Nuit Blanche 2004

An article (Paris/"Nuit blanche": 300 artistes, September 19) from France 2 Cultural News previews the next major cultural event in Paris (see my post on last weekend's National Patrimony Days): the Nuit Blanche. Inaugurated only in 2002 by the new mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, three hundred artists will provide all-night diversion in 130 locations throughout the Paris region on October 2. The celebration has a budget of, wait for it, 1.15 million € [$1.42 million], with 500,000€ from private sponsors. It has also spread to Rome (the Romans just held theirs, on September 18), Brussels, and Montréal.

Music has a place, with a concert of foghorns on the Seine, voice-instrument dialogues in the Buttes-Chaumont, DJs adding sound to film at the Bourse, and a children's chorus in front of the Opéra. Some other surprises that are planned include "Danseurs de surface," a choreographed ballet of street-cleaning machines, designed by Anatoli Vlassov et Julie Salgues at the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad; "Vertiges," six dancers suspended in the air all night on ropes and trapezes, at the old Hôpital Saint-Lazare; "24 heures Foucault," a program of events at the Palais de Tokyo for the 20th anniversary of Foucault's death; and "Crème de singe," an installation/happening by the art collective Donuts, in which virtual apes try to escape from zoo cages all night long, in the shope windows at Printemps.

It sounds like fun, which is the whole idea.