Nuit Blanche

There are times when Paris grabs you by the throat and forces you to acknowledge what an amazing place it is. Living here you can become a little complacent about the tourist sites. I walk past Notre Dame most days and all I can think about is how to negotiate the crowd. I rarely even look up at the gargoyles any more. There are times, however, when the city opens itself up to you and you realise that it is somewhere really special, with something resonating beyond the iconic monuments, and suddenly you receive a fresh reminder of just how lucky you are to be a part of it.

It was a hot night, not even humid, just one of those nights where the pavement seems to radiate heat. The temperature was incongruous at the start of October, with the dusk falling increasingly early, so there was already a kind of restlessness in the air, a perceptible lack of peaceful quiet. Stepping outside of our courtyard we were instantly met by a stream of people walking in the opposite direction. Struggling against the tide we walked in the street, ducking around cyclists and scooters stalled in the mass of pedestrians. There were all kinds of people: youths swigging from wine bottles, parents pushing sleeping kids in strollers and couples like us, arm-in-arm, trying not to lose each other in the throng. From the church opposite we could hear a choir singing and around the corner at its main entrance the steps were filled with onlookers, all straining to get a view of what was going on inside.

It took a long time to walk the short distance to the Hotel de Ville. The pavement cafés, usually full anyway at this time of night, were spilling their crowds further than ever out across the busy intersection near the BHV department store. It wasn't the night to be driving. Car horns and the practice of gradually creeping forward were proving to be ineffective at clearing the crush. The only thing for drivers to do was sit and wait. All around us in snatched bits of overheard French conversation we could hear people saying constantly “C'est Nuit Blanche!”. Nuit Blanche was the explanation for everything here, the full streets, the buzzing cafés and the effervescent atmosphere. Nuit Blanche, or sleepless night, a series of art installations in disparate buildings clustered about the city, free to enter and open from around eight in the evening until the early hours.

At the Hotel de Ville people were kissing and embracing as if it was New Year's Eve. We picked up a booklet with details of all the local exhibits in it and joined the queue to see a film. So there we were, standing among hundreds of others, hearing many different languages spoken all around us, in the central courtyard of the Paris town hall watching a film projected on the wall. Over the centuries old stones flowed images of writhing dancers, seascapes, drownings and a tall, stately woman walking serenely through richly decorated halls and staircases. We were all transfixed by this art entitled “The Leopard” by Isaac Julien, apparently shot primarily on location in Sicily but displayed here in the most unlikely of places at the most unlikely of times.

Location added so much to the pieces of art on display. The sheer bizarreness of being in some of the buildings so late at night gave everything an added veneer of immediacy, maybe even of participatory wholeness. Just by being there in the present we were actively engaging with the art, something that we probably wouldn't have felt we were doing if we were in white, clean gallery spaces during regular opening hours. Often the queues were long and the size of the crowds never really relented, so viewing the installations required a degree of commitment, but on into the early hours of Sunday morning we wandered, mainly in our local Marais neighbourhood, feeling like we were sharing our streets with a heaving band of artistic treasure hunters.

We saw looming concrete sculpture arches in the courtyard of the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, whilst in the Museum of Jewish Art and History Miroslaw Balka's installation “Heaven” glinted in the darkness, thousands of shimmering and twisting plastic icicles imperceptibly hung from the ceiling at varying heights to catch the light from all the camera phones struggling to record them for posterity. The Cloître des Billetes played host to a bearded saxophonist and an energetic female dancer who interpreted his music enthusiastically whilst interacting with a large metal wheel, blue plastic tubes and some turf. The giant, hairy, illuminated red Yeti against his blue glowing background made our local church hall look like the location for a rave. Meanwhile, at the tranquil church of St. Louis en L'Ile, we paused to enjoy a welcome, soothing oasis of calm amongst the madness of the full streets by listening to a tiny portion of an all-night organ recital. Returning home via the market place on Place Baudoyer we were able to view the light and sound installation “The Ghost Market” by Francesco Girardi. This was somewhat spoilt for me by the fact that I'd seen people setting it up earlier in the afternoon, being artists with the aid of large bagfuls of supplies from Leroy Merlin, the local DIY store. Sadly it would always be just a load of lampshades and two black curtains to me after that, but perhaps I appreciated a certain kind of honesty in the art, having viewed the creative process.

The truth is that Paris pulsates with creativity and diversity every day. Events like Nuit Blanche simply bring it into focus and allow ordinary Parisians, along with countless visitors, to join in on a large scale. In amongst the historic buildings and in the shadow of the grand edifices that draw people from all over the world to this city, people are constantly renewing the artistic currents that have flowed here since centuries ago. More than that, people are living out their day to day lives against this energetic backdrop and these people, these ordinary people, are prepared to spend an entire sleepless night wandering around the city in search of art. I am proud to have been one of them.