C
Christopher DeWolf
Guest
Montreal pulls an all-nighter: special "nuit blanche&qu
since toronto will be celebrating its first nuit blanche this summer, i thought i'd give you a taste of what's in store.
on saturday night, montreal held its third annual nuit blanche festival. from sunset to sunrise, 72 distinct cultural activites -- most of them free -- are available all night. they include free access to museums, live art installations, films, comedy, music, outdoor swimming in a heated pool and a lot more (see the full program here.) at 5am there was a free communal breakfast in the atrium of a downtown mall.
last year, my girlfriend and i stayed up the whole night and we decided to do the same this year. we invited some friends along, too. here's an incomplete photographic itinerary of the nuit blanche.
8pm
we all met at the main festival site at place jacques-cartier. nuit blanche is part of the larger highlights festival, which combines three distinct programs of light, gastronomy and dance. i accidentally deleted my photos of the festival site from the all-nighter, so here's a fill-in from earlier that week.
10:30pm
after visiting the montreal science centre and the montreal history centre (which had an exhibition on jazz in montreal and live swing dancing), we headed to chinatown for a bite to eat. this is when i started taking photos in earnest.
stickers on the forehead: it's the latest fashion!
midnight
taking the metro to georges-vanier, we walk through a long tunnel up the ridge to the canadian centre for architecture, which had a "senses of the city" exhibition on urban sounds, smells and textures, live jazz and a live art installation.
1am
after the CCA, we head to bleury street for what was possibly the strangest part of the night: a choreographed snowplow ballet. set to an avant-garde noise soundtrack derived from snowplow sounds, these little sidewalk clearers drove around while dancers, clad in full-body white suits, huddled in the fetal position, spun around wildly, were dragged by the plows and generally renacted some sort of abstract human-snowplow relationship drama.
1:30am
we walked up the street to the belgo building, an old industrial loft building on ste-catherine full of art studios.
one of the studios featured work by julie doucet, a montreal-based artist whose freaky, sex-charged graphic novels, including my new york diary, are pretty well known.
nearby was a dark room in which various people created experimental music. oh, the sounds a bow and a cymbal can make together...
various art-school types congregated within the belgo.
one of the studios was dark "nap room" that featured video installations of people napping. there were also real people napping.
3am
down the street, at place des arts, somebody had their way with this sign.
translation: "dirty rita shits on the thighs of therèse for free."
just who is dirty rita? the person who made rita's dryers, of course!
inside the well-heated dryers, which were lit by translucent jugs of bleach, people sat on upturned laundry baskets and inhaled the fresh scent of clean linens. the sound of a buzzing and rumbling dryer played in the background.
3:30am
nearby, the regular downtown nightlife went on, oblivious to the nuit blanche festivities.
4am
after catching two art exhibits at UQAM (a university), one of which featured an animation of a man peeing/masturbating/doing his lady doggy-style that was projected on a red cloth, the other being a more innocent look at the lives of factory workers in italy, we headed to a crowded teahouse that was serving up free cups of chai.
down the street, life goes on at a 24hr second cup and the all-night depanneur downstairs.
4:45am
we head over to the desjardins complex, where the giant communal breakfast was to be served at 5am. a few thousand people were already in line.
by this point, people were looking kind of tired and grumpy.
5am
the first grateful people get their free food, but only about a dozen people are let in at a time.
some people just couldn't make it.
6am
at last! we were let in and got our heaping plat of breakfast. there were oranges, milk, yogurt, various types of cheeses and a bunch of different types of bread from a local gourmet bakery. i chose raisin bread, a baguette and pain au levain (which is purple and has nuts in it).
we finished after about half an hour and the only two friends remaining with us departed (one of them had just arrived that evening after a vacation in new york, having taken a 7 hour bus ride home. he went kind of crazy at about 3am).
6:40am
a new day dawns!
one of the downsides of trying to get home at dawn on a sunday morning: 30 minute frequencies on our bus.
7:20am
finally, home sweet home. we fell into bed and didn't wake up until 4pm that afternoon.
since toronto will be celebrating its first nuit blanche this summer, i thought i'd give you a taste of what's in store.
on saturday night, montreal held its third annual nuit blanche festival. from sunset to sunrise, 72 distinct cultural activites -- most of them free -- are available all night. they include free access to museums, live art installations, films, comedy, music, outdoor swimming in a heated pool and a lot more (see the full program here.) at 5am there was a free communal breakfast in the atrium of a downtown mall.
last year, my girlfriend and i stayed up the whole night and we decided to do the same this year. we invited some friends along, too. here's an incomplete photographic itinerary of the nuit blanche.
8pm
we all met at the main festival site at place jacques-cartier. nuit blanche is part of the larger highlights festival, which combines three distinct programs of light, gastronomy and dance. i accidentally deleted my photos of the festival site from the all-nighter, so here's a fill-in from earlier that week.
10:30pm
after visiting the montreal science centre and the montreal history centre (which had an exhibition on jazz in montreal and live swing dancing), we headed to chinatown for a bite to eat. this is when i started taking photos in earnest.
stickers on the forehead: it's the latest fashion!
midnight
taking the metro to georges-vanier, we walk through a long tunnel up the ridge to the canadian centre for architecture, which had a "senses of the city" exhibition on urban sounds, smells and textures, live jazz and a live art installation.
1am
after the CCA, we head to bleury street for what was possibly the strangest part of the night: a choreographed snowplow ballet. set to an avant-garde noise soundtrack derived from snowplow sounds, these little sidewalk clearers drove around while dancers, clad in full-body white suits, huddled in the fetal position, spun around wildly, were dragged by the plows and generally renacted some sort of abstract human-snowplow relationship drama.
1:30am
we walked up the street to the belgo building, an old industrial loft building on ste-catherine full of art studios.
one of the studios featured work by julie doucet, a montreal-based artist whose freaky, sex-charged graphic novels, including my new york diary, are pretty well known.
nearby was a dark room in which various people created experimental music. oh, the sounds a bow and a cymbal can make together...
various art-school types congregated within the belgo.
one of the studios was dark "nap room" that featured video installations of people napping. there were also real people napping.
3am
down the street, at place des arts, somebody had their way with this sign.
translation: "dirty rita shits on the thighs of therèse for free."
just who is dirty rita? the person who made rita's dryers, of course!
inside the well-heated dryers, which were lit by translucent jugs of bleach, people sat on upturned laundry baskets and inhaled the fresh scent of clean linens. the sound of a buzzing and rumbling dryer played in the background.
3:30am
nearby, the regular downtown nightlife went on, oblivious to the nuit blanche festivities.
4am
after catching two art exhibits at UQAM (a university), one of which featured an animation of a man peeing/masturbating/doing his lady doggy-style that was projected on a red cloth, the other being a more innocent look at the lives of factory workers in italy, we headed to a crowded teahouse that was serving up free cups of chai.
down the street, life goes on at a 24hr second cup and the all-night depanneur downstairs.
4:45am
we head over to the desjardins complex, where the giant communal breakfast was to be served at 5am. a few thousand people were already in line.
by this point, people were looking kind of tired and grumpy.
5am
the first grateful people get their free food, but only about a dozen people are let in at a time.
some people just couldn't make it.
6am
at last! we were let in and got our heaping plat of breakfast. there were oranges, milk, yogurt, various types of cheeses and a bunch of different types of bread from a local gourmet bakery. i chose raisin bread, a baguette and pain au levain (which is purple and has nuts in it).
we finished after about half an hour and the only two friends remaining with us departed (one of them had just arrived that evening after a vacation in new york, having taken a 7 hour bus ride home. he went kind of crazy at about 3am).
6:40am
a new day dawns!
one of the downsides of trying to get home at dawn on a sunday morning: 30 minute frequencies on our bus.
7:20am
finally, home sweet home. we fell into bed and didn't wake up until 4pm that afternoon.