The annual Nuit Blanche festival brought 12 hours of art to locations across the city.
Art filled the streets and storefronts of Athens in one sleepless night, transforming the city itself into a gallery.
The annual Nuit Blanche festival brought 12 hours of nonstop performance. A packed schedule of artists visited 10 locations to take part in nearly 50 performances. The planned events, which included dance, music and visual art, intermingled with improvised art as attendants turned into participants. The event ran from about 3:05 p.m. Saturday to 3:05 a.m. Sunday.
The nocturnal festival has its beginnings in Paris but has traveled to nearly 120 cities around the world. Meaning “white night” in French, the event aims to share free art with the public for a whole night.
Keith Phetlhe, a graduate student studying African studies and interdisciplinary arts, participated as an artist. As a student from Botswana, Africa, he shared poetry honoring his place of birth.
“It is mainly a poetry that praises,” Phetlhe said.
Poetry has a distinct place in the culture of Botswana. Beginning as an oral tradition, it was used as a way to entertain and inform. In a similar way, Phetlhe’s poetry informed customers at Front Room in Baker Center.
Phetlhe said education and diversity were encouraged through the event. Within one hour at Front Room, Moroccan belly dance, hip-hop improvisation and Phetlhe’s poetry were shared. Similar performances could be seen across campus.
“Someone, I’m sure, came to this event not knowing anything about poetry from Botswana in term of its culture … but this person, from seeing the performance I did, you know, learned something,” Phetlhe said.
Zakes Mda, a professor of English, said he was impressed by the diversity of Nuit Blanche.
“It does a wonderful job exposing the people of Athens to various cultures,” Mda said.
Mda himself displayed that diversity through his series of paintings called “The Man in a Green Blanket.”
The gallery featured art that was created in remembrance of South African miners who were killed by police for striking in 2012. The miners’ leader, Mgcineni Noki, also called Mambush, was known for wearing the green blanket that recurs in each painting.
People were encouraged to not only attend but also to share their own talent.
Daniel Spencer, a graduate student studying an interdisciplinary program in music and English, took part in the event as both a performer and an audience member.
In his first performance, Spencer joined his band Wolfmen in improvising a live score to a silent Japanese film. He also took part in a demonstration of the Ugandan embaire xylophone by Ohio University’s Percussion Ensemble.
After his own performances, Spencer joined as an audience member. He attended Test 1, a live improvisation of cello and dance in Whit’s Frozen Custard. Dancers weaved between tables and chairs, inhabiting a space typically reserved for customers.
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The connection between artist and viewer was a crucial aspect of the festival, Spencer said.
“The performance invaded the viewing space and vice versa,” Spencer said. “In a small festival like this, you see the boundary between performer and audience is very porous.”
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