Nuit Blanche

By staying awake all the night, Parisians celebrate French culture with a bit of fun...

Throughout Paris' center, all the museums, private and public art galleries and other cultural institutions offer free admission to all, with the downtown core of a city itself being turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art), themed social gatherings, and other activities. It lasts from sundown til sun-up and happens once a year. As this was the case, several assistants, myself and Jill decided to hit up the event in true expatriate style.


We met up on the Pont de l'Archeveque for a nice agenda planning and some wine drinking. As you can tell from the following pictures, Jill has majored in the art of drinking wine while outside.


She is in fact a double black belt specializing in the removal of every last drop.


After about an hour and a half of "bavarding", a french word that basically means sitting around and chatting, we decided to get a'moving. Off we were to Notre Dame, a convenient 5 minute walk away where we were treated to the lovely sounds of classical music for about half an hour.


Afterwards, I decided to pull a Mary Poppins or an exotic dancer, your choice, and spin nicely around a lamppost.


At this point, Mae was desperate. Desperate and cranky for a crepe. So I, the fearless leader led us to the crepe salvation, which happened to be right at the entrance of the famous Centre Pompidou. After devouring the most delicious fast food ever offered to the world, us girls headed into the modern art gallery to reflect on the deep philosophical meanings behind the artwork.

For instance, Phil and Lucy are looking into the deepness of this deep blue canvas and trying to figure out why in the world it is classified as modern art, as they could do it.



Here, I recreate the traditional hunchback Mexican bride's position for her marriage. The face represents her constipation at the thought of marriage.



This myriad of faces caused Jill, Philly and myself to attempt to replicate the pain and sorrow we saw in this one man's many faces. Please note: Philly's expressive use of teeth.


Here is possibly the best example of a modern art piece in the Centre Pompidou. You see the phallic imagery chasing the man. It obviously expresses his homophobic tendencies as he is fleeing the mean manly symbols that chase him.


Here you see Philly and my interpretation. I am the homophobic man and Philly is the phallic imagery in hot pursuit.


Once again, Jill and I were inspired by the faces of the Centre Pompidou and couldn't hold back the expressions that just took over our faces.


Here we are leaving the Centre Pompidou, at this point, Philly and Lucy will leave us for a 2 hour adventure to their home which is only 20 minutes away. Apparently this involves the wrong train and some creepy frenchmen... how typical.


After our contemporary art adventures, Jill and I made an executive decision to bike down to the Eiffel Tower. It was 3 am at this point. It took us about 20 minutes to arrive there, but it was well worth it. I think 3 am is one of the only times you can be at the Eiffel tower without thousands of other people. You get to just enjoy this massive piece of construction without the creepy keychain salespeople who stalk you around constantly begging you to buy something.




We biked back and immediately crashed, as to get to my house one must bike the dreaded hill. So needless to say, we both were about dead once we managed to go up the 6 flights to my tiny room.