The immersive nature of Nuit Blanche means that for one night, everyone in Toronto can be a part of the art. This year, Madeleine Collective will turn Room 204 of the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. W.) into a participatory 12 HR Zine Machine.
The four women who make up Madeleine – Ladan Ali, Nicole Bazuin, Alexandra Hong, and Cheryl Hsu – named their collective after the French cookie used as a symbol by Proust for a moment of unexpected inspiration. You’ll find a lot of those moments in Room 204 on Sept. 29th.
From 7 pm to 7 am, ten Toronto-based zine makers and art collectives will join Madeleine Collective and the Nuit Blanche audience and create a new zine every hour. “It really proliferates the idea of inspiration – what can come out of a simple idea,” says Hsu. Inspiration will be sourced from an idea board and Twitter, and guests can create their own art to be incorporated into the zines.
Hsu and Bazuin participated in Nuit Blanche last year, staging an interactive sitcom called “Honey, I’m Home!” This year’s project incorporates the collective’s desire to facilitate collaborative spaces. “A lot of the work we’ve been doing asks, ‘How can we bring lots of people together to bond over something that allows them to collaborate and play off each other’s ideas, and do that in an immediate way, where you’re in each other’s presence, and jamming together?’” says Bazuin. By working with artists who don’t usually zine, Madeleine is hoping to share their love of the medium.
The night will begin with research-art atelier Mammalian Diving Reflex, who are bringing their youth members, The Torontonians, to feed their performance/installation practice through the Zine Machine. They’ll be followed by a group of cartoonists representing the Toronto Comic Jam (Dave Lapp, Nina Bunjevac, Chester Brown, Dalton Sharp and Jordan Bursach) Shameless Magazine, Koyama Press, Fiona Smyth, CAROUSEL Magazine, Paper Pusher Printworks/Papirmasse, Static Zine, Steel Bananas Art Collective and VSVSVS will follow them for an hour of zine jamming each. The results will be immediately published on the web and distributed, and the art created as part of the process will be on display throughout the night.
The results are sure to be unexpected. “We want it to be as participatory as possible,” says Hong. “Collaborative with people who might not necessarily consider themselves artists, incorporating different perspectives.” For the audience, it will be exciting to see where a simple idea can lead, and what the smallest suggestion can inspire.