Nuit Blanche

Every year the city of Paris does an all-nighter. Not the type where you've had so much to drink that an $18 vodka-lemonade seems completely reasonable and it would have been a cheaper night to stay home and burn $5 notes in succession. Nor is it the type of night where you stand outside a club in -3 degrees waiting two hours to get in only to realise that there is actually no one inside. And also not the kind where you walk from Sydney to Wollongong via Tokyo looking for a cab to take you home. Definitely not the kind you spend in the waiting room of a hospital in London thanks to a Whitney Houston look-alike (thanks Goody!), and thankfully not the type of night in front of a compter wondering how the eight weeks to do your assignment culminated into a blank word document and 6 hours to fill 3000 words onto it.

Paris has Nuit Blanche. The one night every year that art becomes accessible at night. Each year the theme is different, the art is different. This year, all the intercity railway stations (of which Paris has at least 5) became the stage for light installations, photograph exhibitions, the shooting of a bollywood film, short films etc. In total, there were over 50 locations of art which remained open throughout the night. Special exhibitions were placed all over the city including churches and public squares.

We decided not to pike too early and left home after 10pm. This is Mel looking ready to take on a full night of art.




First stop was the filming of a Bollywood film at Gare de Lyon. Film shootings are boring. We were watching a dance sequence being filmed and the hour or so we stayed they filmed about 6 seconds of a song/dance sequence. There was rehearsing and waiting, waiting and rehearsing, sometimes there was nothing. And eventually, there was rain. It was such a cold night and the poor dancers were wearing outfits more apt in a Bali summer. So they had their shawls during researsals which came off for the actually take.


We then moved on to what I can only describe as weird block shapes moving on 5 large flat screen tvs. In a church, of course. St Paul's Cathedral, in the centre of Paris hosted this bizarre installation. Suffice to say, our visit was short. Then we went to an exhibition where they had recorded thousands of people each reading a page of Proust's Search for Lost Time. They had a live recording booth where we too could join in. Although tempted, we had to make our way to the whackiest thing we saw all night, the woman who walked around (although the sign indicated that is was in fact interpretive dance) a small room barefoot all night in what looked like a pool of fake blood. Apparently this 'live' installation was going to last 12 hours. This woman was walking like a zombie. Again, I would dare try to explain the piece.



The program is here in case people are interested in knowing about the other stuff.


The idea was poached from other European cities and has been in Paris for the last 5 years or so. Although we managed to see some so-so art and culture, the vibe of the night was amazing and thousands and thousands of people were just buzzing around between the various sites around Paris. It felt like the Sydney Olympics again.