The Forest, 2017
Performance
Location: Walker Court
Duration: 6:58 pm – 2 am

The AGO is pleased to co-present The Forest, a new performance by former AGO artist-in-residence Will Kwan that was commissioned for Nuit Blanche and curated by Adelina Vlas, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The performance is a part of the Dundas Street Corridor Zone, titled Calculating Upon the Unforeseen organized by curator Clara Halpern.

Visit the AGO and witness the powerful performance, join an on the dot tour, explore the first floor galleries and experience Look:Forward, an exciting reinstallation of the AGO Collection.

The Forest is a performance that plays with the force and fragility of the human voice and the capacity of words to connect people across time and space. Inspired by the low-tech ingenuity of the “human microphone” – a technique used to convey speech at protests and rallies when the use of amplification is restricted – the performance relies on the voice-to-voice connection to carry the messages of a speaker through the gathered audience.

Occupying and radiating from the centre of the AGO, the words and stories that flow through the “microphone” are fragments of poetry and poetic text dating back to 1100 BC, by writers from around the world. They reflect on e xpanded conceptions of time, struggle and human evolution, while embodying a slowness that resists the pace of contemporary life.

Share your experience of the performance with #TheForestAGO.

Digital Echo
2 – 7 am

As quickly as a group comes together, it disappears, leaving only silence and traces of the crowd. Read the script left behind by the performers. Watch how the performance unfolded by looking back at #TheForestAGO on social media.

The Forest is co-produced by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Nuit Blanche Toronto.

Will Kwan is a Hong Kong-born, Canadian artist whose work examines how inequality is created and perpetuated through economic systems and cultural narratives. His work is held in the permanent collections of the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, Folkestone Artworks and Hart House and he has exhibited internationally at MoMA PS1, New York, and ZKM in Karlsruhe, as well as biennales in Liverpool, Folkestone, Montreal and Venice. In Toronto, he has participated in exhibitions at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and The Power Plant.

Presented in Partnership with the City of Toronto