23rd edition of Nuit Blanche
June 1–2, 2024
Nuit Blanche is the City of Paris’s all-night signature event, an ever-expanding free art program reaching out to the Greater Metropolitan area and the cities of Le Havre and Rouen along the River Seine, which has spun a global movement in Europe, North America and Asia.
For its 23rd edition, leading up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Nuit Blanche 2024 is expanding further to include Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique, Réunion and Polynesia, making it its largest edition ever. Titled Polygonal/e, a pun on so-called hexagonal France, Nuit Blanche 2024 highlights global connections and traces diasporic oceanic routes across centuries.
Under the artistic direction of Claire Tancons, Nuit Blanche 2024: Polygonal/e, centers artists who address the perils of the postcolonial and post-national present, under conditions of resource scarcity in Marlon Griffith’s WE WILL NOT BOW, a deambulatory performance in homage to Mayotte in the Parc de Belleville; from colonial memories with Abdelwaheb Sefsaf’s Kaldûn requiem ou le pays invisible, a musical performance at the foot of Montmartre’s Sacré Cœur reminiscing New Caledonia’s penal colonies, and Edgar Arceneaux’s The Mirror Is You featuring Alex Barlas, which takes inspiration from his family’s French colonial roots from Acadia to Louisiana; and with rituals of recovery, with Tabita Rezaire’s monumental video installation on traditional prenatal care, L’art de naître, and Orama Nigou’s interpretation of ancient Polynesian funerary rites in Cycle de Rūmia, Acte 3, Ōivi no Rūmia.
Totaling fourteen, among which twelve new commissions in Paris and one in Rouen, with over two-hundred actors, dancers, musicians, performers, and athletes, Nuit Blanche 2024: Polygonal/e, bears witness to France storied overseas history, partly enshrined in Paris’ toponymy. To the East, completing the reflection on Mayotte is Laura Henno’s Koropa, a filmic meditation on migration in the Comoros; to the West are Ronald Cyrille’s L’Antre-deux, showing the transmutation of slavery-era memories in creole folktales at Musée du Quai Branly; Raphaël Barontini’s Déboulé céleste, a processional performance of unsung heroes on l’Île aux Cygnes, at the center of La Seine, at the foot of the replica of the Statue of Liberty, and Soraya Thomas’ Les Jupes, a caustic reflection on white masculinity at Palais Galliera; while Kenny Dunkan’s WÉLÉLÉ !!!, a skateboard ride tuned to tropical night sounds will be building steam towards Place de la République. In Rouen, Gwladys Gambie’s Zumbi, the figure of a coconut tree spirit on stilts, warns of ecological dangers. Last but not least, in Paris Centre, three major collaborative projects, Lucioles, by Astrid Bayiha with Délie Andjembe and Stéphanie Coudert; I CAN(‘t) BREATHE by Jean-François Boclé with Julien Boclé and Thierry Pécou; and Saint-George en Mouvement(s): Chevalier virtuose, directed by Johana Malédon with Romuald Grimbert-Barré, revisit, restore, and restitute texts by Patrick Chamoiseau and Frantz Fanon and partitions by Chevalier de Saint-George respectively, so that the rediscovery of radical pasts can lead to the recovery of otherwise elusive presents.
Completing Nuit Blanche 2024 are 113 projects from the Associated Programs, including Julie Coulon’s Ring of My Dreams, Lola Perez-Guettier’s Et Tender ? –Tender and Araks Sahakyan’s Archéologies d’une mémoire glacée as well as more than 130 artistic projects from the Greater Metropolitan area, such as Violaine Lochu’s ULTRANOX, LABELLE, Ariel Tintar, Maria Kamaty and Ritual Riots’ Voyages entre les îles de la Réunion, de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe, and livestreaming from the studios of three artists from Réunion, Martinique and Guadeloupe, Vincent Mengin-Lecreulx, Raymond Médélice, and Chantéléa Commin, organized by the City of Cachan.
Curator
Claire Tancons’s curatorial contributions spans from Prospect. 1 New Orleans, Gwangju Biennale 08 and Sharjah Biennial 14 to Faena Art, Tate Modern and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Her work features in Global Curators Speak, forthcoming at Sternberg Press.
Support
Nuit Blanche 2024 is made possible thanks to major support from LVMH, Bloomberg Philantropies and the Olympiade culturelle as part of Paris 2024.
Press
Inquiries can be made to Augustin Hassoux, augustin.hassoux [at] paris.fr.
