Dominoes!
The Bentway did something that reminded me ~we can~
On September 22nd a substantial work of art toppled into Toronto, and it was only here for a day.
It was simple and small, a brick, after a brick, after a brick. Yet, it was also grandiose, unfurling along 2.5 kilometres from The Wellington Destructor to the edge of Lake Ontario, by the recently restored Canada Malting Silos - audacious in its takeover of parks, walkways, restaurants, people’s homes, front yards, libraries and more.
This was Dominoes, 8000, plain, white breezeblocks assembled in a neat labyrinth, from end to end. After winding its way through London, England in 2009, linking the five host boroughs preceding the 2012 Olympic games, it has since been displayed in cities across South Africa, Europe, and Australia, its first run in North America was here, in Toronto.
On the day it became a living tapestry. Weaving various areas of the city together, and so too the people laying them, the people watching.
The Bentway Conservancy brought Julian Maynard Smith’s (Station House Opera) project to the city in a fleeting moment of connection.
It was disruptive, and transitory, and blood-pumping.
The spiking rush of adrenaline it caused in children, in adults - to keep up, to see how others reacted, to see some fleeting finish that was never going to be greater than that first level push. It caused at moments your eyes to blur and your nerves to take over. People running, scattering, following the clacks like a stopwatch. Clack, clack, clack. Get ahead. Get the angle. Don’t miss it. Clack, clack, clack.
At one point, the dominoes would have stopped. There was what seemed like a four-domino space on the Bathurst Bridge. Some viewers were shocked. Julian Maynard Smith calmly stood and waited until the dominoes arrived to him, and pushed over the next piece. A smirk on his face led me to believe it was his design; art like life is about timing and intention.
Through a multi-kilometre run, people felt an embrace of ephemerality, the state of imperfection, of trust, courtesy and community.
Of the linkages between us.
Down to the waterfront where the last brick fell in the lake - it was always about the people.
On Dominoes day, The Bentway did something that reminded me we can.
we can shut streets for demonstration, for people to run, walk and be,
we can even happily accept that disruption,
we can work, volunteer and coordinate just because,
we can build,
we can be gracious, courteous and trusting,
we can focus on little things,
we can focus on scale,
we can understand each other's need for shared experiences and
we can make things for no other reason than joy.
this is an adaptation of the story first told on my instagram you can find the original as a highlight titled “Dominoes!”