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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 16:39:05 GMT
Last night was the famous Nuit Blanche in Paris, and the weather was perfect. Frankly, I thought it was a little too perfect because it stayed warm all through the evening, but I cover a lot of ground, so I got seriously overheated from time to time. It was still 17° near midnight, which feels more like 27° when you are running around and riding bikes. The first order of business was to pick up a programme from one of the stands, and such a stand was only one block from where I live. On top of that, the stand opened at 18:00 while the Nuit Blanche didn't start until 19:00, which gave me time to plot some strategy. The staff were amused when I said that yes I have a smartphone but no, I am incapable of downloading or using the app that was created. They gave me a paper map, but I saw a pallette of real programmes behind them that they had not yet opened. Studying the map, I saw that one end of one of the itineraries was on the grassy plain in front of the Millénaire shopping mall in Aubervilliers, and it sounded pretty spectacular. "Lasers and an electro-acoustic composition invite you to watch and listen to the stars by pointing out successively hundreds of objects of which some have been sending us their light in return for 15 billion years."
I have a local bus that takes me to the Millénaire, so I jumped on it and arrived there around 19:15. Here is the information stand in my neighbourhood.  Anyway, I am an idiot, because night had not fallen by then, so obviously the event had not started. So as not to make my trip a total loss, I went into the mall to pee in their fascinating high tech toilets, and then I took the free electric river shuttle to the Corentin Cariou metro station. Normally it stops when the mall closes, but tonight it was running until 2 a.m. Once I was on the boat, I was determined to return later that night because the setting was magnificent. There were about 200 chaises longues on the grass and a number of mysterious black boxes ready to start spraying the universe with lasers.  I managed to just get a furtive photo of one of the black boxes as we cruised by.  The Forêt Linéaire (thin forest) was listed as one of things to see in the area, which made me smile because it has already been there for two years. I have photographed it numerous times already but have not posted a report here, because it is not "ready." A forest needs time to grow, even a linear thin one. But at least here a two pictures of it. It is just a tiny strip between a bunch of BNP Paribas office buildings and the périphérique expressway. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 16:51:06 GMT
This is such a radical development that they have painted destinations on the pavement.  In front of the local UGC Ciné Cité, there were 3 food trucks. Food trucks were integrated into the Nuit Blanche this year, and the could be found at all major locations.  Inside the park that has replaced a demolished Claude Bernard hospital was one of the installations. The theme of the Nuit Blanche this year was ecology and climate change, so a lot of the events were in reference to this.  Nearby was the tunnel under the new Rosa Parks RER station which won't open until December. I had seen the workers frantically preparing something over the last couple of weeks, but I didn't know that it was to get the underpass open in time for the Nuit Blanche. I also saw them ripping up a lot of old rails from the Petite Ceinture, but now a lot of things have been planted there, so that is good news. |
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Post by mich64 on Oct 4, 2015 17:42:37 GMT
I imagine the Food trucks seen a brisk business. Was there a good variety of choices? They look very different from the ones here. The choices are very limited here, fries, hot dogs, hamburgers, and of course, poutine.
Looking forward to your return to Aubervilliers!
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Post by fumobici on Oct 4, 2015 18:45:25 GMT
Nice to see this report kicking off, I'm looking forward to it.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 19:05:45 GMT
Was there a good variety of choices? They look very different from the ones here. The choices are very limited here, fries, hot dogs, hamburgers, and of course, poutine. I am not a food truck customer, although I like to look at them. Here it seems as though every food truck tries to do something original that the other food trucks don't do -- Thai food, meatballs, African dishes, soup, grains, noodles, grilled items... and yes, there are some that do burgers and hot dogs. All of the many food trucks that I saw last night when they were grouped together like that photo of the three of them were clearly organised to sell totally different food from each other. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 19:16:50 GMT
After taking the tram from Rosa Parks to Porte de la Chapelle, I had no choice but to visit the various things next door to where I live. The adjacent and connecting churches Saint Denys-de-la-Chapelle and Basilique-Sainte Jeanne-d'Arc had a few installations inside. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 21:39:49 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 5, 2015 2:14:45 GMT
Great momentum to this story and as soon as you got inside the CentQuatre the visual excitement really amped up. Love that floaty cloud thing that looks like giant chenille, the holes for the Albert Hall, & the water photos followed by that mirror is killer. Greatly looking forward to more.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2015 5:42:05 GMT
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Post by lugg on Oct 5, 2015 9:31:43 GMT
This is great - your comment about the children makes me wonder is a family friendly event? I especially like the water photos and that has given me an idea to create something similar with some of my own photos. Literally winced when I saw the broken glass cube. I think I would have been nervous walking past those totems. Looking forward to more.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2015 11:29:24 GMT
I was amazed at the number of families with small children (ages 4-8) still out past midnight all over the place. People look forward to this all year, and since many of the installations are in schools, I'm sure it makes the children even more excited when they see things being set up ahead of time.
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Post by mossie on Oct 5, 2015 14:07:51 GMT
One of the things that I love about art is that you can glue some bricks together, damage them a little, and we will take pictures of it.
You might but not for me. I thought Cent Quatre would come up with some wacky stuff and wasn't disappointed |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2015 14:39:35 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 5, 2015 16:28:42 GMT
So MUCH visual excitement. I like the people in giraffe and chicken masks standing over the map. It could mean so many things, but made me think of various world leaders blindly carrying out their agendas with no regard for the people on their political maps.
I thought you got some good angles of the ice blocks, but really loved the crowd scene photo right afterwards.
The blue wave is magnificent! So many people line up to see it, too. You said that people look forward to this all year and that there are installations in schools. How are things like the wave promoted? It would have to be something visual to attract so many people -- television?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2015 17:39:45 GMT
The blue wave is magnificent! So many people line up to see it, too. You said that people look forward to this all year and that there are installations in schools. How are things like the wave promoted? It would have to be something visual to attract so many people -- television? Obviously, there is plenty of media coverage in the press (television only shows some of it the next day). Most of the daily papers devote at least two pages to it and publish a map of the "biggies." And naturally, there is also the website. All Parisians know now that the Nuit Blanche is the first Saturday of October and just about everybody has seen one of the big installations, even if only by accident. But these things excite the imagination, so even though most people look for things close to where they live, Parisians like to go out on Saturday night if it is not pouring rain. In that last photograph, you can actually see almost the beginning of the queue on the right, and the people on the left are in the same queue, which turned around at the building at the far end. When I saw that, I felt extremely clever for having found a secret entrance. Anyway, it was about half past midnight so I waited for the bus that would take me to the Mairie of the 18th arrondissement, made even more attractive by the fact that it would bring me closer to home. "Minimalist and spectacular, Projet Fantôme plunges us into the heart of a phantasmagorical universe that invites us to abandon all certainties while carressing us with the sound of the trumpet of Erik Truffaz."There was a huge queue to get in, but I joined it anyway and I was right to do so. There were shows about every 30 minutes, and they were just going in when I arrived. I just made the cut-off point. Unfortunately, there was a big sign that said "Magic is fragile. No photos or videos." People were lying on the floor in the atrium (3 stories tall) of the mairie, or sitting on the steps, or leaning against the wall. Probably about 200 people were admitted per session. This was the 1 a.m. show. A man walked to the middle of the room and slowly unwrapped a ragged piece of plastic, more or less the kind that covers items from the dry cleaner. He threw it into the air a few times and it floated down slowly, and then he took it upstairs. It suddenly glowed with a light inside and started flying around up and down and to every corner of the room. Did I take any forbidden photos? No, I did not. So you will just have to watch my forbidden video images, which are not very good but which will give you an idea of this simple little yet delightful show. I would not have made a video either, but I saw that at least 10% of the spectators were taking photos with absolutely no intervention by any authorities even though there were at least a dozen security people in the room. But everybody seemed very careful -- I think the main thing they were worried about were flashes that would have revealed the wires that absolutely had to be there, but there was not a single flash, and it was definitely not a drone. Even though the first thing that flew around was more massive, the thing I filmed was extremely small and could never have been autonomous. Okay, I'll admit it. I had given up all hope of going to see the lasers shooting the stars in Aubervilliers by then, because my legs had become bloody stumps by now. I decided to drag myself along to Ground Control, where a theatrical event and intermittent concerts were supposed to continue until 7 a.m. Ground Control is an ephemeral event centre that changes location every six months, and at the moment it is right next to my local graffiti wall. I looked at it a bit wistfully but just thought, "It is getting close to 2 a.m. and I am old." And my apartment was only 300 metres away, so I went home and went to bed. I'm sorry. I'll try to do better next time, because I missed so much! Anyway, here is the video to give you an idea of some of this stuff in motion.
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Post by bjd on Oct 5, 2015 19:09:08 GMT
I'm not always keen on a lot of installation art, but some of the light things, as well as the trumpetist with the little white plastic thing floating around seem like fun.
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Post by lugg on Oct 6, 2015 17:56:04 GMT
The blue wave is awesome , thank you for showing us this, hope your bloody stumps have recovered .
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Post by tod2 on Oct 12, 2015 7:38:30 GMT
That was awesome Kerouac! I did look for signs pointing to where I could possibly find some Nuit Blanche entertaiment but as I was feeling really ill (due to what I don't know , except I thought it could be the chinese dish I had earlier), I wasn't looking too hard. I put myself to bed - where Nuit Blanche took on a whole new meaning......
Thank you for your sterling effort in bringing us such delightful photos and the video was the cherry on the top!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2015 18:18:12 GMT
Maison fond (house melt) was inaugurated for the Nuit Blanche on the esplanade in front of Gare du Nord. It is supposed to be a permanent fixture to remind us of global warming and will probably be the object of comments when the Cop 21 people come for the environmental conference in November. I still need to get some photos of it at night, because it has curtains in the windows and furniture inside that you can basically only see at night.
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