Ma Journée de Patrimoine: Part 2

"Instrument/Monument: A contextual creation in free space, this spectacular 'concert of architecture' was written for and on the campus of the University. Rendez-vous: métro Jusieu."

Thanks, Mairie de Paris, that's very helpful.

So at six o'clock I'm standing in this gray square on the Left Bank, with no sign in sight and no officious-looking people standing anywhere, convinced I had misread something because where was the performance? Was I supposed to walk somewhere? Was there a secret signal I missed? The only indication that I hadn't gloriously messed up was that minute by minute a larger and larger crowd of people were amassing around me, who seemed equally lost and confused. I felt at one with my fellow man as we all milled about in confusion and possibly a little dismay, as the sky began to yawn and little dribbles of rain fell from its mouth. Drip, drip, clang. Drip, bang, drip, wait, what?

Stranger and stranger noises began coming from all around us, clangs and bangs and metallic chinks. A kid standing on the grates of the metro looked down with confusion, thinking that might be part of the performance. Heads craned to find the sources of the cacophony (melody?) and then suddenly from around corners and inside buildings and even, it seemed, from within the crowd itself, they came into sight.

The first figure I was was a man done up in black and white, like a mime in razzle dazzle camouflage, with dark glasses and a blind man's stick banging against the street. Then more: a woman on rollerskates with a bucket of liquid nitrogen pouring behind her like an exhaust tail; a conductor with a stovepipe hat on his head and Mad Hatter glasses. All of them were wearing mics--but it was their bodies, not their voices, whose movements were amplified. They clangingly meandered over to the chainlink barrier of the University center, and then onto and over it, pulling out hooks and carabiners and banging against everything in sight the whole time, the buildings becoming drums and climbing walls together. And then the gate opened and we followed them inside, and that's when things got wild.

Lights! Smoke! Fireworks! Halfway through the show, the courtyard lit up to reveal an alien sculptural garden bathed in neon light, against which the performers proceeded to whack their instruments (sticks, steel brushes, hands) with aplomb.

And then the sky opened up and someone came out of it!

I was also amused to see that post-it note art in office windows is a universal phenomenon: behind the aerial acrobatics you just might be able to make out a Pacman on his lunch break.

Who would've thought Paris would make such a good instrument? Neon lights, hooks and highline wires, percussion, what's not to love? A pretty good start to my Saturday night. It seems like this group has been around for quite a few years, traveling around the world and making noise against whatever large objects they can find. This video gives you a pretty good idea of what the performance was like:



After that, the best way to finish my night? Hopping on the métro to the Champs Elysée and walking in the rain--squish squish in the puddles--to the Grand Palais for an equally bizarre interactive art experience involving balloons and bicycles.

You'll have to forgive the poor image quality on these, as it is difficult to take pictures in a building the size of a warehouse, lit only by large bicycle-powered balloons. Dynamo Fukushima was dedicated to the victims of the nuclear accident in Japan, each pedal pump an act of solidarity recorded on a big screen at the back of the Palais. It was touching to take my seat on a bicycle, joining a circle of a dozen other people, all of us pedaling for the same reason.

Yann Toma, the artist behind the installation, is kind of an odd fellow. In the nineties he decided to buy the name and the rights to the defunct electrical company Ouest Lumière, which then became the inspiration for a series of bizarre installations that seem to take everything you'd associate with an electrical company as thei starting point: light, energy, networks, industrial production, bureaucracy. The book I skimmed about him says that he's President for Life of Ouest Lumière, but I'm pretty sure his salary is derived exclusively from the sale of the little signed lightbulbs available in the giftshop, which start at twenty euros for a light the size of my pinky.

At one point I was the only one left pedaling at my balloon, but I was pleased to find that it was still lighting up quite nicely. I wish I'd brought a book with me so I could read and pedal at the same time, but I'll have to save that for when I rewire the electricity of my own house to a row of bicycles. (Sorry, housemates!)