Sugarloaf

September 17, 2022 10:30PM-late

Event Information:
Sugarloaf—was a dance party organized by artist Simon Fuh under the Bloor Viaduct on September 17th 2022.

In planning Implicit Choreographies & Relational Topographies, we were interested in commissioning an artist to engage with the lower Don Valley’s soundscape. We felt Simon’s engagement and research into the social memory and relations surrounding parties would be an exciting complement to the ravine–a site in which outdoor raves are held often and whose sloping topography sustains underground gathering.

During the summer of 2022 Simon routinely visited the lower Don Valley and Portlands areas in search of DIY and ad hoc parties happening in these borderland and peripheral spaces of the city, gathering field recordings along the way. Somewhere between social ethnography and theatricality, these field recordings charted a sonic topography of improvised gatherings in the ravine. Behind these recordings were a set of questions asking: how do these social moments frame their setting and, conversely, how does the ravine influence them? Keeping these questions in mind, Fuh organised a dance party featuring DJ Durga, Fox Sore, and snailspace as a response to his fieldwork and the social context of the site.

Event Response by Alex Simons

Simon Fuh is an artist and writer based in Toronto, ON. He has a Master’s of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Joseph Armand Bombardier SSHRC Scholarship. Recent exhibitions include Memory Theatre, 1 Spadina Cres. (Toronto, ON), places where sounds turn to dreams…, Hearth Gallery (Toronto, ON), Eternal Wish Radio, Forest City Gallery (London, ON), and Down the Rabbit Hole, 330g (Saskatoon, SK). Simon has published writing with C Magazine, Hearth Gallery, and Susan Hobbs Gallery, and published an artist book titled For Now You Had to Be There with Gravitron Press in 2022.