Nuit Blanche is back for its 22nd edition! The event - usually held on the 1st Saturday in October - takes place on 1 June 2024. The spotlight will be on projects linked to Overseas France and the Olympic Games.
To mark the occasion, contemporary art will once again be taking to the streets and monuments of Paris during the Nuit Blanche. This major event in the capital's cultural life invites Parisians and tourists alike to discover works by national and international artists, free of charge. Sculptures, projections, concerts and even temporary installations are spread across the four corners of the city and the Paris metropolitan area, for more than 200 artistic projects, plus one in Rouen, and, for the first time, several projects in outer French territories: Guadeloupe, Reunion, New Caledonia...
This year, the artistic direction of Claire Tancons has favoured projects by French artists, originals or residents of overseas territories, or even internationals, during the Nuit blanche. Among the 126 artistic projects in Paris, there were thirteen emblematic projects, including five by women, which emerged from all horizons as part of the carte blanche to Claire Tancons. While the entire Nuit blanche 2024 has the Cultural Olympiad label, an ambitious artistic and cultural programme designed to bring sport and culture together on a national scale before, during and after the Olympic and Paralympic Games, three emblematic projects stand out in particular.
A processional performance in three movements
© Simon Gérard
On Saturday 1 June, from 9.30pm to midnight, artist Kenny Dunkan is organising a wandering performance between the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville (4th arrondissement) and the Place de la République (3rd arrondissement). Somewhere between a Creole carnival and a celebration of skateboarding, the Guadeloupe-born artist is highlighting the libertarian and festive dimension of this urban sport.
Place de la République - Place de la République, Paris 3
Parvis de l'Hôtel de Ville - Parvis de l'Hôtel de Ville, Paris 4
Saturday 1 June 2024, from 9.30pm to midnight
Textile and video installation
© Stéfan Korte
On Sunday 2 June from 7pm to 2am, Guyanese artist Tabita Rézaire's textile and video installation in the Jardin de l'Hôpital de la Pitié Salpêtrière (13th arrondissement) will highlight the practical and spiritual skills of Guyanese midwives and dyers. The gentleness and ancestral knowledge are presented as a remedy to colonial and modern logic.
Jardin de l'hôpital de la Pitié Salpêtrière - 83 boulevard de l'Hôpital, Paris 13
From Saturday 1 to Sunday 2 June 2024, Saturdays from 7pm to 2am
Performance, installation and video
© Évrard Chaussoy
From Saturday 1 June to Sunday 2 June, two 45-minute performances in the Parc Marcel Bleustein Blanchet, also known as the Parc de la Turlure (18th arrondissement), at 10.30pm and 12.45am, will see Polynesian artist and researcher Orama Nigou embody the divine entity Rūmia. This performance, which reflects on the loss of traditions and endangered feathered species, gives way to an installation that can be viewed until 2am.
Parc Marcel Bleustein Blanchet known as Parc de la Turlure - 1 rue de la Bonne, Paris 18
From Saturday 1 to Sunday 2 June 2024, Saturdays from 10.30pm to 0.45am
Choreographic and musical performance with performance reading
© Valentine Magendie
On Saturday 1 June, from 10.30pm to 11pm and again from 11.30pm to midnight, three generations of artists of Martinican origin will be combining their talents as readers, musicians, choreographers and dancers at the Théâtre de la Ville - Sarah Bernhardt (IVe) to put on a performance combining dance, music and a reading of Frantz Fanon. They explore the psychosomatic consequences of colonial trauma to the rhythm of the ka, a Creole drum.
Théâtre de la Ville - Sarah Bernhardt - 2 place du Châtelet, Paris 4
Saturday 1 June 2024, 10.30pm to 11pm
Saturday 1 June 2024, 11.30pm to midnight
Musical, choreographic and theatrical performance
© Christophe Raynaud de Lage
From Saturday 1 June to Sunday 2 June, from 7pm to 2am, the Square Louise Michel (18th arrondissement) will be the setting for Abdelwaheb Sefsaf's musical, choreographic and theatrical performance retracing the intertwined destinies of the Communards, Kabyle and Kanak rebels of the late 19th century in their exile in New Caledonia. With the Sacré-Coeur Basilica in the background and the monumental sculpture of the skull of the warrior Ataï, the show aims for excess and crushing.
Square Louise Michel - 6 Place Saint-Pierre, Paris 18
From Saturday 1 to Sunday 2 June 2024, Saturdays from 7pm to 2am
Theatrical and musical performance
© Stéphanie Coudert
From Saturday 1 June to Sunday 2 June, from 7pm to 0.15am, at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (IVe), the musical and theatrical performance Lucioles asks a cast of multicultural actors and creators to immerse the spectator in the issues of migration of peoples, diasporisation or atomisation of the living. The troupe, led by Astrid Bayiha and based on an original idea by Claire Tancons, gives two performances lasting 1 hour 15 minutes.
Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris - 24 Rue Pavée, Paris 4
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 9.15pm to 10.30pm, Sunday 2 June 2024 from midnight to 1.15am
Painting, installation and performance
© Pio Abad
From Saturday 1 June to Sunday 2 June 2024, from 9.45pm to 2am in the Arènes de Montmartre (18th arrondissement), American artist Edgar Arceneau, a Californian resident and descendant of a long line of Creoles, will be enlightening the public about the French experience in the Americas and questioning diasporic movements in a pictorial and theatrical performance.
Arènes de Montmartre - 25, rue de Chappe, Paris 18
Saturday 1 to Sunday 2 June 2024, Saturday from 11pm to 2am
Saturday 1st June 2024 from 9.45pm to 11pm
A processional performance in three movements
© Claire Delannoy / Courtesy of Raphaël Barontini and Mouhameth Ndiaye
On Saturday 1 June, from 9pm to midnight on the Île aux Cygnes (15th arrondissement), artist Raphaël Barontini's three-movement processional performance depicts the battle between the Moon and the Sun, in a battle between two mas groups: the skin drum group Choukaj and the snare drum group Bully Mas. The whole thing forms a processional performance with a Caribbean Afro-futurist aura.
Île aux Cygnes - Allée des Cygnes, Paris 15
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 9pm to midnight
Documentary film
© Laura Henno / Galerie Nathalie Obadia Paris Bruxelles
From Saturday 1 June to Sunday 2 June, from 10pm to 2am, attend the first open-air screening of Laura Henno's film Koropa in the Parc de Belleville (20th arrondissement). Straddling the border between fiction and documentary, we follow Patron, a young boy and apprentice 'Commander', on one of his round-trip crossings from Comoros to Mayotte. Viewers are invited to reflect on the law of the sea as a mirror reflecting their conscience.
Belleville Park - 47 rue des Couronnes, Paris 20
From Saturday 1 to Sunday 2 June 2024, Saturdays from 10pm to 2am
Ambulatory performance
© Marlon Griffith
On Saturday 1 June 2024, in the Parc de Belleville (20th arrondissement) from 6pm to 7pm and again from 8.30pm to 9.30pm, Trinidadian artist and Japanese resident Marlon Griffith will be putting on a wandering performance exploring the issues of water scarcity and the plurality of overseas experiences, drawing on the metaphorical dimension of the Japanese myth of the Kappa, creatures with a slit to preserve or decant the precious mineral resource.
Belleville Park - 47 rue des Couronnes, Paris 20
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 8.30pm to 9.30pm
Saturday 1st June 2024 from 6pm to 7pm
Musical performance and choreographic creation
© William Ward, Lithographie du Chevalier de Saint-George / Mather Brown
On Saturday 1 June, between 7.30pm and 11.20pm, this musical and dance performance will take place four times at the Carreau du Temple (3rd arrondissement). It features the work of Joseph Bologne de Saint-George, an 18th-century man-at-arms, master of music, foilist and violinist of Guadeloupean origin who was adulated by the Enlightenment. This original creation invites us to reflect on the singular destiny of an extraordinary man, thanks to the work of French violinist of Guadeloupean origin Romuald Grimbert-Barré and Guyanese choreographer and dancer Johana Malédon.
Le Carreau du Temple - 4 rue Eugène Spuller, Paris 3
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 10.45pm to 11.20pm
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 9.40pm to 10.15pm
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 8.30pm to 9.05pm
Saturday 1st June 2024 from 19h30 to 20h05
Choreographic creation
© Cédric Demaison
On Saturday 1 June, from 8 to 9pm and then from 11pm to midnight, in the Square du Palais Galliera - Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris (16th arrondissement), choreographer Soraya Thomas presents her new creation, a deconstruction of the hegemonic image of the Western man through a reversal of sartorial diktats, during a fashion show with a punk spirit.
Palais Galliera Square - Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris - 14 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris 16
Saturday 1 June 2024 from 8pm to 9pm
Sunday 2 June 2024 from midnight to 1am
Mural and performance
© Emile Ouroumov
On Saturday 1 June from 7pm to midnight, the gardens of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac will be the setting for monumental frescoes and cut-outs by Guadeloupean poet Ronald Cyrille, recounting the bestiary of Creole folklore where anthromorphic and zoomorphic figures clash to the rhythm of ka drums and gwo ka dancing.
Gardens of the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac - 29 quai Jacques Chirac, Paris 7
Saturday 1st June 2024 from 7pm to midnight
The All-Nighter isn't just in Paris! All over the Paris region, some thirty towns and cities are vibrating to the rhythm of music, dance, theatre and sport, with a total of 143 artistic projects! These include the opera Terre, air, feu : Acte II by Maxime Rossi, at the MABA art centre in Nogent-sur-Marne, a multi-sensory and participatory work that revisits the space of the hairdresser's salon in Overseas France; Match-performance by Julia Borderie at the Mairie d'Ivry, offering an unprecedented mix of genres between sculpture and basketball; and Nathan Paulin with "Les Traceurs ", a poetic immersion in the world of acrobats at the Hangar Y in Meudon.
