Métroscope Saint-Martin Prototype from Guiguet Naïla on Vimeo.
Today, as I was crushed against the door of the Métro by around 50 other sardines, trying to think of anything but the smell of the armpit next to my face, several possible distractions ran through my mind. These included; whether the strike that caused this hassle was worth it, what the French word for ‘squashed’ was, my life plan… Then as the train travelled between République and Strasbourg-Saint-Denis I had a flashback of what I had seen there a few weeks ago.
On the first Saturday of October it was Nuit Blanche, which translates into English as ‘white night’ and basically means an ‘all-nighter’. You can have a nuit blanche whenever you want, traditionally involving cheap cocktails, dancing and giggling, but this nuit blanche is a marathon for art-lovers.
Any Parisian museum or gallery worth going to organises a free event for Nuit Blanche. All over the city you can enjoy performance art, video projections, action painting, you name it, it will be on all night. I was of course there like a shot but sadly peaked early and didn’t make it all the way to the 6am free breakfast at the town hall. Despite the fun I had it’s taken me this long to write about it thanks to the stinking cold I had; probably caught from someone I was squished next to on the Métro.
Métroscope was the art performance that today’s sweaty journey reminded me of. The stage was set at Saint-Martin, an abandoned station on line 9 between République and Strasbourg-Saint-Denis. Closed during the WWII, presumably because it’s two minutes walk from it’s neighbouring stations, the stop has recently been used for smarty-pants advertising installations and Métroscope was for the first time (and let’s hope not the last) it had been used for an art performance.
For six hours of Nuit Blanche the station was transformed into a stage by students of L’École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (school for decorative arts) for a dance performance of poetry using letters formed by giant bat wings. Inspired by the work of Muybridge and Marey, pioneers of recording movement through photography, there was also a touch of Tim Burton macabre about it.
The train passenger-audience got a glimpse of the performance for just a few seconds, yet to the viewer the experience seemed like several minutes. The combination of the wind tunnel, the eerie lighting and the repetitive sound of the train gave it the feel of a dream or memory sequence from a film. The fact that we were watching this from a train window rather than in a theatre brought the sense that you were either imagining it or watching something you shouldn’t be.
I’m just thankful that today, this beautiful memory sidetracked me enough to get through to my final stop without passing out!
On the first Saturday of October it was Nuit Blanche, which translates into English as ‘white night’ and basically means an ‘all-nighter’. You can have a nuit blanche whenever you want, traditionally involving cheap cocktails, dancing and giggling, but this nuit blanche is a marathon for art-lovers.
Any Parisian museum or gallery worth going to organises a free event for Nuit Blanche. All over the city you can enjoy performance art, video projections, action painting, you name it, it will be on all night. I was of course there like a shot but sadly peaked early and didn’t make it all the way to the 6am free breakfast at the town hall. Despite the fun I had it’s taken me this long to write about it thanks to the stinking cold I had; probably caught from someone I was squished next to on the Métro.
Métroscope was the art performance that today’s sweaty journey reminded me of. The stage was set at Saint-Martin, an abandoned station on line 9 between République and Strasbourg-Saint-Denis. Closed during the WWII, presumably because it’s two minutes walk from it’s neighbouring stations, the stop has recently been used for smarty-pants advertising installations and Métroscope was for the first time (and let’s hope not the last) it had been used for an art performance.
For six hours of Nuit Blanche the station was transformed into a stage by students of L’École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (school for decorative arts) for a dance performance of poetry using letters formed by giant bat wings. Inspired by the work of Muybridge and Marey, pioneers of recording movement through photography, there was also a touch of Tim Burton macabre about it.
The train passenger-audience got a glimpse of the performance for just a few seconds, yet to the viewer the experience seemed like several minutes. The combination of the wind tunnel, the eerie lighting and the repetitive sound of the train gave it the feel of a dream or memory sequence from a film. The fact that we were watching this from a train window rather than in a theatre brought the sense that you were either imagining it or watching something you shouldn’t be.
I’m just thankful that today, this beautiful memory sidetracked me enough to get through to my final stop without passing out!
"The Imaginary Historian"
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