PARIS AT NIGHT

From aristocratic nights to rave parties, from guinguettes to discos, from street lamp lighters to metro maintenance workers, from the Palais-Royal to amusement parks, from universal exhibitions to trade fairs, from drugstores, bowling alleys and cinemas of modernity to contemporary showrooms, the metropolitan night has evolved in its places and its vocabulary. Aristocrats, ragpickers, dandies, architects, surrealists, futurists, Apaches, workers, party-goers, taggers, visitors or employees… Each generation has reinvented its nocturnal practices, making this space of freedom the mirror of society. More than two years of research were necessary for the design, by Marc Armengaud, philosopher and urban planner, of this exhibition and the book that accompanies it. Two years to bring together a unique and singular whole, unknown or familiar, but also to attempt, thanks to the data collected and the sensitive analysis of the territory, to map the reality, the uses and the possibilities of our nocturnal metropolis.

"Paris by night" reveals the city, the part of the day and the work of the night, a ghostly history hidden in the darkness, never traced, yet made up of emblematic figures, singular architectures and plural uses. "Paris by night" takes the nocturnal state as the original material of the city, a dreamed, surprising, mixed, liberated and mysterious urban territory.

From aristocratic nights to raves, from guinguettes to discotheques, from lamplighters to subway maintenance workers, from the Palais-Royal to amusement parks, from universal exhibitions to trade shows, from drugstores, bowling alleys and cinemas of the modern era to contemporary showrooms, the metropolitan night has evolved in its places and in its vocabulary. Aristocrats, ragpickers, dandies, architects, surrealists, futurists, Apaches, workers, partygoers, taggers, visitors or employees... Each generation has reinvented its nocturnal practices, making this space of freedom the mirror of society. More than two years of research were necessary for the conception, by Marc Armengaud, philosopher and urbanist, of this exhibition and the book that accompanies it. Two years to assemble a unique and singular ensemble, unknown or familiar, but also to attempt, thanks to the data collected and the sensitive analysis of the territory, to map the reality, the uses and the possibilities of our nocturnal metropolis.