Nocturne: Art at Night
Lauren Oostveen // October 13, 2011
Fall in Halifax is my favourite time of year. The Atlantic Film Festival kicks off the fun, and is soon followed up by the fantastic art festival: Nocturne. Nocturne: Art at Night, now in its fourth year, brings art, energy, and thousands of people to the streets of Halifax for one day between 6PM and midnight. This year it falls on October 15th and is shaping up to be bigger than ever.
Nocturne feels like an all-ages Halloween with excited groups of grown-ups and kids alike taking in the sights. Last year 15,000 strolled through the streets of Halifax and Dartmouth enjoying fantastic exhibits and installations. The best part is that it’s completely free and designed and planned by a seriously committed team of volunteers.
My job at the Nova Scotia Archives allows me to take part in Nocturne by showcasing crazy, amazing, weird, and, above all, historic artwork in our gallery space. Last year I presented some very cool images from a nitrate negatives collection (you can now see them online at flickr.com/nsarchives/). This year, I facilitated what has become a dream project. Five very different artists have had full access to the archives’ collections. They have taken film, photos, paintings, and audio recordings and turned them into a series of very different art pieces… from super-8 films of vacations past and present to portraits of distinguished Nova Scotians who have had their heads turned into monsters.
There will be bikes. There will be live painting. There will be street-scapes, trains, ships, and baseball games of yore. There will even be… secret footage of Canadian legend Fred Penner. No, I’m not kidding. Come and see for yourself.
Our fabulous and talented Nocturne artists are: Aimée Henny Brown, Nick Brunt, Andrew Michael Fleming, Therese Bombardier, and Justin Lee. Put us in your Nocturne schedule (there is an app for that: iPhone users can look up “Nocturne Halifax” in the app store) and you won’t regret it.
For more information on Nocturne, visit www.nocturnehalifax.ca. To learn more about the Nova Scotia Archives visit www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm or follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/novascotiaarchives/) or Twitter (www.twitter.com/NS_Archives/).
