La Nuit Blanche

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all beginning to embrace fall! Some of us are already missing carmel apples, apple cider, pumpkins, and storefront autumn and halloween decorations. It just occurred to us that we wouldn't be having any of that, so now I think we miss it even more. I'm having apple cider withdrawal. Even if I had the powdered packets of apple cider it wouldn't do any good because I'd have to descend 3 flights of stairs, walk to the microwave, microwave water, then walk back up 3 flights of stairs to get to my room. I would also have to invest in a mug. Oh, and buy dish soap so that I could wash the cup and reuse it. Anyway, the trees are starting to turn in Paris- autumn has arrived!

Saturday night was "La Nuit Blanche." Literally translated it means the white night, but it actually refers to a sleepless night. La Nuit Blanche is a free arts appreciation night that starts at 7pm and doesn't end until 7am Sunday morning. For those who stay up all night, city hall (Hôtel de Ville) serves breakfast at dawn. The Minister of Culture created the event in 2002. There are art events scattered around 3 areas of the city. Around 8:30pm we left and headed for Le Marais (informally the Jewish Quarter). We weren't exactly sure what we'd be seeing, but we consulted a temporary La Nuit Blanche map by the St. Paul metro stop and then just followed the crowds. After 10 minutes of walking we came to a large line of people. So naturally, we joined. This was our first stop of the night:

From the looks of it, I think it was a dinosaur graveyard. In the second picture I'm pretty sure you're looking at the missing legs, vertebrae, and ear of the dinosaur bodies captured in the first picture. You were allowed to touch the "art" so there were a few little kids (one in a superman cape) running around playing and walking over the tail of one of the dinosaurs.

After leaving this exhibit, we walked around the block and found another line. This one was much more a "social commentary" than the first one. (Unless the dead dinosaurs represent something I'm unaware of).

There were about 40 bowls on the long table and each of them had a different label. I remember seeing "It-girl," "Socialist," "Geek," "President," "Employée," "Communist," and "Tourist." There was a loud voice-track of a man reciting the french alphabet being played over the speakers. Images of people were being displayed on the white thing in the middle of the table via a projector, but the images only appeared for a split second and only every minute or two.

The next line we joined brought us to what I'm calling the Time Room:

This room was pitch black and displayed rows and rows of digital clocks. All of them were programmed to the exact same time. Most were in military time but some were not. It was a really cool effect, but after your eyes adjusted to the dark and you could make out the racks holding all the clocks, I have to admit it was a tad less cool.

At the Time exhibit we found a table with event info and maps for where to find each exhibit in your respective areas. Using this map we walked to the next exhibit:

In this exhibit there was a grid of people projected on a screen above everyone's heads in the courtyard of an old looking building. Each person's individual video was frozen and they played one video at a time. Each person was from a different culture, and although I couldn't understand what they were saying, it seemed like they were all teaching the crowd one thing about where they were from. We watched a woman cook something, a man cook some kind of sauce, one woman showed us how brooms are used, and another guy showed us how to do a floral arrangement with flowers, an orange, and cigar smoke (I may have missed something with that last one..). The videos were light-hearted, each person was cracking jokes and the crowd was laughing. I have no idea what the jokes were.

We decided to make our way down to Rue de Rivoli and head over to the exhibit at Hôtel de Ville. On the way we passed this cool spice store that was hosting a music performance:

See that guy? He's playing flute! Last night I had a dream that I was in band and hadn't played flute for way too long and I felt out of place. Thanks a lot for that flute-dude! Geez.

We had been used to following the crowd and magically finding an art exhibit, so we followed a bunch of people down this random alley. Everyone just kept following everyone else into the alley but there wasn't anything to see except some graffiti:

We quickly left the alley trying not to feel foolish. Out on the street we passed a moving image projected on a wall. This was a video of a running man, and after a minute of watching it, the man turned into a candle. We left before I could see if the candle was going to turn into something else:

In a small plaza we spotted a broken-down looking car painted purple. On the hood of that car sat a very old speaker playing a casette tape of The Beatles and The Eagles. A few women sang along to "All We Need Is Love," and a meat shop was giving out free samples of cubed mystery meat and cubed mystery mini-sandwiches on toothpicks.

Eventually we made it to Hôtel de Ville. The city hall was decorated with tons of neon signs, each in a different language, each saying "Love the Differences."

A message like this from a municipal building directly contrasts what we're learning in class about French identity. After World War II Charles de Gaulle wanted to unify the citizens of France and create a stronger national identity, so he made it illegal to classify any French citizen using ethnic or national background, or religious affiliation. This meant that questions on any one of these topics would never be used in a national census or any other governmental document. The purpose was well intentioned and meant to show that a French citizen is French no matter his or her background. Its effect was to homogenize the population. Seeing a celebration of diversity, albeit at an art show, was a sign that France may be changing.

Uh..I don't know...(yay diversity!!)

After standing around at city hall we walked up towards the Pompidou. On our way we ran into about 10 other people from our program who had just come from the Pompidou. A few of them joined us and we all set off towards the Louvre.

It was a long-ish walk but it was beautiful walking along the Seine at night. We passed Île de la Cité (the island Notre Dame is on) and several bridges. There were tons of people out for the special night. Cars sitting in traffic were blasting music and people of all ages were walking in hoards in every direction. We reached the Louvre and walked through the Arc de Carrousel towards Jardin des Tuileries to sit down. In the gardens there were groups of young people and couples seated all over the place. We sat down and after 10 minutes we were joined by about 7 other people from our program. Because there are so few boys on our program, this group of about 15 of us seated on the grass happened to be all girls. We quickly started talking about boys, couples, and french PDA. One of the French students was with us and she said it's worse in the summer because there are couples all over the place holding hands or kissing and it stinks if you're single and you don't want to be. At one point a guy about our age came up and asked in French if anyone had a lighter. No one in our entire large group had a lighter, because none of us smoke. I bet in a group of 15 french people there would be several people with lighters able to help this guy out.

While we were sitting down I realized I'd lost my bracelet at some point during the evening. It was big on my wrist and had fallen off in class once before, but I thought that was because I hadn't clasped it well enough. I tried not to feel too upset about it; if it was too big for me already then it was going to fall off of my wrist at some point. I looked at the time on my phone and it was already 1am. Time flew by! I was starting to get cold..and I hadn't gone to the bathroom since before we left the dorm. We all got up and headed back to our dorm/home-stays. On the way I saw this poster:

It's funny because in french class on Thursday (after our test) our teacher Anita showed us a few youtube videos to help us practice our french. One of them was an ad for "Nespresso," some coffee brand. George Clooney was in the commercial and the entire thing was in english with french subtitles. I raised my hand.

"Anita? Was this a French ad, aired only in France?"

"Yes!"

"So..but it was in english? And it was meant to have subtitles?"

"Yep!"

"Oh..right..mk.."

Can you imagine if it was normal to have commercials in the U.S. in french with english subtitles? I mean, I'm down..but..I feel like a lot of people would be all, "wtf!?"

Thus ends my Saturday evening. It was a ton of fun, the city was vibrant and pulsing. We were amazed at how many people came out for the art festival. I think Paris is at its most beautiful at night. A few of us are planning to take a nighttime boat ride before it gets too cold.

Peace out! Love,

Hillary