Košice won’t be sleeping the first Saturday in October

White Night/Nuit Blanche 2012 offers 40 artistic installations and 150 artists

The traditional slogan of the White Night/Nuit Blanche event, which invites visitors to the streets of night-time Košice for the third time is once again: “We guarantee you won’t fall asleep”. Thirty light, sound and special installations featuring interactive and mobile works of art and sculptures as well as mapping, dance and musical improvisation delivered by 150 artists from nine European countries guarantee a unique atmosphere during a night illuminated by light on 6 October 2012.

The current year’s version of White Night offers a diverse palette of the latest trends in modern visual arts according to its curator and dramaturge Zuzana Pacáková. Thanks to this event, relative young Slovak art has the opportunity to confront art from the neighbouring Visegrad 4 group countries, as well as from more traditional bastions of European art such as France, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Switzerland. “Last year there were three, and this year there are more than forty invited artists from abroad. This fact is a confirmation of what seemed like a dream back in 2010 has become a reality,” said Pacáková. 

Košice has become an accepted partner among foreign artists thanks to its title of European Capital of Culture 2013 and it has been successful in inviting renowned artists to the eastern part of Slovakia. Young French artist Elise Morin, who has and continues to exhibit in Paris, is just one of the forty foreign artists who will appear in Košice this year. Her original spatial light installation Water Carrier with strong ecological undertones is being prepared on the Mlynsky nahon waterway.

According to Pacáková, who managed to help bring the project to Košice in 2010 while still a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, the organizers try and enhance the White Night program with something new every year. This year offers specialized works of art and a program for children in addition to spreading the activities out into the wider centre of the city. A third new feature of this year’s event is the permanent mark thath the White Night will leave in the city in the form of the work prepared by Dušan Zahoranský. His sculpture is a spatial play on words named “Doma, Otthon, Kher, Nhá…” and will be located in the Kuzmányho neighbourhood.

“He used broken and unusable carpet dusting racks as a symbol of the neighbourhood in order to remind us that a neighbourhood is home and the place where a majority of Košice’s residents live. His sculpture is functional and will correspond in shape and proportion to the exterior environment while remaining in this public space as the author’s gift to the city,” added Pacáková. A service previously unavailable to visitors will be mobile applications providing GPS navigation as well as detailed descriptions of the individual works of art. Growing interest in this prestigious project has been confirmed by its exceptional interest among visitors from Hungary. Special buses have been prepared to bring visitors from the partner city of Miskolc to White Night in Košice. 

“White Night, as one of the key events in the European Capital of Culture 2013 project, brings together the synergy of two exceptional brands in conjunction with the International Peace Marathon in Košice. Both events offer a tremendous opportunity to grab the attention of the Slovak and international cultural and sporting public, which is why we expect that it will be a strong impulse for stimulating tourism over the long term for our city and the entire region,“ said the Director of the Košice – European Capital of Culture 2013 non-profit organization Ján Sudzina.

White Night/Nuit Blanche is a European project that originated in Paris 10 years ago.
The project is the materialization of the desire to (re)discover the urban environment using art to uncover a new dimension. Many cultural and public spaces open their doors to the wider public and prepare atypical cultural events. The city becomes an open space full of art that is available to all. Since 2002, the White Night event has enjoyed tremendous interest from visitors. The event has spread from Paris to other major cities including Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Riga, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, Los Angeles and Toronto. White Night has been held in Košice since 2010. It’s first two years were a huge success among visitors and more than 50,000 visitors were welcomed to the streets of Košice last year.

More about the event, individual installations and authors can be found at: www.biela-noc.sk