In Paris, the first Saturday of October is the Nuit Blanche arts festival.  “Nuit blanche” translates as “white night,” and it is inspired by St Petersburg’s “white nights” when the celebration of arts and culture keeps the population entertained during the summer nights when the sun does not set.  Nuit Blanche in Paris had its 12th annual event our first weekend here, with events in 5 neighborhoods around the city.  The interesting part of this festival is that it starts at 7 pm and goes until 7 am the next morning, with temporary art and cultural events going all night long, and people are out and about very late as they wander about seeing art.  Who knew that art at midnight could be so much fun?

This was a woman at the Swedish Cultural Institute doing ice sculpture carving with a chain saw.

And this was the pop-up pavilion at the Swedish Cultural Istitute. It’s a blow-up building. Seriously. If you look closely, the walls are inflated like balloons.

For 2013, one of the Nuit Blanche neighborhoods was Le Marais.  Our neighborhood.  Excellent!  We were able to wander around and check out some crazy art installations without having to go all over the city.  It was a lot of fun.  If it hadn’t been so dang cold and windy, Chad and I would have stayed out longer than we did.  As it was, we came home around midnight.

Here’s a storefront turned into a temporary art piece with a cartoony collage of technology “stuff.” You can see a black and white cartoon cell phone on the left side, there are also 3 real video screens in the storefront. This one was pretty cool.

These are paper flowers illuminated from within. Nighttime art is all about lighting.

These “ghosts” changed colors as the lighting changed.

And now the ghosts are pink.

Our last “art” visit was to this apartment facade.

It was a fake facade set up in a small plaza.

It was like everyone was home for the evening with their curtains drawn, watching TV, except there was horror movie music playing.  But then when you walked around the side to the back, you saw this:

Scaffolding.  Scaffolding and curtains.  Contempoary art.  Midnight.  Fun.