Dennis Bayazitov | Assistant News Editor
Featured image: Friday Night Live at the ROM wows with yet another fall social exhibit. | Courtesy of Bazis
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) resembled a nightclub last Friday night, coming alive with strobe lights, a dance floor, bubbly young Torontonians, and live indie music.
Upon entering Chen Court, the main hall, museum-goers were greeted by the ROM’s iconic skeleton of a giant prowling Tyrannosaurus Rex, now looming over a sea of people. Circling beams of bright light cut through the dance floor as the smells of the night’s fare drifted through the open space. This was all enveloped by the high energy of DJ Yuknodis big room house for the first set on Cullery Hall’s main stage.
“Friday Night Live is a very special program,” says Coordinator of Festival Programs Zoe McQuins. “It’s 19-plus. It brings in all kinds of great indie music, from local performers all across the province. It also has food from awesome vendors who come in and bring us new cuisine.”
The event further featured two additional exhibits: Anishinaabeg: Art & Power and The Evidence Room.
The Anishinaabeg community stretches from Quebec to Alberta and Michigan to Montana. Art & Power features a myriad of striking colourful pieces from handcrafted metal pipes depicting narrative scenes, traditional Anishinaabeg beaded friendship bags, decorative woven bands, and pictures of Memekweshiks (cave drawings) as a way to pay tribute to the Indigenous peoples.
Meanwhile, The Evidence Room aims to capture the horrors of “the greatest crime ever committed by architects,” investigating the grim role architecture played in erecting Auschwitz-Birkenau, said Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, exhibition principal and professor with the Waterloo School of Architecture. The exhibit displays models of Auschwitz gas columns and gas-tight hatches, plaster casts and models of gas-tight doors to showcase the irrefutable evidence of the Nazi government that gruesomely orchestrated the murder of over one million Jews at this one camp alone.
Visitors further enjoyed classic exhibits the ROM is already known for, such as the European evolution of style, themes and collections; Canada’s First Peoples; expositions of Asian cultures; Earth’s Treasures; World history artifacts; the bat cave; and the dinosaur exhibit.
Canadian service members with Historica Canada’s The Memory Project were also in attendance, making their rounds throughout the halls and sharing their stories of Canadian service.
“I’m the only veteran in the group; everybody else are currently serving naval members,” shares Scott Water, who served as an infantry soldier in the 1990’s on the West Coast. Water, like many of his peers at the ROM Friday night, works in the Canadian Forces Artists program as a civilian attached to the war artists program.
“The programs are set up to allow people to understand what it’s like to be a servicemember,” he says. “But I think it’s really important to also emphasize that, to some degree, you can’t completely understand what it’s like, but there are two solitudes.
“There’s a gap between those two societies; I’m interested in contextualizing that gap.”
Throughout the night, attendees were met with several live musical talents. By the Byzantium display upstairs on Level Three, the top students of U of T’s jazz program instilled a calm atmosphere in contrast with the dance party downstairs with their smooth dinner jazz.
Bronfman Hall on Level Two featured Edmonton indie artist Lucette, who set the mood for a cocktail lounge with her soulful vocals and her band’s driving instrumentals, and was later followed by indie Toronto artist Roveena’s own powerful, poignant pop music.
Back in Cullery Hall downstairs, talents took turns spiking the crowd; whether it was high-energy motown rock covers of indie classics, such as “Blister in the Sun,” “Kiss Me,” and “Lovefool” from The Lonely Hearts; to increasingly invigorating deep house beats laid down by DJ El Devine.
The night interwove historic world culture, paid timely Remembrance Day respects, and filled the typically quieter halls with Toronto talent.
“We just want to say: ‘This is where you belong’,” adds McQuins. “We have things from the past, yes; but it’s about building a future together, and it’s about community. It’s about having fun and expressing ourselves. We hope [Toronto students] are part of the conversation and become part of our community.”
