La Nuit Blanche by Dawn Wendt

Paris’s all-night celebration of the arts, an event called La Nuit Blanche (an expression to say a sleepless night), is an all-night party filled to the brim with events, exhibitions, and a whole parade, with its own confusing and convial dynamic. La Nuit Blanche took place on the 5th of October. There was a parade going through the middle of Paris, most notably with floats weird enough to be remembered, such as the giant Bitmoji representations of Belgian artist Sylvie Fleury, the larger-than-life inflated serpent sailing over a crowd of drunk Parisians, fangs poised at the ready. A T-Rex, as well, just in case you were curious. The theme this year was “movement.” Key events included a float dedicated to swimsuit-clad men and women in the celebration of tattoos, a marathon course running through the museums, a trick mirror illusion of the Eiffel Tower falling onto its crane-necked viewers, karaoke at the opera, and biking on the péripherique, the highway that encompasses the city. There was an exposition on the animality of human beings, the sounds produced by bacteria, and futuristic questions posed by demonstrations on terrarian future should our carbon emissions progress the way they have been. I walked through all this commotion, amongst the crowd of Parisians who were becoming continuously drunker, wondering to myself the benefitters of all this. France celebrates its culture strongly, and makes it accessible to everyone, no matter what socioeconomic class, a boast that the US can’t always relate to. Museums are free for students and people who have registered as unemployed or bankrupt, there are opera tickets that go for €10, and even movie theatres have reduced rates. So perhaps this is one of the key reasons for why La Nuit Blanche New York never took off, but that’s a discussion for another time. It was interesting enough to me that so many Parisians take this all-night art opportunity to get drunk enough to be singing French pop songs on the metro. It was a very unifying moment, to be standing in the crowd of a silent rave, all bodies serving to projector a film on the provided white shirts. The streets are crowded with tourists and French alike, of all ages, all gazing in awe (or perhaps confusion) at the creations of artists. Events last from 7 P.M. to after the sun has risen again at 7 A.M. If you ever find yourself in Melbourne or Toronto around the beginning of October, these cities also boast a well-established La Nuit Bulanche themselves. An experience well-worth it, although, without the provided brochure, I admit I wouldn’t have understood nearly half the objectives of the exhibitions, at the fault of a certain vagueness that surrounded some exhibitions. Either way, it’s a look into a culture’s understanding of art that I wouldn’t have otherwise been acquainted with, and a sleepless night I’m fortunate to have had.