The Distillery Historic District Presents THE RIVER PEACE 10/2

The River Peace, a large-scale public participatory performance art installation created by Thomas + Guinevere, will be unveiled at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010, October 2 at The Distillery Historic District from 6:57pm to Sunrise.

Inspired by Mahatma Ghandi's concept and scope of Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, The River Peace is a mass participatory sculptural movement and sound performance installation; a giant metaphoric river where the content is not water, but a mass human meditation and expression of peace.

The River Peace takes the form of a 1,500-foot long luminescent sculpture, stretching around and through the historic laneways in Toronto's Distillery Historic District, which members of the public are invited to help carry and move through in their own meditative expression as musicians and dancers create a mass orchestral and choreographic illusion of a river in constant flow - with everyone's cell phones providing the installation's luminosity.

As it is occurring, an aerial perspective of The River Peace will be captured on video and projected onto the walls of Mill Street so the public can witness the real-time media artwork resulting from everyone's participation. (The video will be taken from the top floor of the Pure Spirit Condo Tower in The Distillery and be projected onto the face of the Rack House on the north side of Mill Street.)

In addition, participants with QR (Quick Response) readers installed in their phones can turn their phones into colour-shifting lighting instruments. A PDF menu of QR Codes will be available for download on http://www.thomasandguinevere.com starting September 30, so that participants can follow the River Peace's scheduled colour lighting cues throughout the night. For more information on this, visit the Thomas + Guinevere website.

The 1500-foot sculptural meditation will move clockwise through the Distillery District: EAST along Mill Street, SOUTH on Cherry Street, WEST on Distillery Lane and NORTH on Trinity Street.

The River Peace is created in collaboration with composer John McDowell and presented by The Distillery Historic District in partnership with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and Le Labo.

The River Peace will make use of a large number of volunteers, as musicians, dancers and more collaborate with the creators in the weeks leading up to Nuit Blanche to create the sound, flow and form of the installation. Dancers of all disciplines will engage in durational movement meditations and lead members of the public through the installation in a slow meditative choreography that can be done by everyone. Instrumentalists and vocalists of all musical styles will work with noted composer John McDowell to create a large-scale site-specific orchestral soundscape. Volunteer helmsmen will mobilize the sculpture, while general volunteers will help with various duties, from ushering on the night of Nuit Blanche to instructing cell phone use for creating the light, etc.

300 participants at any given time are needed for the realization of The River Peace so that it can continually flow throughout the night. Interested members of the public can get involved by contacting TheRiverPeace@gmail.com or visiting www.thomasandguinevere.com.

In light of the 5th year celebrations of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Thomas + Guinevere's Confinement of the Intellect (since renamed The Encampment) from Nuit Blanche 2006 has been selected to be part of the group show Some Enchanted Evening. Additionally, Thom Sokoloski will sit on the panel - When Curators Speak - at the Art Gallery of Ontario, moderated by David Liss, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA).

As well, The River Peace was recently selected by The Times Square Alliance Public Art Program to have a New York City premiere in its 2011-12 program.
THE RIVER PEACE by Thomas + Guinevere
At Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010
Sponsored by The Distillery Historic District, and in partnership with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and Le Labo
October 2, 2010 - 6:57pm to Sunrise
Visit www.thomasandguinevere.com for more info

ABOUT THE ARTISTS - Thomas + Guinevere

Thom Sokoloski and Jenny Anne McCowan have built a partnership around developing site-specific public participatory art installations. With their common interest in site-specific work, the interrelationships between art and public and their extensive experience in creating innovative multi-disciplinary performance and image-based work, they began Thomas + Guinevere.

What distinguishes their work from most conceptual and relational art practices is their insistence on the primacy of the visual and aesthetic impact of the work. Socially and historically relevant, interactive, and truly public through participation, they create a sculptural landscape by conducting an optical experiment on a grand scale that can be experienced from multiple perspectives. From afar, their work creates a temporal sculptural form, while up close the work offers accessibility into an experiential and visceral intimacy with the content. To this end, they rely on an interdisciplinary mix of creative collaborators from the community who step forward to participate in the artwork's process and construction.

In 2006, they were commissioned to create a large-scale public performance art work The Royal Flush, integrating the indoor and outdoor spaces of the Fallsview Casino that was presented all summer long. They were then commissioned by Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 06 to create Confinement of the Intellect, a metaphorical archaeological dig into the memory and history of mental health on Queen St. West. It then went to New York City in 2007 and was presented on the South Point of Roosevelt Island where it was renamed The Encampment and focused on the island's history as a centre of quarantine until 1975. In 2008, it was then presented in Ottawa's Major's Hill Park with a focus on Canada's history of intellectual disability. Upcoming works include The Ghost Net Project, The Hope Tower and a new version of The Encampment for the War of 1812 Bicentennial.

Thom Sokoloski was co-founder of The Theatre Centre and Autumn Leaf Performance. Some of his signature work includes directing R. Murray Schafer's RA throughout the Science Centre and at the Holland Festival and Hermes Trismegistos inside Union Station for World Stage and Festival of Liege, his own Kafka in Love inside the Hart House swimming pool for World Stage and producing an international tour of Claude Vivier's Kopernikus, Michael Nyman, Master Musicians of Jajouka and the Sonic Boom series of new opera and music. He has curated for the McLuhan Festival 04, Toronto International Art Fair 05, Contact 07 and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 09.

Jenny Anne McCowan has an extensive background as a dancer and choreographer in creating and performing mass routines in rhythmic gymnastics in Canada and abroad, a developed working philosophy and practice of 'public momentum' drawn from her master's thesis on Rave Culture and a body of work that has been performed in New York City, London, Miami, Lyon and Berlin. Her dance/circus spectacle Raise, a fundraiser for a paralysed circus artist, created a mass following and collaboration between 100-plus performers and the public. She is now developing a series of solo works inspired by female artists and composers.

John McDowell achieved worldwide recognition with his soundtrack to the Academy Award winning documentary Born into Brothels. The score blends Western and Indian music in a mesmerizing mix and features the seductive vocals of Brazilian Girls vocalist Sabina Sciubba. He was also the composer for the documentary Stolen, which premiered at TIFF in September, 2009. From the NYC area, John has worked with the likes of Sting, Santana, R. Murray Schafer and Donna Karan. In 2007, he orchestrated the soundscape for Thomas + Guinevere's The Encampment in NYC on Roosevelt Island.

 

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