, the captain relents. With patience and determination, the artist has congenially disrupted the status quo.

Hooked onto the ship’s hull, Villar finally begins his short journey. As commuters gather around, snapping photos, befuddled and amused by the artist, it becomes clear what Villar was up to. More than merely riding the outside of the ferry, Villar was riding out a fantasy. And, ultimately, by making the commute his own adventure, he invited the rest of us to imagine how we might do the same.

To see Splitting Image, make sure to visit the park this Saturday!

Many were introduced to the work of Richard Serra when the infamous Tilted Arc was removed from Manhattan’s Federal Plaza in 1989. After much controversy and more-than-a-few death threats, this curved wall of steel, standing 12 feet high and 120 feet long, was dismantled and removed from the public space. Today, the incident continues to spur debate- pitting principles of artistic ownership against proper use of communal spaces.

But well before Tilted Arc was created, Serra was extolling the properties of metallurgic materials via film and video. First breaking into the intimidating medium with Hand Catching Lead in 1968, Serra continued to refine his ruminations on base, industrial materials in subsequent shorts including Hands Scraping and Railroad Turnbridge. With his complicated relationship to public art and fascination with the processes of industrialization, Richard Serra’s participation in Bring to Light 2011 could not be more fitting.

To read an interview with Serra from 2008, click here.

Make an entrance. Come to Bring to Light by water!

Ferries run on their regular weekend Schedule until 8:00PM. View Here. Special Event Schedule (above) begins at 8:30.

Originally commissioned by Garage Center for Contemporary Culture for exhibition at the 54th Venice Biennale, Commercial Break makes its stateside premiere at Bring to Light. Displaying over 100 video works by leading international artists, curator Neville Wakefield conceived of this project in order to address advertising’s increasingly rampant impact on pacing and perceptions. Whether commenting on the culture of self-promotion within the art world, or the creation of wants and desires outside of it, Commercial Break’s 30 to 90 second videos offer the opportunity to recalibrate perceptions of art and commerce.

On the Greenpoint waterfront, the videos are given a stillness for reflection, while the frenetic pace of Manhattan and the FDR looms in the background.

To read more about this project, see this interview with Neville Wakefield.

A community event at the site of the future Greenpoint Monitor Museum, produced in conjunction with Bring to Light 2011, will feature Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Oliver Tilden Camp No. 26, and The Depressionaires.

The public will have a rare opportunity to visit scenic Bushwick Inlet, a cove on the East River accessible at the end of Quay Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The Greenpoint Monitor Museum will dedicate a sign identifying the place as the site of a museum honoring its history, with support from Assemblyman Joseph Lentol and the Greenpoint Lions Club, on land donated by Motiva Enterprises. The first of a series of USS Monitor and Civil War 150th anniversary events, Light on the Inlet will feature war re-enacters, Civil War tents, uniforms, artifacts, photos, video projection of archival materials, and live music by The Depressionaires.

Event commences at 2:00 PM

3:00 PM – Unveiling of the Museum’s Site Sign dedicated to the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War and the 15th Anniversary of the Greenpoint Monitor Museum.

The site is located at the end of Quay Street on the East River.

Contact:

The Greenpoint Monitor Museum: 718-383-2637

Stephen Zacks: szacks@gmail.com, 917-412-1926

Screening Times:

Friday Sept 30th at 9pm, Sat Oct 1st at 6pm and 11:30pm. Grouper will perform live at all screenings.

Capacity is limited, available on a first come first served basis

The Perception of Moving Targets is a feature-length anthology of short films directed by Weston Currie and scored by the songs of Grouper. Each narrative is an interspacial and transdimensional trip to the liminal space between sleep, memory and waking reality.

In a zone where boundaries dissolve four neighbors spiral down the hallways of perception, enter the looking glass, and timeslip across memory to visit loved ones lost, confront painful truths, or arrive at ecstatic revelations about the meaning of their dreams.

Like Delia Derbyshire’s The Dreams for the BBC’s RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP, these four narratives are connected by their recurring dream elements, symbols and themes. Each film finds a portal into the next, following a thread that connects the characters in a common or even shared journey.

OSA is providing a VIP boat cruise to Bring to Light which will leave from the ferry dock at North 7th for sunset; boat down the twinkling East River to see the Statue of Liberty at the golden hour, then land back at India Street Pier as the lights come on for Bring to Light. Complimentary drinks and appetizers will be provided on the boat.

DATE: Saturday, October 1st

TIME: Boarding at 5:45, leaving at 6:00 pm

BOARDING POINT: East River Ferry Landing, on the East River between North 6th & 7th Streets (The Edge).

Proceeds to benefit OSA to help improve North Brooklyn parks. TICKETS are $60 at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/198380

Curious to know how the artists do it? Please join NBNY and GarageCUBE’s founders and developers of MadMapper and Modul8 projection mapping software, Boris and Ilan, for a series of workshops on Tuesday the 27th. All you need to bring is a computer, imagination, and a love of light and projection. Let the experts take care of the rest.

Scheduled workshops include:

Modul8 and Mapping – September 27th, 4-7pm ($80)

Mapping with MadMapper – September 27th, 8-11pm ($80)

To attend the workshop please email workshops@bringtolightnyc.org and include

- Your first and last name

- Which workshop(s) you would like to participate in (1 and/or 2)

- Occupation

- Samples of your work (vimeo/youtube links and jpegs – under 500k)

- A picture of your cat, dog or pet fish

In the Woods from Nuit Blanche New York on Vimeo.

Now it wouldn’t be much of a festival without some merrymaking, would it? BTL gleefully brings Camille Scherrer’s In the Woods to Greenpoint’s waterfront. The would-be-clown-cum-projection artist flexes her technological wizardry and love of… well, wizardry as she transforms viewers into figments of her imagination. Wings, feathers and claws abound as some serious computer programming and a large dose of whimsy create a sidewalk fairy tale sure to make audiences’ minds wonder…

Learn more about the imaginative Camille, here.

…Is how the late Jeremy Blake described his lushly-hued, amalgamations of film, sound, and abstract painting. For Bring to Light 2011, NBNY is honored to present the enigmatic and enthralling Winchester Trilogy. Inspired by America’s prototypical, the-bigger-the-better approach to home construction, the trilogy transports viewers into the mindset of Sarah Winchester, the creator behind the Winchester house of San Jose, California. Displayed on three large screens, the films progress slowly, hypnotizing the audience with Blake’s ruminations on the forces (rational or otherwise) behind this architectural curiosity.

To read more about Jeremy Blake and the Winchester Trilogy, check out this interview with the artist from 2005.



Photo Courtesy Kinz + Tillou Fine Art

Light Graffiti from Nuit Blanche New York on Vimeo.

We’re delighted to announce the second annual Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York 2011. Our curatorial team has endured many sleepless nights of their own, selecting over 50 light, sound, projection, performance, and new media projects for display at the Greenpoint Industrial Waterfront. Continuing its exploration of contemporary art’s intervention in the public realm with works ranging from the highly participatory to the utterly spectacular, Bring to Light 2.0 has something for the art lover in all of us.