Nuit Blanche

I took the camera out last night for one of the most visually arresting evenings Paris has to offer - contemporary art festival Nuit Blanche - so here's some of the highlights.
This spooky figure appeared on the balcony of the theatre where contemporary art legend Christian Boltanski showed, bellowing out unintelligible instructions to the hour-long queue outside. Those patient enough were rewarded with a truly eerie experience, finding yourself on the stage of the theatre while various bestial figures moved in the murky interior and a shadowy prophetess intoned portensions of the apocalypse 'Tomorrow there will be no morning and the sky will run with blood....' that drew heavily on both Greek myth and Biblical imagery.

Antoine Bertin attached microphones to weather balloons he then sent up into the Paris sky, leaving headphones on the ground for spectators to hear the sounds of the Paris night distorted and reflected back - buskers, kids driving around blasting out rap music, and also what sounded like more intimate things - crying, arguing couples, fighting cats. Magical.

The Italian artist Marcello Maloberti processed a series of ceramic tiger heads through town and then threw them down in a ruined amphitheatre and invited spectators to stamp on and destroy them - brilliant acoustics, possibly an interesting comment on the public's tendency to chew up culture and spit it out...

The Quebecois collective BGL addressed the themes of deforestation and the waste of resources - by creating a plastic forest in a gym and then burning it down. Rather literal, but it looked spellbinding.