The night the city doesn't sleep: La Nuit Blanche

On the first Saturday in October, the city of Paris gets together and collectively pulls an all-nighter. That's exactly what a "nuit blanche" means: literally, a white night, meaning a night without sleep. Ten years ago a tradition began to celebrate the end of the summer season by funding a large collection of artists to set up works and performances across the city on the first Saturday in October. Various cafés join in and keep their doors open through the wee hours. And the city of Paris, or the youth at least, flocks. Unlike New York, Paris is not a city that never sleeps. The French know how to relax and take vacation, and many things shut down on weekends, especially Sundays. That's part of what makes this event so exceptional, but that's not the half of it. The works aren't always beautiful or impressive despite their deep meanings and interpretations as explained in the official Nuit Blanche guidebook. In fact, what we saw consisted of

-a blow-up glowing teepee on the banks of the Seine

-a dumpster which we sat in for a few minutes (after a twenty-minute wait) to listen to an odd collection of sounds which represented the mysteries of the universe

Here we are waiting in line for our turn to sit in the dumpster. We already figured something was up.

Our group pretty much filled up the whole dumpster in our round. I felt a little bit bad for the two other random people squeezed in with us (including the woman hiding from the camera). We had a darned good time, even passing out cups and popping open a bottle of wine for our turn in the dumpster/exploration of the sound of the universe.

-a tent full of several-foot-long, thick light-up cylinders hanging from the low ceiling (called "Ghost Market")

-some sort of modern art display in a medieval-looking courtyard

-a respectable piano concert in an interestingly lit church

-a wall of lights and a giant glowing stuffed creature called the Yeti

-a room full of people walking around with purple umbrellas (Purple Rain, this was one of the featured exhibits of the evening)

-a mansion courtyard filled with artistic construction of concrete bricks that might have been created at my engineering undergraduate dorm

-an unscheduled and seemingly impromptu brass band performance outside the Pantheon at about 3:30am. (By the time we arrived, some of the band members had already called it a night, lying down cuddling their instruments while their bandmates enthusiastically played on with a dancing crowd cheering them on.)

In short, the art is generally a little too modern to feel very profound. If you're lucky, you'll stumble across one or two works that really strike a chord or prove to be a lot of fun. Two years ago, I'd really enjoyed an audio work in a church cleared of it pews. A full circle of speakers had been set up, each projecting a different voice. After a few minutes of simple chatter projecting through the speakers, they all silenced and suddenly began an unearthly song which one could hardly be certain was produced by human voices. Everyone in the church simply lay down in the circle of speakers as the music began, captivated. I couldn't find anything that sounded so beautiful in this year's brochure, but I had been very tempted by a dance party with dance lessons at several times through the night in which all the participants wore headphones to hear the music. The interpretation was that the experience would at once bring people together and isolate them, but mostly it'd be fun to partake in a silent dance party, if only the boys in my Nuit Blanche crowd could have been convinced to dance.

The most wonderful part of La Nuit Blanche is not the art itself but the spirit of the city. For one night, the city is bustling, vibrating well into the wee hours, and not just with skimpily dressed clubbers. There's a fair amount of wine flowing but the overriding sentiment is not one of drunken debauchery but a collective high of young people out to celebrate the last few days of nice weather before being plunged into the long, dark nights of a cold Parisian winter. It's a night to be carefree and stay out way past your bedtime, a night to stare at modern art in confusion with your friends and people you'll never see again. It's a night to enjoy being alive, a night you're glad only happens once a year, yet a night to look forward to every year. Vive la Nuit Blanche!