It was a brisk evening on Saturday September 29 th, but downtown Edmonton was speckled in hot spots: glowing visual feasts from Epcor Tower to Edmonton House to Primavera Plaza. Nuit Blanche, an all-night, light-up, contemporary art event, delighted thousands with lights and colour. This international festival, which began in Paris, France in 2002, first came to Edmonton in 2015.
A myriad of spectacles awaited those willing to brave the chilly weather and explore the downtown core. In an empty parking lot, a crowd gathered to play video games projected on the side of a building, and just a block away, in Abbey Glen Park on Jasper Avenue, something else was going on. Sure, it had the lights and the colour, but it also had something more. If you were downtown on that evening, you may have heard music bouncing off the buildings, and echoing down the streets, and if you were lucky enough to follow the sound, you would have come across something truly special.
“The Longest Journey,” an art installment by Dawn Marie Marchand, brought musicians, singers, dancers and a poet into the fold of her artistic vision, these performance art components, orchestrated into theatrical form by director, Barry Bilinsky. Each performer was handpicked for something meaningful they could bring to the installment, and I was honoured to be chosen among them for my song, Silent Road. The short presentation – less than twenty minutes – ran every hour and a half beginning at 7:00 pm, invited people to make a journey of their own.
The Longest Journey at Nuit Blanche Edmonton
By: Shauna Specht
Photos by Brad Crowfoot